well i loved it for the most part except that some of the cutscenes were excessively long

The only one I disagree with it the variety one. MGS4 did have a bit of variety--chasing a guy through the boring streets, riding a motorcycle, gear vs gear battle, etc. That's the reason I always played Act 2 over and over again. It was the closest thing it had to a normal Metal Gear stage.

Aside from that, I totally agree. I've played every Metal Gear as they came out, as soon as they came out since 1987 (except the MSX version of MG2 which I couldn't play until Subsistance came out on the PS2). Hell, I even played and enjoyed the Nes Metal Gear game, Snake's Revenge and thought it was awesome, too. I purchased a PS3 the day MGS4 came out--a $500 MGS4 bundle, no less! I've bought every Metal Gear multiple times. I even plan to buy MGS3 on the 3DS despite owning two versions of it on the PS2 and the HD Collection on the PS3. I LOVE the Metal Gear series but MGS4 was a huge let down.

3/4 of the points posted by the OP are about the story, this shows how much he cares about gameplay.
About 4h gameplay and the fact that you can run and gun the awnser is simple, you have to play the game on hard mode. In terms of gameplay MGS4 had the best mechanics in the series, sure if you play on easy mode it's a shooter with awkward controls and it's more casual than Cooking Mama but MGS2 and MGS3 were exactly the same.
Also if you play on hard or very hard mode, since you can't go straight on randomly, it lasts at least about 10-12h of gameplay.

I couldn't get into MGS4 no matter how hard I tried. I gave it multiple shots, and I couldn't. Good thing I only paid 20$ for it.

Look at this review. It gives shivers every time I look at it. I trust this guys "review" over yours without a doubt.

http://ie.ign.com/videos/2008/06/12/metal-gear-solid-4-guns-of-the-patriots-playstation-3-review-video-review?objectid=714044

You'd made for a good game critic, you treat you own opinion as objective fact.

The cutscenes in Uncharted are just important because there's such a poor plot. Pretty much anything anything would be important, since there are no standards in the games. You realise that Call of Duty has a way deeper plot than Uncharted, right?

You heard me. Plot that is basically filler and gameplay that is worse than MGS1. Pretty bad.

I don't get the argument that some people are posting about a "pussy mode". So all of the faults that were addressed in the OP are null and void because people played the game on the default difficulty? Absurd.