Another Great Entry in a Great Series
That trend does not stop here, thankfully. Metal Gear Solid 4 is the culmination of years of fine tuning gameplay elements, cinematics, and overall presentation on the part of Kojima's development team. To say that the game is perfect is a bit of a stretch, but all told it's as close to perfect as any of the best games I've had the pleasure of experiencing.
From a visual standpoint, MGS4 set a high standard for Playstation 3 games on it's release in 2008. Looking at it now, it's hard to see why it was so impressive now that the generation is almost at a close and we have so many fantastic looking games in our collective rearview, but for it's time the visuals were a revelation. In comparison to it's contemporaries (LBP, Haze, UT3) MGS4 had a certain level of graphical consistency and quality that was unmatched. Characters are rendered with an impressive amount of detail, and environments, while not mind blowing, do serve the purpose and set the stage for the proceedings.
Gameplay is where the game truly stands out. Poorly aging and clunky gunplay mechanics aside, Metal Gear Solid 4 still handles like a champ. CQC is expanded on even further, and the wealth of maneuvers that Snake is capable of in-game is staggering. To elaborate would be superfluous, but suffice it to say that the people over at Konami did a great job of making the player feel like a deadly (if rapidly aging) mercenary amongst witless amateurs.
Strangely, this brings me to my only major complaint about MGS4, and it's a complaint that can be leveled at the entire series: the A.I. is still, for lack of a more appropriate term, silly. That they forget you much too quickly after being beaten nearly to death and then calling in reinforcements, all because you hid under a barrel right next to the lot of them, is jarringly inauthentic. However, I'm not saying the game would necessarily benefit from incredibly accurate enemy A.I., but one begins to question whether or not the series may need to rethink the way it handles interaction with the adversary.
Music, as is typical of this series, is serviceable. You won't have any of the tunes stuck in your head, but it fits the mood set here, and bumps up in intensity when appropriate for the situation. Sound effects are a little more impressive, with battlefields sounding adequately dangerous thanks to the enemies' calls to each other and radio communications, as well as the sound of bullets whizzing close by when the action ramps up.
Overall, Metal Gear Solid 4 is one of the better games on the PS3. I haven't even touched on the multiplayer, which is just icing on the cake. It has a bit of a steep learning curve, and nowadays it may be more or less dead aside from a small community of devotees, but it is a unique online experience without a doubt. There's not much left to say, except that any PS3 owner owes it to his/herself to experience this game. With it's convoluted, but entertaining story, and tried and true Metal Gear Solid gameplay refined to near-perfection, this is definitely a game that should not be missed.