Game Play: Metal Gear Solid 4

I've only had brief encounters with the Metal Gear franchise, and I think I can safely say I've never finished a single one before last night.

And of course by "finish", I mean watching the last thirty minutes of cut scenes. Whatever you've heard about this game's lengthy cinematics, it is not hyperbole. In some ways, though, this is part of the game's charm. It's unabashedly old school in many ways. It uses long cinematics, there are checkpoints during the levels and no way to save in between, you can die quite easily and need to start all over again, there's extensive menu play to get things done - all things that many modern games frown on ... MGS4 revels in.

The saving grace for me is that the combat feels much improved, and I don't feel like I have to hide in a corner and watch enemy movements for ten minutes to progress five minutes into the game. The mechanics are tight all around, and the production values are completely off the scale good - sound effects, music, level design, textures, animation - everything.

And honestly, I feel like I only scratched the surface of what is possible with the game. I never, for instance, used a Playboy magazine to distract a guard. I only figured out late in the game that falling on someone knocks them out. I rarely used the Metal Gear sidekick. There's so much interactivity to this game that it feels very much like a realized combat world.

Which is probably why the lengthy movies are so forgivable. A lesser game might feel more like a movie, but MGS4 just feels epic all around. And that's possibly the most impressive bit. Remember that this franchise began as a pastiche of action movies, basically a tongue-in-cheek parody (and back in the 80's, these were pretty common ... go look at any of the old game covers) ... Snake himself is now an amalgamation of Mel Gibson, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Kurt Russell and Lee Van Cleef. Yet, the game can stand on its own as a good story (even if it's an odd and often self-referential one).

I don't know if MGS4 would be my favorite game of the year, but it is definitely up there. Highly recommend. And don't forget Metal Gear Online either...

Game Play: Metal Gear Online (Demo)

I don't have a full version of the game (yet), so I downloaded the demo.

OK, technically I downloaded it twice, because once you download the first time, you "update" the demo which somehow seemed to take twice as long and doesn't use the normal PSN update method, but rather forces you to use an ingame one. The ingame one has a BitTorrent option, which is technically fascinating, but will still force you to pack a lunch before you can try the game out which is 100% annoying.

Once in, though, I was kinda surprised at how much fun it was to play. I expected some control frustration since I haven't played either any version of the full game (which, to the demo's credit, you are warned against) but that didn't really last very long. For the most part, it's crouch, sneak and shoot.

And it works really, really well. Many games have tried to slow down the normal frantic pace of online shooters, which has evolved into a kind of ADD with sugar frenzy after years of iterations, but MGO takes the slow pace pretty seriously. And it adds the proper kind of tension to the game.

Where Unreal Tournament feels more like a high paced action movie, MGO feels more like going out and playing paintball with friends. And that's not a slight, as paintball can be a pretty good adrenaline rush on its own.

I don't know if the demo separates the audience from the full version - but my only real complaint was not having enough opponents. It took a while to get a match going, and then it was only 3v3.

Solidly (har har) recommend, hopefully can see some bigger matches down the road.