Agreed soooo much with this review. I'd never played an MGS game before, despite having wanted to, and MSG 4 was fun, but... come on, there were so many simply crazy features that it's incredible. Yahtzee is spot on about the long cutscenes, which are decent at setting the mood but horrible when it comes to actually, you know, inotroducing. But my main gripe is that MSG 4 is that it's apparently gone to the actions dogs and jumped on the current "omg games **** if you can't be an 1337 Rambo and mow down enemies by the thousands!!11" bandwagon started by the six-year olds demanding the games to be as dumbed-down as possible to be "fun" (pronounce "fun" in a sweet light voice while munching cotton candy and playing with your LEGO bricks while stifling a wail because someone mentioned the horrible no-no-words "realism", "teamwork", and "challenge"). MSG 4 is the first stealth game I've ever seen where your character not only can take a gazillion hits before dying and regenerate lost hit points fully and instantly, but also carries around a whole arsenal of heavy weapons ranging from assault rifles to freaking Javelins, and has the absurd ability to call up an arms dealer at any time to order even more, which are then magically and instantly teleported to him (shut up about the MKII/MKIII "getting them for him"). And why on Earth does the game pause while I access the menu to call people or ready weapons, a task which should not really be instantaneous gameplay-wise (in a stealth game, at least)? While the game is still awesome when you use stealth, there's no reason to actually use it to complete levels, which makes as much sense as a racing game that you can win by driving at a snail's pace and finishing dead last. If MSG 4 is a stealth game, then I'd hate to see the devs try to make an action shooter.
The third person camera is OK except from the fact that you can't switch from it and that it allows you to cheat by looking around corners without exposing your character (I'd favor listening for footprints or something else that actually involved a kind of... skill). Then there's the stress and alert levels which take an eternity to cool down if you actually do sit back and hide as you're meant to, making me feel like I'm being punished if I play the game like it's meant to be played.
There's so many more things I could rant about, such as how immersion is killed whenever someone calls you and the screen switches to a bizarre web cam screen, but I digress. Writing about all the faults of the game would take me ages. Go play it instead, trying to pretend it's the stealth game it's meant to be. That's what I do, and when I do, it's actually quite fun.
Sorry about this. Needed to rant :/ .
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