After a long break, I finally sat down and finished "Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots". It took me about 6 months to finish this game.

Overall I would say that I have never played anything quite like MGS4.

"Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots" by Konami

First off, its not a game so much as a game/movie.

The gameplay is highly polished AAA-mediocrity. The movie is terrific. More than once, I wished that the whole game was a movie so I could just sit back and relax and try to decipher the story.

I assume the game has a lot to do with the previous games but I never played any of them. More than once I felt like a person that had never heard of Star Trek attending a Trekie convention, wandering around int total befudlement...

I had heard that MGS4 "explains all" but I found that the explanation needs an explanation. The story was so freaking complicated.. Just look at the cast: Naked Snake, Solid Snake, old Snake, Octagon, Liquid, Zero, Big Boss, Big Mamma, the 3 furies, Ocelot, Jack, Raiden, Naoimi, the Colonel, Vamp, Eva. *phew*

Last year they actually released a free downloadable "game" that is in fact an encyclopedia of game characters and events. Top that.

At times I wish they had just written a book. Maybe it is genius but for a video game it seemed too much, the opposite extreme from Gears of War. The movie scenes also include a lot of flashbacks that did not make sense to me so I assume they were from previous games.

I had heard that the guy behind this game really wants to do movies and it shows. The cut-scenes are long and numerous. They reminded me of the movie version of Final Fantasy. Pretty amazing stuff that would make a totally good movie of just CGI. The chase scenes are great. The fight scenes have amazing choreography. The camera moves like scenes in a movie. They even add flecks of water on the lens.

If the movie aspects of the game are amazing, the gameplay kind of suffers. This is an FPS and a derivative one at that. You can sneak around and use CQC ("Impressive CQC, Snake") but the game has such an arsenal of weapons, I mostly killed people. Hundreds of them.

I have heard that the Hard version of the game is very different. I played it through on Normal and did very little sneaking. Progress was easy except for the boss battles. A few of which were so darn hard... I dont like it when games alternate between mindless and impossible.

There is some variety. Some sneaking. Some fighting. Some chase scenes. But as a sneak-y FPS, I preferred Splinter Cell and Thief. The massive compendium of detailed weapons was pretty irrelevant to me.

The story is also odd for a video game. The theme of the game is that war is bad, war victimizes people and technology generally encourages war and makes things worse. Moreover, the game flat out states that FPS games only encourage real world violence by making "war a game". Yep. This is a game that says video games are bad. Too much for me, especially the backstory for the three boss battles. I guess I am not ready for video games to provide commentary on real life.

There were some amusing moments in the game and even a few jokes. They include a few scenes from the previous MGS games, as in the actual scenes in the old graphics engine. And there are some self-referential jokes about the PS3 and blueray and rumble. I have never seen that in a game before. Those were cute even if the retro-gameplay was a bit frustrating.

A year ago, this game was getting huge attention in the media. It was gonna sell PS3 systems... It was gonna be the best game in history... Well, if you already have a PS3 you ought to get this game just to see it. It may be the best PS3 game but its not the best game Ive ever played. However I am glad I got to experience a bit of the MGS world before it ended.

"Appleseed Ex Machina [Blu-ray]" by Shinji Aramaki

PS

When I played the game, I was impressed with the mech's and the choreography and the female characters. But this weekend I saw "Appleseed Ex Machina [Blu-ray]" -- a movie that is almost identical to MGS4 in many ways. I guess MGS is not as original as I thought as it seems to borrow from other contemporary Japanese entertainment.