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I've followed the adventures and mishaps of the Snakes from their inception on the original Playstation via Metal Gear Solid and have always wondered what the big effin deal was. For those of you who are not aware of the game, it is supposed to be a stealth game where you crouch, hide and sneak your way through multiple levels while trying your best to not be spotted by any guards and/or mechs. Attempting to understand the storyline that the creator, Hideo Kojima, had thought up is a bonus. The game has a massive following and a fan base that stretches for miles on end, but this writer would much rather keep to the sidelines and observe all of this with a bag of chips.

Though the original game was a genre setter and an eye opener for games to come, it was riddled with issues and plot twists that made no sense and did nothing more but avert me from the reason why I bought the game in the first place: Fun and excellent reviews. Now I'm not saying that I wasn't entertained, neither am I saying that the reviews were useless, but there were times when I found myself running around to acquire an item that "X" ally has told me about without understanding it's ultimate motive or reason. I've played enough games and few really were the ones that were able to avoid this problem successfully, yet I am baffled when it comes to this game: Everything seems to happen to your convenience and nothing you do can alter that. What's the big effin deal then? Another aspect that made it stand out for me was that there was no true antagonist. You ended up pitying everyone and killing them either way while not truly grasping the threat that any of them had on you or the supposed world.

At any case, I'm not here to discuss the original and its flaws. The subject for today is the great grandchild: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, a game that I have recently put to rest in my gaming library. The game is a massive leap from the past generations and definitely an excellent way to show off the current potential of the Playstation 3, but just how stunning is it really? Not that much.
Keeping with the traditions of its predecessors, the game is a jumble of mixed storylines, superb cut scenes (most ranging no less than 25 min.) and resurrected characters that are copied and pasted around to provoke nostalgia among those who have played the earlier installments and complete and utter confusion among those who haven't. As for me, I was indifferent either way. Don't let me start off on the wrong foot, though: The game is a tremendous production that deserves everyone's attention and is definitely an excellent way to spend 20 random hours of play. It is, however, not the best 20 hours of play that I have been through. The story is another one of those unlikely-super-hero-out-to-save-the-world scripts that tries its best to provoke emotions from the player and contains enough loopholes that end up making you believe that you missed a detail or two in some drivel that some character let out. The storyline is, and I say this with all possible respect for those who have spent their drunken stupors thinking up plots like this, quite frankly disposable. You have characters bouncing around from one twist to another, events taking place for no plausible reason and a handful of protagonists that fail to justify their importance to the script. Otacon's relationship with Naomi is laughable to say the least, and to make me believe that a child like Sunny ends up being the backbone of their research is no better.

One of the game's primary objectives is to make you feel with Snake and his hindering state, and it does a good job at doing so. Stay crouched for too long, and snake will grunt while beating at his lower back; Get stressed and your regeneration will become slower. These and a few more events are small touches that help in putting you in Snake's shoes as an attempt to make you act for him on a conscious level. Where it fails, though, is in the L1 gimmick that allows you to see what Snake is looking at during cut scenes if you hold down the button when you are told to. Not only is it breaking me away from what's going on-screen, but the L1 symbol is a small yellow blip that is allocated in the upper left corner of the screen, and so during the cut scenes you're going to find yourself stealing looks over to that corner frequently just to make sure you're not missing anything, ultimately destroying your experience. The X button follows the same rules but does something worse. Kojima Productions is aware that not everyone who will play this has played the past games, and so in an effort to salvage the situation, they included a feature that is supposed to give newcomers a glimpse in to the past and veterans a foreboding sense of nostalgia: Press the X button as many times as you can during a cut scene, only when you are told to in order to get glimpses of the people and events that are being currently discussed. What it ends up doing is giving you an epileptic nightmare and a bunch of hazy blue images that seem to be spawns of those same drunken people I referenced earlier. Where is the trigger for you to go button mashing these pointless inclusions? You guessed it, in the upper right corner of the screen during the mission briefings and cut scenes.

Most of the weapons and items you will naturally never use, but they make the game accessible to all sorts of gamers. The game caters to the stealth nuts in the same way that it does to those who would rather break in to a battlefield with guns blazing and it is promoting itself greatly accordingly, but that's not saying much as all the previous ones were exactly the same.

Guns of the Patriots is more of a letdown to me, complete with Mr.Kojima's Hollywood approach to movie making and is a disappointing way to see the series end on a graphical note rather on a story one. This is reportedly the last Metal Gear game and the events tie up in methods that would put Jerry Springer's audience to shame. Play this game just so you know what the world is on and do get back to me to explain to me what the big effin deal is.