Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

There's not going to be an incredibly elaborate and laborious camo system, is there?

The graphics are fantastic and sneaking around outside is really fun, hiding in the grass until some asshole wanders close enough to get a tranq dart in the face is kind of gratifying.

I played the motorcycle chase again yesterday though, and that really is awesome. There's no people pissing themselves in front of other people, or guys made of bees, or gigantic fireballs with faces that swerve through the air and yell at you.

One other positive about this game is, besides the shitty camera where you can't see someone who might be right in front of you no matter how many sonar pings you fire or how much you crank up the motion detector, the environments are really pretty good. The jungle is really like a jungle with lots of grass, plants, trees, and little tiny animals hopping around, and then you can kill all them animals or shoot fruit down from the trees. Not that you'd ever need that much food. Basically you can find all the food you'd ever need for an entire game in one or two of the first areas.

Back to negative though, I still want to BITCH about the camera system. You can go prone and use the scope and zoom in and look for enemies, but the fact is that if the camera won't show them to you, you won't see them UNLESS you go into first person and go into first person again and then again and again until you basically are never moving. And what really sucks is when you try really hard to get the feel of an area and the location of the enemies, you take some out, and then you go to get a tempting looking treasure box and some guy over there sees you and hits the alarm instantly and you have 50 people shooting at you. The fact is that this game doesn't really rely on stealth or a camo index or blending in or being sneaky or using the Mk23 instead of the 1911, or trying to gather intelligence on a location, or using your scope and first person and thermal goggles, or throwing empty magazines to "divert" the enemy's attention (directly to you, every time), or setting up TRAPS!!! by blowing up the food storage and then throwing food on the ground. Getting through this game without being detected relies a billion percent on the plain old tired Japanese rote memorization of areas from multiple playthroughs. In fact the game seems even more made for playing after finishing it, because the the more you finish it the more of the camos you get to keep, and it keeps a game completion counter on your save now. But being "stealthy" by just remembering "hey, there was an enemy there the last time I played, he will probably be there this time as well" is dumb.

guys made of bees

now, now. I like what your friend wrote, but i do think he's giving short shrift to guys made of bees. Guys made of bees helped build this country, ya know...

this is actually, no hyperbole, one of the game's plot points.

as it should be

but it has everything i love about Metal Gear: the emphasis on stealth, the over-the-top bosses, amazing graphics and cinematics.

perhaps he intends it as a prequel?.

you can get Snatcher here from Underdogs, by the way...

well see, its not so bad if you pay attention to your surroundings and your camouflage, which is why the camera is crucial and needs to be fixed so bad. however they ARE fixing it in the upcoming 'director's cut' style game MGS 3 Subsistance, with which you can move the camera around anywhere, like in Splinter Cell.

Otacon talks about it when we first meet him in MGS in the lab. I think you also see a poster for Policenauts on the wall(another Kojima game).

well he just talks about 'japanese animes', not policenauts per se, though clips from policenauts play over his dialogue.

This is asking a LOT from me. I really hate holding onto R1, and also the possibility that a guard will sneak up behind me is a terrifying thought.

i thought that he made more of a direct reference to Snatcher somewhere in the game.

My god that's my experience to the letter. That is, until I tossed caution to the wind and let myself get alerted.

Now I am at the final boss! Oh god, time limit!

In other news: will MGS4 continue Kojima's fascination with pants-wetting?

I didn't think they were spoilers! My bad!

http://www.metalgearsolid.org/show_downloads.php?id=739

Your own little Otacon desktop clock -- for Win/Mac

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/22703.html

Kojima walks you thru 15 minutes of game play footage. Pretty impressive looking stuff

the link to the osx one doesn't work!

bleurgh. this is exactly what i DON'T want from mgs. i.e. less fantasy, more military, less aloneness..

http://wire.ggl.com/2007/08/24/mgs4-the-beauties-are-beasts/

I was watching this the other day when I realized I had just reached the point where I didn't want to hear or watch one more thing about this game before I get to actually play it. It's the game I'm most anticipating right now, but I want some surprises left.

yeah, i've avoided all info on the game so far, really. i think the last thing i watched was that trailer from like a year ago, where a little robot with otakon's voice shows up or something.

Longish Eurogamer preview of MGO...
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=93022

Apparently June 12th, 2008!

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/855/855057p1.html

http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/855/855057/metal-gear-solid-4-guns-of-the-patriots--20080226051222749.jpg

Sweet Christmas, I just got a boner.

This makes me more excited than ever to get my hands on this game.

MGS4 Hands On

You might not want to read though!

MGO Beta footage on the loose
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4k8iBDKVjg
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x57eht_mgo-la-catapulte-a-3-ahhhhhhhhhhhh_videogames
http://www.dailymotion.com/search/mgo/video/x57d7q_metal-gear-online-ingame_videogames

I can't think of a single thing worse that a multiplayer MGS

I'm honestly surprised about the appetite for this

haha those videos make it look as awful as I expected!

what d'you reckon, jeff, you interested?

I'm extremely skeptical. I do want to try out the man catapult though :)

I don't think it looks terrible... it looks a lot like Rainbow 6 / Graw with a sense of humor, but maybe a little more fussy in the control department (which probably isn't a good thing for a multiplayer game).

raiden is a BADASS in MGS4 but what's w/the cuban heels?

I thought the ipod was bad but vamp placing calls on his sony ericsson was a bit much

Are you going to try out the online?

I doubt it; I know it has its fans but I don't see the appeal

on chapter 3 of the SP now and I'm still really enjoying it; there are lots of cutscenes but you can kinda get a feel for whether you should skip or not within 30 secs or so.

cool that you get to play alain delon in le samourai at the beginning of ch.3

act 3 was kinda a chore (despite the alain delon section), the turret section on the motorbike was zzzz and the boss was irritating

but it was TOTALLY worth plodding through act 3 to get to the payoff in act 4. so. good.

this game, like most MGS games I guess, is chock full of ideas. it's just a shame the engine is so creaky

I think the best bit about this game is the guinea pigs

I was going to say something disparaging about the wtfness of the storyline, but then I realized it took me 4 MGS games to get to this point so the joke's on me, right?

casenater93 laughing octopus has a huge cameltoe and big ass and big titties and shes hot. i got a boner watching the cutscenes with here :P so what are you talking about and yes i got a stiffy from pixles DAMN YOU HIDEO KOJIMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 8 3 months ago

it's just a shame the engine is so creaky

I don't know what you mean by this. Game had amazing graphics.

I didn't skip any cut-scenes when I played through this, which was probably a mistake. The excessive cut-scenes definitely added to the uneven feeling and off pacing, and kept me feeling somewhat uninvolved. There are some really good bits to the game, but for every good bit, there's a tiring bit. In particular, the boss fights all felt like a grind. Also all the rolly robots in chapter 4 got on my nerves. Would have really liked if more of the game was like chapter 1 when you are sneaking though the battlefield.

Still holding on to this and thinking of replaying it again at some point though.

the framerate is terrible, the textures are pretty low-res in places and the game needs to be re-installed at the beginning of every chapter

it's not the best engine, optimisation-wise

the boss fights really are a boring grind, with the exception of the battle against crying wolf which is very reminiscent of the fight against the end in MGS3

I forgot about the five minute installs between every chapter. Not ideal, especially because I only have a sixty gig hard drive. Didn't really notice the framerate or textures, but I'm not nit-picky about that stuff in general. At the time the graphics looked great, but maybe these days (in a post Uncharted 2 world?) they're showing their age? Just noticed this thread is almost five years old!

yeah, I went from uncharted 2 to this and the comparison does MGS4 no favours. uncharted 2 is buttery smooth throughout and the backgrounds are much more detailed. plus you don't even need to install uncharted 2, period, in fact it's not even possible

I understand naughty dog have made their pre-caching code available to all PS3 developers. maybe kojipro cd have a look at it for MGS4: existence

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

the last boss is the most fucking tedious shit I have ever played in a MGS game and I don't think I can bring myself to grind out beating him. fuck.

this game only gets worse after the crying wolf boss. it turns into a total cutscene-fest, with several turret sections, low framerate split-screen sections, arena shootouts and horrible boss grinds. terrible terrible endgame that has eroded all of the goodwill I expressed upthread. no wonder so many people were sour on this game.

Originally I gave up on the game at the final Vamp fight, but finally went back to it and beat the rest about a year later. I'd like to say it's worth it to finish that last boss fight (the fist fight one?), but it really isn't unless you're desperate to see another two hours of incomprehensible or pointless cut-scenes.

I'm not sure most of the boss fights are really less tedious in 3, it's just that the stuff that surrounds the boss fights in 3 is much more compelling and fully realized and integrated into a somewhat cohesive story, while 4 feels very much like bits of a bunch of games (some good) kind of mushed up together and never really gets into any kind of good flow that makes one want to keep progressing.

you normally get some pretty nifty unlocks at least when you complete MGS4

I will complete but goddamn that fist fight is a chore

completed it. the fist fight was OK once I realised I had been doing it wrong. best to just fist fight rather than dodge and try and initiate the QTE cutscene as it takes too long that way

anyway final breakdown:
14 continues
31 alerts
247 kills
"EAGLE"

good game. flawed but v.good, and a fitting end to the series on consoles ;)

do I try a big boss emblem run: y/n

(n)

ilx poster cozen u lead a rich & fulfilling lyfe: y/n

(m)

If you do try a Big Boss Emblem run be prepared for controller smashing levels of frustration with the motorbike chase in Act 3.

yeah def not goin to do tht - only so much of my rich & fulfilling lyfe going spare

perhaps u wd enjoy these rich & fulfilling recypes mr lamp?
http://www.bilerico.com/2009/07/semen_recipes.png

is that a cum flan

homophobia nagl there bro hb n.e.way tho yung blud

Started this but it just seemed like a movie. Girlfriend gone this weekend so might try again.

hb to u too apols for the cum blancmange

np but my birthday isnt for months

me either hi5

EYE HAVE YOU

god this was such a chore to get through. i agree that there are a lot of neat things about the gameplay itself but you never get a chance to really try it out. the story makes no sense and is impossible to care about, and they kinda ruined the stealth aspect by making every weapon in the world available at any time.

it's variability and options the game gave you. you didn't have to purchase a single weapon - but that they were there, and in such a plethora, i thought one of the game's strong points. i love any game that allows me to oversee exactly how i enact things.

the story definitely didn't make sense, but neither did the other 3 games so it wasn't an entire groaning point this late in the series.

/defenseofoneofmyfavoritegames

oh i know and i've always defended the series cut-scene orgies before, but i think they finally overdid it this time with the mission briefing stuff and the monkey. could also be i had more tolerance for that sort of thing when i was younger and could play for 10 hours straight, where nowadays i kinda want to actually play when i can find the time

yeah, i can sympathize and yet at the same time MGS has always been a series, to me, that demanded an afternoon and all attention. it's never been a quickie-let's-do-one-mission-before-my-ride-gets-here kinda thing. which relays in fact that i absolutely loved the mission briefing scenes, the novelty in fact that a game is actually allowing itself just to wallow and experience things at their most unexciting in preparation for whatever's to come. i wouldn't say it's on a tranquil shadow of the colossus level, but as someone who often hates the medium i spend so much time within it was pretty refreshing to me to find that there were developers who valued the potential for the medium to accomplish something outside of immediate and constant action. videogames could be so much more and it continually bums me out we've been playing the same things/concepts for decades on end. so anyways: interactive cut-scenes i might be blowing up here, but i appreciated wholesale.

i can't really excuse the monkey. i didn't find that really funny at all.

i can't believe some of you people defend this shit! consistently! fuck you! FUCK YOU!!!!

― cankles, Monday, 30 June 2008 07:06 (5 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

playing through this for the first time. it is pretty good. it is funny as much as MGS2 denies to be a power fantasy this game is the ultimate indulgence of that. cutscene heavy and every bit the overblown western action film inspired military sci fi fantasy the series has always been.

the cyborg ninja Raiden is totally redeemed and we see him delivering the most emo edge lines of all time in that plane lol. i love it.

the game itself feels very safe, like chicken noodle soup. i have not died once and am 4/5 of the way through. it has Huey and the Col. helping you, just like MGS, it has Naomi, it has the return of MGS1 levels, etc.

i am enjoying the return to Shadow Moses even though as a level it's really the most aimless one yet, it proves that you can't really remake those old games cos the entire game would be one level! then again the start of MGS4 is full of walk across a room, see a cutscene, walk across another room, see another cutscene, save, see another cutscene.

there were times when i was in Europe (that stalking through the foggy city streets level ruled) when it was playing cutscenes and pausing to save, multiple times, during the cutscenes. lol.

on some level i can't help but love this for the audiaciousness. this game is in the Guiness Book of World Records for this stuff.

PS. MGSV is still my favorite.

oh yeah wtf is with the game installing in between chapters? the first time that happened i thought my PS3 was losing its mind

suddenly the difficulty has skyrocketed. i made it through most of act 4 with no problem, took out the Sniper Wolf robot, was enjoying the constant nostalgia and Otacon saying awestruck things about the first MGS, literally saying "You are the shit", etc.

now i am in the split screen duel. on the right half Raiden is in a fight with Vamp and on the left i am stuck in a little spot of ground in front of the Metal Gear and charged with killing endless waves of gekkos. now this is bullshit and not fun. i have heat seeking rocket launchers and a rail gun, i can call up Drebben in the middle of a fight and buy ammo as much as i want, but no matter what i keep dying. inevitably there is a gekko that jumps next to me, count down to self destruction, and explodes, killing me in the process. even if i have rations equipped, i still die. any tips for this part?

ok some quick googling told me to charge the rail gun. will try that...

https://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2014/02/28/the-story-behind-metal-gear-solid-4-39-s-bizarre-intro.aspx

this is pretty awesome read talking about the making of the intro live action segments.

also i watched the Superbunnyhop review last night. i LOL'd at him pointing out that this game has the main villains

a) shutting down all guns, resulting in the first total global ceasefire
b) curing cancer with nanomachines

it is hilarious that halfway through the game the main bad guy has inadvertently caused world peace.

Man, do I ever not remember any of this nonsense, which almost makes me question if I ever even played 4 (which I did, because old Snake, and Johnny Diarrhea).

i finished this game today. the end of the game is like 3 hours of cutscenes w some gameplay just tossed in. really once you get through Shadow Moses the game goes entirely linear, to the point where you are just holding forward for a good while.

it's a shame cos the gameplay during the start is a nice evolution of MGS3-style but by halfway through there is nothing stealthy about it. the last few hours you shoot like a million bullets. often there will be a room but of badguys and you just fight them over and over until the game just steps in and takes the control away from you.

still, it's pretty enjoyable. definitely worth a watch a least once. it really feels like the sequel to MGS everyone wanted from MGS2. the ending is super melodramatic. i like how during the very last bonus audio Snake calls himself a "blue rose", Kojima w the FWWM reference.

shoot i didn't have this thread bookmarked, v happy to read all of your posts on here adam! so many things i love abt this game, thought i talked abt it around here somewhere, maybe on one of the other mgs threads. the gear vs gear 5-minute combat remains one of my most favourite video game things ever because it's just such an absurd waste of development money for something that is completely unused at any ohter point. not even in a dumb dlc rush mode or something.

i loved that bit. all the MGS games have a OTT action setpiece, usually near the end of the game, where it just goes crazy. MGS2 had that bit at the end of the postmodern part where you just fight 2 dozen enemies in room after room that is also completely at odds with the rest of the game, where you stealth your way past a dozen enemies spread out over the entire game map. it is part and parcel with the cutscenes, the interactive cinematic stylisms that are the bread and butter of the series.

was kind of surprised that half the game was just a recreation of MGS, tho i guess that IS what the fans wanted, the expectation subverted by MGS2. the happy endings were all pretty nice, Big Boss as always pulling a fast one on everybody, Raiden waking up to have his life also revealed as a life and bestowing a suburban fairy tale ending on the ultimate tortured edgelord emo robot ninja of all time.

i liked how at one point they are all stuck and Johnny is the only one that can help them, and it turns out that him having diarrhea and being a general weirdo meant that he refused the nanomachines treatment, so he is free to save the day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWqlz0wsQQ4

Raiden's speech starting around 3:00 in is so classic. "I'm a shadow, one that no light will shine on". you could open a Hot Topic just selling t-shirts with every line that he says here.

"It was never going to work out for me. It even rained the day I was born."

"I have nothing. I have always been alone. Always."

i think it would rank near the bottom for me though, i like playing 2/3/V way more, i like the stories in those games more as well. still a lot of fun and worth seeing at least once.