What Made MGS4 A Disappointing Sequel

metal gear solid is my favorite franchise in the history of video games reviewing the games over the past few years has really taught me that and after a year and some months i'm finally back to review metal gear solid 4 guns of the patriots released on the playstation 3 in the year 2008. it's very fair to say that this game is the single most divisive game in the entire metal gear franchise although to be fair in a series as big as metal gear most games have opinions all over the map but some love this game some hate it and somewhere in between and so on i myself have not played this game since my first time around in 2016 so that's before i did the review of the first metal gear i might add i don't know what to say i just never felt the urge to revisit this one after the first playthrough i liked it but definitely not as much as metal gear solids one through three or twin snakes that basically stayed as i played more games in the series like the first two metal gears or portable ops but yeah calling this game a big deal would be an understatement since the hype cycle was massive for this i mean how could it not we just got two prequels expanding our knowledge of the lead up to the metal gear series we knew and loved and now we're going back to follow up the events of sons of liberty with solid snake back as the main character with the promise of who are the patriots being answered for the first time even as someone who only played it eight years after release there was a lot of entry going into mgs4 now that it's been so long since i last played guns of the patriots i was really curious to see how i felt about it since while it has been over a year since i last reviewed metal gear it has most certainly not been that long since i last played metal gear so let me first get a word in about myself and the middle gear series as a whole shortly after doing the portable ops review i decided to keep playing the games only this time with a fresh new twist that i was going to beat them on the hardest difficulties which by the way mgs2 is nightmarish on extreme much more fun on hard all the while providing a fresh challenge that wasn't there on normal the most important part of this is snake eater though when i reviewed it i was unsure about whether or not it was really one of my favorite games of all time but after replaying my previous favorite game again it quickly became clear to me that there was no game quite like metal gear solid 3 snake eater i mean at this point i have now beaten snake ear on extreme mode three times one of which where i killed one person the following two times where i killed nobody i can even seek you see the boss like it's nobody's business which i complain about in my review but if you want my further thoughts on that i have reviews of metal gear one through portable ops that are definitely important for this video although as a fair warning i think most of those videos haven't aged that well but still my opinions are there i have a long mold over how i was gonna write a review of metal gear solid four i mean i changed how i reviewed stories in the review of metal gear solid three but since mercury solid four has just so much to talk about that i don't think that would work as well since i have a lot to say about story graphics gameplay and the rest and i'm gonna dive in with both arms swinging praying for the best so let's start metal gear solid for guns of the patriots as per usual some obligatory facts metal gear solid 4 takes place in 2014 and if you're keeping track at home that places this 19 years after solid snake's first solo mission in outer heaven the center point of the timeline 50 years after naked snake kills the boss at the beginning of the timeline and most directly five years after snake otakon and ryden uploaded the virus and the patriot ai known as gw killed solidus snake left arsenal gear crashed through new york city and had a lead in the identity and location of the mysterious patriots who were revealed in mgs2 to have been behind everything in regards to united states politics because as the ai said human beings aren't competent enough to be held with such responsibility the patriots were alluded to during snake eater where we learned about the philosophers which formed towards the start of the 20th century which aligned with the data on the disk snake and otakon got in mgs2 which said that whoever the original founding members of the patriots were they died about a hundred years ago as of 2009 the philosophers left behind a massive funds called the philosopher's legacy half of which was recovered by the cia through ocelot with a dummy being sent back to china with eva as the location of the real other half was left unknown until big boss got it from jean the funds are going to be used by zero and ocelot for some unknown organization they're working on and hopefully wanted big boss in on it and up to this point ocelot has become liquid ocelot since he fused with liquid's personality i was not planning on going on tirade like that but still that sets the stage pretty well for metal gear solid 4. i don't know much else to say as we cut to black and actually start the game with one of the most famous opening monologues in the history of gaming war has changed it's no longer about nations ideologies or ethnicity it's an endless series of proxy battles fought by mercenaries and machines war has indeed changed as in the metal gear universe the patriots went so off the wall that now the world economy is completely fueled by war fought between people and robots as a wave of constant market stimulation soldiers are filled with nano machines used to regulate the body and the emotions to turn everyone into well-oiled killing machines also i love the music and the tracking shot at the beginning it's called the love theme and has played at specific moments throughout the game [Music] snake is now an old man still love cigarettes but an old man nonetheless this would add some ambiguity as to how long it's been since mgs 2 since liquid did comment that snake looked older in the tanker episode but he still got around just as well as mgs1 or air metal gear 2. i did just spoil that the game takes place 5 years after mgs 2 but it's still something to wonder when starting the game more importantly gekko arrive on the scene and start tearing men limb from limb in mgs 2 metal gears themselves are becoming more mass produced in the aftermath of the shadow moses incident as shown by the army of rays and arsenal gear but a hallmark of advancing technology is becoming smaller and more compact with gekko basically being miniature versions of metal gear rex but still packing a punch arguably more so since it's just as indestructible but can get around much easier with the first segment of gameplay just being getting away from one of these things that snake stands no chance against it but that was just the prologue as the dust clears we cut to three days earlier as snake is in a similar graveyard to mgs3's ending and this leaves me wondering why is this the grave of the boss i mean does snake know about the boss was gray fox buried here big boss liquid solidus schneider anyone nah snake is here saluting a gravestone because it was done in mgs3 and people really resonated with that this is how mgs4 works in a lot of ways where i wonder how many plot points and ideas would have been in the game if not for the fan base surrounding the game which is a lot of cynicism right at the start but i can't help but wonder however fan service can wait otacon arrives looking about the same as you'd expect after 5 years as we then learn that snake is suffering from accelerated aging snake is 42 years old and yet looks like he's 70. liquid also warned of this in the last game few more years and you'll be another dead clone of the old man the reason snake is in the middle east is because of the fact that colonel roy campbell had alerted him and anacond that liquid ocelot has been spotted there and it's a simple hired hit snake is to assassinate liquid and then the job is complete back to the present day the game is split up a little differently than the previous games instead of a quick prologue and then the rest of the game we have five full chapters to explore and again there's just so much to say about this game so let's start with the gameplay i know you're surprised but bear with me the gameplay in the metal gear series has been pretty consistent up to this point i mean metal gear 2 basically defined how movement was in metal gear solid 1 2 3 and portable ops and in my review of snake eater i had some issues with the controls not to ruin my experience but in particular the transition from standing up to crouching to crawling was kind of awkward and in need of some kind of change well guns of the patriots changes enough in the control department to feel improved but it's also not too drastically different as to alienate players who have started from the beginning at first i was thrown off a bit by a lot of things some of which i got over and some i didn't but an mgs3 by using the d-pad you could stealthily walk or crawl around any enemy or on any surface however mgs4 does away with that but you really don't need this though since the analog stick feels smoother than ever before it's hard to describe since all the games even mgs1 supported analog control and the dualshocks themselves never got vastly better analog sticks it's just that i find moving snake around to feel better than other games to the point where you can adjust your speed with the stick perfectly fine unlike mgs two and three which had two states of movement with the stick running and walking with sneaking on the d-pad being an mgs3 other than that holding down x while rolling will still send snake into the crawling position which is good but one of the biggest draws to the controls in mgs4 is the ability to crouch walk i mean this sounds small but it really does allow you to move at a decent pace all the while staying behind cover and keeping the camera percents high it's also good if that middle firing angle is good but you want to move around and get a better shot you don't have to stand up run while leaving yourself exposed just to find a better angle i don't like how you have to stop completely in order to crouch but still the more control options the better and mgs4 has that the developers had an interesting choice to make in regards to the hand-to-hand combat though since mgs3 introduced cqc to the series and portable ops continued it cqc was not just gameplay though it was a technique that naked snake and the boss thoroughly developed together which made those fight scenes so exciting to watch but we're back with solid snake in this game and he never demonstrated an ability to use cqc before ultimately they decided to keep cqc in the game which i'm grateful for since it was so fun to use and i wanted to see it expanded upon so you can now string cqc slams while holding assault rifles and other two-handed weapons which is an improvement over snake eater in addition to that cqc is a lot simpler to pull off no longer requiring you to fiddle with the analog stick to slam someone to the ground you just hold the r1 button to grab someone and the game takes care of the rest with a dedicated button to slit someone's throat meaning that you won't accidentally kill someone in this game which is why my first attempt at a no kill run of mgs3 ended in such tear-jerking failure at the same time though mgs-3's more skill-oriented cqc made it more inherently satisfying to use in snake eater than in guns of the patriots as you'll see when we talk about shooting later in the video getting good at mg s3 is why it's my favorite game of all time it's such a strange game from the offset but it's so satisfying to learn to become a guru at and i'm not even close to all the way there i might add but still cqc is really good in mgs4 from a sheer accessibility standpoint but with that it's less fun for me personally since with accessibility some of the cool stuff like interrogations have been cut anyway back to solid snake how can they justify his seemingly now knowing cqc well the writers did think of something hey snake since when did you learn how to use cqc i got the training back when i was in foxhound but i never used it in actual combat you had those skills all this time and never used them why ah man who taught me it was my former commander in foxhound big boss never felt right using a technique learned from a man who betrayed his unit my my what a convenient little setup we have here big boss trained solid snake in the ways of close quarters combat during foxhound but snake stopped using it because it felt wrong to use the tactics of a traitor well that works except metal gear 1 where snake was aided by big boss until the end of the game why did he not just use it then i'm sure what you're thinking right now because metal gear won the game from 1987 on the msx and they didn't think of cqc yet right to that end i agree with you i don't care about this at all i just wanted to point it out as a way of saying don't bother explaining things you can't explain this will serve as a precedent since mgs4 tries to find a way to do that very thing with plot points that shall we say have far more weight than cqc but for someone who hasn't done it in 20 years snake's pretty good at it and so is everyone else since evidently the patriots released a bunch of info on big boss and a quick guide on close quarters combat was included so that's an excuse for your enemies to start countering your cqc which was something that only the boss could do before i like that since it just increases enemy variety but that's enough for that for now most importantly though snake meets drebin number 893 but everyone just calls him driven in the world of the patriots id control the weapons that soldiers are using aren't even normal information emotions bodies are controlled but so are guns since if not being used for a purpose deemed necessary by the patriots the guns lock up and can't be used drebin recycles gun parts and opens the locks on id based weapons he basically serves as an in-game shop where picking up weapons and ammo on the field gives you drop-in points where you can buy ammo and a million kinds of guns he also injects snake with the nano machines needed to interface with the new weapons i like that detail snake doesn't like needles after the whole fox die thing in mgs1 as a character i don't have too much to say on drabin so snake sees this happen gross but then it turns out the idiot farting in a barrel is a member of rat patrol team zero one code named akiba real name johnny this was the prison guard with stomach problems that mgs won two and his grandfather was from three i hate this i hate this so much it's not clear right now but this joke character has no business farting up a storm as a main character regardless rat patrol team zero one has two other members that are so forgettable that i can't bother to say their names and they're led by merrell making her first canonical appearance since metal gear solid one i've had to go over this numerous times in the comment section before now so this gives me a good chance to do it in a video i went on record in mgs one and two saying that i personally thought the ottacon ending of mgs1 where snake submits to the torture resulting the death of mero fit the story much better than the true ending i've never argued which ending is canon since clearly the canon answer is that snake survived the torture and merrell lived which isn't a problem at all since that just means that otakon left shadow moses on his own but as far as the chronology is concerned the audicon ending made more sense before this game because in mgs2 snake and otakon are working together as the ngo philanthropy where they had the dedicated mission of destroying metal gears in any and all form this is a far more logical progression as snake and ottacon both lost the women they cared about on shadow moses escaped together and then formed his company as opposed to what actually happened which was snake and meryl escape otakon gets himself out snake and marrow split up at some point in between mgs1 and the tanker incident and then snake works with otakon i mean it can happen but it's pretty jarring this is more personal but as far as the writing is concerned the icon ending of mgs1 is also a better fit with the themes of the story merrill was a pretty lame character in mgs1 and disappeared from the story for over half the game since she got captured and otakon and snake worked together to destroy rex and save the day i mean otakon was basically the only person that snake could trust during shadow moses because everyone else was lying to him i mean there's also nastasha romanenko but like i've never talked to her more than like twice in my entire time playing mgs1 but the point is is that the audicon ending just felt right to me i mean that's just how i like mgs tragic but with a light at the end of the tunnel which describes the best moments for metal gear 2 and metal gear solids 1 through 3 to a t mero leading this unit of losers is fine i guess but i found her character be pretty annoying in this game as she goes on and on about how much she has moved on from a personality in mgs1 and then freaks out on a dime when campbell's name comes up in spite of that it was sad enough to see normal oticon paired up with old snake but it's even more so with merrell her still looking young and doing better than ever before has contrasted well with snake running around with joint problems looking 30 years older than he is campbell evidently remarried to a woman meryl's age which is pretty nasty but that's not important right now some frog soldiers arrive to kill everybody and these soldiers are all women it's worth pointing out that while female soldiers did exist in portable ops they were a very huge minority so this is a first but also that shows how many men have died over the last five years with the war economy since women are drafted on the front line as for the rest of the escape scene it's pretty obnoxious with the one checkpoint cramped camera angles you name it once that's over snake goes back to sneaking to find liquid and so that leaves us with a good time to talk about the rest of the mechanics all the functions of the survival viewer from mgs3 are streamlined or removed which is a shame the survival viewer used to be something i hated because of the constant menu switching but as snake eater 3d showed all it really needed was a quick touch screen access to really work well since we're back to the not too distant future mgs we have imaginary tech like the brand new octo camo snake can stick to any surface in the game and a sneaking suit will resemble that color and texture and this is really worthy of praise since there are a lot of different environments in mgs4 so kudos to the developers for programming in every single texture with the octocamo just like mgs3 the name of the game is to keep the numbers up and be as still as possible to be able to hide in plain sight in ways you couldn't in previous games this much i like but the stamina has been removed meaning that the complex ecosystem from snake eater goes with it replacing the second health bar is the lamb's all get out psych meter what makes it lame is that when it's short yeah your aim is worse and stuff but when it runs out snake just collapses and you fiddle with the analog stick till it gets back up halfway through chapter 2 snake gets an unlimited supply of syringes which are nano machine suppressors in the story but in the gameplay are psych meter refillers do that and it's a done deal great gameplay the camera is not just up snake's ass during the escape scene in general the camera feels a lot closer than i'd like and i mean the parts with the camera isn't supposed to be up snake's ass the fixed angles in the original snake heater release were pretty bad for a full game but it added a lot as a secondary camera option in subsistence allowing for a greater view of a whole room if the free camera wasn't good enough to suffice i mean guns of the patriots has more or less the same camera as snake eater subsistence so therefore seeing things is not much of a challenge but i still noticed that to compensate for the lack of fixed camera angles snake now has a threat ring around him when enemies are lurking portable blobs had something like this in the radar but mgs4 has a flat ring around snake when enemies are close but haven't caught you it will start to move more rapidly when you're closer to enemies and then it will be red if you're caught it works but i did find other methods of finding guards like the night vision goggles or expanded wall peaks to be more effective for seeing enemies which isn't a complaint you know the more the merrier but on the subject of the threat ring itself i just think the game could use a better camera system and you probably wouldn't need it the level design of chapter one improves a lot from this point but it's then that we're introduced to the new villains the beauty and the beast core or the bnb for short i would say i'd talk about it later like i always do but there really isn't anything to say when we've got laughing octopus raging raven crying wolf and screaming mantis combinations of the emotions from the cobra unit and the animals from the rogue foxhound unit these women have no exaggeration not a single personality trait all four of them have a war cause tragic backstory and that's it i mean they themselves don't even explain their backstory before dying they die dreben calls and then gives you the run down so snake doesn't even react to it like you did with sniper wolf or vulcan raven for example he just goes uh okay and when i say tragic backstories i mean these are easily the darkest parts of the game which is so forced and hammy to the point of absurdity dreben also points out that snake has cleansed them of the horror allowed them to come to terms with it but like how would he know that seconds after they die hence why it would make more sense for them to say it themselves i keep using they and them because it is all four of the b and b's to the point where i skipped screaming manchester's backstory because frankly i didn't care at all the cobras and mgs3 for one didn't make a big deal out of themselves and were also used to demonstrate what liquid was talking about in mgs1 the good guys vs bad guys nature of war that used to be there but whatever of all the things in this game story i could complain about i just don't care about the bnb so snake finds liquid ocelot and i feel compelled to call him liquid ocelot because the fact that i just don't see liquid here unlike mgs2 we no longer see ocelot's voice switch from patrick zimmerman to cam clark instead it's just ocelot acting like more of a maniac than usual i don't know i just don't hear liquid when it's not cam clark unfortunately another reason to wish that liquid never got killed off anyway snake doesn't just shoot liquid ocelot leaving him plenty of time to test out whatever he's working on that causes the nano machines and all the soldiers including snake to go completely haywire with naomi by his side ending the chapter was snake completely defeated and in need of rescue as liquid gets away which is how most of these chapters end actually but yeah that's the end of chapter 1 of metal gear solid 4. so after that we get the first mission briefing in the main story in the virtuous mission from snake eater i complained that the opening was a little hard to get into because of the fact that there was a cool hook at the beginning but then we got the briefing filled with info on the mission and then we landed and we were told all the same stuff again in metal gear solid one you could view the mission briefings if you wanted to however the game story expected you not to by having the characters talk about the mission at the start of the game the beauty of mgs2 is that ryden wasn't briefed on anything at all and therefore we didn't even have to talk about this you weren't briefed on any of this and you came in alone to boot why chapter one did have a briefing in the menu but i couldn't bother to watch it so this will be our first the status quo is that snake and anacond live in a plane called the nomad i hope buying fuel for this thing as two government fugitives isn't too much of a hassle but with them they have sunny olga's child that was a hostage to the patriots at the end of mgs2 that was rescued by ryden in between games and given a snake and otakon to look after sunny is a character with no character the only thing going on with her is the fact that she's a kid she's a socially awkward genius and since she never goes outside and she sucks at making eggs other than that she has no real bearing on anything in the story for well over half the game and is not interesting in the slightest snake and anaconda talking about whether or not naomi was in the middle east working with liquid as they decode a video message she left the mass can be rescued in the middle of south america she's being forced to do research against her will with campbell confirming that liquid might be there metal gear solid 4 is infamous for long cut scenes and so is the entire mgs series but mgs4 was a bit inconsistent with this this briefing for example isn't that long it just feels long since nothing said by any character is interesting in the least bit they just talk about the mission awkwardly avoid eating sonny's crappy eggs and that's about it looking back at cutscenes from the first three metal gear solid games the cutscenes were really not that long on average so the more boring stuff like zero explaining operation snake eater naked snake was fine because where it was really at and sneakier were those fights with the boss tragic dialogue fantastic moments to stick in your mind forever similarly interesting dialogue was what made long scenes like liquid's rants at the end of mgs1 the patriot ai the end of mgs2 especially work so well in my opinion you can sit through just about anything regardless of how long it is if it's at the bare minimum interesting mgs4 scenes usually have this at the start because it means snake beating merrell for the first time on screen since mgs won that's cool and interesting let's all pay attention but it is go on for so long we cut to a slideshow to demonstrate what merrell's talking about i also skipped bnb cutscenes after a while because they're just so stupid but yeah these briefings are some huge insomniac cures i was on twitter for most of them however i'd say this one's the least offensive the patriots are using the war economy and controlling the narrative of life just like solid has feared five years ago so finding out who the patriots are is a top priority since snake believes that the data disk from arsenal gear was a load of crap now if this chapter just started with snake in south america and then we got an explanation of why he's there in the scene over the codec it would make way more sense and probably have more intrigue but as it stands they do exactly what mgs1 did repeat the information we learned in the briefing but we already know it otakon literally mentioned mei ling and then snake is surprised to hear her name when the actual mission starts with examples like this why did i have to sit through a whole briefing if the game acts like it never happened enough story time talk some gameplay how is the level design of mgs4 well it's all over the map and quality over the five chapters i mean the first half of chapter one was a bit of a mess and of course on my second run it was easier but on my first goal it was a bit confused by how we're in the middle of a city and doors are all over the place and just don't go anywhere i don't think it was a big deal just something i didn't like in addition to the fact that chapter one literally takes place in the middle of a war zone chapter two does as well but chapter one was more drastic with debris bombs and tanks after finding merrell and doing that terrible escape scene then i thought it got a lot better to just do typical metal gear sneaking which i'm definitely fine with as we can now pat enemies down for items as opposed to having to pick up the bodies and drag them with the perfect finishing touch but yeah chapters two through four all do a good job providing areas to sneak through that are up to the metal gear series standards but then chapter five is just a boring shootout so oops one idea they had for chapters one and two was that snake is obviously a third party walking through a war zone so therefore he has no reason to get involved in the fight but if you wanted to that option was certainly there for you however the game kind of skews this since the pmcs are after you and the game starts you on the side of the rebel underdogs basically picking for you which side you're going to help out if you so choose since if you don't help the rebels you're gonna have to sneak past or get caught in a fight with them it's a neat idea but it doesn't really amount to much especially when the war zone routine stops by chapter three this game must be super frustrating to play at maximum stealth i mean i just got blown up at the middle of nowhere in chapter 2. snake respond snake the items are really lacking creativity in comparison to snake eater as well i talked about how boring the psych meter and syringes are from a gameplay perspective but this extends into the rest of the game as well i had a whole section of my review of snake eater on the details and weird stuff in the game since there were just so many examples to choose from it bears repeating that snake eater is one of the weirdest games ever made and i love it so much for that reason guns of the patriots is still definitely a kojima game so obviously there's plenty of hidden details to find have a ball with but it doesn't feel like there's nearly as many as snake eater i love the drum barrel though but yeah though where's my crocodile cap allowing me to avoid detection underwater where are my fake death pills causing for easy boss kills you certainly can't do this in mgs4 what and just when the real fear was about to [Applause] begin that's a non-lethal kill i might add since you don't get injuries in this game you don't have the subtleties that made it great like how you heal one part of an injury and then not the whole thing it will heal on its own and then expand your health bar on the higher difficulties so snake finds out that campbell's new wife murals pissed off about is rose ryden's girlfriend from metal gear solid 2. i would have a bigger reaction to this but i feel like even kojima wouldn't pretend this crap makes any sense let's just wait for the plot twist one thing i did notice about rose is that she sounds like more of a robot in this game than the ai version and mgs2 did speaking of ryden what's he up to these days well quinton flynn a raspy voice delivers info but enemy threats up ahead like how it's been done so many times before and snake finally decides to ask rose what happened to ryden in between games what happened between you and jack after the big shell incident he became unstable memories began to resurface from his childhood when he fought for solidus in the liberian civil war and in the midst of all of that the baby we had together it it hadn't even been born yet jack slowly stopped coming home and when he did he'd be dead drunk sometimes covered in cuts and bruises roy was worried he was jack's commanding officer but jack just avoided him i was all alone and roy was so kind to me what the hell on my first playthrough i had been enjoying mgs4 a lot thought the game was pretty good excited to play more i just got to this scene i was just left dumbfounded i'd been a fan for like three months at this point i couldn't believe what i just heard and of all the things i completely forgot about this game that one had stuck with me over the last three years as definitively insulting i mean it's not that this couldn't happen it's just that metal gear solid 2's endings of my favorites in the history of games it was so optimistic and hopeful after a pretty depressing journey i could re-watch it any day of the week anyone you know no never heard the name before [Music] i'll pick my own name and my own life i'll find something worth passing on they taught me some good things too i know we've inherited freedom from all those who fought for it we all have the freedom to spread the word even me ryden chose life and was going to build his own path with rose and then snake spoke about the magic of the digital age and how the free exchange of ideas could build a more prosperous future which countered what the patriots said about man not being worthy of that power these are the things i will pass on that's what i live for could that turn into this yes but it feels like a betrayal before we talk about ryden himself in mgs4 let's talk about combat again shooting has constantly evolved throughout the history of metal gear and with the leap from playstation 2 to playstation 3 be in massive air quotes depth of shooting has once again gone up that's right aiming in metal gear is now third person that's not the only change though what i do like is that aiming is still done with l1 like in mgs 2 3 and portable ops but firing the gun has been mapped to r1 like cqc which makes the game feels better to play when shooting and that's of course good however the developers must have been really proud of their work with the guns because damn there's a lot of it in this game as i played through mgs4 it got kind of mind-numbing after a while since i was diving for cover blasting my foes away one by one and that doesn't mean it was easy by any stretch of the imagination since i died a sizable amount times but the alternative is trying to be stealthy with no kills and that's not very fun either because everyone has grenades tanks assault rifles rocket launchers in the kitchen sink i mean enemies outclassing you in weapons has been a thing since metal gear 1 but since there are so many enemies now fueled by the war economy why not fight back this is where drebin shop comes in back in my review of metal gear solid 1 i had praised the fact that every type of weapon you would need like a handgun an assault rifle a sniper rifle grenades a surface-to-air missile and since you had every type you'd only get one but now with dreben points you just buy all these weapons and the variety is just too much sons of liberty and snake eater were a bit more guilty in that sense but with limited ammo and osp it still wasn't nearly as overwhelming as this game where i can get like one of four handguns and that all basically do the same thing and even share an ammo count try wrapping it right around that i feel like they put a lot of effort into these shooting mechanics but other than the control scheme itself i prefer the gun play on mgs2 and mgs3 especially in every other way third person shooting in general was never much of my thing i just feel like it's a bit imprecise and there's too much blow back from firing to the point where i don't feel like i'm actually hitting anything perhaps to compensate from having so many weapons and having the ability to purchase ammo on the fly the main pmc enemies you'll be fighting feel incredibly dissatisfying to beat with any gun of any kind since the classic tranq headshot still does the trick but other weapons just fade into the white noise enemies don't react to getting shot in specific body parts like they used to unless i'm wrong about that so i indeed was wrong about this you can hit enemies at critical points it's just that enemies are still bullet sponges in this game so that's how i didn't know other than that there were some other principles that made mgs2 especially three and even one feel better than this in mgs4 weapons have limited clip capacity as guns tend to do and when using up all that clip you have to wait like five seconds for snake to finish reloading the gun which pisses me off to no end why well because i got used to mgs one through three where if your clip had say eight bullets in it but you had a total of like 30 half of your clip was down all you had to do was de-equip the gun re-equip the gun and there you go reload time was completely bypassed in all three games the fact that guns the patriots doesn't do this is mind-boggling to me since it was in metal gear solid for playstation 1. it's not a glitch either it's in the mgf3 manual in the advanced tactics section it's called a tactical reload which means it had to have been intentionally cut why maybe to make it more difficult to make more realistic i have no idea but both of these things are lacking in justification since i just want to play the damn game yeah i did realize that reloading say a tranquilizer dart is faster than reloading it in previous games but again i'll take having the option of waiting for longer reloads and being able to bypass reload times over faster reload times you see all this has just been personal preferences since mgs 4's method of gun combat is perfectly fine and works well for what it is but just bothers me personally however the next thing is just a straight up step back from snake eater as stated earlier i have beaten snake eater over five times in 2018 two of which were no kill runs and one of the reasons why this was so much fun was a trick with the sleep darts i already mentioned tactical reloads but this falls along the same line the sleep darts regardless of the clip capacity can only be fired once before needing a reload which has been true in every game since mgs2 but in snake eater using the reload trick before reloading means you can basically fire sleep darts rapidly [Music] i mean why else is someone as impatient as me bother with a painstaking no kill run i spent hours in the ps2 fight with the pain getting this right this is not in mgs4 when i went back to mgs2 before this video i was surprised you couldn't do it in that game but hey more power to snake eater right yeah but this is a sequel and i don't feel like the skill-oriented mechanics from mgs3 have been faithfully brought into this game if it isn't that then it was just cut so it doesn't matter that snake has octocamo it doesn't matter that cqc is less cumbersome it doesn't matter that snake can crouch walk this game is not as good as snake eater as a game let alone as a story speaking of story you must be shocked how much more time has been spent on the gameplay than story well the gameplay is just about done being discussed because it's at this point when the game goes so far off the path that you can't see the tracks snake tries to track down naomi and my god she wins dumb ass of the year award she's by far the worst character in the game the worst real character i mean jesus get him off the screen but first portable ops in a canon metal gear game almost like that game was raring to be canon was approved by kojima himself until he decided the game was wrong but anyway naomi's entire character is a complete contradiction of her personality in mgs1 listen to the first sentence she says in chapter 2 and you'll know what i mean i knew you'd come [Music] you and i neither of us can escape our fate what remember how naomi's whole arc was thinking everything was tied to fate but then learned that this was not the case and regretted her actions and wanted to live instead sneak even calls this out you said yourself we must allow ourselves to be chained to fate take a shot every time naomi says the word fate or destiny in this game actually no you'll die in 20 minutes the sad fact about this is that she does it for no reason this game's story has absolutely nothing to do with fate a repeated theme in mgs4 is responsibility if anything kojima's one word theme for this game was sense which is nice i guess but responsibility sums it up so much better since snake has no real reason to fight in this game so many other people can do it for him but he believes that people like meryl or ryden shouldn't waste their lives when this mission was caused by him and he has no future anyway so therefore he should finish it it doesn't have that much depth to it but i like it it's just so tragic for a character like snake this being the first scene where the tragedy of old snake just really gets put on full display he can't fight the accelerated aging since it's not fox dye or anything like that that causes his old age it's inherent in his genes like liquid said mgs2 solid snake and liquid snake exist to fight they can't reproduce or anything like that but it's also revealed that dreven giving him that shot earlier is causing fox dye to mutate and within a few months snake will become a bioweapon of mass destruction which is again sad because despite what he says snake has fought so hard to save mankind multiple times over destroying countless metal gears putting people on the right path like holly or merrell or otakon or ryden and all he gets for it is a never-ending wave of crap whereas big boss was once a great man but did terrible things by the end and is remembered as a hero thanks to the patriots but of course there's also some pretty bad writing in this scene as snake is told by naomi that he has six months till the new stranded nano machines kill everyone until naomi changes her mind it says that it's the original fox shy strand that's gonna do that and then changes their mind again then it's gonna happen in three months all three of these things are in the same scene liquid ocelot's plan is to hijack the patriots control of the nano machines and guns and every soldier and use it how he sees fit calling it guns of the patriots and liquid then takes hostage of naomi again with the help of the secondly sympathetic metal gear character vamp only second to colonel vogen because he didn't have a twisted backstory like that does let's end this chapter already vamp gets away naomi gets saved by drebin who helps snake escape with a chase scene as we finally get to land a dent in these geckos until then ryden arrives to tear through geckos with his perfected sword technique this and the ensuing fight with vamp is some expert choreography but ryden is the cyborg ninja for this game and his personality drives me up a wall so fans hated ryden back when mgs2 was originally released i mean wikipedia could tell you that much everyone knows it now but despite the fact that solid snake is my favorite mgs protagonist big boss and ryden are tied for second place mgs2 and mgr riding that is he's just an edgy badass in this game with his low raspy voice robot bodies suicidal tendencies and self-deprecation i hate watching him because was this really what they want to do with ryden after his horrific backstory was revealed followed by that optimistic ending the answer to that is obviously no it was just the game bowing down to the fans yet again but they saved naomi at the very least with ryden really banged up and he's gonna need repairs as they regroup on the nomad ending chapter 2 of metal gear solid 4. so the story was just starting to rot there but now we've arrived at chapter three my goodness this chapter is rock bottom for the story and writing so let's see why by starting with the excruciating mission briefing sunny still sucks in making eggs since she has no mother figure to teach that and naomi is here to pick up the tab isn't that cute oh and naomi really knows her elements thorium protactinium uranium neptunium plutonium americium so we're off to a great start i don't know how to describe this scene i just think it's cringy the whole sunny and her crappy egg cooking skills is just symbolism so painful that i would need tgx to come up with something funny here because i've got nothing so liquid's going to eastern europe to find the body of big bosses his dna is the last thing he needs to gain access to the patriots control system snake asks why he would strictly need big boss's dna when they're all clones anyway and because of that question we get one of the dumbest scenes in the history of metal gear solid and i have seen many yeah you've got a great butt colonel i've got emma emmerich here we've managed to avoid drowning but this one takes the cake neither your genetic pattern nor liquid genetic pattern is a 100 match for big bosses what do you mean what do you mean what do you mean you don't match snake were you there in mgs1 when the real liquid's whole reason for being mad was that he was recessive clone and snake was the dominant clone of big boss it turned out to be the other way around which is really cool but even if liquid's notion was true wouldn't that imply that there's some genetic imbalance and big bossness hence why solidus snake exists you know the perfect clone of big boss since this briefing in particular just never ends they go over this a million times making my brain explode every time but to make it worse they use this low to complete bullocks to explain why liquid died from fox dye in mgs1 but not snake who was asking that question yes fox died targets specific people based on their dna and the strand that snake got was supposed to kill the rogue foxhound group but naomi specifically went out of her way to make it target snake himself as revenge for the great fox death in metal gear 2. i never cared why snake didn't die from fox die he was told to live the rest of his days to the fullest and maybe foxtail will get him one day so that's what he did good enough for me ryden keeps splitting in and out of consciousness and he says that big mama in europe has the body of big boss but he also says they can find dr madnar to help repair his robot body that dr madnar the guy who 15 years ago was forced by big boss to build a second metal gear for him and he then tried to kill snake but after being shot by [ __ ] rockets he realized the error of his ways and told snake how to destroy metal gear d call me crazy but i just figured that guy was dead after that also i guess the patriots turned ryden into a robot but like why i don't think any of that makes sense what haven't the patriots done in this game otakon then goes on a five minute lecture about how sonny practically lives in the computer and never goes outside because it's dangerous which is true but like shut up already things then get sexual as naomi and otakon dance around having sex in the helicopter no leave them off it makes you look handsome you think so this scene is nails on a chalkboard it is so cringe-worthy to the point where i must ask was it intentional i mean possibly but it goes on so long that i don't care about the scene to end but the stupid does not end there as we go to eastern europe snake has disguised as his younger self to sneak past the pmcs which doesn't work since he gets caught in like three seconds i mean he doesn't even walk in the scanner he just stands there and almost starts a fight someone's gonna have to remind me what the plan was here again since it makes no sense as merrill then shows up to save him reminding me that johnny's in this game i almost forgot they got a character that bad into a metal gear game merrell also gets triggered but now you're just too damn senile to face the truth wake up and face reality old snake finally beginning the gameplay portion as snake trails a member of the local resistance back to big mama's base i actually really like this part if i'm honest finally no more war zones i just get to sneak around i mean the last time metal gear did a trailing mission it was absolutely awful but this one's pretty well paced there's a lot of room to get around to hide putting octo camera to good use is really fun i get to practice my perfect headshot skills and play the theme of terra on my ipod i don't have much to say on the gameplay in this chapter so let's talk about how mgs4 looks the graphics have obviously seen an enormous boost from the previous games with far more detail in the war-torn environments and cities than you'd ever get on ps2 i don't know what to tell you other than it's more detailed and looks like a ps3 mgs game but what interests me more is how guns the patriots runs can i just say that i'm so glad that companies are remastering their ps3 games for ps4 if exo has this 480i then this is an area of gaming graphics i just can't take that being early 7th gen games while this is not the case for every game a lot of games had this jank as all hell 720p 30fps and most games could barely keep that dipping into the 20s as a frame rate junkie i just can't with this my first exposure to tps gameplay was from uncharted and i had no problem playing the games on ps3 until i got the ps4 remaster when it came out and after trying the ps3 version again it just seemed basically unplayable obviously hyperbole but it's true 30fps games just feel jankier in the camera movement the animation the effects what have you it does the people who worked on a bit of a disservice to be fair mg s3 on ps2 was 30 fps but it was at least locked but of course the only way to play the game now is on ps3 which reminds me can the mgs games please come to steam anyone now that i'm done with that little tangent metal gear solid 4 didn't run as poorly as i remember since when you're just running around like normal it is a decent 30 fps when there's the slightest bit of action which basically summarizes the first two chapters the frame rate is going down and you really feel that the game really could use a remaster on ps4 or pc since as is it's fine but you just want to see these sequences realize their full potential especially in the action heavy cut scenes as i said at the end of chapter two the choreography is on point some of the best cinematics i have ever seen in the game but it's held back in a way but a lot of people say that the reason mgs4 never got remastered is because the game is so tied to ps3 hardware but if that's true i mean i guess i didn't do the research so what do i know the soundtracks metal gear one through portable ops were all really strong i mean i don't listen to them on any kind of frequent basis but it's all great stuff and with mgs4 i love the old snake theme as it just feels tired and depressing a lot of the cutscene music like the new closure arrangement the love theme or father and son really packed the emotional punch demanded by the story in cinematics but the in-game music is decent it's just that for me in-game music nothing worthy of instant classic status like encounter from mgs1 or yell dead cell from mgs2 now that this is done it's time for the story to go full idiot what has become an infamous moment in metal gear history where the series was changed forever snake finds big mama who is eva from mgs3 this by all accounts should have been a great scene as solid snake finally meets his mother for the first time as we the audience see eva now 50 years later but why does it fail well eva is just so annoying in this game the vocal performance is fantastic but her role in the story is just explaining things that aren't already clear like most characters in this game do and she's constantly holding apples reason being because she impersonated the real evil you know adam was ocelot and snake was snake during mgs3 that's it see what i mean this game is so obnoxious with the symbolism to the point where eva holds apples as a church as our base of operations the only reason is because her name is like eve from the genesis story how much more on the nose can it get they don't even get the story of mgs iii right eva uses her taking the fake philosopher's legacy to china as taking the apple from the snake and being cast out of eden but that's just not what happened yes eva took that fake microfilm from snake but she was the one tricking him since he thought he got the real one from the boss but eva was pretending to like him so she could get the micro film and it just turned out that ocelot got the real one and she got the fake one that wasn't snake's fault far more egregious is the plot twist of who are the patriots i already felt betrayed by ryden's portrayal in this game but this is way worse so following the events of mgs 3 and portable ops all the characters from mgs 3 agreed that the boss died tragically and that her will needed to be fulfilled once they got the other half of the philosopher's legacy they put this plan into work major zero naked snake paramedic sagan ocelot and eva formed the patriots a group meant to carry on the ideals of the boss but major zero decided that they needed an icon for the next generation and so he fluffed up the myth of big boss which is something that had already begun by the time of portal blops that only got worse after that game because of the wealth that the patriots had they began to seep into other areas of america and zero became so drunk on power and only wanted more which made big boss a bit uncomfortable and that was when this now crazy zero decided that he needed to keep big boss around with or without big boss which is when he had taken big boss's dna and used it alongside eva as the surrogate mother to carry the clones solid snake and liquid snake this scene goes into so much gratuitous detail to show how dedicated this game is to [ __ ] up the series this twist was such an out of left field mess that kojima and company had to spend the rest of the franchise justifying it so let's go over some basic problems with this scene from a logic point of view so if solid snake does not know who the boss is then what was the point of the grave salute just to get our nostalgia bone tingling also again with this cia wanted the boss gone this was mentioned in portable ops and continues to get confirmation when for me the beauty of the story in mgs3 is that the boss got dealt a crappy hand in the need for pawns in the usa ussr conflict nothing more to it than that which is why she wished for soldiers to not have political ideologies but regardless big boss was so mad that he was used like this that he struck out and made outer heaven and zanzibar land in an attempt to destroy zero and his patriots not because he was a warmonger who took the boss's will the wrong way he was a hero all along and solid snake was a pawn of the patriots when he stopped big boss both times i just hate how these great characters are portrayed here zero especially is so villainized for no reason mgs3 he was a really nice guy who was stuck in the same crappy position as snake but he still had a wit and quirky personality to him that stayed true throughout the mission metal gear solid 2 showed us a legitimately scary conspiracy that ran through the usa with loads of points that actually made sense and are still relevant to this day and this game decides to merge that with a cast of funny light-hearted characters from three that is just a crappy crappy idea that spawns from this game's biggest problem trying to explain metal gear solid which i can talk about later despite how many slide shows there are and us already knowing that zero grew the patriots up even to the oval office sometime during the msx era nobody clearly explains how this [ __ ] works and why like did zero have a staff of people that made creepy ais i didn't know he was a brilliant programmer he wanted control okay and after gw got wrecked to the big shell the ais went out of control creating the war economy which evidently only exists in smaller countries since the awful mission briefing of the next chapter clearly shows us how's the white house responding the public the president has yet to make an official announcement but the world of mgs-4 in 2014 does not leave room for a president with the economy fueled by war and not war driven by race or liberty but profit because of the patriot ai going off the wall wow looks like i got that one wrong but it's not the first and it won't be the last but i don't get it though so before gw went crazy and sons of liberty the patriots worked behind the scenes to fake politics and control everything and after that they still do that only now they have effect over smaller countries remember the patriots were made in america and worked in america and the philosophers were the ones that were on the global scale this makes no sense another thing they do for absolutely no reason is the fact that paramedic is the psychopath who turned gray fox into the cyborg ninja from mgs1 which is completely absurd starting with how on mgs1 naomi was the one who told us about dr clark and his experiments on gray fox a predecessor dr clark was in charge dr clark yes he started the gene therapy project and where is he now he was killed in an explosion in his lab two years ago she didn't just make a mistake she spoke as if she knew the man personally this game also retcons the gender of sonny since she was referred to as a boy in mgs2 but there's a big difference here i just said naomi spoke about dr clark like she knew him but olga never said the gender of her child and snake just assumed he snake what about olga's child don't worry i'll find him count on it i used to brush stuff like this off like it was nothing but in the time for my mgs1 review to now i no longer stand for crappy plot lines like this from a character perspective you want me to buy the fact that the silly medic who cared for naked snake but also had casual talks about the new godzilla movie is the same crazy person who did this to great fox sorry that is penelope from a sly 4 levels of bad ocelot and eva were very anti-zero while big boss is running outer heaven and zanzibar and when he was defeated by snake in metal gear 2 i was about to say killed but even then i don't even know if that's true anymore the patriots got their hands on the body and ocelot and eva have been trying to get it back and in an attempt to fool the system ocelot used hypnotherapy and nano machines to convince himself that he is liquid but lost himself to the treatment nano machines is also how psychomantis manipulates people and how vamp gets up from being shot in the head no just no that is not how this works for some reason this game is so against the idea of magic and supernatural elements being in metal gear and technically that was started in mgs2 at the end there's no such thing as miracles or the supernatural only cutting edge technology but everything spoke to the contrary of what ocelot had said i mean you could pretend that nano machines are how these characters had their crazy powers what's your excuse for snake eater i mean a game that took place in 1964 how was the end photosynthetic how did the pain produce bees from his innards how was the sorrow a spirit medium if those things don't exist the sorrow and the boss are the parents of ocelot and i thought the sorrow being a spirit medium was a cool explanation for liquid inexplicably taking over ocelot via his arm that ocelot channeled his spirit and that would make sense to me but this game tries so hard to denounce fantasy for metal gear that it shoots itself in the foot in the process and man this scene really needs to shut the [ __ ] up about fps games affecting kids i mean we get it zero is an evil monster yada yada yada don't rub it in mgs3 did this sort of thing in the gameplay and not spouting it at me in the middle of a chase scene being a part of the gameplay actually giving you a reason to care about the violence you could be unleashing is another reason why snake eaters so great the game has a million and one ways to deal away with threats not lethally and that's awesome it was what motivated me to try the game non-lethally when other mgs games don't draw those emotions out of me even if the first four games still handle that message in the story pretty well so yeah this chapter story is [ __ ] terrible now then let's go back to the game with this garbage chase scene there's been a chase scene in most metal gear games however it makes them work much more than this is that you weren't going as so fast as to lose your ability to hit anything and to make it worse you have to reload like every four seconds because you can't tactically reload this game but the car crashes as snake has to battle the second of the bnb's raging raven which leads me to the boss fights the bosses are very split in this game laughing octopus tries to do cool tricks like impersonating characters or objects in the room and crying wolf does the whole sniper thing the second best of any mgs games as we have such harsh conditions to deal with since the snow is blowing in your face and you have a massive arena to play around with it makes for a cool atmosphere the final boss can be saved for later though but the other two b and b's are just the worst well let's first toss laughing octopus into the mix because of the fact that her boss has good ideas but at the same time all those bosses suffer from the issues that came from the game being a tps since mgs 2 and 3 were not games about shooting landing a good shot was far more valued like remember the vamp boss and how a well-placed head shot took off such a massive chunk of health for the olga boss for the end vulgar boss the fear the pain here i just unload clip after clip into these guys and they just won't die raging raven being the absolute worst in the game as she won't hold still as i keep firing away and when my shots do connect again it whittles the health bar away so slowly that it feels like i'm not doing damage at all especially since the bosses have no reaction to being hit at critical points screaming mantis involves you running around like a buffoon spending more time reloading your guns than firing them as you need to realize that nano machines are the reason you can't land a hit when you realize that the boss ends in literally five seconds so snake and big mama escape from the swords only to find liquid waiting for them alright snake you've been hired by campbell to find and assassinate liquid ocelot and here he is sitting there smoking a cigar pull the trigger and end this what the hell shoot him okay he revealed he has the body shoot him why does he not just shoot him so eva sees that the ship carrying big boss's body is in flames and starts to cry as snake asks another completely ridiculous question is that it like dude are you an idiot what metal gear what well sort of but is he a senile idiot what i knew the number in fact i remembered it just now well pretty much so instead of taking the chance to just shoot liquid that he had like three minutes ago snake instead decides to fight liquid it gets completely dominated and never decides to take that knife out of his shoulder for the whole rest of the scene it turns out that naomi's still working with liquid ocelot since she left after leaving ryden with madnar off-screen there'll be plenty of time for naomi in the next chapter though next liquid vamp and naomi are cornered by the entire military and merrell's team but in a shocking twist that takes 36 minutes to unfold liquid has controlled the system and shuts off everyone's guns as meryl's team go flying into the water as liquid gives snake and eva the body of big boss back as he turns to ash and eva tries to burn alongside him before snake gets out of there and gets a little burn on his face too i would not have sarcastically skimmed that whole scene if i cared just that little bit more i mean by this point that abysmal briefing happened we learned that some of the most fun and energetic metal gear characters responsible for government conspiracies and snakes didn't just shoot liquid for the second time causing all of this this chapter's story was a catastrophic disaster so needless to say all i wanted was to shut the game off as i'm sure a lot of fans were feeling after that massive air quotes twist but yeah eva dies spouting poetry but things get even worse when johnny saves merrell and pulls off his mask to resuscitate her and reveals that he's drop dead gorgeous on the inside if revealing major zero and the mgs3 cast as the main villains of the century wasn't enough then this is the moment when the game definitively jumps the shark this mound of diseased hyena filth was a joke character he was laughably incompetent at his job but not only did he [ __ ] his pants right in our faces for the first half of the game but now he's super good looking and is going to be in a romance with merrell is this a joke no it's not a joke i wish it was a joke since that would make this country-sized pill that one percent easier to swallow like seriously everything related to this guy pisses me off so much he's the worst character in the series because his presence pre-reveal was so annoying and gross but everything after that's just so cringe-worthy and makes no sense that is the note this chapter ends on i really like that stealth section but good god almighty the chase the boss the story especially were rotting more than johnny's pants in chapter one as i said at this point i just wanted to put the game down and never look back but we're almost done bring on chapter four so now that we've reached chapter four the game has jumped to the shark it's totally possible for the game to still have good moments but the metal gear i love ceases to exist in the metal gear series from this point on because of that last chapter my thoughts on the gameplay are covered so let's see how the game ends this mission briefing is mercifully not as bad as the last one as we see that oticon snuck the mark ii onto the ship liquid was on and can the shots stare at naomi's legs and it's just getting weird in here liquid does not have the capacity to beat the patriots with nukes and for that he's going to need the only nukes left on earth not controlled by the patriots and that's the railgun left behind by metal gear rex on shadow moses island a place that not a soul has set foot on since the incident in mgs won so we hate the world economy right snake and company wanted that dealt with right so liquid just did that it's the first total ceasefire in human history so are we going to try and stop liquid from growing the system himself i'm asking because i genuinely don't get it the plot of this game is so confusing because the dialogue is so meandering no better example than this briefing where campbell announces we need to go to shadow moses and instead of just saying it we get like a paragraph describing the island almost to make sure fanboys have their tongue firmly drooling before saying the name already despite all that this briefing does have some good scenes that carry real weight and fall in line with the responsibility theme i talked about earlier face it snake we've lost otakon we never stood a chance it's not about winning or losing i know we started this it's our duty to finish it but yes we are returning to shadow moses island and after playing the opening of mgs1 again we're reminded of how cutting-edge that game was for its time and how cool and how new it was this is the kind of nostalgia i like taking what's old and making it feel new again in this case feeling new is feeling older than ever i think it's fair to say that most players who played metal gear solid had never played a game like it before and it was such an engaging experience because of that but now we're back to the classic location that introduced so many to this world that snake jumps off the helicopter with back problems this part is sad but it's beautiful at the same time half of the island is slipping away into the ocean with the other half to follow and nobody has been here in nine years and it feels like it the place is dirty and dying as the surveillance cameras fall and break the snow covers everything outside the lava in the furnace is dried up technology needs to be booted up again shadow moses is dripping with more atmosphere than ever before gameplay-wise this is the absolute highlight of the game the level designs built off the back of a game that already had good level design and they also decided to do new things with it as we explored previously unexplored areas the facility to get around since pathways we used in mgs1 are in that much disrepair also the gecko and dwarf gecko are great here since we're back in the cramped and isolated environments from mgs1 making encounters with these guys feel more intense finally this game is fetished with references and callbacks can finally be applied well since again it contrasts the events of mgs1 so well with the present day but i noticed something a little off but the audio it's snakes i'm in front of the disposal facility excellent how's that sneaking suit working out i'm nice and dry it's a little hard no not the twin snakes that's even worse than acknowledging the existence of portable ops obviously i'm kidding since i for one think portable blops is canon better than peace walker and a good game in general and i think the twin snakes is an unrated game that while not replacing the original it certainly is a great game in its own right i believe that they use the twin snakes audio for mgs1 callbacks because of the higher quality but there's already a filter over it to make it flashbacky and echoey so i doubt anyone would notice personally i would rather them use the original takes since mgs1 is and always has been the canon version of the shadow moses incident but i also do get it since mgs1 is a bit of an outlier when it comes to mgs voice acting since snake sounds different to the 6th gen games naomi and mei ling had accents that they don't have in this game and as a result the twin snakes audio technically falls in line with this game easier on a sheer sound level but again i don't think anyone cares on the subject of flashback audio can we talk about this game's overall fetish for flashbacks wait i'm the writer and editor of this video i don't need your permission so one of the ways this game bothers me is how it's fan service the video game the actual writing in this game is weak for metal gear standards but then it picks up the tab by pumping the story full of references and explanations for things we didn't need or a given stupid answer to just for the sake of trying to tie something from one game to another game the dialogue is loaded with this crap as well where characters say lines word for word from previous games just to make sure you know that this is the ultimate metal gear game in chapter 2 i just walked up to a random crop circle and then the ai campbell's rant about an intense light starts playing i mean snake wasn't even there for that why would he remember that now of all places it's just a lazy way to feel metal gear without being metal gear but having people roll in their seats with hey i remember that without remembering the fact that you have to actually go somewhere at this stuff like mgs2 did as if characters going through the same routines for no reason was bad enough the game remembers to shove this [ __ ] down your throat with actual flashbacks to previous games by mashing the x button over and over and over again when needed like why if you don't do this it's hilarious since the game's cut scenes leave you time to press the button meaning you just stare at nothing for a few seconds if you don't press anything it's cool to keep the graphics of the old games intact when doing this but it's ultimately pointless like why does mgs4 need to have a snake salute a grave at the beginning just so we can flash back to that time where it was really interesting tragic moving revealing and so many more things can't i just play the game where that was new would relive it part of me feels like they just did that to make sure players were still awake in these boring as all get out mission briefings shadow moses itself is great since it serves the point of the story well but no someone says emma's name and we have to flash back to her 10 times i just don't come to metal gear for this crap i come to metal gear because metal gear solids one through three and even metal gear two at its best were in moments that were really tragic sure but again there was always that light at the end of the tunnel which made these characters engaging to follow solid snake himself is my favorite character of all time because of how much of a hero he is despite how much crap he goes through on a daily basis all while carrying a profound sense of ideals profound ideals in the series in general is another reason why i liked it so much like living life to the fullest in mgs1 or using the wonders of the modern age to leave a permanent footprint in the world from mgs2 or the effects the time and place have on people on mgs3 were all the thematic reasons to love metal gear solid but 3's story was the best not because of the thematics since mgs 1 and 2 have a beat in that category but the characters were so lovable so villainous or tragic or somewhere in between and this game takes that and dumps all over it in addition to having good thematic ideas but spending more time explaining it to death and actually making points but to make up for that they shove nostalgia so far up your ass you forget how poorly written it is at times if it just stopped at shadow moses or the final boss it could have been so much better but even after shadow moses there's still nostalgia crap everywhere also what's with the product placement in this game the thought of product placement in video games isn't something unique to this game but i thought it was just so jarring to play a metal gear game with an ipod as one of your items and i really had a hard time taking it seriously as oticon wails into his macbook pro over the fate of naomi oh so much complaining so little time so wrap this chapter up wolves care about crying wolf for no other reason than that it was in mgs one we make fun of how we don't have to swap discs anymore because that was an mgs one even though switching disks is way better than shitty install screens and we finally reach rex but before we do that we have to bumble around trying to fight vamp when the real trick is using the syringes to take away his nano machines as he finally dies liquid has the railgun from rex already but otakon boots up rex to escape not before naomi arrives put the final nail in her coffin as she reveals that she's been suffering from an incurable strain of cancer and that she's been prolonging her terminal lifespan with the use of nano machines another complete contradiction of naomi liquid died from fox died too what about me when am i gonna go that's up to you what do you mean everybody dies when their time is up yeah so when's mine up [Music] it's up to you how you use the time left to you live snake like i can't think of a single reason for her to do any of these things it's just so inexplicable i guess they want to have naomi die where gray fox did also have otakon fall in love with her just so he can cry when she dies because it was done in previous games but the first time was an interesting stockholm syndrome angle as that was contrasted with the relationship between snake and meryl and the second time was where it was otakon's sister which is a much different relationship in and of itself but the two had a very tragic history as neither one had spent the time together they wished but realized too late as this was used to further the friendship between snake and otakon now we're back to a person otakon really has absolutely no chemistry with just because it was in mgs1 good grief this scene carries no weight i do not care at all about naomi at this point because she's so all over the map in this game that just doesn't matter also ryden came back and killed vamp as the team worked together to control metal gear rex to escape i know it's really jarring transition for me to be happy again but it is amazing to actually play as a metal gear as liquid ocelot arrives in a metal gear ready to fight it out fan service done right it is just so fun to play as rex duking it out with rey especially as you tear the thing apart more and more throughout the fight you kick rey in the face when he dives for you this is followed by one of the most pointless and stupidest scenes in the game fox think again so snake is defeated and liquid gets away as he has his own arsenal gear with an army of rays the railgun the system mount snake more wait what the hell at his fingertips snake is about to die and says ryden is still a thing he sacrifices himself to save the day end of the chapter as mei ling finally appears with her crew of marines to help snake oticon and all the rest carry out the final attack ride really sucks in this game as a character everything that made him good is gone and nearly shows up when you need him and that's such a damn waste thus ending chapter 4. thank the stars were on the last chapter this briefing rivals chapter three for how bad it is to the point where i stopped paying attention completely to write many rants about in my notes maryland crew are here and mei ling goes over the battle plans and by that i mean she sees how hot johnny is and intentionally drops her pointer so she can stick her ass in his face by picking it up you just can't make this crap up they try to be so funny with him now like when mei ling walks by and tries to grab her ass and meryl stops him in a disapproving manner this is weaponizable levels of cringe and it really takes a whole lot away from the climax like when all the characters dramatically walk towards the canon they're firing themselves out of to get on the liquid ship this could really be an emotional moment since all the characters know this fight is win or lose no chance to retreat remember no matter what happens i'll be with you till the very end you are my pride and joy but they take away from this by having johnny [ __ ] face plant on the side of arsenal gear and fall into the ocean instead of just landing with the rest of the team this is not funny i did not laugh at that i groaned this is supposed to be the climax of the metal gear series so snake must run his way through generic hallways firing enemy awards until he finds meryl unconscious with dozens of enemies around and this is when screaming mantis arrives to give us that horrific boss fight right out of the blue johnny arrives to save the day writers if he's going to be the one that saves merrell from screaming mantis in a super dramatic fashion why did they have him fail to land on the ship in a super stupid and forced attempt at comedy couldn't it have been ambiguous where he landed maybe give this idiot some credibility only a little to make matters worse screaming mantis is working alongside psychomantis from beyond the grave why would they do that this review just keeps writing itself i mean remember when psychomantis died feels kind of nice but here he's making a complete ass out of himself telling me to put my controller on the floor as he can't control me because we're on ps3 far too complicated for him i mean how many times do i have to say this this crap is cool the first time in a game with good writing characters not again for the sake of pandering in a game with bad writing also mantis literally exists in a game on ps4 snake decides to go ahead and be the one who takes otakon to the patriots central control unit but to get there he must first travel through a microwave hallway and on the way he has an old man nano machine spaz attack as troops arrive literally put their guns away pull their knives out and slowly walk towards snake that is the very textbook definition of [ __ ] contrived i really don't want to say more that just makes no freaking sense ryden arrives to save snake as he tends to do in this game and this is the one area of the story i really like in this game and that's snake's guilt for ryden he feels bad since ryan's whole life is so screwed because of what the patriots did to the guy just to make him exactly like snake but in reality snake is one with nowhere to go after this not ryden which is why he wants to risk his own life in the microwave so ryden doesn't have to this microwave scene is one of the most famous in gaming as the iconic hero solid snake is stumbling through this microwave as his sneaking suit is burning it really is brutal imagery however i'm gonna be honest and say that this scene is a great idea but it would be better in a better game i was not lying when i say i tuned out of this game after chapter three since it betrayed the series so much unfortunately the scene didn't carry much weight since the climax has so many problems leaving me to think about the detailed shot of snake's ass i mean the previous scene showed johnny and merrill having a love fest while shooting at the frog troops as they literally propose to each other and argued like a married couple it's literally like that highway scene from the incredibles only it's the climax of metal gear solid 4. so attempts at seriousness fall flat which is a shame i want to be moved by this when i'm just not so a bit of post-production here uh i actually went back and watched this whole scene of snake in the microwave hallway again a few weeks out for having played it myself and it honestly was a lot more emotional i really got emotional when watching this footage because the fact that it just felt so sad i don't know what to say it's just so dramatic and so upsetting and just so brutal i mean it's it's just it's not the hardest torture scene if we're gonna call it that but like it's just lit certainly looks it but uh from like a story perspective but yeah i think that's the reason because when that proves what i was saying when in a void that is one of the best parts in gaming when it comes to the emotions but when it comes to its actual place in metal gear solid four and i'm playing the game when i'm marathoning the game for a review it just sort of falls flat now anyway let's get back to the review otakon successfully uploads the virus that destroys gw once and for all deactivating liquids troops along with it ending the war economy ending the system all that [ __ ] is naomi comes on the projector talking about how she knew they would destroy the system since remember naomi's a genius of all things computers in this game as she and sonny wrote the virus program called fox alive so i guess sonia actually did do something in this game but yes they finally did it otacon also cries again and completely contradicts himself i'm done crying i don't have any more tears to [ __ ] don't think it's over though we still have a whopping hour and a half left snake passes out and wakes up on top of arsenal gear as liquid admits this is exactly what he wanted freedom from the patriot system and for some reason despite his base of operations being where gw is held he just waited for the heroes to find a way to shut down for him ocelot teaches snake about the philosopher's legacy even though eva did the same thing earlier in the story but hey porn blops it's there it was canon oh twin snakes is here as well now you know a scene's good in all seriousness did this scene need to exist i thought for sure that most of this information about big boss trying to create world without politics for soldiers was one already implied at the end of snake eater two already stated by big mama and three clearly obvious if you've ever played the game and watched every other slideshow speech skipping out on big mama's entirely so we helped ocelot reach his goal and fulfilled the boss's vision without even knowing it what a twist but for some reason liquid still wants to have a final showdown with snake because he does it was also this game where we really started acting like solid snake and liquid snake have some kind of poetic deep and perennial struggle when it's just not the case but i can save that [ __ ] for the phantom pain despite those flashy riding fights with vamp snake versus liquid ocelot is by far the best bit of choreography in the entire game no over-the-top flips it's just a bare-handed fight to the death between nano machines syringe-reliant old men which somehow just seems after the metal gear series finale it gets really good when the main theme of the game kicks in around the halfway mark [Music] uh [Applause] okay it's a little corny for snake and ocelot to refill each other's health even if it's cool visual but this begins what is easily one of my favorite final bosses in gaming i mean that sincerely the mechanics completely changed for this which i've complained about in other games but here it works it's very simple to understand and get to grips with as the only objective is to beat the [ __ ] out of ocelot in fact the mechanics are really simple to the point where if that was it then the effect might not have been as strong but the thing that elevates this would be the fact that we got retro styled health bars and the most prominent music from mgs one two and three i don't like how it uses solid snake and naked snake interchangeably since they are not the same by any stretch of the imagination okay look can i just enjoy this game for five seconds as we get nostalgia that works well as this is what should have been the final moment of gameplay in the [Music] franchise cool [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign i realize that it's not the most fair thing to give the final boss a free pass for gimmicky nostalgia when i hate it and 95 of the rest of the game what can i say having that in the final boss felt more earned than the main game you know the time to build your own identity in fact i probably would have enjoyed it more if you just cut the shitty callback dialogue and flashbacks just left shadow moses and the final boss but anyway ocelot finally dies but before he goes out it's pretty much confirmed that he was in control the whole time of just doing a liquid act but we still have another hour and ten minutes to go you could almost watch the entirety of batman mask the phantasm in that time i'm not too mad i mean at least not yet because as what was intended to close the saga for good you wouldn't want a half-baked rushed ending despite that though a surprisingly little amount of things happened beyond exposition merrill is getting married to johnny campbell arrives as meryl finally forgives the guy for being a weirdo and everyone's happy to celebrate the occasion except for me because i'm still mad that one of the last things to happen in the attempted final game is meryl marrying a joke side character that has done nothing but [ __ ] his pants for years and is now suddenly good looking sonny's character name and obsession with cooking eggs is revealed as she gets a good look at the sun for the first time now that the world is safe from the control of patriots her eggs are sunny side up get out ryden is in a hospital bed somehow cured of being a robot as rose walks in with her son john as ryden gives the usual depressed speech about the beauty and the beast until she reveals that it's not campbell's son it's his and that in order to protect them all from the patriots eye they left ryden alone as rose and campbell pretended to be married to fool the patriots now everyone is wonderful unhappy as ryan's with his new family what a wonderful way to end a terrible character arc you know by bringing ryden exactly where he was at the end of the last game only now it comes after moping around acting like he's an animal as he sounds all edgy and [ __ ] but finally we get what is the best part of this entire game as snake walks into the grave we started the story and knowing he has three to six months before becoming a bio weapon of mass destruction and the mission is over and it's time for snake's final act of heroism as he loads a bullet in his gun and puts the gun in his mouth the camera pans up and the shot fires that scene gives me chills almost brings a tear to my eye just thinking about it the timing and volume of the music the camera angles it's just beautiful and from a story perspective as i said towards the beginning of the review solid snake really did not deserve this but this is the hand he was dealt and he takes it like a true boss but anyway the exposition carries on as drabin reveals that he was controlled by the patriots rap patrol team 10 was controlled by the patriots and so was philanthropy again the patriots wanted them to take out liquid before he wiped them out which they all did do anyway so sucks to be the patriots skipping the boring stuff about sonny's character let's have a listen of my favorite lines from otakon in this entire game as sonny asks where snake is and we already know from the previous scene the music the delivery it's just on point i wonder if i'll ever see him again snake had a hard life he needs some time to rest sonny and otakon stare into the sunset the game ends a great way to go out for such a mixed pathway here until the game dumps all over it we have 40 minutes left as snake in fact did not shoot himself and is at the grave of big boss was this the grave solid snake saluted at the beginning why in case you didn't know snake doesn't like the guy but then big boss returns from the dead this scene ruins it all i would have forgiven almost everything if this game ended on that beautiful tragic note but instead big boss returns deliver some more slideshow exposition this scene is interesting to say the absolute least for about 10 minutes but they managed to make a scene where solid snake and big boss now that we know we know about him talk for the first time since metal gear 2 boring as all hell let's talk about the good stuff like the cqc hug big boss has brought what's left of major zero back with him and he knows that the death of zero will finally end all this and the timing of the music and the acting is great we had helped turn zero into 100. his sin was ours but for that reason i'm taking it upon myself to send zero back to nothing richard doyle is great as elderly big boss and that's about it big boss explains a lot of stuff that we again already knew or could have guessed beforehand but he does explain one thing that sucked earlier in the story eva was all upset about big bosses burning corpse however this was actually solidus's body which you can tell because big boss and solidus are missing opposite eyes eva clearly knows this because of the fact that she sees snake with his solid eye and remembers big boss's other eye being missing so was eva in on this or an idiot to account for big boss's return they explained that parts of his body burned away by snake were replaced by pieces drawn on from the bodies of liquid and solidus i mean that's how ocelot got his hand back so i guess not out of the question but this is just such an obnoxious way for a game to end as we say the same things over and over and over i swear how many times big boss says take zero back to nothing or that snake is free they made this scene so boring that i was just completely tuned out as big boss salutes the boss's grave for the final time before dying himself but we already did the mgs3 flashback you can't just cash that check twice thinking we won't notice oh also big boss mentions that snake erased him twice before but we all know that was venomous snake in metal gear one you know what there's enough to talk about with metal gear solid 4 that venom can wait but as big boss dies snake finds out that he won't become a weapon of mass destruction but his old age will catch up with him soon enough and that he should live which he does alongside otakon as shown by the end credits finally ending metal gear solid 4 guns of the patriots [Music] what can i say about guns of the patriots well a lot of course but in conclusion do i hate this game my answer to that is an unenthusiastic not really with a question mark at the end i'd like to think that i've matured some of my time on youtube and while i hate a lot of the things about this game as a reviewer and a fan i'm definitely not gonna flip tables over it this game didn't ruin my childhood or anything like that since that's just dramatic metal gear one two solid one two twin snakes most importantly snake eater and portable ops i guess aren't going anywhere anytime soon this game really does make me mad as a metal gear fanatic but it's not a broken mess or anything i just don't like it that much as a video game on its own an area that i spent almost no time on in this video metal gear solid 4 is an amazing third person shooter with top tier production values for 2008 so if that's what you're looking for this will probably be one of if not your favorite metal gear game but i happen to not care about third person shooting and definitely value good writing in mgs and guns of the patriots really fails there i mean i could skip the cutscenes but all the things i'm looking for in an mgs game were already in snake eater and to a lesser extent sons of liberty and all the previous games so instead of lamenting what mgs4 does not have i'm just going to shrug my shoulders and pop snake eater in again that sounds like fun but if i'm talking about guns of the patriots i can't fathom my great ideas like instant reloads were cut out why bosses and enemies were bullet sponges why gunplay was so prioritized in general now that i think about it but those are the reasons why i'm probably rarely going to pick this one up again if at all since other than octo camo battle analog control and crouch walking i will just play snake eater since it does everything else better even the stuff mgs4 does better like simpler cqc that is certainly not something i'm unwilling to put up with in snake eater but as for the story what i think has the largest impact on guns of the patriots was this game's unshakable need to explain everything in the metal gear series it has always been stated that these were questions never meant to be answered and i have respect for kojima and all those in the writers room for trying and giving their best effort but guns of the patriots just loses its own unique identity in the midst of all these explanations to questions that didn't need answers since more plot holes come about in place of the questions explaining metal gear to its absolute core is a task that just simply cannot be achieved without undermining what makes it great to begin with but then again mgs4 already has a massive identity issue as is given the fact that this game won't stop with the nostalgia crap what the game story excels at would be the emotions all the best moments in this game are incredibly emotional which resonated with me and so many other players across the world however when you pull back the curtain i can't escape the sea of bad writing hidden there metal gear solid 4 was about as good as i remembered from three years ago a decent game but not one i'm clawing at the bit to play again but as a game it's pretty good if not what i want from the series and it's definitely not even the worst metal gear solid game not by a long shot speaking of which as promised to make up for the lack of metal gear reviews i'm now going to tackle metal gear solid peace walker remember i at least think this game is fun and the story has good ideas and emotions in it keep me in your prayers guys thank you all for watching and i will see you next [Music] time [Music] [Applause] [Music] bye

Channel: J's Reviews

Views: 295,523

Rating: 4.4317589 out of 5

Keywords: Metal Gear, Metal Gear Review, Metal Gear Analysis, Metal Gear Series, Metal Gear Retrospective, Metal Gear Series Retrospective, Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid Series, Metal Gear Solid Retrospective, Metal Gear Solid J's Reviews, J's Reviews Metal Gear, J's Reviews Metal Gear Solid 4, J's Reviews Metal Gear Series, Metal Gear Solid 4, Guns of the Patriots Review, Metal Gear Solid 4 Analysis, J's Reviews, Review, Analysis

Id: q671OA5YPa4

Length: 91min 49sec (5509 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 11 2019