The story is linear; it has no branching. But to say there is no exploring is incorrect. There is an arsenal of hidden weapons and items scattered throughout the game that the player will miss completely if they simply follow the straightest path to the goal which is not very interesting.

There is a wide range of ways to play through the game as most who've been following the series are well aware of. Simply running to the goal may often result in the fastest time, but hardly the best play.

Go through with pure stealth and you can keep kills down to the absolute minimum, but will have fewer points to purchase new weapons and much fewer pick ups overall.

Use non-lethal kills on bosses and you'll receive some interesting bonuses, which I'm sure many have already figured out.

Not that anyone but the most hardcore MGS fan will do this, but probably the purest way to play these games are with only the Mk2 tranquilizer gun for regular play, minimum kills and heavy reliance upon the Octocamo without triggering any alerts on The Boss Extreme.

The ridiculously forked grading system based upon how you play through the game pretty much spells out what type of player you are based upon your style of play. There aren't any other games I can think of offhand that do that.

Does anyone else see this commentary paralleling what is typically seen as the mentality of many Game Reviewers in the industry?

If more people had finished the games before reviewing them a more modest review would probably be the case. Just a thought.

Am I alone on this one? Probably.

MGS is the game equivalent of Japanese cartoons. Poor clichéd storyline with some semblance of morality and a huge rabid fanbase that watch everything to do with the subject.

Some of you people suprise me, though. From reading your posts I feel like I've fallen into one of those pretentious art forums and it's suprising that you enjoy this entertainment medium at all. Maybe you should go and read some Nietzche instead of complaining about a game that is so obviously below you.

Knowing the character of Big Boss pretty well, and after his amazing final speech in MG2, it seems even more retarded to resurrect him in MGS4 as a great warm fuzzy guy, ONLY TO DIE 20 min later. And that's a slowwwww 20 min. FoxDie is supposed to kill in seconds, haha, but we got treated like anime watchers where a 20 min heart attack if normal.

I'm glad SOMEone recognizes that :

A) The final battle is horrid; to compare it to VF1 is a huge insult to VF. Compare this fist fight to fighting Liquid in MGS1, when the controls actually worked. And mashing R1 in the final sequence = BARF. This should have just been a movie if it was gonna control like shit.

B) Fan service doesn't mean it's "GOOD". MGS1 is my FAVORITE GAME of all time -- I've been gaming since Atari -- and I thought the whole chapter was really pointless. But I still play through MGS1 now and then so I guess it didn''t fit me too hard there. Playing the old games before this also just highlighted how longwinded and bloated MG has become :P

If he wanted to go nostolgic, he should have been fucking Outer Heaven or Zanzibar, which haven't been rendered in 3-D before either -- and places that most MG players have HEARD about but never gone to, so it would be new to them.

It's def the RE4 of the series -- meaning the gameplay is fun but barely feels like it has what made the series great. It's MG -- I want to sneak around, not pilot a slow-ass mech through 100 robot drones.

Great discussion on here. But I guess everyone has different tastes. Like in movies.

There are the guys who enjoy Matrix 2 and 3 for its in your face philosophy.

And there are the guys who rather enjoy movies like "Spring, summer, fall, winter ... and spring" for its philosophy.

To each his own.

Did you ever know that you're my hero?
You're everything I wish I could be.
I could fly higher than an eagle,
'cause you are the wind beneath my wings.

I give that post a 9.9.

It's not that. I enjoyed MGS4 for what it is. Interesting boss battles, amazing detail and presentation, and fun gameplay.

What I don't enjoy it for is its lengthy, preachy dialogue, broken story, and people telling me that it's a profound piece of art.

I disagree on the final boss battle.

I absolutely loved the concept but hated the execution.

I don't think games are below me.  Halflife (and 2), for example, had an *excellent* story... you were given more than enough information by *doing* things to get excellent characterizations, a superb plot, as well as a decent (but not great) dialog on the limits of humanity through the use of background audio clips, television clips, and stuff like that; you don't need a character to flat out say,

"Are the combine and those ruled by them any more human than the zombies and headcrabs they oppose?  Once human progression is given to the care of others to maintain, can we really be called human any more?  If we deny ourselves the right of self-determination of our future, aren't we just the same as the Zombies and Headcrabs we profess to hate?"

All of that information is expressed extremely well in HL2, and other games do it as well or better than HL2.  None of the ones I am thinking of resort to heavy-handed dialog to portray these themes.

Art, Philosophy and Video Games can go hand-in-hand; I don't believe that there is anything intrinsically better about heavy-handed cut-scene-ridden games than a game that forces you to expand the themes for yourself; which, as I understand DTG's argument is what he's saying. 

If I am wrong about his argument, than I apologize; but since he hasn't responded, I haven't gotten clarification on his beliefs.

On top of that, don't you think that kind of approach is defeating the potential of the media?

Video games are in their own class when it comes to media. It's not a stagnant format created by one person or a team... It's an interactive experience that can change depending on preference and experience.

Using lengthy cutscenes and long-winded exposition to tell a player something defeats the media. We may as well be watching a movie at that point. A not very good movie, at that.

Which is why I will stand by my opinion that games like Mass Effect use the media far better than MGS4 or any Final Fantasy game. BioWare actually takes the time to appreciate what the strengths of interactive media are and approach their games with that in mind instead of trying to fight the limitations and turn the media into something it isn't, namely a movie or philosophical text.