By Jeremy Parish 05/15/2008 1UP Target: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots Background: War has changed, and so has Solid Snake. He's old now, though none of his comrades are -- and rumor has it that he has just six months left before his rapidly-aging body gives out. Endless conflict has spread across the world as a self-sustaining economic force, Liquid Snake (now Liquid Ocelot) has his own military force as big as any nation's, invincible robo-women rule the battlefield, and little baby Metal Gears are an inexorable battlefield presence capable of annihilating entire platoons in an instant. Welcome to Metal Gear Solid 4, the latest, bleakest and most absolutely final chapter of the Metal Gear series. (Or so we're promised.) For all its bleakness, it's also the most modern Metal Gear yet. With its release date a mere month away, Konami was kind enough to give us some hands-on time with the game to prove that, yes, it really does play as well as the hype would suggest. By now, true Metal Gear devotees have immersed themselves in the now-closed Metal Gear Online beta, and having run around shooting our friends online it's easy to see how much the single-player game has in common with its multiplayer component. Controlling Snake in MGS4 is essentially the same as controlling him in MGO (for those lucky enough to have had the opportunity to play as the legendary hero against an army of mooks) -- except, of course, for the addition of a story component that propels the setting from one scene to the next. (And, of course, Snake gets to control the Metal Gear Mk. II remote drone himself.) SCREENS: Click the image above to check out all Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriot screens. What We Played: Director Hideo Kojima regaled us with a nearly 40-minute game walkthrough -- far more substantial than the quick intro at the game's Japanese unveiling a couple of days ago -- and then we were set free to play it for even longer. What follows are our impressions; we'll try to skip the spoilers, but if you're overly anxious about experiencing the game all fresh and new you'd probably better jump ahead to the bullet points at the bottom. The game begins with a series of cutscenes interspersed with in-game action. Snake enters an unnamed Middle Eastern battlefield by riding in the back of a makeshift troop transport (a pickup truck) wearing a cloak similar to the local militia garb over his sneaking suit. He vanishes into the background once his convoy comes under fire, only to find himself face to face with a troupe of mechanical creatures ("gekkos") that resemble 10-foot-tall Metal Gears and sound, strangely, like cows. After a bit of quick thinking and general fakery, Snake evades the mechs and begins to work his way toward a rendezvous with a UN team called the Rat Patrol. All of this happens through an alternating mix of cutscene and gameplay, with one fading into the other as smoothly as you've ever seen. Snake isn't completely defenseless to begin with -- he starts with healing rations, a knife and an AK102 rifle -- but given the setting he definitely feels under-equipped at the start. It's probably for the best, though, as it helps ease players into the new style of gameplay. Snake now has an over-the-shoulder targeting camera swiped almost directly from Resident Evil 4, with the possibility of switching into first-person view for precision. There's a world of subtlety in the first-person POV alone; if standing while firing your rifle you'll bob and weave, but if squatting or laying prone your aim will remain steady. Different weapons possess different recoil: Pistols are reliable, specialized rifles like the M14EBR (an inexpensive sniper rifle) are firm like a rock, heavy machine guns like the M60E4 suffer from serious kickback. On the plus side, hold down the trigger for a sustained M60 burst and Snake will start to scream like Rambo. He may be old, but the man is still packed with testosterone. There's plenty to watch for in addition to battlefield chaos; Snake's life bar is joined by both the Psyche meter -- similar to the Stamina bar in Metal Gear Solid 3 -- and the Stress meter. The more you push Snake, the more quickly his stress builds... and when he's stressed out, his Psyche plummets. Low Psyche means less accuracy with rifles and slower health recovery. Also of note are the various display options offered by the Solid Eye, which combines a scope, radar, night-vision goggles and infrared vision all in one. In its default mode, Solid Eye shows nearby objects of interest in an abstract overhead view where people and devices in motion appear more intensely. But it can also reveal footprints and heat sources. All of this barely begins to touch on the depth and breadth of the gameplay. There are the returning gimmicks (drop a girlie magazine to distract enemies or hide in a cardboard box) and new gimmicks alike (an in-game iPod which is controlled exactly like a real iPod courtesy of the right analog stick). There's the grenade launcher whose range can be manually adjusted with the D-pad, the fact that puking lowers Snake's stress gauge, the abandoned building filled with claymore mines and other booby traps, a potentially harrowing side trip through the militia's underground base. And that's just the first hour of the game. SCREENS: Click the image above to check out all Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriot screens. Good to Go: If anything sets MGS4 apart from its predecessors, it's the scope of the game's battlefields. Where previous games have been set in close quarters with a handful of enemy patrols, MGS4 begins in the heat of battle... and (for the first hour, at least) it never relents. Bullets whiz past, shells explode nearby, squads of privatized troops (PMCs) and local militia go at one another in real-time with the same ferocity and tactics demonstrated in the cutscenes. Snake is an interloper in this world, a single player in a much larger battle, and the setting feels truly organic. Sometimes you'll stumble upon a group of soldiers as they run past; sometimes they'll stumble into you. Depending on which organization they're with and how friendly you've been to them, they may either open fire or ask for back-up. Both friends and foes employ real combat tactics. Snipers are accompanied by spotters; teams use contact codes to indicate whether to advance or retreat. And you're free to either wade into the fray or keep to the sidelines as you see fit. Good to Go: Which is the second great thing about MGS4: Its exceptional sense of freedom. While your overall progress seems fairly well set -- you're moving from waypoint to waypoint as dictated over the codec radio by your ally Otacon -- that's just the general shape of the game. The specifics are entirely up to you. The huge, dynamic battlefields offer plenty of possible routes for sneaking, and Snake is equipped with plenty of tools for stealth: The Metal Gear Mk. II remote drone, the Solid Eye data marker, a suppressed stun gun, a ring of "awareness" that indicates the relative direction of nearby soldiers. But he's also kitted out for straightforward action, with an impressive arsenal of weapons and a refined interface that makes shooting ridiculously fun. Good to Go: Clearly the creators sensed how great the action feels in MGS4, because they've added an in-game economy to allow the purchase of a huge assortment of weapons. These range from cheap grenades to pricey rifle mods to the impossibly expensive Tanegashima flintlock rifle, whose single-round design and incredibly slow flintlock reload time are a fair tradeoff for the possibility of summoning a kamikaze wind capable of clearing the battlefield. The shop merchant, Drebin, can be contacted at any time through Metal Gear Mk. II, and he accepts pay in surplus ID-locked weapons that Snake doesn't need and couldn't use anyway. Warm Afterglow: The hype for this game is starting to hit the sort of ridiculous peaks that Halo 3 enjoyed... but it's not without merit. Few games can claim such an impressive level of gameplay detail, narrative ambition and big-budget polish. We love rooting for the underdog, but sometimes the AAA hits really are worthy of the hype. MGS4 just might be one of those games -- and in a month, we'll all learn for ourselves.
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