I bought this game to watch a movie that achieves nothing and barely makes any sense. Well maybe it kinda does (a little bit) but in a way that completely abandons the entire purpose and ideas of the previous titles. MGS1 was the earliest example of a panoramic story in a video game, reifying a substantial film-caliber quality of the medium. MGS2 was the optimal approach to the first entry, utilizing both what made the first title a great success as well as taking a step further to, not requisitely following strictly the narrative but inventing a brand new one for a very specific purpose - relevantly critiquing video game community as well as other, perhaps more serious social/political phenomena. MGS3 was, unlike the previous installments, a safe and effective work. It didn't do anything beyond its reach and that is the core value in effectuating any form of arts. So to say the least, these are wildly different games, with very different purposes that wouldn't work if they are tightly related to one another. It could somehow be in the same universe, but, particularly for MGS2, to make it tie together thematically would fundamentally go against the ideas presented.
All these contextualization may be jading, but this is important in creating a backdrop to possibly one of the worst mistakes in video games, not from Kojima, but from the company that coerced Kojima to keep chundering new Metal Gear games. This game made one thing very clear to me. It showed how unapproachable, aimless and narratively nonplussed the franchise was at that point. This wasn't supposed to happen. After every single MGS game, Kojima intended to satisfactorily put an end to it, but it somehow just went on. This game holds contextual significance to the franchise, because for that, a catastrophe was brought upon. Let's see how this movie turns out.
Since this is basically a movie (and yes I will repeatedly hammer this idea in the review because this is what this abomination of a 'game' truly is), I will judge it with my film criteria. Oh boy will this review be long.
-
WRITING:
It's an understatement of generosity to deem that this movie bespeaks genuine indolence and bad taste in writing a story. As a matter of fact, this movie would go out of its way to resolve every single issue with the most despicably inexplicable plot device (the kind of lazy writing I most dislike). If a character dies and that's somehow undesirable, or maybe some weird pseudo-political anti-purpose governmental plotting happens to just happen, it is always consequential of that one plot device. Even if somehow there's a demon from another dimension comes into play (which is very feasible inasmuch as this movie would just make anything possible, really), it will be that thing, the "nanomachines". Since nanomachines is a quantum-physics variant which in essence functions similarly, it is so convenient to implement in every single plot point and dump it with some flipping-internal-universe-logic-upside-down yapping as definitive explanations. It truly is godawful and infuriating having to sit through that.
It's also an act of benevolence to say that this game defeats the purposes of the previous ones (I'm a kind man after all). I would actually consider this game to set in an alternative universe if possible, and would definitely want to leave the first 3 games alone (which I have, and no one can convince me otherwise). Talk about thematic suicide, it was horrifying to see the worst possible generic-ass version of Raiden. Well sure you might argue he was painfully generic in MGS2 as well, but that's only for a greater purpose. It's actually thematically powerful and serves its objectives splendidly. In here he's cool. Yes he's pretty cool. He's so out of character but he's cool. Or worse, he's a cyborg. But seriously, Raiden being implemented the way he is in this game truly goes against the intents of its predecessor. The entire character arc of Raiden collapsed as soon as he is introduced in this game. It broke his characterization, made him into a convenient plot device ready to be used rather than an actual character with any consistency in writing.
Fundamentally, the game is a wrap-up of every other game, clearing the possible confusions deriving from what would be considered plot holes if linked all titles together. Which is why it had to neglect the ideas, themes and even what was built upon for the characters in order to conveniently, or rather, with plausibility, pave the way to its goal - an attempt to explain with some sense of cohesiveness. The problem is it shouldn't have. Result is not unprecedented. A convoluted, incoherent mess that ties all knots with 'nanomachines'. The plot was stupid enough, but thanks to nanomachines, it went straight from being stupid to downright unbearable.
EXECUTION (as a movie):
2 words, fan service, a giant fat package of fan service. And not of good quality mind you. In fact, it's quite displeasing kind of fan service. MGS4 is a bizarre assortment of eclectic styles from not so favorable artists in other industries. You have that over-the-top flashy, poorly thought out, insensible action sequences where dudes chop a gigamachine in half, flying around insanely most definitely from Michael Bay. You also have that third-rate proposal scene from Michael Bay. These corny and poorly directed sequences, with the intention to be emotionally evocative, are just insulting. The only way I can ever not get annoyed by it is to think that Kojima is making some sort of meta joke that is too esoteric for my intellectual capacity. Or maybe he just has very bad taste in filmmaking, which he does, as shown through every single MGS title. Except this time, it's not charmingly corny, because for a title with such narrative importance, it doesn't have as much freedom to be fooling around. Either be serious and give out proper explanations, or at least don't ruin other installments, or basically just don't exist altogether. To have a game that ruins others and proceeds to be so stupid and corny, instead of reminding you of 'good' corny Hollywood action flicks, it deprives itself of any charm of such ilk, becoming so unpleasant for lacking so much self-awareness.
As stated above, the writing is inevitably a mess due to the flimsy connections between each game, to the point where there is no tangible methodology in linking them. Perhaps because of this, the execution had to go with my least favorable approach - continual expositional info dumps excused by fan services. And yes, expositions is nothing new for a MGS title. MGS1 has a bunch of info dumps but they aren't stretched out too painfully, and at least it wasn't the main part of the dish. MGS2 has much more info dumps, but they are dense, idea-packed and perennially fascinating to read. MGS3 is where the problem seems to first cross the line, having overly long, uninteresting, soap-opera corny cutscenes that overstay its welcome. But then you have MGS4, where info dumps got the some kind of world record, and I wish I'm making this up. Though it's one thing to be tiringly longwinded and another to be overbearing and disrespectful. I've explained in one other review why this 'no respect' is the case. For how it is executed, the audience are to think that everything somehow so conveniently can be explained by an in itself indecipherable plot device (nanomachines). So no matter how nonsensical everything is, the director will always get away with it. Nothing really matters, because nothing really has any strict rules so we just have to accept whatever comes. To me, that absence of respect, which is integral for any art form, is where things become unforgivable.
-
Now that we're done with all the movie criteria, what about game criteria? The actual criteria that I always use for virtually every single game ever? Again, I never considered this to be a video game, but sure, let's talk about it anyway.
GAMEPLAY:
The cutscenes are often around 5 minutes to half an hour long, and the gameplay takes up merely less than a quarter of the game (3 hours of gameplay, 10+ hours of cutscenes). So the first criticism is the gameplay is incredibly underwhelming, short and lacking. Secondly, the gameplay detaches itself from the spirits of its predecessors, being that it is no longer a stealth game. But that's alright, I personally don't hold much grudge against that idea. The biggest flaw in the gameplay, though, is this feeling of scrapped material latent in every corner of the game. Basically, there were initially a set of ideas that were supposed to be implemented into the game but then for some reason weren't. But they didn't completely remove it so it was just there but for no apparent reason. This is an annoying technical issue. For instance, the psyche meter was absolutely for nothing, even worse, confusing and much, much less of a desirable outcome than the stamina hunger meter in MGS3. It's actual backwards evolution. There are many other issues that just make the entire gameplay seem incomplete, insufficient and lackluster. Also, the bosses were so, so unmemorable, comparing to everything we have in the previous games. It just adds up so much to the already underwhelming interactivity.
EXECUTION (as a game):
Since we're looking at whatever this MGS4 is from a video game perspective, I should also add that it was incredibly exasperating to ostensibly 'play' a game while forsooth watching boring info dump hour-long cutscenes continually. By the time these cutscenes ended, I already lost all interest in the gameplay. And when a cutscene started, I sighed loudly. And why am I looking at a spuriously real-looking pre-rendered film, I mean would I not rather watch an actual film and not this quasi-looking-ass? But that's not the point. The execution radically obliges the players to conceive whatever happening on screen. You have no other choice but to sit there, be concerned about the plot, and 'play' in a minimalistic fashion whenever it allows you to. I guess this wouldn't be such a big deal if it didn't brand itself as a video game and instead a semi-interactive movie. Well I would still hate it because it's an awful movie by all standards, but I'd bump it up to a 2 perchance.
-
In conclusion, with limited interactivity, a video game is often meant to be experienced. But what left for the players to experience in this game is awful writing, cliched tropes with fan service-esque tone throughout 10 hours of low-quality 'cinematic' cutscenes. The writing of MGS has never been very great. I don't know how much longer will it take for Metal Gear circlejerking fanbase to admit that Kojima simply isn't a talented writer. The plot of MGS always felt conventional yet self-indulging, but managed to be genuinely entertaining, while also served as a secondary device to push forward its other greater strengths. In MGS4 however, you have these accumulatively put-together weaknesses of every the MGS game, self-proclaiming wrongly its strengths and taking it for granted. MGS never has brilliant writing, or even remotely a good one. With this fan service arc of nothingness besides the self-explanatory 'nanomachines', it makes itself out as a series with good writing, perceiving that being convoluted compromises a more thought-provoking quality, and long cutscenes typifies picturesque filmmaking. None of this is true. This is the worst attempt at a video game ever, taking itself so seriously and failing so wretchedly. In fact, this might very well be the worst video game of all time.