Metal Gear Solid 4

by Alex Shepherd - 2008/02/05 10:48am

After years of waiting for what seems like an eternal moment of gaming justice for all of those hardcore fans of one of the most successful series in videogame history, Metal Gear Solid 4 is finally nearing completion, and we have the first preview right here on PSBeyond.

Metal Gear Solid games and their hero, the ageing mercenary Solid Snake, have a rabid following and a reputation for excellence, and Hideo Kojima (the creator of the series) is regarded by many to be one of the greatest games designers alive today. With that kind of pedigree bolstering the near perfect relationship between his work and the huge amount of hype surrounding the title, it would have been understandable if this, the last installment in the series, had stuck with the same formula that the fans had gone wild for in the past. Understandable, but not that exciting, surely, well, prepare to be completely amazed.

The guys at Team Kojima are aiming to make their final Metal Gear Solid project more accessible to newcomers; retaining the feel, control and style of the old games, whilst implementing some incredible new features and designs that is certainly not making their monumental task any easier. The first difference you’ll notice about this game is the camera. Where the other games have stuck with a top-down view, a common complaint due to the difficulty of seeing what’s going on in the larger environments, MGS4 has adopted a more traditional method fro players to become accustomed too.

The camera follows the player and is controlled by the right analogue stick, giving you full control over where you’re looking in the environment. In combat the camera can be switched to an over-the-shoulder view for aiming, or a first person view when you want to make those tricky shots. It doesn’t sound like a big change but when it comes to the combat it makes things much more fluid, and in this game you’re going to need it.



The reason why you’re going to be thankful for the new camera arrangement is that Snake isn’t just infiltrating some remote base with nothing but clueless guards standing in his way; he’s alive and present on a very dangerous militised battlefield. All around you there are fire fights and running battles going on between the local militia and a high-tec private military company. Armoured vehicles guard makeshift checkpoints, squads of soldiers move in tight formations through shelled out buildings, Artillery and UAV bombers pave the way for sudden assaults, and the utilization of the combat ready services of the PMC’s certainly add a crushing impact on our heroes combat status.

Whilst all of this activity is going on, you’re in the middle of it all, trying to stay alive. A nice touch for this game is a new “octocamo” suit for Snake, which takes on the colour, pattern and texture of his surroundings at the touch of a button. This will be a welcome relief after the constant menu hopping of Snake Eater’s camouflage system.

Another result of all this destruction is a brand new factor to take into account while you’re playing: Psychology. In addition to the usual health bar you’ll also have the “psych bar” and “stress bar”. These represent Snake’s mental state, and keeping an eye on them is going to be a necessity if you want to survive on the battlefield. The psyche bar is a measure of how focused Snake is. The lower it gets the less effective you’ll be in a fight. The stress bar is a measure of Snakes overall physical performance. It will fill up in stressful situations, and when it fills completely Snake enters what’s known as a “combat high”, with greatly improved abilities. The downside of this is that Snake’s psyche bar will drop down to nothing as soon as the combat high wears off. Of course there is a way to refill Snake’s psyche bar: just find a quiet area and leaf through a few pages of a dirty magazine. What? You though a Hideo Kojima game was going to be normal?



Of course that’s not to say that fans of the previous games will be feeling left out, and one of the things that they’ll definitely be buying this game for is the story. Kojima is staying tight-lipped about most of the concluding chapter of Solid Snake’s tale, but there are still some things we do know. The game focuses on Snake trying to stop his revived and reviled brother Liquid from creating Outer Haven, a world of constant war.

Almost every surviving character in the series will be making an appearance, including Otacon, Raiden, Vamp, Meryl, Colonel Campbell, Naomi Hunter and even a much older Eva. We know that the Patriots, the shadowy organisation behind the creation of the Metal Gears, have a part to play. And last but not least, we have Hideo Kojima’s word that all the loose ends that were left flapping around after Sons Of Liberty will finally be tied up. If that doesn’t have Metal Gear Solid’s fanbase rushing to pre-order their copies then I honestly don’t know what will.

In this age of by-the-books sequels and generic shooters it’s refreshing to see a developer playing with their formula, but at the same time Kojima has given himself a big task. On the one hand he’s making MGS more accessible for people who didn’t like the other games or who’ve never encountered the franchise before.

On the other hand he’s got to live up to the expectations of the hardcore fans, which are sure to be sky high once the hype machine gets going. Add to that Sony’s ambitions for the game (they’ve already described it as “the mother of all exclusives”) and it’s easy to see how much pressure the two-hundred-strong development team will be under right now. Still, if what we’ve seen so far is anything to go on, we should be in one heck of a final chapter in the saga of Solid Snake. Expect to get your hands on it in the second quarter of this year.