It is as if Hideo Kojima kept forgetting he was making such a fantastic game and not a major motion picture.
Its no surprise in the story, Liquid is up to no good and Old Snake is the only soldier able to stop him. Character twists and fantastic locations with allies shifting sides and deep conversations that are incomprehensible. The story is not bad, after a while you begin to feel the connections and emotions of each character and when it seems some are going to die, you actually do care whether or not they live. The story is a huge part of this game since it mostly delivers a story more so than game play. However much of this economic based "proxy" war "mumbo jumbo" is incomprehensible and you'll find yourself tuning out of the long strenuous cut scenes. The graphics are fantastic and the voice acting and animation and the dialog, don't get me wrong, however when getting down to video game business cut scenes should set up the game play ahead giving the player a mild dose of story to keep them compelled. Anything above that and the player begins to drown amongst useless thoughts so by the time game time comes around its hard to imagine. Again, thats not to say cut scenes are bad. However most of the cut scenes I found were absolutely unnecessary, yet a few of them that were fight sequences were really cool, and I'll be watching them again in the extras.
I don't want to divulge too many names here or any real plot items, since for many this game is about story and I would not like to ruin anything for anyone. It seems though in terms of an artistic point of view, Hideo went all out film maker on the cut scenes, and sort of mildly set up the game. I despise artsy films, as they seem too pretentious, and many cut scenes seemed to pretentious.
The game play on the other hand is bittersweet. On the one hand, the camo is really cool and so is the gun blazing action. Actually, controls are nice (mildly confusing when going into first person aiming) but very crammed in, theres lots for Snake to do and it gets clustered. This barely detracts from the game, I'm only nit picking to really be brutally honest about this game, since everyone else is going gaga over it. Its impressive, not perfect.
The main problem with the game play is that its short and between long cut scenes; and there is not much challenge, all you have to do is reach the next point that starts a cut scene, so you can just run through.
The boss battles are on par, more so dragged out normal enemies that flail stuff or shoot more stuff then normal enemies. The only thing that prolongs game play is your own stealth discretion; you can drag out the game as long as you want.
Music score was good, but needed in many instances of stealthy actions, where there was no music.
The weapon system with "dude that sells weapons" is very good; difficult to master and difficult to use, but once you get the hang of it, it's nice. I found that when a boss came around, I just bought like 10 missiles for the RPG then proceeded to blow them to smithereens.
After completing the single player (or to take a break) theres some nice multi-player icing on top of the cake that is MGS4. It is not bad not terrible, but also to be blunt not fun. Its the same mechanics as the single player but with humans, so we think faster than the game can which causes a massive cluster f*** of you dying and super duper fantastic players hogging points. No points for kill assists either, which sucks because theres such a small number of players in a condense area that everyone is killing everyone constantly but it just does not feel fun because there is supposed to be stealth and strategy. Then they place porno mags down and you stare at them and die, its funny but annoying. Of course if you get stunned you have to waggle the stick for half an hour. Which sucks. I think I played MGO for a few days, and decided to stick with World of Warcraft and Call of Duty 4 for my online fix.
I mean overall, I'm trying to say that the superb production value of this game does not over compensate the issues that detract from the over all game experience. I will not dock marks for the online, because thats an extra they did not even have to put in; although now they want to cash in with micro transactions... fine, with micro transactions I will dock. I hate to be a negative Nancy or a downer Debbie and a bit of a bitter Betty here, but someone has to spoil the parade that is compliments for Metal Gear Solid 4. Buy it. I got the Limited Edition, I love the game (not the online). But it is far from being a perfect game. Many argue the perfect score, but to me a perfect score represents the developers attention to every detail in a game to produce a flawless work of art that fluently transcends story and game play above all else. Plus I'm starting a whole really, brutal reviews thing like I did with World of Warcraft. Which thus concluding, Metal Gear Solid 4 receives this score for a job well done, and the apple of the Playstation 3's eye.