Crazy to think MGS4 is gonna be 13 years old this year. It was a landmark game in 2008 that floored everyone when it first came out and, to this day, still holds up visually and mechanically.
My problem is, for as great as the mechanics may be, the game kinda stops being fun two acts in. The instant Octopus goes down, everything I loved about the game up til that point dries up. There’s no more battlefield stealth sequences. No more conventional stealth action. And the boss fights, mostly, aren’t as inventive as Octopus’.
Act 3 boils down to a tedious tailing mission where, even if you know where the cathedral is, you still have to slowly tail that whistling dipshit. Then two overblown yet monotonous railshooters, and a boss fight that can be fun, if you don’t go to the top of the tower and just fight Raven inside.
Meanwhile, act 4, despite all the nostalgia, ditches human guards for ineffective evil bowling balls which you can’t even use half your fun toys on. The act has the most bosses and they’re all rock solid, especially Wolf’s, but so much of the gameplay around it feels inefficient without a human presence.
And finally, act 5 brings back the human enemies, but only for one room, before it devolves into a series of set-pieces that just don’t excite me. I know a lotta folks love the final boss fight of the game but I wasn’t one of 'em, to be honest. I believe that a final boss should put the skills you’ve been honing to the ultimate test. You can’t do that if you toss all the mechanics out the window and introduce brand new ones right at the home stretch. It could’ve worked if they did what Death Stranding did, give you a stealth action shootout with Ocelot first like you do against Higgs, then have the old man slap fight. But honestly, the real issue is that act 5 is literally just one corridor. It wouldn’t have killed anyone to make Haven have as many rooms as the tanker in MGS2, to actually get some proper sneaking done before all the chaos after the fact.
My issue overall is that MGS4 is just too inconsistent. It’s a game that tries to be MGS’s best hits, but honestly, is at its best when it’s just being MGS4. And it’s only being MGS4 in its first two acts. The instant it ditches its most unique idea, nothing after that lives up for me. And as we later learned, so much of that wasn’t the original plan.
Act 3 was supposed to be a lot longer, and the European town from MGO2’s third expansion was gonna be used after Raven’s boss fight. You had to escort Big Mama through the town and passage, evading guards, and when underground, evading a new type of Gekko that chucked acid grenades through doors.
Act 4 was originally supposed to have a human PMC unit, the wolves, which were gonna be Russians led by this guy, who was likely going to act as a boss fight at some point too:
The act was supposed to be longer, with plans to revisit more sections of Shadow Moses.
And while I have no clue if act 5 was gonna be longer, it should’ve been. Hell, they could’ve done battlefield stealth one last time by having the marines face off against the cyber gals.
The story is what it is. A whole lot of exposition dumps and usage of the word nanomachines, as well as some muddied storytelling when you throw Big Boss back into the mix, but honestly, I don’t really think MGS4 is any more offensive than any other MGS game in that regard. It’s incredibly stupid, but charming, and I’m skipping all of its cutscenes anyway so who cares.
There’s nothing about it I absolutely hate, but the sheer quality of gameplay just dips way too early for me to wanna replay it all that much.
That’s my take at least. I made a fuller video on my channel if anyone wants to see that noise. But otherwise, how do you feel about this game over a decade on?
