Great Game
Ok so I finally got some time to sit down to play and beat Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. I was pretty happy about it. On normal hard it was hard enough for the first time through but not too hard to where I didn’t want to play it because it frustrated the crap out of me. I had to continue a few times (mainly because of the frustrating battle with Vamp) but overall it wasn’t too bad.
Sometimes I felt the cutscenes to be a little long winded, but once I hit the end of act 2 I was really drawn in by the game’s plot. The developers help keep you involved during the cutscenes by making you have to hit “X” for certain flashbacks. It kept me from walking away on the really long animation.
As for the plot, there seems to be a lot more things happening in the background on this game than previous releases and the optional database add-in that you can download from the Playstation Store is a big help if you need a refresher course.
Bottom line, I would recommend this to anyone, regardless if you played the previous games or not. You won’t have the same amazement that a veteran would have with the story or the visuals, but still should enjoy it. I found myself sneaking through some areas (like you are supposed to) but found myself not being penalized if I decided to go crazy and kill everyone on the level. It hurts your overall ranking in the end, but that helps in making you want to go back and play the game over again with perfect scores…one thing I think the Playstation lacks compared to the Xbox 360′s built in scoring system.
Expect to spend around 15-20 hours of gameplay if you just breeze through killing everything in site. Probably longer if you want to go super-stealth.
I have other games to play so I am going to put the controller down on MGS4 for a bit…give my brother-in-law a chance to have a go at it. I’ll post back if I decide to increase my rank on the game.
