MGS4 suffers from a hideous and non-apologetic over-production boss that took this game over and turned it into a Blu-Ray movie that periodically requires user input...There should be a WARNING on the label. And while MGS4 is still a decent game, especially at the $29.99 price point, I've played at least 10 BETTER shooter-type games on the PS3, some even less than $20 now (Dark Sector, TimeShift, HAZE). Also, how anyone who has played this game could even remotely claim, "MGS4 is not a shooter" is beyond me. There are guns, MANY guns, correct? Your character can't survive without SHOOTING these guns, correct? MGS4 is a shooter just as much as a "stealth game", the degree of each depends on how you choose to play through...And that's one of the game's STRENGTHS, even though some people cringe at the thought for some unknown reason.

The basic problem with this game is the things that should be EASY are needlessly COMPLICATED and things that should be INTERESTING are absolutely BORING.  You can spend nearly half the game (which is not very long in gameplay time) just trying to figure out how to consistently target and shoot someone with any accuracy. For example, until you learn to use the first person view of the gunsight (triangle) to target someone, sometimes Snake is just staring at the wall while being pumped full of lead or you're staring at the back of his head while trying to shoot someone right in front of him (when you only use L1 to target). Of course using the sights while moving and trying to shoot an enemy means you have to 1) toggle the L stick to move while 2) toggling the R stick to use the "floating camera" to see around you as you move then 3) press triangle to pull up a gunsight and 4) push and hold L1 to target the enemy and FINALLY 5) push and hold R1 to actually SHOOT someone...Honestly, this is just about as ridiculously difficult as one could possibly make it to target and shoot a bad guy in a simple video game!

The learning curve is further complicated by a Menu Interface that must be pulled up (and gameplay STOPPED) if you want to do anything other than walk, stealth, "jump-roll", aim, fire and reload. For goodness sake, you can't even switch to a different weapon without interrupting gameplay! And if you want a weapon that's not in your "immediate" inventory, well, you've got to toggle through the Pause Menu to find it and switch it out with something else. In fact, you'll find yourself constantly pulling up a menu and L1ing and L2ing and toggling and toggling and Xing, ad nauseam...

Another WARNING: Get killed before a checkpoint and lose everything you just spent the past 20-min doing, including any weapon upgrades. Boy, that sure makes things fun, huh? Just to frustrate you some more, when you kill a bad guy you can't just walk over him and collect his inventory like you can when you walk over his weapon or like 95% of other games...You have to press triangle and Snake physically picks him up and gives him a Heimlich Maneuver to make him puke out his prize...Just see how annoying this becomes after about the 20th time or 50th time or 100th time...

It's still unclear to me why a guy must crap his pants under fire and then walk around with brown stains on them. Is that some kind of Japanese toilet humor? Seems like he'd have enough sense (or shame) to strip the pants off a dead guy and clean himself up instead of walking around his squad smelling like a turd rassler for the rest of the Act. Perhaps that's part of the "Epic" story here? Let's see...How about this one...Page 53, guy craps in a barrel, runs off butt-naked then finishes it off by soiling himself while avoiding enemy gunfire. YES...An integral part of the storyline...I'm a GENIUS! Woo-hoo!

And the developers did a fine job of effectively limiting player involvement during the 2 most important scenes of this "Epic" story: 1) Snake going through the microwave corridors to reach and shutdown "GH" and 2) the final battle between Snake and Liquid. If EVER there was an appropriate time to ask, "WTH were they thinking?", it's in both of these scenes...Consider that in arguably the MOST IMPORTANT EVENT in the entire game (Snake going through the microwave corridors to "GH"), your (his) success is simply based on HOW MANY TIMES YOU CAN PRESS TRIANGLE in about 2 or 3 minutes...That's IT!! Press it fast enough (maybe 400-500 times) and Snake is THE HERO! But fall short and you'll soon see every one of your remaining MGS beloved characters OFF'D in rather spectacular fashion. I'm sure Kojima forever endeared himself to his loyal throng of MetalGearHeads with that visual treat!!

After this, Snake is basically D-E-A-D...I mean, he pukes up lunch and falls face first right into it (what a way to treat the HERO of your game series, huh?) and Naomi is beckoning him from beyond the grave. His syringes no longer work and Otacon is of little help since he can't stop crying into his MacBook like a teenage girl who didn't get asked to the Prom. So Liquid strolls onto the scene and pumps Snake and himself with "the good stuff" syringes and Snake and he square off like kids in a schoolyard brawl. The problem is first you're just watching them fight, then you're somewhat in control of Snake, then you're watching them again, then you're pushing buttons again, rinse & repeat every few seconds. So not only did the developers feel no shame about constantly inserting cutscenes during gameplay throughout THE GAME, but they also did it liberally throughout the Final Battle itself...Simply SHAMELESS!! You basically get to press R1 to attack, then triangle to get Liquid on the ground (by video), then R1 again (to watch another video with Snake choking Liquid), then triangle again (to watch another video of Snake smackin the bejeezus out of Liquid)...Then Liquid stands up (in yet another video) and exclaims, "Splendid, Brother!" (which is actually pretty cool the 1st couple of times, then it loses its effect), and you're like, "OK...So am I supposed to start fighting again, now?" Just BIZARRE for a player to be put through something like this in the climactic fight scene of a SERIES...It reeks of CONTEMPT for the player on the part of the developers.

There's also a terrible problem that the developers have just letting someone friggin die in this game...You kill a boss, then they transform into another boss that you kill again...Then they play this cutscene that's 3 or 4 min long of them FINALLY dying! Then Drebin has to come in and tell you the SAME STORY again and again about how they were abused children who watched their familiy members die and were taken away by the Army and trained to be who they were before you just killed them...It's like you Tivo'd a show and just watch it again and again after you kill each boss (twice)...PURE FILLER!  And just think...You get to do this FOUR times!!

Or Snake has a Bowie Knife stuck 8 inches into his chest and the next scene he's good as new again...Or Raiden or Vamp "dies", then you see them again a couple of scenes later, then they "die" again. This became more like a PARODY of an action game and we even laughed hysterically when Raiden shows up near the end WITH NO FREAKIN' ARMS AND A SWORD IN HIS MOUTH ready to take on a couple dozen Baddies (who, oddly enough, are armed to the teeth but just stand there and stare at Snake and Raiden for several minutes instead of attacking)...Snake even has to take the sword and put it back in Raiden's mouth when he's through talking...Are you kidding me??? LOL...Then after this he even shows up AGAIN in a hospital room all put back together. This is just too much!!  And another person decides she can't take it anymore (can't say I blame her) so she hits herself in the neck with the "Death Syringe" not once, not twice but unbelievably THREE TIMES before she finally shuts the hell up and dies! In fact, I think she was still mumbling something incoherently when Snake just turned around, got in the mech and left her babbling on and on while the bldg was collapsing...These are NOT the things of an "Epic" story. They're more along the lines of a "Kentucky Fried Videogame". A parody. I wouldn't be surprised if Kojima laughs so hard he pees his pants when he reads some of the 5-star falling-all-over-themselves SERIOUS reviews of this game given the pure absurdity of a hero with no arms showing up for a sword-fight! (Maybe "it's just a flesh wound"?)

You've probably heard about the cutscenes and their insane lengths by now. It's no lie. Kudos to anyone who can actually sit through every minute of watching Sunny try to cook a couple of freakin' eggs and get Snake or Otacon to chance eating one (and she's the "brains" of the operation?!?). BORE ME TO TEARS, why don't you...Maybe there are a couple of eggs waiting to ambush me in the next level? Add to that the fact that you get to WATCH SNAKE CHAIN-SMOKE FOR NEARLY NINE MINUTES when the game first loads...Another 4 minutes of this when Act II loads. In fact, you're treated to this chain-smoking show EVERY TIME an Act loads...Just UNBELIEVABLE!! With all of the slick cutscenes to repeatedly interrupt gameplay and THIS is the BEST YOU GOT to show us while the game loads, Konami?

Now I realize there are a few hundred people here on Amazon that had some sort of "spiritual experience" when they played this game, but to be sure, not everyone is going to fall in love with MGS4 when they play it...And even though I feel BETRAYED by 339 5-Star glowing reviews (out of a total of 455), I'm still not trying to completely trash the game and everything I've stated in this review is TRUE. For me, these things keep MGS4 from being anywhere near "the best PS3 game ever" or "the reason to go out and buy a PS3"...Give me a break! This actually COULD'VE BEEN a 5-star game IF 90% of the cutscene lengths were left out AND easier target/shoot controls were employed AND more gameplay was added that wasn't as repetitive AND less complicated inventory acquisition and control were added.

As it stands, this is a game with needlessly complicated controls that substitutes repetitious gameplay and excessively boring cure-for-insomnia cutscene lengths in the place of both QUALITY and QUANTITY of gameplay.  Furthermore, this "movie" is clearly a victim of over-production. Imagine a 2-hr summer blockbuster where almost nothing is edited out...Much of all the raw footage is included and it's now ballooned to an agonizing 8 hours long. That's what happened to MGS4. Only the most devoted fans are left in the theater when the credits roll...Everyone else left a long time ago.

Instead of being subjected to 9 minutes of chain-smoking Snake while the game initially loads, a brief "narrative" could have been shown to get EVERYONE up to speed with the background story. This is basically what happens in the beginning of Killzone 2 with a roughly 3 or 4-min movie and it's quite effective even if you missed the original Killzone. Once the story is set up, it's time to get in the game and not look back. The problem with MGS4 is it CONSTANTLY LOOKS BACK...In fact, nearly every new character brings with them a GAMEPLAY STOPPAGE and a BORE-ME-TO-SLEEP STORY that can go half an hour and only provide a couple more pieces of the main plot (if you can stay awake and not click "SKIP"). Of course this absolutely DESTROYS any continuity to gameplay and results in a more forced storyline that soon falls on deaf ears because nearly everyone has already left the theater. While they were SMART to include a "skip" option whenever a cutscene appears, it was a strategic error to not tell the background story while the game initially loads...What follows is a soap opera feel where every character is compelled to hit a 10.0 on the Drama-Meter while telling their story that is 98% fluff material or repetition. It's a true over-production tragedy...
MGS4 suffers from a hideous and non-apologetic over-production boss that took this game over and turned it into a Blu-Ray movie that periodically requires user input... There should be a WARNING on the label. And while MGS4 is still a decent game, especially at the $29. 99 price point, I've played at least 10 BETTER shooter-type games on the PS3, some even less than $20 now (Dark Sector, TimeShift, HAZE). Also, how anyone who has played this game could even remotely claim, "MGS4 is not a shooter" is beyond me. There are guns, MANY guns, correct? Your character can't survive without SHOOTING these guns, correct? MGS4 is a shooter just as much as a "stealth game", the degree of each depends on how you choose to play through... And that's one of the game's STRENGTHS, even though some people cringe at the thought for some unknown reason. The basic problem with this game is the things that should be EASY are needlessly COMPLICATED and things that should be INTERESTING are absolutely BORING. You can spend nearly half the game (which is not very long in gameplay time) just trying to figure out how to consistently target and shoot someone with any accuracy. For example, until you learn to use the first person view of the gunsight (triangle) to target someone, sometimes Snake is just staring at the wall while being pumped full of lead or you're staring at the back of his head while trying to shoot someone right in front of him (when you only use L1 to target). Of course using the sights while moving and trying to shoot an enemy means you have to 1) toggle the L stick to move while 2) toggling the R stick to use the "floating camera" to see around you as you move then 3) press triangle to pull up a gunsight and 4) push and hold L1 to target the enemy and FINALLY 5) push and hold R1 to actually SHOOT someone... Honestly, this is just about as ridiculously difficult as one could possibly make it to target and shoot a bad guy in a simple video game! The learning curve is further complicated by a Menu Interface that must be pulled up (and gameplay STOPPED) if you want to do anything other than walk, stealth, "jump-roll", aim, fire and reload. For goodness sake, you can't even switch to a different weapon without interrupting gameplay! And if you want a weapon that's not in your "immediate" inventory, well, you've got to toggle through the Pause Menu to find it and switch it out with something else. In fact, you'll find yourself constantly pulling up a menu and L1ing and L2ing and toggling and toggling and Xing, ad nauseam... Another WARNING: Get killed before a checkpoint and lose everything you just spent the past 20-min doing, including any weapon upgrades. Boy, that sure makes things fun, huh? Just to frustrate you some more, when you kill a bad guy you can't just walk over him and collect his inventory like you can when you walk over his weapon or like 95% of other games... You have to press triangle and Snake physically picks him up and gives him a Heimlich Maneuver to make him puke out his prize... Just see how annoying this becomes after about the 20th time or 50th time or 100th time... It's still unclear to me why a guy must crap his pants under fire and then walk around with brown stains on them. Is that some kind of Japanese toilet humor? Seems like he'd have enough sense (or shame) to strip the pants off a dead guy and clean himself up instead of walking around his squad smelling like a turd rassler for the rest of the Act. Perhaps that's part of the "Epic" story here? Let's see... How about this one... Page 53, guy craps in a barrel, runs off butt-naked then finishes it off by soiling himself while avoiding enemy gunfire. YES... An integral part of the storyline... I'm a GENIUS! Woo-hoo! And the developers did a fine job of effectively limiting player involvement during the 2 most important scenes of this "Epic" story: 1) Snake going through the microwave corridors to reach and shutdown "GH" and 2) the final battle between Snake and Liquid. If EVER there was an appropriate time to ask, "WTH were they thinking? ", it's in both of these scenes... Consider that in arguably the MOST IMPORTANT EVENT in the entire game (Snake going through the microwave corridors to "GH"), your (his) success is simply based on HOW MANY TIMES YOU CAN PRESS TRIANGLE in about 2 or 3 minutes... That's IT!! Press it fast enough (maybe 400-500 times) and Snake is THE HERO! But fall short and you'll soon see every one of your remaining MGS beloved characters OFF'D in rather spectacular fashion. I'm sure Kojima forever endeared himself to his loyal throng of MetalGearHeads with that visual treat!! After this, Snake is basically D-E-A-D... I mean, he pukes up lunch and falls face first right into it (what a way to treat the HERO of your game series, huh? ) and Naomi is beckoning him from beyond the grave. His syringes no longer work and Otacon is of little help since he can't stop crying into his MacBook like a teenage girl who didn't get asked to the Prom. So Liquid strolls onto the scene and pumps Snake and himself with "the good stuff" syringes and Snake and he square off like kids in a schoolyard brawl. The problem is first you're just watching them fight, then you're somewhat in control of Snake, then you're watching them again, then you're pushing buttons again, rinse & repeat every few seconds. So not only did the developers feel no shame about constantly inserting cutscenes during gameplay throughout THE GAME, but they also did it liberally throughout the Final Battle itself... Simply SHAMELESS!! You basically get to press R1 to attack, then triangle to get Liquid on the ground (by video), then R1 again (to watch another video with Snake choking Liquid), then triangle again (to watch another video of Snake smackin the bejeezus out of Liquid)... Then Liquid stands up (in yet another video) and exclaims, "Splendid, Brother! " (which is actually pretty cool the 1st couple of times, then it loses its effect), and you're like, "OK... So am I supposed to start fighting again, now? " Just BIZARRE for a player to be put through something like this in the climactic fight scene of a SERIES... It reeks of CONTEMPT for the player on the part of the developers. There's also a terrible problem that the developers have just letting someone friggin die in this game... You kill a boss, then they transform into another boss that you kill again... Then they play this cutscene that's 3 or 4 min long of them FINALLY dying! Then Drebin has to come in and tell you the SAME STORY again and again about how they were abused children who watched their familiy members die and were taken away by the Army and trained to be who they were before you just killed them... It's like you Tivo'd a show and just watch it again and again after you kill each boss (twice)... PURE FILLER! And just think... You get to do this FOUR times!! Or Snake has a Bowie Knife stuck 8 inches into his chest and the next scene he's good as new again... Or Raiden or Vamp "dies", then you see them again a couple of scenes later, then they "die" again. This became more like a PARODY of an action game and we even laughed hysterically when Raiden shows up near the end WITH NO FREAKIN' ARMS AND A SWORD IN HIS MOUTH ready to take on a couple dozen Baddies (who, oddly enough, are armed to the teeth but just stand there and stare at Snake and Raiden for several minutes instead of attacking)... Snake even has to take the sword and put it back in Raiden's mouth when he's through talking... Are you kidding me??? LOL... Then after this he even shows up AGAIN in a hospital room all put back together. This is just too much!! And another person decides she can't take it anymore (can't say I blame her) so she hits herself in the neck with the "Death Syringe" not once, not twice but unbelievably THREE TIMES before she finally shuts the hell up and dies! In fact, I think she was still mumbling something incoherently when Snake just turned around, got in the mech and left her babbling on and on while the bldg was collapsing... These are NOT the things of an "Epic" story. They're more along the lines of a "Kentucky Fried Videogame". A parody. I wouldn't be surprised if Kojima laughs so hard he pees his pants when he reads some of the 5-star falling-all-over-themselves SERIOUS reviews of this game given the pure absurdity of a hero with no arms showing up for a sword-fight! (Maybe "it's just a flesh wound"? )

You've probably heard about the cutscenes and their insane lengths by now. It's no lie. Kudos to anyone who can actually sit through every minute of watching Sunny try to cook a couple of freakin' eggs and get Snake or Otacon to chance eating one (and she's the "brains" of the operation?! ? ). BORE ME TO TEARS, why don't you... Maybe there are a couple of eggs waiting to ambush me in the next level? Add to that the fact that you get to WATCH SNAKE CHAIN-SMOKE FOR NEARLY NINE MINUTES when the game first loads... Another 4 minutes of this when Act II loads. In fact, you're treated to this chain-smoking show EVERY TIME an Act loads... Just UNBELIEVABLE!! With all of the slick cutscenes to repeatedly interrupt gameplay and THIS is the BEST YOU GOT to show us while the game loads, Konami? Now I realize there are a few hundred people here on Amazon that had some sort of "spiritual experience" when they played this game, but to be sure, not everyone is going to fall in love with MGS4 when they play it... And even though I feel BETRAYED by 339 5-Star glowing reviews (out of a total of 455), I'm still not trying to completely trash the game and everything I've stated in this review is TRUE. For me, these things keep MGS4 from being anywhere near "the best PS3 game ever" or "the reason to go out and buy a PS3"... Give me a break! This actually COULD'VE BEEN a 5-star game IF 90% of the cutscene lengths were left out AND easier target/shoot controls were employed AND more gameplay was added that wasn't as repetitive AND less complicated inventory acquisition and control were added. As it stands, this is a game with needlessly complicated controls that substitutes repetitious gameplay and excessively boring cure-for-insomnia cutscene lengths in the place of both QUALITY and QUANTITY of gameplay. Furthermore, this "movie" is clearly a victim of over-production. Imagine a 2-hr summer blockbuster where almost nothing is edited out... Much of all the raw footage is included and it's now ballooned to an agonizing 8 hours long. That's what happened to MGS4. Only the most devoted fans are left in the theater when the credits roll... Everyone else left a long time ago. Instead of being subjected to 9 minutes of chain-smoking Snake while the game initially loads, a brief "narrative" could have been shown to get EVERYONE up to speed with the background story. This is basically what happens in the beginning of Killzone 2 with a roughly 3 or 4-min movie and it's quite effective even if you missed the original Killzone. Once the story is set up, it's time to get in the game and not look back. The problem with MGS4 is it CONSTANTLY LOOKS BACK... In fact, nearly every new character brings with them a GAMEPLAY STOPPAGE and a BORE-ME-TO-SLEEP STORY that can go half an hour and only provide a couple more pieces of the main plot (if you can stay awake and not click "SKIP"). Of course this absolutely DESTROYS any continuity to gameplay and results in a more forced storyline that soon falls on deaf ears because nearly everyone has already left the theater. While they were SMART to include a "skip" option whenever a cutscene appears, it was a strategic error to not tell the background story while the game initially loads... What follows is a soap opera feel where every character is compelled to hit a 10. 0 on the Drama-Meter while telling their story that is 98% fluff material or repetition. It's a true over-production tragedy...