I didn't mean to compare Doom III to any of the MGS games because I found parts of every MGS game enjoyable while I hated almost the entirety of Doom III. My problem with MGS2-4 is that each game had a serious deficiency... in MGS2, it was playing as Raiden and the God-awful story. In MGS3, the story was vastly improved but the controls were so outdated that it was infuriating to play. In MGS4, the stealth elements were almost an afterthought and I ended up playing the second half of the game more like I did GRAW than a stealth game.

Ah, Doom 3.  Loved the tech, for some reason the monitors you could actually activiate and use particularly impressed me, the lighting, the animation... pretty much everything apart from the actual game especially the monsters in closets.  Pity, really.  And whatever happened to those cool interactive monitors?  Apart from Doom 3 and Quake 4 I can't remember them being used anywhere else.

MGS for sure. It trumps SC in almost every way. Storywise SC has a more gritty realistic one that seems is more enjoyable from a serious standpoint. MGS also has a great story but has too many "lame" anime moments that break the mood for me. MGS still has a lot of cool story elements nonetheless.

Gameplaywise MGS kills SC. It's a difference between japanese and american game design. In SC most of Sams actions are done through toggle or quicktime events. IE: hit the A button to grab the guy then push another button to peform the next action. MGS give you more control over the character actions. Wih snake you have to perform a sequence of button pushes, stick moves, button holds, and pressure sensitive functions to grab an enemy and do whatever action afterwards. Its more like mario where you have supreme control over your character's actions.

Those aren't quicktime events. Those are typical button-pushing used in every game. That's like calling Street Fighter a collection of QTEs to punch or kick. It doesn't make sense. QTEs are God of War style button prompts that initiate a sequence of events not controlled by the player.

With that said, MGS does have a few more button combos than SC but inversely, SC has FAR more methods of attack (hanging, dangling from ceiling, hoisted between two walls, etc.). On top of that, SC has far more cohesive gameplay elements that are actually necessary to complete a mission, unlike MGS4 which turned into a run-n-gun bloodbath when I played it.

You can congratulate MGS4 for having all those button manuevres but I won't give it credit because those moves were almost completely superfluous to completing the game, even on the Solid Normal difficulty setting.

I think this is an unfair comparison Conviction is not out yet. I voted for MGS though.

I did not vote because Splinter Cell: Conviction hasn't been released yet. I do think that MGS 1-3 is far greater than Splinter Cell, Pandora Tomorrow, and Chaos Theory. I have not played Double Agent, but from what I hear, it's the weakest game in the Splinter Cell series so far.

Splinter Cell: Conviction however, looks amazing and after hearing about Ubisoft's new DRM scheme, I am probably going to get an XBox360 when this game releases.

@rocketpig: It's funny that you mention MGS4 turning into a run-and-gun game, because it looks like Splinter Cell is also becoming more aggressive in it's game design. Hell, one of the pre-order bonuses is an automatic shotgun. If that doesn't scream run-and-gun, I don't know what does. I think this is a great thing though. What makes these kinds of games (MGS, SC:C, and others like R6, GR, SOCOM) great is that you have the option to run-and-gun or to play stealthily, rather than having the developers force you to play a certain way.

I'ma say...Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of The Patriots, which to me is the best game ever made.

That is until Final Fantasy Versus XIII comes out!!!

You judge the whole Splinter Cell series experience based onplaying Splinter Cell: Double Agent. One blemish in the strong Splinter Cell series. Imagine if we judged the entire MGS series based on the abomination that was MGS 2. MGS 2 with Raiden as the lead character instead of Snake and an extremely confusing plot. It would not be fair. Lots of spin off games from MGS main series that have had mixed reviews.

One average game in the series does not make the whole series a failure.

From a sales persepective MGS sells more than Splinter Cell series. Splinter Cell games have more realistic stealth game play than MGS games. The reviews of both series are both rated highly in the wide gaming community. MGS has a much bigger fan base than Splinter Cell.

Splinter Cell: Conviction looks much better than MGS 4: Guns of the Patriots based on those screen shots. I can not wait for Conviction to come out in April this year. Conviction releases almost two years after MGS 4- a huge advantage in regards to graphics improve over time.

Sam Fisher or Snake? Both guys are real bad asses. I like them both, but Sam is the man.

MGS2 is far from a abomination and its the highest rated MGS game

As a series MGS is way better than SC but I wouldn't be surprised if SC Conviction is better than MGS4, MGS4 was not Kojima's best MGS game or work in general

I disagree. If the game is billed as a stealth experience, I shouldn't be able to get myself out of jams by gunning everyone down. It defeats the purpose of the genre entirely. There were times in MGS4 where I was sneaking, got caught, and said "to hell with it". I just started running and took down all the enemies instead of fleeing and fighting from a position of strength. What is the point of sneaking if the element of danger from being caught is removed?

It's like playing Super Mario Bros. with unlimited lives. If there's no danger of dying too many times and having to restart from World 1-1, what kind of challenge is there left to the game? What does it really offer at that point?

There are plenty of games that allow the player to play as they like, which I appreciate a lot of the time. On the other hand, that doesn't mean it works for every genre. Allowing me to run-n-gun removed the challenge from MGS4, even on Solid Normal. And before anyone says "WELL YOU HAVE TO PLAY IT ON TEH HARDEST DIFFICULTY!!!11", I'm not going to do that on a game that didn't offer me a great experience the first time around. I save playthroughs for games that really hit me with a "wow" factor in the first run, which MGS4 did not.

And R6 and GRAW don't really give you an option on how to play the game... they give you different STRATEGIES, but there's only one style of play to get through some areas because you'll get your ass kicked in 5 seconds if you try to blitz the enemy. There's a big difference between giving the player a squad to use strategically, allowing for gameplay choices, versus letting the player run through the world like Rambo in what is supposed to be a stealth game.