Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is a stealth action game developed by Kojima Productions and published by Konami exclusively for the PlayStation 3. It is the sixth Metal Gear game directed by Hideo Kojima and was released worldwide on June 12, 2008. It is the final Metal Gear game where Solid Snake is the main character.

Why It's A Hero

 * 1) Highly detailed graphics for its time, pushing the PS3's launch edition to its limits.
 * 2) Excellent voice acting. Especially David Hayter's as Old Snake.
 * 3) Dark and depressing yet amazing soundtrack.
 * 4) The game deals with the trauma caused by war. Many soldiers seen in the game suffer from PTSD, and many of the characters have had war forced upon them. Raiden, for example, regained memories of his time as a child soldier, which made him unstable. He couldn't tolerate reality and became an alcoholic who ran away from home.
 * 5) Good gunplay that implements the over-the-shoulder perspective many games had adopted at this point.
 * 6) Smooth controls.
 * 7) Amazing art direction.
 * 8) A lot of returning characters like Raiden, Meryl, Vamp, and Naomi with some of the returning characters being changed for the better like Johnny, an easter egg character with a running joke that he has diarrhea, is now a courageous and formidable character in love with Meryl, and Raiden who is now a cybernetic ninja similar to Grey Fox.
 * 9) * In fact, Raiden was beloved by this point that he got his own game: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.
 * 10) The game does a great job of wrapping up everyone's story including Raiden who reconciled and reunited with his family, having learned that Rose's marriage to Roy Campbell was a sham and that Raiden's miscarried child is alive and well, and Snake finally learning to live and spend the time he has left with the people he cares about.
 * 11) Lots of cool gadgets and weapons that you can tailor to your own style of play.
 * 12) Great storyline that has Snake trying to takedown Liquid Snake who has taken control of the AI made by the Patriots.
 * 13) The player uses a new form of camouflage called "OctoCamo". The OctoCamo suit allows the wearer to blend in with any surface within a few seconds, however, the player can still change the pattern of the OctoCamo manually as long as the player saves the camouflage.
 * 14) A new "Psyche Gauge" which replaces the stamina meter that appeared in the previous game. The Psyche Gauge functions as an assessment of Snake's psychological state. If Snake is in a combat situation, then his adrenaline will increase, and he can fire rounds off faster and receive less damage. However, if Snake is near something that smells bad or hears something debilitating in a cutscene, then the meter will lower making Snake's accuracy and movement speed decrease accordingly until it can be replenished.
 * 15) A new sound-based mechanic called the "threat ring" that visibly vibrates when sound is made nearby allowing the player to get an idea as to where the enemy is.
 * 16) Dozens of secrets and easter eggs to discover.
 * 17) The cutscenes are highly impressive thanks to its camera angles and script.
 * 18) Tons of throwbacks to Metal Gear Solid, including a level where you return to Shadow Moses! While this may come across as nostalgia pandering, this makes a lot of sense when you consider that Snake is old and may be reminiscing about his youth and that this is a way to show how far the player has come since this is the end of the Metal Gear story.
 * 19) Sad and beautiful ending. The world has been freed from the Patriots' control; Johnny and Meryl get married; Raiden and Rosemary reconcile, with Rosemary revealing Raiden is a father; Drebin, Meryl, and their entire unit are no longer tools of the Patriots; Otacon adopts Sunny to raise her as his own daughter; Major Zero dies in the arms of his oldest friend, Big Boss, who reconciles with his estranged son Snake before also dying in his arms; and Snake has been cured of the FOXDIE virus (or at least injected with a new variant that is unlikely to mutate again before his death), and, while he still only has a few months to live, resolves to spend them peacefully rebuilding the world together with his oldest and best friend Otacon and his adopted daughter Sunny.
 * 20) *The ending also makes the game have very positive and encouraging morals: Never smoke, love your parents and your family, and of course, never think about suicide as it is wrong.
 * 21) Few, but memorable boss fights.
 * 22) A minor but nice addition is the ability to pause the cutscenes.
 * 23) The game saved the Playstation 3 from its terrible launch, with many buying a PS3 mainly for this game.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The final row of cutscenes goes on for 1 hour and 11 minutes, beating Metal Gear Solid 3 and earned the game the Guinness World Record for the longest sequence of cutscenes in a video game, at least until it was beaten by another Kojima game 11 years later, Death Stranding.
 * 2) This game is not for newcomers as it has many references and throwbacks to the previous Metal Gear games that newcomers won't understand thus making the story very confusing.
 * 3) The trophy, Sounds of the Battlefield requires the player to obtain all iPod tracks in the game. And while most can be found in-game, two of those require you to get the Big Boss emblem and get all 40 emblems respectively. This in turn makes it the hardest trophy in the game due to how tedious and repetitive it is since some emblems depend on the difficulty, how many deaths, how many alerts, no kills, not using recovery items, not using the stealth suit, not using bandana items, and beating the game under a certain time frame.
 * 4) * For reference, playstationtrophies.org estimates it will take the player 8 playthroughs to get all 40.
 * 5) It's difficult to fight the Suicide Gekko while the fight between Vamp and Raiden take up half the screen.
 * 6) The game has an inconsistent tone as it mixes goofy with serious. While Metal Gear always had a goofy undertone to it, this was mainly kept outside of cutscenes as to not disrupt the seriousness of them. But here, the goofiness is mixed in with the cutscenes which can make it hard for players to take it seriously. A good example is when Johnny craps himself in the middle of combat.
 * 7) Plot Hole: If Snake accomplishing his mission was all part of Liquid’s plan, why does Liquid keep trying to kill him?
 * 8) The frame rate can decrease at times in the cutscenes as many players report of the game dipping below 30.
 * 9) The BB unit’s backstories would have been more profound if they were established BEFORE Snake killed them.
 * 10) The fight scenes with Vamp and Raiden can look more like a dance-off than two people trying to kill each other. But that gets cancelled out in the final boss fight with Liquid.

Reception
Metal Gear Solid 4 received universal acclaim, according to review aggregator website Metacritic. It has a score of 92% on the site. Reviewers were unanimous in approval of the way the title continues and concludes the series. Eurogamer stated that "You could not ask for a funnier, cleverer, more ambitious or inspired or over-the-top conclusion", while IGN Australia found that the result "refines the MGS formula and introduces just enough new (or respectfully influenced) ideas to ensure that it stands on its own as a game." Edge concluded that "it is faithful to its fans, its premise and its heart, delivering an experience that is, in so many ways, without equal." The new control scheme and shift to more free-form, "replayable" gameplay were particularly highly praised with a few minor annoyances. The game was also lauded for its technological and artistic achievements, with Edge describing Otacon as "the real star", and "a gaming revolution" while they found the game's score to be superior to that of many Hollywood offerings.

Criticism was levelled at the game's storyline, which some reviewers found confusing although ultimately rewarding, particularly for fans. It was generally conceded that although the plot is intrusive, with many lengthy cutscenes, they are somewhat appropriate given their prominence in the rest of the series, and the addition of a pause function for these story sequences was welcomed. Edge and Eurogamer alike concluded that although the game represents an apotheosis of the series style, it ultimately fails to revitalize it, and will not win over new fans. Some fans were disappointed with the game's plot and were also slightly disappointed with the absence of trophy support on the game, despite trophies being introduced to the PlayStation Network after the release of the game.

Trivia

 * This became the last PS3 game offered to PlayStation Plus subscribers in February 2019, nearly 11 years after its release.
 * Snake's speech about war became a meme.
 * Contrary to popular belief, Sony and Konami never made any exclusivity deal to make the game exclusive to the Playstation 3, the reason Hideo Kojima chose the PS3 over the 360 is because the limitations are huge compared to the PS3.
 * Snakes's drone is reminiscent of Gillian Seed's robotic sidekick Metal Gear Mk. II from the game Snatcher.
 * For the Japanese dub, Kojima purposely picked Chikao Ōtsuka as Big Boss because him and his son, Akio Ōtsuka (who plays Solid Sanke), had a falling out. According to Outcast Podcast and Famitsu, this was done as a means to thaw the ice between the estranged father and son. Which it did.

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