UKking

WARNING - This post discusses just about everything in MGS4, and as such if you haven't finished and don't want to know about what happens, don't read the spoiler.



^ I don't agree about the B&B Corps.

Spoiler: I thought that they were tacked on. Ask yourself; how would the plot have been different without them? Sure, we wouldn't have had ten minute-long pointless and tedious monologues from Drebin explaining to us how they all ate their parents in warzones when they were kids, but the fact is, they weren't relevant to the plot, and in a game that's so heavily story-driven, the fact that they serve no purpose whatsoever in that regard means you don't care about them, what happens to them, or anything like that. Obviously the game needed a few bosses to complete as you went along, as the MGS games have always had so far, but that's literally all the B&B Corps are. They were a gameplay mechanic, thinly disguised as a moral referendum on the effects of war, if disguised at all. And I only ever felt preached to when their stories were told through Drebin's pretty ropey exposition. Individually they kind of worked - after all, they do give you something to complete as well as the actual missions, and you do look forward to getting them out of the way - but the first three were boring to fight (just pump them full of lead for a while and you're laughing), although the first was a little creepy with the way she could disguise herself as dead soldiers, or Naomi, or whatever, then she'd make a noise behind you and FUCK, my heart stopped. She freaked me out. The second and third weren't anything special, and while Screaming Mantis was interesting and scary (dead bodies coming after you are frightening after all), once you worked out how to beat her it was a piece of cake. In fact, I've got a fairly big problem with Screaming Mantis which extends somewhat to the rest of the game.

Usually, I don't like supernatural things. I don't believe in ghosties and ghouls, and so when they turn up in my games, or films, or fiction, I'm more often than not going to switch off. I can't be doing with Lord of the Rings, World of Warcraft, goblins and dragons and magic and spells, most of the time. I like my entertainment to be based in the real world, and for things to be based on science, even if it's silly made-up science, as long as it's not ooh, inexplicable magic stuff. That's why I can forgive the bullet in Renard's brain in The World Is Not Enough, the one that's supposedly burrowing down into his head and cutting off his senses as it goes. It's silly and obviously twaddle but as far as suspension of disbelief goes I can accept quite a lot and it's what we've come to expect from James Bond films, to an extent. Now, in the MGS games, there's a fair amount of crazy stuff but it's usually based in this slightly twisted real world where proprietary military technology's gone a long way. But I cannot get over Screaming Mantis. She is so close to supernaturalism - and so badly explained - that I can't forgive her. For those who don't remember, she has two puppets that shoot 'ghosts', one that controls the bodies of the living, the other that does the same for the dead. We're offered an explanation from Otacon: something about the first ghost being a hypnotic hallucination that scares people into doing what it wants, and the second providing a voltage that reinvigorates and allows control of the dead body. Now I can accept quite a lot,as I've said, but these explanations were clearly just excuses to allow the developers to get away with including Screaming Mantis, and that means that their reasons for including her ought to be good, and luckily, they're alright. Partly it's because she's creepy, and she is, though as I've said, once you figure out how to beat her it's not hard at all, limiting her scariness, but the main reason is for the throwbacks to MGS1, with Psycho Mantis. These make the fight early on quite good fun (did you try switching the controller to port 2?), and interesting when Psycho himself returns. There is another problem I have with Screaming Mantis though, and that's the fact that you can keep and use her puppets. All he bosses give you a useful item or weapon, but I can't accept these puppets. Have you tried them? Not only are they very tricky to get the hang of, but there's no way they fit in a roster of real, or realistic, military weaponry. They take the game too far to the edge of supernaturalism and don't really work in any way.

Now for my other gripe with the game: nanomachines. Given Kojima's penchant for plot twists that turn everything on its head (and I like these twists, by the way), by the fiftieth one you're starting to run out of explanations. Which, I suspect, is why most of the revelations in MGS4 are down to a) someone having nanomachines in them, whether they knew it or not, that allowed them to do something crazy; b) someone's nanomachines going wrong, mutating or not working, causing them to go crazy; c) someone not having nanomachines, or having out-of-date ones, meaning that they can't be controlled or monitored by the System; d) all of the above; e) something else about nanomachines. While I'm not against the nanomachine ideas in the game, nor am I against millions of plot twists, you do get to a point where you're second-guessing the game, trying to work out where the next nanomachine-based revelation will come. And at some points they're used as very flimsy explanations for things - such as Screaming Mantis's puppets.

However, starting this post with such annoyances is a way to get them out of the way, as I think that MGS4 is one of the greatest games I've ever played, and ever will play. This is somewhat down to the integrated cutscenes (MGS's third-person, cinematic, highly-linear answer to the unbroken first-person cutscenes of FPSs such as CoD4 and Half-Life 2). By this I'm particularly thinking about the opening scene and the one in which you fight FROGs with RAT Patrol Team 01, as well as the split screen cutscenes in which Vamp fights Raiden and Snake crawls through the microwave tunnel. The FROG sequence is one of my favorite gaming moments ever, as the fluidity of the combination of cutscene and gameplay is as good as any unbroken cutscene/gameplay scene from CoD4 or HL2, and to my mind possibly even better. It's partly down to the fact that the cinematic sections are only seconds long, before you're fighting again. Usually a cutscene - particularly in the MGS series - relaxes you, as it's a signal that you've just completed a part of the game and now you can watch some stuff happen. Not so here. The camera angle changes, the characters have some dialogue, and you think, "Ah, good, I can put the controller dow- oh no, there's my health bar and radar, the camera's swinging back round behind Snake, looks like I'm fighting again!" It's virtually unprecedented in third-person gaming - at least, the fluidity with which it's achieved and the effect it has is.

Another superb integrated cutscene - and another moment of MGS4 that's gone straight into my favorite gaming moments ever - is the one in which Snake crawls through the tunnel of microwaves, while in the screen above, we see the USS Missouri preparing for battle, soldiers bearing down on Raiden, and Johnny and Meryl together. The fact that all you're doing by the end is button-mashing isn't a problem - in fact, it increases the intensity of the scene. The way that all Snake's doing is killing himself slowly, and the music rises, and the stuff's going on above you, and then Snake slows down, and you finally reach the door, and when it opens it just reveals another fifty feet of glowing red microwave hell, and Snake slows down again, and the animation of his body really shows how every ounce of energy he has left is going into making every movement forwards, and you have no idea whether he'll make it or not... that scene was incredible. I've never experienced anything like that in a game before.

Other - normal - cutscenes were memorable and great on their own merits. Not all - in particular, the plane briefings and final ('Debriefing') scene really tried my patience (and the final one, though you get to see Big Boss, is reminiscent of the ending of MGS2 with its overwrought preachiness and anti-climactic feel). However, I really liked the one in which Meryl and Johnny get engaged. It was not only superbly choreographed and shot, but very funny to boot, without feeling cheap, cheesy, unbelievable, or out-of-place. The whole game has a very funny side, possibly due largely to Snake's world-weary, sarcastic, I-don't-understand-what-you're-talking-about-but-I'll-take-your-word-for-it persona, and it's important - without a sense of humor this game (indeed, the whole series) would not be nearly as involving or fun as it is. I liked their wedding, too, because it made me feel good (though Meryl's much butcher than I'd imagined...), as did Rose's ending with Jack. I never hated Raiden as much as everyone else did in MGS2, but I always hated Rose. Face it, she was an annoying, whiny bitch in MGS2, and on the Codec in MGS4 she's an annoying, whiny bitch, but the ending with Jack made her into an okay person. Partly because she came clean to Jack, and it was all happy, and partly because her new haircut and jumper have made her much hotter since MGS2. I'm a simple man.

Naomi's death was an epic scene, and if you're struggling to see how MGS4 really is next-gen entertaiment, you need only watch it (after the microwave and RAT Patrol Team 01 bits ). No videogame has had a more heart-rending sequence than this, ever. The music was perfect, and the way that Otacon reacted to Naomi's death - and the way that she held the Mk. III to her as she died - was as emotionally affecting as any film I've ever seen. It's one of those bits that you can't explain. You just need to see it (and understand it, of course) to really understand how intense it is. Poor Otcan can't seem to hold onto anyone he loves... first Sniper Wolf, then Emma and now Naomi... I hope he settles down with Mei Ling and decides to not go to places where the people he loves can die horribly any more.

I also like the end of Act 3, where Liquid takes over SOP on that river. Nothing much to say here... I just liked how it was choreographed, shot and scored.

Vamp's first fight with Raiden was surprisingly involving for me, as I'd watched most of it in one of those long trailers that Kojima likes to produce, and it bored me, but in the game, I couldn't look away. Again, it was magnificently choreographed and shot, which was part of it, but it was also because Vamp was becoming interesting. In MGS2 I hated Vamp. This is partly because of his supernatural nature, which in MGS4 was revealed to be because of - surprise surprise - nanomachines, but at least it meant that he wasn't a magical beastie. I mean, in MGS2, Fortune couldn't be hit by bullets, but that was revealed to be due to that little thing on her hip that the Patriots put there. Vamp was just left unexplained. And the fact that Vamp could die was a good thing, because he was still a bit of a cock.

I found the final fight disappointing, but not because of how it was set up and played out - doing it any other way wouldn't have worked so well. Fighting Liquid in the Metal Gear as at the end of Act 4, fun as it was (and it was brilliant), wouldn't have suited the end of the game. The fistfight was a good way to do it, as it was visceral, personal and climactic. I just wish that the actual gameplay mechanics had been sorted out properly. As it was, my victory on the fifth go seemed to be heavily influenced by luck rather than tactics or skill, which was a shame. I did like how the health bars and music changed through the fight, and I loved how at the end, the health bars went and when you hit R1, the superb animations really conveyed how Snake put all of his effort into thumping Liquid one last time. The integrated cutscene stuff worked well here too, with the camera's seamless movement from cinematic to gameplay shots heightening the impact of the fight.

I like how, throughout, genre convention is played with somewhat, mainly through Snake's constant encounters with Liquid, where usually you'd expect the main boss to show up at the end and that's it. Seeing him at the end of Act 1 - seeing as we weren't shown anything else in the trailers, I thought that that would be the end of the game. So to see him there - and nearly kill him - was quite a shock and really excited me.

Speaking of that, I really loved the variety in the different Acts. Given that I thought the whole game would be set up like Act 1 (knowing nothing different from the trailers), it was beyond my already high expectations to discover that there was so much more. This isn't to say that Act 1 was a let-down, as I loved it, and I thought that the warzone scenario was more immersive than many games (especially CoD4) that pride themselves on realistic battlegrounds (and they do too, no argument there). I think it's the idea that the battles are going on around you and you're not involved (though you can get involved) that does it. It's just like being dumped in a military base or jungle, except that here, a war is happening. It's not your fight, you've just come across it. An especially important part of this, at least for me, was the use of surround sound - an explosion goes off over there, bullets are flying, guns are going off, people are shouting... it really increases how convincing the scenario is.

Act 2 was okay. The tracking was interesting and fun, and the Gekko and zombie things were annoying.

Act 3 was where things really knocked up a notch. Though much of the Act was plain cutscenes, the following/helping out thing with the Resistance guy was intriguing and enjoyable, but the section was slightly flawed in that you could just put on the Octocamo rather than the disguise you were given, and things would be much easier. In fact, that's something of a gripe with the whole game - Octocamo is good and certainly a load better than the camouflage system in MGS3, but it does make certain sections of the game quite easy. Having said that, I'd rather complete an easy game and have fun than get stuck on a hard one, and having completed it on Normal I can always go back to a mental extreme mode if I want a challenge. So it's not a gripe, really, just an observation.

Act 4 was superb. For a start, the blizzard was impressively created. Again, the sound was important, with wind whooshing all around you, but simply the graphics were stunning. When the blizzard reached whiteout proportions it was impossible to see anything, and the snow whizzing about and flying in different directions was convincing and presented a new type of challenge. And then, reaching Shadow Moses... the nostalgia hits you like a slippery fish, and both seeing the derelict base and speaking to Otacon, you're both reminded of how incredible and groundbreaking MGS1 was, and really able to realize how far the games have come since then. The flashbacks and voices-in-your-head were nostalgic, cool and also funny at times (I particularly liked seeing the gun-camera again). And the bit with the Gekko on the electric floor was good because it not only reminded me of how fun it was to guide that missile through that level, but also allowed to me to use my cunning to reactivate the floor and kill the bastard. I really hate Gekko.

The start of Act 5 was great. Immediately being chased down was certainly a novel way to start a level, and made it exciting from the start. I liked how it achieved its climax, as I've already discussed, with the several areas of action combining into an epic, epic series of events and cutscenes. Act 5 is gaming at its very, very best. Except for Screaming Mantis's puppets, of course.

I've mentioned the sound a few times, and it's worth just wrapping up how superb the sound design is - both the score and in-game sounds. The score is as good as any game soundtrack ever composed, particularly the Old Snake theme, which instantly goes down in the list of memorable and perfectly-judged themes from MGS games. The in-game sound design is great, particularly the use of surround sound as I've discussed, and I love the bit where you see the back on Jonathan's head, which is shaved into the shape of an exclamation mark, and the guards' exclamation sound plays.

The graphics are as good as we've seen so far on PS3. Texture quality isn't as good as it could be (probably due to the RSX's 256MB of memory) - normally this isn't a problem as the camera's not close enough to anything for you to notice it, but every so often it is, and the low resolution of some textures breaks the game's immersiveness a little. But the character and object models are great, and the lighting and other effects are excellent - the aforementioned snow, dust billowing, lens flare, smoke wafting, eyeballs glistening, the B&Bs... well, glistening too, really, once they're out of their suits. The way that textures fade and change (primarily on the Octocamo and the B&Bs outfits) is impressive and very cool. Fundamentally, MGS4 is, graphically, very sound, and let's not forget that it runs at a smooth 60fps - and that with time, developers learn more and more about the consoles for which they're programming and how to get the best out of them. MGS3 is one of the best-looking games on PS2 - by the time that PS3 has been out for that long, god knows what Kojima's team could be doing on it. It's widely thought that the PS3's potential vastly outweighs its current showings, so it'll be very exciting, that's for sure.

Oh, and one last thing. Whenever Snake killed a B&B, or when Vamp died, all I was thinking was,"Cut their head off!" Seriously. You can't trust people dying in Metal Gear games, and Snake should know that by now. Those nanomachines that Naomi injected into herself when she and Vamp died - I bet they were new nanomachines to make them ito superpeople that'll take over the world in MGS7. I spent the whole game thinking that the B&Bs would come back and I'd have to fight them all at once at the end, purely because I can't trust that shooting someone a lot is going to kill them, not since Vamp and Raiden showed how much they can take. Cut off their heads. Problem solved.

And one other last thing. I remember reading on some website prior to playing the game that all that's left of Raiden is his head and spine, and the rest is machine. Fine. But is it actually explained in the game? I remember at the end, when he said to Snake that he was all machine, and I remember when he was bleeding white stuff, but I don't remember anyone actually spelling it out. Did I miss something?

If you read it all... cheers. I'm interested in what you guys think and whether you agree with me or not. Regardless of the problems I had with the game I still consider it to be one of the best I've ever played. I'll probably think of more stuff I want to write about it in the future too... I'll come back to the thread if I do.

Oh, and Metal Gear Online's good. Play it. Stupid log in system but once you've got through it, it's awesome.