Metal Gear Solid 4 Is Still A Glorious Mess

love it or hate it it's kind of hard to deny the stain power the metal gear solid series has had on the gaming industry and although its roots are as far back as the nes it all started for me when a polygonal solid snake hopped out of the water in the docks at the shadow moses base it went on to become one of my favorite video game franchises of all time after doom of course i mean i bought a playstation 2 just so i could play metal gear solid 2 and then i eventually bought a playstation 3 just so i could play metage solid 4. which at the time really looked like it was going to be the final game in the series it's really kind of hard to explain the hype that was surrounding this thing at the time but to say the expectations were high is a bit of an understatement and if like me you've been riding the kojima train the past decade well then you're probably hoping to get some much needed questions answered what's also kind of crazy too is when you consider that the first game and this one were both only 10 years apart i mean go back and look at the game from 2012 nowadays and i reckon you'd often be hard-pressed to see any difference anyway when it finally came out it got glowing reviews it won game of the year awards and it sold a bazillion copies not to mention becoming a topic of discussion for salty xbox fanboys who couldn't play it because of the exclusivity man you are one pathetic loser and it seems that every few years discussion over this thing starts to trend again usually when kojima finds himself in the limelight regarding whatever new game it's rumored he's supposed to be working on i've actually been wanting to do a video on this for a long time now despite the fact that metal gear solo 3 is my favorite game in the series i just think that there's so much more to talk about here with metal gear solid 4. think again i'm not sure i'd say it's a masterpiece in fact at times i even struggle to call it a game but it's also not so much something you play as it is something you experience watch out she's going to try to grab you that works two-fold mostly in the way that the majority of the content in this game is just so out of left field that it's like you're having an out-of-body experience just seeing it but secondly and more importantly because you really do spend the majority of this game watching cinematics some of which can go upwards for 20 or 30 minutes what is your problem i mean even after the final boss there's an epilogue sequence which goes on for well over an hour yeah [ __ ] really that's weird according to cinematic only videos of the game on youtube these run for around the nine to 10 hour mark all up and considering that most websites say the whole thing only takes 15 hours to beat if you think about it that kind of means that like 75 of the time is spent watching the game as opposed to playing it i mean it was definitely the sony trend at the time with titles like uncharted and it's also been a trend for the series since its inception but this time they really took it to a whole nother level now before we get started i do want to say i'm not going to spoil every single element of the game here but i am going to talk about a whole lip of stuff here so if you haven't played it well you might want to take a smoko or i don't know just skip the video entirely wrong way also if you like this video and want to support the channel well then consider becoming a patron you get early access to videos like this and can also join that super exclusive discord server and have a say in what gets covered next right so metal gear solid 4 loads up after an extended series of company logos to give us one of the most gorgeous main menus of all time and if you're paying attention to all the promo stuff surrounding the game world you'll instantly recognize that solitary figure off in the distance to be solid snake or old snake as he's now known loading up a new game begins with this short sequence we're able to change through these various tv channels watching garbage game shows and cooking shows the kind of stuff which funnily enough ain't too far removed from the kind of crap they put on tv nowadays these kind of work on a meta level with one channel having david hayder being interviewed by lee merriweather hater of course being the chad that voices solid snake himself and lee merryweather providing the voice for big mama but also playing one of the original catwoman back in that old batman tv series appropriate no but this stuff also sets the precedence that this is a game set in a world where violence and war has pretty much become commonplace with these violent commercials advertising the various pmc groups you're gonna be coming across during each act like that commercial showing the guy getting killed by robotic praying mantis i mean it's the kind of thing you'd expect to see on the telly in a world that's become completely desensitized to war and conflict praying mantis unmanned surveillance systems right after that you're finally in the game kind of riding in the back of a truck in the middle east with snake as he goes on about how war is now a commodity and soldiers just now work for the highest bidder war has changed war never changes it's actually a pretty cool opening sequence with snake dressed like altia from assassin's creed for some reason and it's a sequence that just shows first hand just how senseless all of this war is with these rebel soldiers being gunned down so methodically by these privately owned soldiers you almost kind of forget that you're playing a game at this point and when the heads up display starts to transition onto the screen which is something that i think is really cool but that point you've pretty much forgotten that that cold lump of plastic in your hands is called a controller then at this point you walk like a grand total of a dozen steps and another cinematic begins [ __ ] this is like a lengthy sequence which introduces one of the most common and annoying enemies you're gonna come up against called the geckos now i know they're supposed to look like gekko lizards with their large heads and long legs but to me they kind of look like mini metal gear rex's with emu legs either way though they're just dumb and annoying and i gotta say that kojima really bet on the wrong horsey with this enemy design because they suck and for most of these early instances you encounter them all you can do is just run right past them and try not to take too many hits surprise [ __ ] then after running around for like another 10 or so seconds you again lose control and another cinematic begins this time showing snake being pursued by a bunch of these geckos before he apparently just vanishes into thin air now this cinematic teaches us two things right firstly that these geckos apparently need to take shits which is information i think is really necessary but then that also snake's got a brand new toy the octo camo suit which allows him to replicate whatever surface he's attached to and become harder to detect this cinematic also has one of the lamest meta-jokes of all time i mean no place for hideo what the hell were you thinking anyway the title card then pops up the goosebumps kick in and that's essentially it for the prologue most of which you just spent watching and this is really the trend that metal gear solid 4 starts to take and you better get used to having control taken away from you frequently i mean at one point you watch a cinematic you drop down an elevator shaft then you literally watch another cinematic at this point when you've just spent the first 20 minutes watching the game unfold as opposed to playing it you really just want to get in there and start sneaking around but instead what you might want to do is go off and put on a cup of tea or make a sandwich because now there's a series of lengthy cinematics from this point which cuts back to a few days earlier where snakes hanging out at a cemetery before then being picked up by otakon and campbell which then has to explain the reason why he's in the middle east to begin with snake i came across some information well we're waiting basically in a nutshell liquids being spotted there the same liquid who apparently managed to take over ocelot's mind by being grafted onto his right hand because yeah that's a plot point in these games plus it also explains why snake looks like he fell asleep in a sauna and has ended up more shriveled up than a camel's nut sack yeah the guy's obviously seen better days and at one point when returning character naomi hunter has a look at him she starts crying oh my god yeah because that's the kind of reaction you want when a woman sees you without your clothes on alright let's just get this over with turns out that fox die virus she gave to him has a nasty side effect of causing his body to rapidly age plus it also has the effect of giving him a mustache and an awesome looking mullet still though you can't deny that this guy's a handsome dude even in his old age so then now the entire story along with everything else it has to do needs to find the time to explain why the fox die virus is doing this and what implications this has on the rest of the world and i think that's the main issue the story has here is that it's got to do its best to wrap up all of these loose ends and plot points from the last few games in the previous games we had things like undead cyborg ninjas a vampire that flamenco dances and can dodge bullets they're a guy that can shoot wasps out of his dick hole now here's metal gear solid 4 that has to come along and make sense of the whole thing which i think explains why campbell shows up out of nowhere along with other characters like meryl and mei ling both of whom we haven't heard a peep from since metal gear solid 1. what happened to your face what's wrong with your face it's kind of like one of those recaps you watch on netflix before you watch stranger things season 7 or whatever they're up to now only this recap goes on for 30 minutes instead of just two so yeah like i said grab a cup of tea or make a sandwich i don't know even go through your bank statements from the last financial year and get your taxes done you've got time trust me now the funny thing is is once you finally get into the gameplay you start to realize it's actually pretty damn good when you're finally back in the middle east after sneaking past a few guards you get your gear you get a new toy called the snake eye which is like a mechanical eye patch that helps you pinpoint enemies and also has the added bonus of a night vision mode it's an all-purpose goggle that displays radar images and other data in 3d along with some much needed weapons like a springfield pistol and a tranquilizer pistol which is used for those all-important non-lethal takedowns which is the only correct way to play the game it is kind of a shame that there's so many weapons you can buy in this game and yet going around killing people always kind of feels like cheating to me you know compared to trying to sneak past them or take them out not lethally i don't know man there's just something so much more satisfying about leaving behind a sleeping body as opposed to a dead one you also get otakon's robotic sidekick the mark ii a pint-sized metal gear that can be used for recon though i mostly kept this guy on the bench but the most important tool in your metal gear arsenal is that octo camel it's a special muscle suit that snake wears which kind of makes him look like he's been carved out of marble but more than that it's a more intuitive version of the camouflage mechanic than the third game because now instead of having to fiddle around in menus like an [ __ ] now you've just got to stay still on any surface and the suit automatically changes its to match it later on you get a full-on face mask which makes you pretty much entirely invisible and it's one of the few ways the six-axis controller has also been used well because if you ever shake that controller like it's an aerosol can it resets the camo back to its default and this even works in cinematics too the stealth is kind of like a combination of the second and the third game you don't have that magic radar showing an enemy's exact field of vision but the solid eye does let you know when someone's nearby which kind of lets you plan out accordingly when you're crouching or going prone you also get this very handy reticle which also shows the general direction and enemies coming from and again it doesn't outright give their position away it just makes you a bit more aware that you're not alone i think it's a good balance of not holding the player's hand but then also giving them a fair chance to prevent them from being detected all the time ah [ __ ] if an enemy sees you as you'd expect the alert is raised and they'll run off to call in reinforcements which i've always thought it's kind of stupid i mean these guys are already in these active war zones and yet somehow the side of snake amongst all of these other armed rebels is enough for them to then call in support it can also be really tricky getting through these first areas without getting seen if you don't know what you're doing now i know that's kind of the case for like every stealth game ever made don't spook me like that but there's so many moments here in this first act where enemies are almost scripted to show up it's like you run past some sort of invisible marker then a couple of guys didn't come out of a nearby alleyway and if you don't know this is going to happen you can and often will get spotted it's a lot different to most of the other games where enemies are usually following a preset path that you can study and then learn how to best avoid you know like how most [ __ ] stealth games work don't spook me like that i mean even metal gear solder 3 which kind of broke tradition and put you into these much larger jungle environments where you were surrounded by the kind of bush that made cambodia look like kansas still had enemies who would patrol along a preset route like the other games in the series i did punish myself and beat them on that european extreme mode to get that much coveted big boss rank and one of the requirements for that is not being spotted a single time and that really was one of the most frustrating trial and error experiences i think i've had in my entire life outside of you know trying to find the g-spot and these starting areas show off exactly what i'm talking about because like everything else in this game it's all highly scripted it's all part of the plan and it's just kind of odd considering otherwise that most of these eras really play out like a stealth or combat sandbox if you even help out the rebels during these sequences you can increase your standing with them to the point that they're no longer hostile at that point they'll invite you around for tea and biscuits or even let you date one of their 12 sisters this is done by mostly taking out the other faction units or just by giving them your spare rations don't have to twist my arm thanks wiping out all of the pmcs in an area ends with these guys celebrating their victory and though it is kind of short-lived hearing them all cheer as a result of your hard work is a pretty cool feeling the only problem you'll have here is the frame rate because it's awful i mean guns of the patriots is a pretty damn good looking game at times i mean it's easily one of the best for the platform even if it has a really bad color palette but it seems like konami just didn't give two shits about the performance because this thing chugs along constantly combined with the frequent installation screens for each act you kind of get the feeling that this thing is pushing the poor system to its absolute limits which yeah probably is now it's around this point you'll run into one of the new characters a guy named dreben no not that dreben lieutenant the feeling is mutual draben's this morally ambiguous dude who hangs out in war zones with his pet monkey the pet monkey that's also addicted to cigarettes and soda okay and he's kind of like the merchant from resident evil 4 in the way that he just kind of keeps popping up all the time you know if the merchant from resident evil 4 kept company with a diaper wearing simeon that is anyway dreben's a gun runner that goes from conflict to conflict selling weapons to whoever wants to take them off his hands in other words i'm a gun launderer the thing is all the guns in the metal gear solid universe have id locks which means only the person the gun is assigned to can ever use it and it's actually a pretty clever idea it's like the law givers in the judge dread comics and it makes sense that a mechanic like this would exist in the future at a point in times when guns are being handed out like candy it's kind of logical for gun manufacturers to want to prevent their product from falling into the wrong hands so drebin comes along and he's able to clear out those pesky id locks for a price and then from this point on every weapon that snake comes across can be sold to him for driven points and also unlocked if he wants to use it and that kind of brings me on to dreban's shop which is like this magical marketplace where you can just pause the game at any time then go through this interface where you can unlock and buy new weapons but more importantly buy more ammo yeah literally anything you want or need at any time need more missiles during a boss fight well just pause the game head on over to driven shop and stock up [ __ ] more than that though it's delivered to you instantly and also with a pretty cheap price in fact it doesn't take too long before you've got way more stuff than you need what this means is that ammo management is never an issue you know at all you don't need to worry about being precise with your shots because if you ever run out you can just pause the game go back to the shop and stock up again for peanuts if this is like kojima's way of showing how mainstream war and conflict is and if ammo is so commonplace that it's just become trivial in value well then i guess that's kind of brilliant for me though i think it's just a casual mechanic they've added to cater to more gamers and it's actually one of the few things i liked about playing through this game on european extreme is that it prevented you from utilizing this shop as an instant refill station still though it's pretty awesome the amount of weapons on offer here and also the amount of customization options which is again a bit of a shame considering that i find myself compelled to use that tranquilizer pistol 99 of the time here and shoot people in the head from the other side of the street the only other non-lethal weapons are the most synagogue returning from metal gear solder 3 which is a rifle that's been in use since the first world war along with various sleeping gas explosives or just shooting people with compressed air shells from the automatic shotgun which really does feel like you're incapacitating people by overdosing them on oxygen what's going on either way though i think the gun is really solid and being able to shoot from either shoulder and zoom into a first person view is all seamless it's smooth and that's a good thing because you're going to be forced into taking enemies out here lots of them and the reason i say that is because metal gear solid 4 is just packed with heaps of these forced combat sequences where you have to fight your way through these platoons of bad guys the kind of stuff that really takes the espionage out of tactical espionage action not what i'm saying large caliber weapon ought to do the trick gun now again this isn't anything entirely new i mean in mega solid 1 you had that shootout with merrell against the genome soldiers you had to race up the communications tower and then there was also that elevator shootout among a couple of others in metal gear solo 2 there was that shootout in the tanker and then later on that epic fight with ryden and snake teaming up inside arsenal gear but i think in metal gear solid 3 the only one was that final chase sequence on the bike with snake and eva i think you could get through the rest of that game boss fights excluded without ever having to fight someone the combat sequence in this first act again may be in a bit of a throwback to the first game has snake teaming up with meryl alongside her rat patrol squad against the platoon of frog soldiers oh yeah she'll probably explain the frog soldiers are women in skin tight combat suits all who have child bearing hips who leap around with p90s and then sound like seagulls when you kill them and at this point you've got to fight through a few dozen of them as you try to make your escape if you spent the last hour or so going through trying to remain undetected well then this is going to be a bit of a crash course on how the combat and the shooting works which is going to completely blindside you with up until this point you've been approaching this as a stealth game you know which most people would and i think rolling into a group of soldiers inside a rusty barrel is about as far removed from stealth as you could possibly get in the second act there's a sequence where you're escaping on the back of an apc shooting at a seemingly never-ending influx of geckos along with zombie-like soldiers who keep trying to climb up on the back of the vehicle then in that third act it's a motorbike chase through the streets as you're being attacked by you know i think literally every single enemy soldier that was stationed in europe now the final few areas of this first act do kind of redeem it somewhat letting you go back to distracting guards with porno mags or yielding into them with a barrel and i mean look you really wouldn't want to have it any other way i think to that the opening areas of the second act are also the best the stealth ever gets here now you're in south america trying to track down naomi and moving through all of these jungle environments complete with a night to day transition again given the choice to aid the local militia or just use them as a distraction to sneak by unnoticed it all leads to a long-winded series of cutscenes with naomi but more importantly the first boss fight against one of the members of the beauty and the beast unit [Music] yeah probably one of the weakest elements to this game are these new boss encounters comprised of these four psychopathic women in these incredibly elaborate combat suits with the symbolism behind their unit name being someone that knows that it's not even remotely clever yeah get it the beauty and the beast unit you know because they're beautiful women that are also mass murderers they get introduced in this cinematic where they make short work of a large group of rebels and it's like they're scraping dog [ __ ] off the bottom of their shoes for starters though let's talk about how all four of these are just really rehashes of bosses from the previous games the first fight is against laughing octopus 2 is definitely the most unique in the sense that the only real connection is that she shares her name with decoy octopus from the first game and also has similar tech to snakes octocamo being able to change her appearance to blend in with the background camera so at least she is kind of original but the others though not so much i mean raging raven is really just the fury from metal gear solid 3. i am the fury and you could also argue she has elements from the high d and the harrier fight in the first and the second game crying wolf is more or less just sniper wolf with fortune's railgun attached and i mean the fight even takes place in the exact same location where you fought sniper wolf in the first game again it's like poetry so if they rhyme and then finally i don't think i ever need to explain who's screaming mantis is based off now i know that this series has always been about constant throwbacks and references to the previous games and in a way this does feel like that riding style coming full circle but even if you ignore that these are still just really crappy boss fights i see and there's really not much going on here apart from just shooting them until they die how tense that first fight against fortune was in metal gear solar 2 where you had no idea how you were supposed to beat her and she just kept ripping that room apart with a railgun well how about fighting vulcan raven back in metal gear solid 1 that cat and mouse exchange where you could trick him with claymores or c4 bombs or just wait from around corners with the nikita launcher or the stink missiles or probably the most unfair comparison to metal gear solid 3 with the vast clever and creative ways you could take out all of those bosses i mean the end for instance was this lengthy battle of patience intelligence and attrition tracking the guy down across multiple areas freeze but nah for these fights against the bb unit you know you just kind of shoot them laughing octopus even spends half of the fight just completely still poorly hidden and basically giving you a free shot but what happens after beating these characters is even more infamous the [ __ ] is that right so after you've taken them down either lethally or non-lethally doesn't seem to matter they then come out of their shells literally then have some kind of mental breakdown because as it turns out they're all suffering from some pretty serious trauma brought on by these horrific events they suffered earlier in life it becomes like an interpretive dance routine or something as they reenact these memories in front of snake and it might have had some kind of powerful effect on the player but they do it in such a way that it seems like all they're missing is a metal pole and some body glitter i shouldn't be laughing then they go for the ultimate finishing move by attempting to hug snake to death come again i guess the point is that they've been so robbed of basic human affection for so long and they crave it so much that they're somehow able to siphon it out of snake by doing this and i do find it pretty funny how snake basically throws them to the ground like their wet laundry if you wait long enough you then get transported to this white void with a three minute time limit and if you happen to find the camera or play the right song on your ipod because the ipod's a thing in this game you can even mess around with them in various other ways too you know when someone said that music sues the savage beast i don't think this is what they had in mind never mind then after that and in stark contrast to the wacky vibe that all of this has the game tries to make you feel guilty or something after drabin calls you up and tells you about all the [ __ ] up backstories that they've all got but the thing is though it just doesn't work at that point it's kind of like too little too late screeching and calling she killed every last living being in the camp both the soldiers and the civilians they'd enslaved uh-huh i think the main problem with these characters is that they rely more on their physical appearance and the metal gear solid series has always had these strong powerful female characters but their attractiveness came from the character itself as opposed to how they would have been rated on am i hot or not.com olga for instance was a badass [ __ ] who ran around in a cybernetic ninja suit and kicked all kinds of ass and i'd let her pin me down in the amazon position and have her way with me you know anytime she wanted you know what you're doing that wasn't just because she was physically attractive it was because she was also capable and intelligent not a chance the bb unit are like victoria's secret models with a shoehorned in backstory about how they're all damaged goods but they just don't seem like the kind of people you'd believe could be in those situations so it kind of detaches you from the writing now look in kojima's defense the series has had a history of sexual undertones and blatant overtones in some of the character designs but i've always kind of felt like there was a justification to that even metal gear solo 3 was walking around with their boobs out half the time but that's because it was supposed to fit in with her real objective being the honeypot trap that's manipulating the main character to suit her own agenda we've got company it's the ocelot unit i don't know man i just think out of all the bosses in the main games in the series these four are easily the weakest and they're barely established before you have to fight them i mean the first time i played this i kept forgetting they were even in the game until they showed up again in mediga solid 1 you had this rogue gallery of freaks that snake had to fight through who were all rallying behind liquid snake's cores same thing in metal gear solar 2 man i mean the members of dead cell were dedicated to fighting for solidus and again i mean in metal gear solid 3 the cobra unit were basically joined at the hip they weren't called sons of the boss for no reason these guys were ready to die fighting for what they believed in my friends let us fight together again i have waited long for this day we will fight with you once more in contrast the bb unit are just more like hired guns they're a byproduct of an economy where soldiers are a tradable commodity and if you had enough cash to spend well i guess you'd be able to afford the psycho screaming lady in the batsuit to go flying around the battlefield and drop missiles on your enemies it does fit in with the premise you know of war being a business and soldiers getting swapped around like shares on the stock market but it just removes any real connection these women have to snake i'm actually kind of surprised they just didn't bring back more bosses from the previous games i mean they did manage to bring back vamp again which admittedly is pretty damn awesome and i will give kojima credit here in the way that men or women he doesn't mind sexing these characters up and van still looks like the kind of guy that leaves behind puddles of bodily fluid underneath the shoes of all the women and men that he comes across even ryan returning as a cyborg ninja because yeah you gotta have one of those in every single metal gear solid games it seems is a handsome looking dude here with his perfectly styled j-pop hair still though i don't mind attractive characters in my video games i'm a perfectly healthy sensible person and i don't get upset with that kind of thing but what i do get upset by is dumbass characters who [ __ ] their pants and get promoted to being key players in the entire story yeah of course all i'm talking about here is johnny or akiba oh what is your problem johnny was just like a random character from the first game really just a punching bag used for comic relief a guy who had conveniently timed irritable bowel syndrome that allowed snake to escape from his cell and then as a blatant example of how these games like to recycle things he popped up again in the second game and then there was another reference to him in metal gear solver 3. but now for some reason he's been upgraded to a major player working alongside merrell in her elite rat patrol group which kind of makes you wonder just how elite they can be if a guy like this can get him i mean it's kind of like they've teamed up with mr magoo or something and the guy screws up constantly even outright giving their position away at one point which caused them to be attacked by the frogs oh crap this is not good his first capable moment isn't even due to his own proficiency when everyone's swallowing their own tongues after ocelot makes their nano machine spazz out this guy's only unaffected because he's been the one skipping out on his injections you know we have a term for that in australia it's called doing a bradbury and it's where you only manage to win at something because everyone else fails then i guess almost out of just convenience meryl somehow ends up falling in love with the guy and then marrying him oh my god though i guess at a time when men are dropping like flies you should probably shack up with the closest bloke with a working dick you can get your hands on the whole sequence where these two are talking about getting married at the climax of the game by the way where the world literally lies in balance casually gunning down approaching enemies like they haven't got a care in the world is the definition of cringe and don't even think about cheating on me now i have my own theories about this scene i know that mr and mrs smith came out in 2005 and i know that kojima is a big fan of hollywood movies so my head canon is that he wanted his own husband and wife combo you know like brad and angelina and this interaction is the result of that and i want a real wedding with flowers and a cake what the hell were you thinking i mean damn dog it still must be a pretty small list of candidates if you're settling with a guy who thinks that it's perfectly fine to just grab onto a nice ass because that ass happens to be walking past within grabbing distance it'll be like if queen amidala married jaja bings and look in johnny's defense he does kind of redeem himself holding off the frogs with merrell long enough for snake to complete his mission but at that point like it's kind of hard to unsee someone [ __ ] their pants you know what i mean stop right there thankfully though you don't see this dumb [ __ ] for most of the game which is good so like acid reflux it only comes up now and again this is not good right now getting back to the campaign finally after that boss fight with octopus there's a really fun sequence where you need to track down where naomi was taken following footprints and trying to ascertain which ones are the right ones whilst also avoiding enemy patrols and again it's a really cool little segment that reminds me a lot of metal gear silver 3. capturing everything fun about those games you know being able to mess around with the ai whichever way you see fit from here though it all kind of goes downhill this act ends with an entirely on rails chase sequence on the back of an apc where you're shooting at geckos with a 50 cal and pushing back soldiers who have scrambled eggs for brains as they keep trying to pull themselves up onto the vehicle the best part of this entire sequence which is a fight scene against vamp and returning emo bad boy ryden is entirely out of control but it is pretty cool to watch and has some really impressive fight choreography capturing that batshit crazy combat style that kajim is known for kind of funny too how whichever character you're not controlling always seems like the cooler one it's like seeing snakes show up at the big shell all over again now the reason i said it's all downhill from here is that from this point on you're basically just locked into this member berries ride that you can't really delineate from i'll explain everything for the next chapter you're in eastern europe somewhere trying to find the leader of a rebel group who might be able to help you find the corpse of big boss and despite needing to sneak into the city undetected even going so far as to change his facial appearance with this new camo tech snake causes a scene during a routine checkpoint inspection for no good reason i said over here saved only by the fact that this pmc group happens to be led by merrill who saves him in the nick of time and i mean what was his endgame here was he just gonna resist these heavily armed soldiers and hope he didn't get arrested or detained that's enough anyway meryl manages to wave him through and if merrell's here then you know who else has to be yeah over here hey snake what is wrong with that guy now for the first part of this act all you're really doing is following a single npc through these dimly lit streets so he can lead you to the location of the rebels dimly lit streets where it looks like someone's turned up the bloom settings a bit too high because you can't see jack [ __ ] now you can let this guy wander off if you want to but at the end of the day or the night i should say you still need to tell this guy to find the rebel base there's some fun ways that you can mess around with the ai but you never really need to you can get by the entire time by just pretty much staying prone and shooting these guys in the face with a track gun so the whole thing's not even that remotely difficult [Music] after you finally reach the rebel base you're treated to yet another badass cinematic showing snake doing something really cool which we yet again don't have any control over having said that though it does in a good way remind you just how proficient this dude is and watching him take down a dozen people in a way that would make john wick look like an amateur is pretty sweet after this bit get comfy because you're gonna sit through another 20 to 30 minutes of exposition as we meet up with the rebel leader named big mama and look if you need to be told who she really is at this point well then i have to conclude that you've either not played the third game or just got a lot of empty real estate in between your ears and then for the final part of this act you're again on rails this time on the side of big momma's motorbike for a higher speed chase throughout the city streets for yet another forced combat sequence this time outrunning pmc soldiers frogs and raging raven and her robotic cronies and this bit this right here is the absolute worst section of the entire game if you're trying to beat it on european extreme and i just can't tell you how long it took me how much blood sweat tears and semen were expended just trying to get past it i think we lost them the next unexpected lengthy cinematic though sums up a big part of what i dislike about some of kojima's writing with these later games and that's how it seems that he thinks the only hardships that characters need to go through are physical ones and i swear this guy has some kind of fetish for having his protagonist get violently assaulted case in point is right here having to watch snake get the living [ __ ] beaten out of him by ocelot followed by him then losing his eye in an ensuing fire india look i get the symbolism he loses his iron it's supposed to show him slowly turning into his old man but did we really need to see the guy get batted around like this or later on like this how this dude's head hasn't turned into mashed potatoes at this point is anyone's guess at this point the violence in the body count also starts to creep into poor verhoven territory this whole cinematic has ocelot taking control of this global system controlling the weapons for all of these soldiers and then just having his own troops mercilessly gunned down these people by the dozen i mean it's a slaughter [Applause] and i could never tell if i'm supposed to be laughing at us like doing his little finger guns now the next act is just pure fan service but admittedly in the best way possible after getting his ass beat yet again snake is returning to shadow moses to acquire metal gear x's railgun and i gotta say that being able to see this base recreated in this new engine is pretty damn [ __ ] awesome that first moment when you come over that hill and see the helipad off in the distance obscured slightly by this blistering snowstorm it's just the stuff that boners are made of and there's even a random chaff grenade pickup in the middle of the helipad you know just like old times when you see this is why i keep coming back to this game thinking the whole thing is a masterpiece because when you experience stuff like this that really feels like it's been tailor-made for people like myself who've been playing these games since they were 12 years old it just really captures that raw nostalgic emotion that few games can muster for every five dumb things that kojima does he does something like this insanely ryan there are claymore minds around there who are you it is kind of ruined a little bit by all these robot enemies patrolling the base but otherwise it's a really fun trip down memory lane and the meta jokes actually make sense here you know what i mean it's like they've been earned this time instead of just being shoehorned in hold it snake time to change the disc i know i know it's a pain but you need to swap disc one for disc two you see the disc labeled two no no huh oh wait we're on playstation 3. vamp shows up at the end here yet again with those wonderfully deus ex nano machines again being the explanation for how he's so resilient and there's even a short boss fight against the guy but the real centerpiece of this act is the follow-up fight with ryden it's like watching the hulk going for round two with thanos and it ends exactly how you'd want it to with ryden cutting this european [ __ ] down for good i always kind of love the way too that snake smiles at him when it's finally done he looks like an approving father this act then ends with one of the most enjoyable sequences in the entire game where you control the barely functioning metal gear wrecks and have to fight your way to the surface destroying countless geckos along the way and look we might have been robbed not being able to control this thing in the first game but being able to drive this thing now more than makes up for it then as you reach the surface you think you've made it only for a [ __ ] metal gear ray to come out of the ocean piloted by ocelot and look at this point we've gone into full-on fan fiction i mean the only way that it could get more fan service-y is if these guys started making out hold on to that thought after the fight ocelot then retreats to his giant submarine slash battleship the aptly named outer haven which snake and his buddies then have to launch a full-scale assault on for the final act a final attack that's led by mei ling because apparently a data analyst can someday turn into the captain of a battleship alright and look at the cinematic 2 it's like something out of armageddon they all look like they're about to blast off into space and blow apart an asteroid but i do struggle to call this thing an act though it's got an incredibly short sequence outside the ship avoiding frogs and gekko before the final fight against mantis and then the rest of it being mostly just cinematics and scripted sequences but it does have that scene where snake becomes a microwavable casserole and crawls down a super long corridor that makes a tanning bed seem like a flashlight in comparison snake eater might have had its lattice scene but guns of the patriots has its microlite corridor and once again it's the moments like this when you forget all of the other stupid [ __ ] that this game has stop right there when you see that image of snake crawling through this harmful environment that would kill a weaker man in seconds his body held together just by sheer will alone doing all of it for the greater good but also on a deeper level because he really just doesn't want to live anymore i mean stuff like this just hits you right in the fields a big part of why this also hits so hard is definitely the music especially the theme tune during this sequence and i think it's kind of ironic that kojima made a big deal about getting harry gregson williams you know to come in and do a cinematic soundtrack and then the best song in the whole thing i think is composed by somebody else now this sequence in the following cinematics all go on for so long that you kind of think at this point that the game has to be over and you almost start to forget that ocelot's still a character in this game right around the same time that the dude shows up to remind you this is just as i'd hoped things would end and this is it right here what has to be one of the best final boss fights of all time where two grown men settle their differences by punching each other in the face a couple hundred times and again too a fist fight atop a giant machine it all kind of seems familiar doesn't it snake punches ocelot so hard here that the dude's consciousness starts time traveling going back through the various iterations and personalities he's had throughout the years because i think to at this point that even ocelot is confused as to who he's supposed to be i mean i know i was ending with what is without a doubt the best is metal gear solid 3 incarnation with definitely the best theme in the entire series [Music] i mean seriously man here in that snake eater theme kick in while these two dudes are beating the [ __ ] out of each other is rivaled only by hearing it in the third game during that final showdown with the boss [Music] you know there's a word that gets thrown around a lot on the internet and that word is kino it refers to something that just transcends a visual and auditory experience and finds itself in the realm of true art well sunny gems i consider this final fight of snake vs ocelot to be the very definition of kino [Music] and honestly you know what if the whole thing just had have ended with these two finally burying the hat [ __ ] finding out ocelot's true motives and then snake dying on the top of our haven well i probably would have been fine with that of course this isn't what happened because we've still got an hour-long epilogue to go wrapping up all of these loose ends oh [ __ ] yeah due to that whole subplot of meryl and johnny getting married we're forced to sit through that [ __ ] along with seeing ryden apparently put back together again by all the king's horses and all the king's men aren't she going to say hello i like turtles which is kind of odd i mean didn't he just turn back into cyborg ninja man a few years later during the events of metal gear revengeance but the real made of this whole thing is watching snake and big boss interact one last time putting aside their differences as big boss fills in the final few plot holes then finally dying amongst the sea of white flowers similar to his showdown with the boss in metal gear solid 3 and again another emotional sequence that kind of left me wondering who in the room started cutting all these onions this is good isn't it and then that's it metal gear solid 4 guns of the patriots is over and it's the end of an error i wonder if we did the right thing i guess at the end of the day kojima told the story he wanted to tell even if it is completely long-winded and often bat [ __ ] insane if you wanted to have meryl marina do to add more liquid [ __ ] in his pants than a toddler does well then i guess we have to respect that in fact it's actually kind of funny looking back at it now considering how even more weird and confusing the plot would eventually get when metal gear solid 5 was released like what writing the script for this video has been one of the tougher things i've had to do in recent memory it's kind of like someone asking you to summarize the bible in bullet point form no doubt about it and i feel like even though i spent the better part of 45 minutes talking about it i've still probably left a whole bunch of things yeah unless they port this thing to other platforms which i doubt metal gear solid 4 is always going to be this weird little playstation 3 exclusive that seems to cater to a very specific demographic of the mgs fandom to recap i'm still not sure if i'd say the game is a masterpiece but it definitely does what it does well and there's really no other game quite like it it's like you can paint a bunch of [ __ ] on a ceiling but there's only going to be one system chapel and love it or hate it man metal gear solid 4 is one of a kind i seriously doubt people are going to be talking about horizon forbidden west or halo infinite 14 years from now but i'm pretty damn sure people are still going to be bringing up the memory of ocelot and snake bashing each other skulls in for a while yet and i doubt we'll ever get any other game that lets you make a battle scart fashion model dance to japanese pop music you [Music] you

Channel: GmanLives

Views: 1,719,813

Keywords: metal gear solid, metal gear, metal gear solid 4, big boss, metal gear solid 5, xbox one, metal gear solid 2, metal gear solid theme, video games, metal gear solid 3, metal gear solid 1, metal gear rising revengeance, metal gear solid 2 theme, metal gear rising, metal gear solid 4 raiden, video games 2022, metal gear rising memes, hideo kojima, konami, playstation, playstation 2, playstation 4, konami games, solid snake, gmanlives, gggmanlives

Id: WlBxFCnFJGM

Length: 45min 10sec (2710 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 01 2022