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DTG on 15 June 2008
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Ssyn said:
DTG said:
Only a handful of issues prevent this game (in my mind right now) from being the best game in the series.

The retcons and questionable story decisions I mentioned were two of them.

I also felt there was a little too much gameplay in the first half of the game and not enough story sequences. This is redeemed by the extensive cutscenes during the second half, but better pacing would have helped. There's also too many overblown action sequences. Most of these are directed magnificently but I would have prefered more deep dialog sequences. That said there is still a lot of thought provoking exchanges rivaled only by MGS2.

All in all MGS4 feels a lot like a slightly watered down, more hollywood style MGS2 which is what prevents it in my mind from surpassing the level of perfection realized in MGS2.


I'd agree with you on the retcon's not being liked. The story in MGS4 imo was superior to MGS2's; I didn't mind the entire idea of the patriots wanting to make a simulation of shadow moses, but the addition of really unessarcy charaters like fortune, fatman and even Solidus imo was a mistake. Not to mention(rocket pig won't agree) the dialog in MGS4 surpasses all the others by a mile(MGS2 was weak in this department). MASSIVE SPOILER YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED Sadly Big Boss coming back was cool to see along with zero; but it seemed a bit to out of place.


If you thought MGS2 had unnecessary characters then how can you overlook the bloated cast of MGS4 which contains reference to almost every character that has ever set foot in the MGS universe? There were far too many characters involved in MGS4's storyline even if only for brief mention.

Another huge drawback of MGS4 that I forgot to mention is the almost complete elimination of the codec. Ryan Payton said that we could expect plenty of optional codec conversations which has turned out to be a complete Lie. That's something that weighs quite heavily on me and would definitely have to factor into the overall score if I were to write a review on MGS4.

Another seemingly minor yet important element missing is the Theatre Mode which does not appear even after a complete playthrough. I suspect Konami plans to charge for this via DLC which is a serious disservice to fans who bought the 20 dollar more expensive LE version only to find an incomplete soundtrack and missing features that should have been standard since the Subsistence version of MGS3. These small yet relevant flaws are clearly a result of Konami going cheap on basic aspects only to later (probably but not surely) charge for their download. It's simply intolerable for a game of this magnitude and price. It's kind of like if Ipod released a new model next year retaining the price of last years model and yet they charged you an additional 20 bucks to enable standard video playback capability for it.