Customer Reviews
Probably the best video game ever - By: Mike Anderson, 19 Nov 2008 
This could very well be the best video game ever made. Never before has a game shown so much character development & such a great job of storytelling - yes, it's linear, & yes it does use a lot of cut-scenes; & simply, that's why it's so darn good. The gameplay is solid but the cut-scenes make this title something far more than a game.
Hideo Kojima is the only one who truly gets it. He's the Spielberg of video-games.
I was blown away. You owe it to yourself to buy this game.
Probably best Metal gear since Solid 1. - By: Mr. Tim Malcolm, 17 Nov 2008 
I have played all the MGS games, & this is a throughly enjoyable edition. The biggest change is that all out action shooting is much easier to do & more successful as a tactic, & the wealth of weaponry is far more extensive & available. Consequently there are a lot more optionsin your approach to the game. It still makes more sense to be sneaky, but if you'rein a tight spot you can shoot your way out of it. There are a lot of varied & impressive set piecesin the game, & it is technically very very good. The boss battles are slightly easier thanin previous games, but the game is still reasonably hard, & you will benefit from the excellent guide. It loses one star because the cut-sequences are way too long (it never bothered mein previous games, but they seem even longerin this one), & the plot is not interesting enough to justify such a lot of cut-scene. Excellent game though.
WOW the best MGS game - By: U. Judge, 12 Nov 2008 The mgs series has always left big impressions on gaming as a whole from the first game to the very impressive MGS snake eater & MGS4 guns of the patriots doesnt disappiont. MGS4 is simply breathtaking from the moment the game strats to the end. Next gen truly does start with MGS4 the amazing graphics & sound are truly unmatched. The final epic saga of the legendary solid snake graces the ps3 & is unquestionably the best next gen game out there.
Definitely not Lipstick on a Pig - By: Matthew Dean, 10 Nov 2008 Firstly, let me just say that, though I've played demos of all them, this is the first MGS that I've actually played through myself so, while I know what to expect roughly, I do not know the ins-and-outs of the games as a series. Also I know next-to-nothing about any of the games of the series before it came to the Playstation all those many years ago. Basically, I am not completely engrossed by all things solid & serpentine & so will pertain to some form of objectivity.
Initially, the game is setin an atmosphere very different to previous offerings; there is,in the first act (of five), an incessant battle ongoing between two different militias & the ricochets of their gunfire seem to hound you round the entire map, tricking you into believing that, despite your best efforts at inconspicuousness, you have been seen. It very quickly becomes apparent that the visuals of this game are achingly impressive & the war-ravaged scenery really does look good enough to eat. The detail of each character, each building, each vehicle is truly special to behold & the hair on a person's head, something that has always been notoriously difficult to render, looks remarkably life-like & usually behaves as such though the hair of a certain Redhead (trying to minimise spoiling the plot) seems never to move once regardless of being among vicious street-combat. So, allin all, the visuals are good, be it an urban landscape, a South American plain or an Eastern-Bloc city, & you'll certainly have enough time to admire them...
The gameplay on the other hand, while not really bad at all, is not quite so revolutionary. This is the game which basically invented the 'sneak 'em up' genre, & yet, as a greying albeit beautifully modelled Snake, you can shoot your way through the entire game. There are certainly times when hosing down anything that moves is not the answer, such as the beginning of Act Five, but for the majority of the game you simply can just pummel the enemy with lead, which is not very stealthy. You can buy a suppressor for most weapons but this doesn't make killing all the enemies you meet stealthy. I expected far more sneaking & waiting (which is not necessarily dull) yet it is unnecessary, especially when you're carrying a belt-fed machine-gun. Shooting all the enemies is not,in itself, a dull experience, just a hollow one since really you should be creeping past them. In addition, the weapons are, on the whole fun to use, but the control system is slightly irksome & is not particularly intuitive. Furthermore, the actual controls cannot be changed, only such settings as sensitivity & invert axes, leaving one to grow highly frustrated at times. On balance, the control system is at the very least adequate.
Now we'll (I'll) discuss the flaws of the game, beginning at the very obvious one of the length of the cut-scenes. I don't care that people claim it is trying to blur the boundaries between game & film; if I wanted to watch an hour of cut-scene I'd watch a film. Cut-scenes are quite necessary to most games & help the story along immensely, yes I concede those facts, but there is a point at which you just want to muller all the enemies with your newly-acquired assault rifle. I understand that the plot is somewhat intricate (I'm not even going to try to explain it) but more than half-an-hour for a cut-scene really is pushing things a stage too far. I also concede that I could have skipped them but, for knowledge of why I was mindlessly killing everything, I felt I had to watch them; I owed it to the developers to at least understand the story a bit.
My second gripe is that it seems to suffer from similar flaws to, coincidentally, a film. Shrek III, an enjoyable affair, is bogged down by having too many characters from the previous outings to truly give any of them any real character & MGS4 follows suit almost. Out of the previous MGS offerings, I know the original Playstation release most thoroughly (which is not saying that much) but I felt that the developers had gone too farin trying to name-check everything from MGS1, that it seemed a bit contrived for my liking. Also the fact that everything that happenedin the first instalment actually didn't quite happen how you thought it did is rather annoying. You'll see exactly what didn't quite happen how you thought it did.
There were also a few moments of frustration. One of these was the boss-battle against Vamp. I admit that I took a while to remember that I had my syringe but, even when I knew how to finish him off, the control system made it so awkward (I admit I checked on the web to see what to actually press) that I must have killed him for more than forty-five minutes, knowing what I had to do but not knowing how to do it. Why couldn't Snake just inject Vamp when he was shot down? It seemed he'd suddenly turned into Guybrush Threepwood with his inability to do anything. Also the 'B&B' battles were rather easy (I played it on Solid Snake Normal since I'd never played much of them before)/samey & really was not very interestedin what Drebin (you'll find out who) had to say about them.
I've given it four stars because, while it is visually a masterpiece, the gameplay at best is enjoyable, though not so revolutionary, & the length of the cut-scenes serve to foil this game getting any sort of five-star rating. Very good & very enjoyable but inherently flawed & possibly a bit too contrived.
not bad but not as good as metal gear solid 3 - By: Christine Menendez, 09 Nov 2008 The problem is that the gameplay suffers due to the finite amount of video & dramam & not as much gameplay.
The game producers need to cut back a little on the amount of video.
I also disliked the amount of movements & the lack of chaff grenades & other spy gear.
It seems more & more like another medal of honor & less & less like a spy game.
On the plus side i must compliment the programmers on the variety of weapons & stuff you can gain & the creation of the octosuit & the mk robot thingy idea.
