Metal Gear?

I should have known that I wasn't going to like Metal Gear Solid 4. The signs were all there: the long cutscenes, the difficult game mechanics, the tangled storyline. I new all these things going into MGS4, yet I felt the need to give the game a fair shake. Despite all of its flaws I like my PS3 I like the interface, I've liked most of the games I played on it, and damnit I still love that controller no matter if I use Sixaxis as often as I change the oil in my car.

The point is that like Fox Mulder, despite all evidence pointing to the contray, I wanted to believe. I know many more people have discovered the truth of Metal Gear, but no matter how hard I try to see it, I seem to be blind to it.

I can stomach bizarre, convoluted stories that require steeped knowledge of continuity to understand. Somewhere here in my bedroom is a copy of Crisis on Infinite Earths, a stoy that is fundmentally wrapped in about 40 years of comic book continuity. I love this book, despite the fact that the first time I read it years ago, about 70% of it went completely over my head. I can't find that twisted geek love here in MGS4. Sitting through 20 minute long explanitions of secret government cloning projects, that is presented as pure talking head exposition is just frustrating to me.

There is also a heavy dose of pretension ingrained in most of the story. Following each boss battle the game is stopped and you are subjected to a long tale giving you the sad story of the person you just killed. Whatever subtleness that was there before is explained in painstaking fashion to the player. Kojima (the game's producer and creator) has a message to give you, and no amount of interpretation is to be left to the viewer.

The game preaches of the evils of the military industrial complex. There are no questions asked to be answered by the viewer. Only a worldview that we are supposed to accept. This is a shame because the played is turned into a viewer constantly. The core advantage to this medium is removed, active participation in a story is turned into passive observation.

The game itself though shines at first. Players are rewarded for being patient and using the environment to their advantage. It's a deep game, and there is no absolute one way to get past the game's stealth sections. Conversely the game's bosses are very pattern based and rely on the player learning the right way to beat them. This really wasn't a problem though until the last 2 bosses for me where the game became far more frustrating and literally leaned on callbacks to past games in the series to hold it up.

That is ultimately why I didn't like MGS4. The game offers great promise that is met more and more by disappointment towards the end. I walked away wanting more of the game I started playing, and none of the game it ended up being. Fresh gameplay ideas are turned into old ones, or jokes about old gameplay concepts.

Metal Gear Solid 4 is without a doubt an uncompromisng vision on Hideo Kojima's part, and not even I can deny that comes across as a labor of love. It's just not a vision I can embrace.