While reporting MTV Multiplayer’s week-long series about game reviews I’ve heard from members of the gaming press about restrictions publishers place on game reviews. I’m familiar with some of these. It’s common for a publisher to specify plot details that they don’t want revealed in reviews.

What I heard about print reviews for “Metal Gear Solid 4” was different.

I’ve been told by two gaming media sources who asked to remain anonymous that Konami representatives had been asking print reviewers to keep some technical details out of their reviews, namely the length of the game’s cut-scenes and the size of the game’s installation on the PlayStation 3.

Such details wouldn’t have been plot spoilers, but perhaps the publisher was concerned that they would be viewed as negatives?

Konami representatives declined to comment to me about any of this, as did editors of a few major video game magazines.

A couple of weeks ago, gaming blog Kotaku posted back-to-back links about the two supposedly off-limits topics. The size of the game’s installation was spotted on the “MGS4″ box. The other was a disputed report about the length of the cut-scenes.

So that technical information — accurate or not, I don’t know — is getting out there. And that information about the game has been acknowledged by Eurogamer, which ran an “MGS4″ review that mentions both things.

Whether Konami really has put these limits on reviewers and if such limits are tolerable to game reviewers is something I can’t answer. It’s something worth keeping an eye on as print reviews of “MGS4″ start trickling out.

And you all argue over review scores as though they mean anything. Ridiculous. Sounds like we should believe Eurogamer over the other sites so far.

Whats the big deal about the cutscenes. You take a small thing a turn it into a big thing. You know you can skip the cutscenes.

Why would you want to skip the cutscenes? Thats the best part of MGS...the story. Otherwise you are playing a second rate splinter cell.

I can see many people cough cough sony fanz cough cough getting all worked up about this

@Snake

And not understand the story...

Yeah, and if given the option in a game, we can skip an entire level. At the end of the day, you still don't know WTF is going on.

The "skip the cutscene" excuse is bullshit. But that's not the story.

If this is true and I was a reviewer, I'd throw a giant Fuck You at Konami and write an article focusing on both. This sort of thing is nonsense.

This is why reviews are rubbish and cant be trusted, this the type of stuff consumers paying money for games have a right to know about. But because of all the under the table payments or threats from game publishers we never know if the reviewer is telling the whole truth about a game.

Maybe the review copy has longer load times than the retail copy, I thought something like that happened with LO? As for cut scene length, I am told IGN mentioned how long they are

i think its good tht a game is going to have such a story line. i think it is going to draw you into the game more.
The installing thing tho, mmmmmmmmm that could be a bad thing, depends how long it takes and what the size of it is

Konami sucks, mostly.

I think they're just getting us worried for nothing. Sure, cutscenes are going to be long. I don't mind; actually I like it. What I'd like to know, however, is how long are the installs going to take. We already know there's one for every act. But does that mean they're short or what? Konami makes it sound like they're long.