In the middle of my replay of the Metal Gear Solid saga. Took a week off between 2 and three. I just finished taking on The End on Sunday. Metal Gear Solid 3 takes the cake.

Metal Gear Solid 4 is missing something. There were so many easter eggs and twists and turns, and just plain innovation in MGS1-MGS3. I haven't gotten to it yet (for the replay) but MGS4 is unfortunately not as good.

Best: Metal Gear Solid 3

Worst: Metal Gear Solid 4

I think the overall problem is that the first three games didn't have to be responsible in their story-telling, leaving MGS4 to clean up the pieces. Think of it like how the Presidents keep thinking of short term solutions to long term problems and eventually someone will have to come along and finally right them for good instead of pushing them under the rug. Then again, MGS4 did just explain away everything with "nanomachines are responsible" so maybe it was yet another solution to brush the problems under the rug for Kojima. I'm pretty sure he had absolutely no idea where the story was going after MGS1 and it shows.

3 > 1 > 4 > 2

You're probably right.  Still, a lot of things in part four made me cringe.  Akiba, the wedding, the "escort mission", Drebin and his monolgues about the Beauty and Beasts........I could go on.

I'm replaying the whole series.  I'm taking my time with them too.  What impresses me about the first three is the amount of content.  Codec conversations and easter eggs out the ass!  Psycho Mantis told me I was playing "Super Mario Sunshine".  Naomi gave me a massage with the controller.  Meryl freaked out because I was staring at her boobs.  Part two had more variety than any other game in the series:  Sniping, defusing bombs, swimming, escorting, running around naked.  Ice cubes melted if you looked at them long enough.  There was a woman in the hostage room who'd open her legs when I look away, and closed them when I tried to peak at her underwear!  The more you look, the more you'd find.  MGS 3 actually packs more easter eggs than part 2.  The story is amazing and heartfelt, to boot.

I guess the other three set the bar too high.  MGS4 has a "deja vu" motorcycle scene, a "deja vu" tracking scene, a surprise (and impressive) Gear on Gear scene, and a poorly done fighting game.  I've enjoyed cinematics since the days of Ninja Gaiden.  I actually bought games like Astyanax and Xenogears because of their lenthy cinematics.  A lot of MGS4 was cinematics.....but when the cinematic is just two people having a conversation for twenty minutes......I tend to want more.  The "Drebin points" system and the fatigue system (let' watch Snake take a nap to regain his stamina!) actually made the game LESS FUN than it should have been.  The bosses, like someone else said, were let downs too.  They beat MGS2's rougues, but didn't stack up to parts 1 and 3.

I'm being too hard on MGS4.  I did love the game.  It's just that I love the others more. Sorry.

4=3>2>1>PO

4 has better gameplay and some of the most epic moments in all of gaming but 3 had better boss fights (The End, The Boss and The Sorrow) and the least convoluted of all the stories.

These were my main problems also overall, outside of what I previously mentioned. I can't believe they practically did away with the Codec. Only two channels? Otacon and Rose never had anything worthwhile to say either. That was a massive let down, and probably could have cut down the cutscene length if they let some of the story be told through Codec. I still remember talking about Alaska with Master Miller and flirting with Mei Ling over Codec in MGS. I remember the woes of Jack and Rose's relationship being aired out over Codec in MGS2. My personal favorite are the words of wisdom intertwined with 1950-1960's cinema told to me by Paramedic in MGS3. I was so pissed about the Codec system in 4. It was such a fucking waste. Couldn't they have given you a direct line to the Colonel, Sunny and Drebin at least?

I don't want to get nightmares thinking about the Akiba and Meryl shooting scene against the frogs as the profess their love to eachother. Barf! Talk about forced and unnecessary.

While I love MGS4, I must agree. The wedding, the Akiba and Meryl love scene etc. were all amazingly stupid and I skip them often. I disagree about Drebin's monolouging on the b&b though. I enjoyed those conversations, they were all so amazingly screwed up finding out why these women were like they were and it solved a huge problem from past games in the series, Boss monolouging. Seriously, who has a 20 minute monolouge before they shoot you in the head? I did like that they presented most of the story in cutscenes too. I'd rather see the game play out then listening to it unfold half the game. It was bad enough having to do nothing but listen to half the game instead of playing it, at least now I get to watch too and its all completely skippable. These were Kojima's solutions to problems gamers were complaining about and I loved the way he solved them. Now if only he hadn't put Akiba and all those awful scenes in the game....

I liked that Kojima took note of how horribly long a lot of the codec stuff is in MGS2, but I agree that MGS4 was rather limited in your codec offerings.

I feel that MGS1 and 3 were pretty good all around.

It was confirmed by Kojima even after 2 came out that the story played out mostly during Codec because of space limitation. Now that there is enough space available to turn all of the codec conversations into cutscenes, that is what was implemented. Its funny to see people complain about upgrading technology and presenting a better final product because of it. People complained about long codec and now they complain about long cutscenes. Also, the script for MGS4 was twice the size of the one used in MGS2 but its hard to tell with the way it was implemented. You notice long drawn out Codec conversations more then you notice cutscenes I think. But then again, people complain about cutscenes in the fourth one too.