2.5/5 ★ – Ejsponge61's review of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.

I beat this game around 2010 because people wouldn't stop gushing about this series thanks to a friend letting me borrow it. It's the only Kojima game I beat, and the only one I've played outside of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow months later and Ground Zeroes years later. This game is mid. Mechanics try to cater to both stealth and action combat which lead to neither feeling very satisfying when compared to contemporaries in other genres. It's got a lot of polygons, but it rarely goes outside of its oppressively brown color palette. And some gameplay sequences are used once and never iterated on ever again. I understand that's done to enhance the story, but to me, there barely was one. The plot was as off-puttingly convoluted as it was long-winded. The game just refused to clarify most of its baseline framework. I understand that's what the prior 3 games are for, but considering the perfect scores this game got, and the fact it wasn't advertised as an episodic game, I was hoping to not be completely lost. And I really could see myself enjoying the insane characters and over the top highs of the story, but the plot slows to a crawl so often that I really had to push through a lot to see the positives. So, yea, I can see why everyone loves this game. It's weird, which I can really respect. But nothing about this game is accessible or inviting. Blame that on the fact that you have to be deeply familiar with 3 earlier games (and at least 2 other prequels that released later) to fully appreciate the story. Blame it on the fact that it's gameplay can't really decide what genre it wants to cater to. Blame that on the fact that the game is artistically bland or so long winded that I fell asleep 4 times during its final cutscene. Or just blame it on the game just not clicking with me. But just because everyone else likes it, I don't have to as well. At least I gave it a shot tho.