Metal Gear Solid 4

Yup. Little bit late to the party, but fuckit. I played through it recently and im giving my thoughts on it. DealWitIt.

Metal Gear Solid 4 is not very good as a game, infact, about half of the time I was playing I was curious as to whether it should even be classified as a game.
The stories people tell about MGS4, saying its the best movie ever on the PS3 ( I wouldnt really know as I havent played Heavy Rain) are completely justified. MGS4 could easily be described as a 15-20 hour film with some interactive scenes - Worth mentioning also that the story of said film will make little sense if you have played through the other games, and probably no fucking sense at all if you've never played the previous games.

That said, for metal gear fans (Myself? Maybe? Im not even sure...) there are alot of cool throwbacks and flashbacks in the game, references to itself and its unique humor ["Damnit otacon pull yourself together this isnt a game"] along with a complete remake of some parts of shadow moses island from MGS1

The game is somewhere around 8-10 hours of cutscenes/codec calls, and 6-8 hours of 'gameplay' - although I feel like a fair amount of that gameplay isnt the desired type from a MGS game....
Basically alot of scenes have forced combat, which i suppose could be worse, but fucking hell the combat in that game is so shitty, the third person aiming style is pretty badly done if you need to actually move at the same time (its fine for tranq'ing soldiers in the side of the head, ala MGS2/3), god forbid you actually attempt to take cover in a full scale firefight, or aim down the sights of your gun, as you'll find yourself in a clusterfuck of useless buttons, tiny aiming area and general bullshittery.

The one big thumbs up it gets from me is for certain climax scenes near the end of the game, the game does a very cool and arty split screen style with action going on along with cutscene in the other panel, its very well done, powerful and memorable, and im amazed I havent seen anything like it before. Also, the final fight against 'youprobablyknowwho' is epic as fuck (I quite dislike the use of the word epic nowadays because its overused, but the final battle really can't be described in any other way)

verdict: Its okay if you loved the previous games I suppose, but in all honesty I'd probably say its just not worth your time unless you really really care about the MGS universe. I for one couldnt really give a shit about sons of the patriots, big boss and so on...