i know it's a little late, but i just played MGS4...

[BlaizeYES]

recently i played and beat it. and i must say... i was a bit disappointed. i was hoping for a certain part, the "mission debriefing," and that part wasn't even that involving... like it was forced. anyone else feel this way? the people i know who have played the game said they loved it... but it felt more like a jerry bruckheimer movie than the other games i've played. maybe i've outgrown games in general.

the one part i LOVED though is when snake took off his clothes in front of naomi and she started crying at how old and pathetic snake looks... and the look on snake's face and his body language as he's staring at himself in the mirror is beautiful... he looks defeated, self-conscious of his brittle decadent body falling deeper into depretiation, and just utterly despondent. thats 5 words beginning with "de" to "de"scribe OLD SNAKE, and captures the moment perfectly

[amtalx]

I thought it was really good. The 90 minute ending was a bit much though. I fell asleep the first time and had to finish it again to watch it.

[BBonez]

I personally enjoyed every bit of MGS4. I do feel there could have been more stealth involved but I welcomed the new system with open arms since it felt good. Cutscenes were long and if you're not a huge fan of MG you might not enjoy it all I suppose. I enjoyed all the cutscenes and although the ending was very long, I sat through it because I was just curious about what happened and everything. To truly enjoy the game you have to get involved with the story I think ><

[BlaizeYES]

lol... well to me, it seems that they spent most of the time explaining why things happen, instead of developing the characters around them the way they've done in other games. now you could say that they've already done that through the first, second, and third ones, but it just seemed a bit more detatched in the relationships with snake.

now heres spoilers: otacon has someone "he loves" die in every game he's in, when he only nailed naomi once and got overly attatched, and sniper wolf(who really didnt care about him at all). meryl's character in the first game was good, she had good parts... in this game though, her relationship with snake hardly meshed the right way, they made her useless in this game instead of keeping her as an integral part of snake's emotional and psychological being. had she died, it would have been worthless, but it beats the wedding. mei ling was worthless, could have taken her out of the game and nothing changed. big boss? worthless. even naomi, they forced her character into that position while showing no real attatchment to any of the other characters in the game. i was talking to my friend who played the game, and he agreed... it really didnt feel as if any person really had a solid identity in MGS4, no internal conflicts or different perspective or philosophy on what was happening and what they believe... the only identity was from a little backstory to paint over each hollow character. the beauty and the beast things... overdramatic, after laughing octopus' backstory, i'd just fastfoward the codecs explaining the rest, didnt care for em.

well, thats what i liked about metal gear solid before... describing the psychology of the main characters(although some may be generic) and their conflicting philosophies, dynamic characters. it seemed more like a nostalgia trip through most of the game rather than a gripping MGS1 or MGS3... completely stoic, anything could have happened and it would have mattered, even the fight with liquid(it was pretty good), but there was no sense of urgency, everything was already fucked up... seemed more like a fight for snake to say to everyone else(that for some reason doesnt just shoot liquid) "i still got it," because even if snake got killed in that fight, someone else would have just finished him off.


as you can see, i had alot of disappointment. did ANYone else think of any of this?

[SubstanceD]

Overall I really enjoyed the game although much like yourself I was very dissapointed with the storyline.

It's not how I would have imagined the MGS saga ending. If I were Hideo Kojima I would have taken a very differnt route with the storyline. I remember reading somewhere ( I think in Edge Magazine ) that in hindsight, Hideo admitted himself that if he had known that the MGS saga was going to turn out the way it had we would have ended MGS on the PS1 differently and there would be alot less of the clone stuff and alot less of the Nano Machine stuff.

As for alot of the returning characters, for the most part I was glad to find out what had happened to alot of MGS1's cast even though I was dissapointed by them all. Meryl's storyline was anti cliamtic. It seemed out of character for Mei Ling to be a Captain of a warship ( or was it a submarine, I cant remember ), I always thought she was a civilian so where did the military connection come from. Otacon just eneded up repeating the same role of love and loss that he endured in MGS1 and MGS2. I was actually happy with Naomi's role in the story, sad about how her story ends but it was fitting for the character.

Great gameplay and the fact that I am a massive MGS fanboy kind of made up for the games weak points. I thought it was a great game but it could and should have been better.