It begins with... well, we can't tell you how Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots begins. We can't, and we won't. Can't, because we promised Konami we wouldn't; having generously granted us three days to play through the whole thing, the publisher is understandably paranoid about spoilers, with the game still six weeks from release. Won't, because we want you to feel exactly the same delicious, hair-raising mix of bemused awe and shock-of-the-new that we did when you turn it on for the first time. Metal Gear Solid 4, it is instantly apparent, is special. It's not like other games.
That's not quite true, of course. There are a handful of other games it is like: its three predecessors, and, to some extent, the PSP's Portable Ops. Like its gruff hero Solid Snake, the series has always preferred to work alone. It may have been tremendously influential in establishing stealth gameplay, but none have ever dared imitate its bizarre and occasionally awkward blend of cinema and videogames, sneaking and soap opera, conspiracy and sex, bombast and self-deprecation, self-referential silliness and deadly earnest seriousness.
You couldn't even if you tried. And on this occasion, in a heroic effort to draw a line for once and all under Snake's story and give the Metal Gear Solid series the grand finale it deserves, Hideo Kojima and his team really have outdone themselves. 'Extravagant' doesn't cover it. Nor do 'dramatic', 'spectacular', 'sentimental', 'surprising', 'long-winded', 'final', 'painstaking' or 'polished'. Guns of the Patriots is Metal Gear Solid in excelsis
www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=135362
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