We have identifiied the problem.

MGS4 is fan service, through and through, so if you've never played it before, it'll probably be really hard for you to get "into" it.

Especially the end boss battle. It would be entirely lame if you haven't played the earlier games.

Personally, I thought the end battle was genius, even though the controls sucked ass.

I think it really starts to engage when you are shooting at the PMC troops while being on the motorcycle. It was so fast paced. My favorite part was when the car flip and motorcycle jumped in the air in slow motion. I was still able to shoot during the slow motion. I like the fact how as the cutscene ends it goes right into the gameplay. For example, when i was about fight the crying wolf, it showed a cutscene and as soon as the cutscene ended it when right into the battle mode.

Act one is amazing, act 2 is unbelievable, act 3 is meh, act 4 is WOAH, and act 5...ive only just begun!

I LOVED that battle. :)

uhh, it IS a sneaking game, stealth espionage, yadda yadda... you can certainly blast your way through it, which is disheartening, earlier games(especially 1) you'd get your ass handed to you if you tried a shootout.

but yeah, if you have no idea of the story it would be hard to get into at this point.

Second half of act 3, after the long cutscene after the sneaking in act 3. Unfortunately, the rest of the game gets easier after the act 3 boss fight.

I think being able to walk around as if you're a one-man militia has something to do with that.

Kojima really should have upped the difficulty on Solid Normal. Japanese audiences may be bad at shooters but for a veteran American player, the second half of MGS4 was ridiculously easy.

 lol, japanese audience may be bad at shooters but they are the best MGS players in the world. They hold all the world records in all MGS games so far.

You obviously missed the point of MGS4. You get higher scores for not killing anyone and especially not triggering any alert phases rather than running and gunning so shooting abilities are pretty non essential in a proper MGS4 run.

You mean he's one of those silly developers that doesn't make the Japanese Hard mode the American Normal mode?

Tsk tsk.