Since I did not play console games until recently, there are a lot of major game franchises that I know nothing about. For instance, Metal Gear. Metal Gear Sold 4 has just come out on the PS3 and it is my first exposure to the brand. I have heard praises about this franchise forever on the 1up Show, I have wondered about all the bizarre names, and I was very curious to try the game for myself.

"Metal Gear Solid 4" by Konami

Here is my initial impression of MGS4 after just a few days with the new game and my new HDTV.

A metal gear appears to be a robot.
Snake is the main character. Solid is a phrase from Undercover Brother - it also appears to be Snake's first name. Or maybe not. Snake looks really old but apparently he is not; he has some kind genetic issue or maybe it is nanomachines. He also has a voice so gravely it sounds like Jack Palance aka Curly.
Every character in the game has a crazy name like Liquid, Ocelot, Octogon, The Colonel, etc.

After hearing all the hype for so long, I was expecting a lot from MGS4. So far it has been a good game with impressive graphics but it has not overly impressed me.

I am not sure I have ever played a game like MGS4 except for all the other games like MGS4.

• The story of this game is a combination of Syndicate Wars and the Bush/Cheney White House.
• Snake himself is Sam Fisher's twin brother from Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell games. Complete with night vision, a sneaky/climby suit, and a silenced pistol.
• One thing that I did think was unique about MSG4 was the proportion of cut-scenes to action until I remembered Mark Hammil and Wing Commander.

Maybe the timelines actually show that MGS invented all these techniques but my impression is that the game is more evolution than revolution.

Even so, the game has a lot of polish and it looks great. Really great. In fact, this game looks more like a movie, which is good because the game practically IS a movie. The proportion of cut-scenes to play-content is huge. It does not bother me so far because i am new to this game world but it is unusual.

What does bother me a bit is the gameplay. I kept hearing this is a stealth game and the "right" way, the MGS way, to play the game is NOT to kill anyone. Just sneak, sneak, sneak...

Well if this is a stealth game, why are there so many weapons? Tons of them. Moreover, why do you make money from selling weapons? The game pretty much tells you to kill guys and take their guns to make money. That seems incongruous.

And right at the beginning there are some incongruous action parts. Locations where you can skill guys (to get their guns) like fish in a barrel. They dont see you and but they never stop coming either. Infinite pointless kills because when you climb out of the hiding spot, you get a cut-scene and all the guns they dropped are gone. Hmmm.

Although you can sneak around forever, the game forces you to keep up the pace by giving your gadgets batteries. If you move too slow, you batteries run out and you lose your cool night-vision and computer assist. Although this is clever, I must be pretty slow because my batteries are often dead and the game is less fun without your gear.

Sadly MGS4 follows the Japanese game tradition of wonky interfaces. It requires way to many clicks, menus and generally non-intuitive navigation. To see the mission briefing you have to quit the game? But then you have to load the save game you were playing to get the briefing? Oddness.

And the true joy of all console games is present here as well: save game madness. You can only save at certain points but the game does not autosave. If you die, it takes you back to the last checkpoint but if you turn off your machine and go to bed (like I did), you find that you can only load a game that you specifically saved. There is no "Continue" option when you restart the game. So there are checkpints but you actually have to use the menus to save by hand. This behavior is retarded.

I started the game and wandered through the first intro level, watched a huge cut scenes, started the second level and then read the manual. The manual says to start with the training simulator which is kind of cool. The manual also says to to watch the mission briefing which tipped me off that there actually was a separate briefing...

The game has extremely long cut-scene intros for each level. But it also has an option from the main menu for a "Mission Breifing". I assumed the briefing was a replay of what I had seen but I was wrong. The briefing is another LONG and completely different exposition of backstory. I now understand why the game barely fit on a BlueRay disc - it must have hours and hours of movie content.

Based on the comments, it sounds like the MGS fanboys enjoy the game more than newbies like myself. They see a continuation of a long story with a lot of nostalgic memories. I am meeting totally new characters with pretty silly dialog and a lot of cut-scenes.

But I am enjoying the game and it has pretty much stopped me from playing GTA4. If Im not playing Team Fortress 2, I am playing MGS4.