The long awaited sequel is here but there are a few problems that hinders the game play.
In the past the MGS series there have been both "Tactical" and "Espionage" action to the player to choose from. But the game creators usually lean towards espionage than tactical. In MGS4 the game play totally drops the espionage action and focuses in on the tactical aspect more than ever. The reasons behind this are of course the environments in which you play in strictly being "war zones". The game offers a customizable options for your weapons to help enhance the tactical action but this option seems complicated at first but ends up being simple in nature, to simple. The only thing that you can really do to your gun is either add a suppressor, laser sight, scope, grenade or shotgun attachment, under grip and a flashlight. But a large amount of the weapons that are offered you can only customize 1 to 2 options. Another appealing aspect is the arsenal of weapons at your finger tips that you can use. There are so many weapons in this game you wont even end up using half of them.
Next up is the Close Quarters Combat or the lack of being able to use it. Snake is suppose to be a master at CQC but during the game Snake is offered very very limited options of how to use it. The main and only way to use your CQC effectively is to sneak up behind an enemy and grab him. Although there are more options to do from this position such as disarming, searching, and of course killing you have to use complex button combinations to use each but most of the time it doesn't even work and you end up letting the enemy go or you could just use your silenced handgun and kill them with a head shot and eliminate the use of CQC altogether. In some of the cut scenes Snake uses his CQC like he is playing with children and effortlessly disarms opponents and knocks them out and this makes the player think why cant i do that in the game.
The individual enemy AI is still the same always walking back and forth on patrols but never deviate to throw the player off this is really disappointing. Also the Team AI is a whole lot better enemies will know go behind cover and try to flank you and they now throw hand and stun grenades at your feet causing you to roll out of the way. BUT one thing that i hate is that they always know where you are if you kill an enemy, run away and hide in your barrel or box the enemies will go straight to you and kill you in this manner, shoot when you are on the ground and when you stand up knife you back down to the ground and shoot you.
So in conclusion i think that this is one of the best games out there to buy or to rent it takes about 20 hours to beat the game but actually only 8 hours of it is game play and the other 12 is the half hour cut scenes and codec moments. Dont get me wrong i love MGS it just the above topics that i stated really take out of the game play for me.