My views on this game will differ from everyone else’s, so enjoyment will vary.
firstly I need to say this game is quite a masterpiece, the art, music, characters and plot all mesh together nearly perfectly. Anyone who doesn’t enjoy this game, really need to look at their gaming values.
I also have to say this, it’s a disappointing installment to the mgs series, by that I mean it lacks the soul of Metal Gear. The humour of it is still there, but its so little. Sneaking now has been butchered to the point where there is no real benefit to it, even in hard mode. True the staples of MGS are there, bodily fluid jokes are a plenty, there’s the trust worthy cardboard box with its new friend the oil drum. The ever omni-present “!” when guards see you, just wish they kept the soul in it and still made it open to new commers to the series.
Since the game has stepped away from the codec to deal with the story, the codec know feels borderline pointless. There is no save frequency, no after save conversations, no calling Octacon to get a quote about the box or the locker.
Boss fights are still as odd as ever, though the difficulty sometimes feels a little easy. I am currently on my 3rd play through and haven’t really come across a boss fight that has made me panic in any way. They are fun and enjoyable, and sometimes amazing.
A few other little things bugged me, between each “act” there is an install time for that act, around about 2-4 mins. Not that much, but it breaks the flow of the game like a sledge hammer breaks an egg, when dropped from a very tall building onto the for-mentioned egg. Another thing, the use of the six-axis is used basically no where.
The online multiplayer is a little bit on an oddity. You need a Konami id and a Game id to go with your PSN id and your PS3 id. A total of 4 IDs, tho the Konami ID is only used when buying content for the multiplayer and single player. Other then that the multiplayer is very much light hearted, it is not up to the standard of proper multiplayer games like CoD4 and Halo3, but it doesn’t need to be. Especially when you can run about in a cardboard box then hide as your enemies run past you only to grab them to kill them.
Several modes are there, along with some of the MGS4 cast. Sometimes a player will turn into snake, or octacon or meryl and so forth. This I suppose is to make up for the bland custom character creation tools. Your person can only wear brown, yellow or green. There is some variants on clothing and you can pick equipment you start a round with and after that round you can buy better guns with Drebin points you get for killing and capturing stuff and so forth.
If you love the MGS series then this game will be enjoyable, but also this game is open to new players to the series. It is a reason enough to own a PS3.
So far I don’t know if it supports the new trophy system though.
