Reviews

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Posted by jiosis on May 14, 2009
Game review based on: PS3
Game available for: PS3

Article
Comments (0)

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Yes you read it correctly. No it’s not a typo of “Metal Gear Solid 5″ and No! it’s not a joke! Just about time, huh? One more month and six days and it will be a year since it was released in Japan and North America! Well, so who am I writing this review for? For gamers like myself who care to spend money on things they are not sure about! (Here I’m assuming/hoping I’m not the only one!)

I’m sorry it’s my first post here so I should introduce myself! My name is Soroush and I go by Jiosis almost anywhere online! (Don’t bother googling it! It doesn’t mean anything! )
If I’m not asleep, I’m either coding, surfing, watching movies or playing video games (you can guess, my wife isn’t so happy about it!). I should say I’m not even close to such a hardcore gamer as Mikestrife is. I buy games here and there but I should be confident about a game to buy it at launch otherwise I’ll wait for its price to drop and/or find it used!

You’ll soon notice that my taste of video games is different than Mikestrife in most cases and that was my very first reason not to trust Mike’s advice on buying MGS4 and even caused me to look at it from the empty side of the glass.

I’ve known Mike for almost 3 years now and I don’t think if I’ve ever seen mike as excited as the day Konami set a release date for this game.

“This game is going to be a system seller”

“I can’t wait…”

etc, etc.

For me it was a sign… “CAUTION!”. But I had so little information about this game so the only way to prove myself wrong was to pre-order (put $5 down at EB) to receive a demo dvd AND a code to participate in their limited public beta and try out what Mike called “The best game ever! (gonna be, in that time.)”

I’ve never played any of the earlier MGSes so I didn’t understand anything from the story explained in the demo disk I got and the beta was for metal gear online only! Sure enough I couldn’t hate this game more and it wasn’t unexpected at all! It was a third person shooter which had nothing new to offer, well at least nothing interesting! Long story short I played the beta twice half an hour each time and made my decision! “NO” not for me! Even though the cut-scenes which were already published as the game’s trailer looked amazing, I convinced myself not to even try it ’cause the gameplay I experienced during the beta was nothing even close to those commercials.

Anyways Mike gave up on me and instead conviced another co-worker of ours to buy this game (Speaking about video games is a big part of our daily conversations out of work. Nerds!). He absolutely loved it but that love at first sight didn’t last long and since then he has yet to play and finish the first chapter (Act) of the game.

So here we go, 11 months later. I found a used copy of the game at my local Blockbuster store for $35. Bought it, brought it home and since then (The purchase receipt shows May 8th 2009) I have been late at work every single day! Why?! Because it is such an amazing and addictive game that it takes strong courage to stop playing!
I’m sorry I probably should re-phrase my last statement! …It takes strong courage to stop playing, watching or thinking about what’s gonna happen next!

If you haven’t played it, I think the best way to describe it is “a 20ish-hour long [interactive] movie!” Perfect story, great animation, smart AI, not repetitive and great ending! Even the voices are well chosen and well done! On the difficulty I played (SOLID NORMAL which is the 3rd difficulty of the game.) the game is fairly challenging but not frustrating! If you’ve got fraustrated you’re probably doing something wrong or you’ve missed something! On a side note, one thing you’ll notice about me is that I don’t like games which are pointlessly hard to beat and this game is definitely NOT one of them!

I finished the game JUST before I started writing this post and I’m already thinking of going through the game again especially now that I have a better understanding of what to do and where to go!

If you haven’t played this game, do not let anyone spoil it! I suggest you don’t even lookup for the cut-scene videos ’cause it will take away 3/4th of the fun and you may get bored between missions. Of course there were some parts I prefered to be different and features I wished it had but they’ve all got lost between all the good things this game has to present.

My final conclusion: You’ll love it unless you expect something this game is not! It is not “Call of duty 4″ nor “Killzone 2″. No zombies or horror scenes. Be prepared to watch lots and lots of cut-scenes between your missions. You may find it wierd but the only game I can sort of compare this one to, is Uncharted while they happen is totally different space and they are not same kind of games.