This is where it ends, and what an ending! Nostalgic! Awesome music! Clever and fun presentation!
The BAD STUFF first shall we? :
Threat ring: totally unnecessary, it's just irritatingly floating around you. I mean we metal gear players have suffered with bad camera angels for soo long, but still been able to pull off perfect sneakings.
Mk 2: Only used it once, and that was on a very nostalgic occasion..involving electrified floor. I allways liked to play MGS 3 on extreme, because it didn't give you any of those crazy gadgets like the sonar and stuff. Sometimes less is more, makes the game more immersive. That brings me to the controls
THE GOOD AND THE BAD...and the ugSscchh! wanna get sued?!
The controls(oh really?): There's a lot of things you can do, and it takes a while to get used to, and the buttons are pressure sensitive, which as we all know, can screw things up for you sometimes. But you get the hang of it, and then you become DA Snake. So it has it ups and downs. Just read the manual...and try to remember it all!
CQC returns with some added moves. The strip search of enemies is now performed a bit more realisticly than the shaking hoola hoop soldiers of previous installments. And all other moves do look very slick and realistic.
THE STORY
This is the final chapter, and kind of like Star Wars ep 3, they had to cram everything unfinished in here, luckily with a much bigger time window, and therefore a billion times better pulled off. I mean Anakin turning to the darkside 2 minutes after having a laugh with Obi?! Oh well, back on topic. So instead of just finishing everything up, a whole new spectrum (with the nanosoldiers and all that) is introduced. Which tends to go over the top and really haves you sitting on the edge of your seat trying to take it all in. But the good part is that it does rap everything up, although you wish it could have been done in a less confusing way. What is really worth mentioning about the cutscenes are that 1: they blend very nicely in to gameplay. 2: You can now PAUSE during the cinematics! Thanks Kojima!
ENEMIES
Most of the time you will fight squad operating PMCs(private military contractors..I think)who work together as squads to bring down the militia and you, Snake. You can ally with either side, but I only tried being friends with the Rebels, or Militia as they are called. So the PMCs where my enemies, and it felt like the natural choice actually, since the rebels where allways the ones trying to break through the PMCs defenses, kind of what Snake is trying to do.
Then there's the small metal gear things walking around. I just stayed out of there way and that worked fine, although they can be scary since they remind me of a T-rex hunting you down, they do have some impressive melee attack skills with their legs, so stay away. You'll eventually get your hands on a big familiar weapon, that you can bring these mini gears down with.
There's also special forces ninja-like soldiers who come frome time to time to push you around, using P90s and crazy jumping spiderman skills. A few shots to the head and they go down. You just got to find the right moment when they are not moving too much.
Finally there's a robot type of enemy in form of balls with arms that roll around and shoot and jump at you trying to grab you.
BOSSES..that I won't spoil.
Kind of like in all metal gear games there is a group of bosses with their own strength and weaknesses. This group consists of four sexy girls, which doesn't look too sexy when you first encounter them. The boss fights are quite easy once you get the hang of what you have to do, which isn't hard at all. They aren't as interesting as in previous games, sorry to say. But they tend to be more of the scary type, which is a plus.
WEAPONS..of tiny destruction
The weapon choice is vast and varied, with all modern weaponry you can think of, and then some. Quite early on in the game you meet Drebin, a weapon launderer. You see, all weapons have ID locks in MGS 4, and Drebin can unlock them for you. You can buy weapons and ammo from him anytime during the game from the pause menu. You can also customize your weapons with parts you buy from him. Like supressors, scopes, grips etc. Every weapon that you pick up on the battlefield(you can pick up weapons from every body lying around this time around) that you allready own, will automatically be sold to Drebin minus the ammo which you get to keep. By doing different things in the game you can earn Drebin points that you can use in his shop.
THE DESIGN
Beautiful! Motion capture, Metal Gear in HD, sharp textures, awesome effects, big maps, interactive environments and lots of detail, such as bottles lying around that makes sound if you walk over them and stuff like that. Then there's the sound. The music is awesome, as we all have come to expect from a Metal Gear game, and hear this, you have an iPOD! From the item menu you can access your iPod where you can listen to music from all metal gears and other Konami games. You will come across music tracks hidden all over the game that will be added to your ingame iPod. The voice acting is great as allways.
The game has a great sence of humour to it, and really have some great jokes about older games in the series and such. Speaking of that, the game really takes you through the hole series with flashbacks and other big and small design implementations to make you remember the whole experience in a way to say farewell. Do I make any sense? Well you understand when you play the game. At the end of the game I cried, just a little but still, it was very emotional. Not just the whole this is THE end thing, but the way the story ended for every character in the game.
just want to mention the MULTIPLAYER
Metal Gear Online is included in the game, and is really a unique and fun game since it includes the elements from the single player, such as CQC, cardboard boxes etc. But also thanks to the very cool character creation system, where you can decide every peace of tactical equipment. Also in games there there is the ability to fully customize weapons, if Drebin points are activated. Meaning that if you kill you earn points to buy customizations.
CONCLUSION
Not the best in the series, personally the first(MGS) and third are my favourites. Very Very good looking and sounding game, with great game play and memorable moments. Great story that spiraled a little bit out of control along the way, but still managed to finish up quite nicely.
The first game to bring me to tears, but was it tears of joy or sadness? Play the game to find out.
The score slider is broken! It has to be 9.5 instead of 9.3 then. Thanks for reading!!