Metal Gear Solid 4. Complete. Disappointed. Spoilers.

The Game Room
1

So I finally got around to beating MGS4 last night. I’ve loved every MGS game so far and loved this one too up until the end of the 4th act, after which it only got worse and worse…
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I’m on my way to work but I’ll quickly hit a few key points about what bugged me and fill in more detail later.

  1. Mei Ling is now a Navy CAPTAIN? Seriously? WTF? Look, there’s no such thing as a navy CAPTAIN who looks, and behaves, like a 18 year old Japanese school girl. Completely unbelievable and annoying. The Japanese need to learn how to let characters be adults and stop keeping everyone artificially young and busty. Easily the cheesiest and stupidest character development of any MGS so far.

  2. Raiden stopping Outer Haven from killing Snake by standing in front of it. Is he the Hulk now? Superman? This thing looked like it weighed 10000+ tons and he just stands in front of it and pushes it back to stop it’s forward movement. Then he gets squashed but not killed for like the 10th time in the game.

  3. The wedding. This was the worst part of the game and the entire plot point came out of no where (hell I thought Akiba died earlier). All the sudden the douchebag and Meryl have a 15 minute long gun battle to plan their wedding. Fucking dumb. Then we have to sit through the stupid thing during the ending. And she is wearing her gun belt over her dress…EXTREME!!!

  4. The ending AFTER the ending. Where Kojima undoes everything he did by killing Snake. Big Boss shows up after his body was burned with the dumbest explaination straight out of Days of Our Lives. Major Zero came out of no where too. The ending was all around terrible and WAY too long. Almost 2 hours if you include the start of it at outer haven.

  5. Otacon. Worst and most annoying male character ever to come out of Japan. Send this sheep dog through the wood chipper please because I can’t take more of his emotions and drawn out dialog.

  6. Japan needs to stop writing western video game characters because they can’t do it properly. Period.

  7. The whole Liquid/Revolver thing was f’n dumb too. Never really got it even after the 45 minute explanation of it at the end.

The presentation was top notch and if they would have put different words over the same cutscenes it would have been 10000% better. Great game killed by a terrible ending with ridiculous dialog that no one would ever say.

Did I mention Mei Ling as a totally unbelievable Navy CAPTAINn yet?

I’ll be back for more later.

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  1. Yeah, well, it’s not like it’s an MGS first. Otaku nuclear technician, anyone ?

  2. Yeah, Raiden is pretty much God now - which is sort of understandable considering he’s not much of a human anymore, and besides MGS bosses have fucked with reality more often than not. Vamp running on water, Mantis having telekynesis, the cyber Ninja surviving and actually pushing against Metal Gear’s foot and so on… So, yeah, he’s badass, as a tongue-in-cheek to the fans who hated his effeminate ass in MGS 2.

  3. Are you kidding me ? That cutscene is quoted so often on TvTropes as a Crowning Moment of Awesome I’m getting sick of it. It’s cool, light-hearted and, yes, badass of those normal, unenhanced, non super-gened soldiers to rock that hard.

  4. No comment. Hideo is less clever than he thinks - again, not an MGS first. Weak recessive genes anyone ?

  5. See 1), MGS1 and MGS2.

  6. Yeah, because Western Asian characters are so believable ;).

  7. Yup. I’m still not quite sure what the fuck *is *going on exactly. At this point, I don’t even effin’ care who’s the man behind the man behind the man behind the man.

3

Aren’t there now something on the order of at least three different sets of The Patriots?

First, there had to be the super-rich bunch, who may or may not have been the originals. Then, there were the post-WW2 bunch, who sent Big Boss (Naked Snake) in to get them access to the money. Then Big Boss himself became a Patriot (or something). Then he made the new AI’s, which are the current Patriots. And all the Patriots are titanic jerks, for no particular reason at all.

Apparently, Big Boss is God. Because he can run strange genetics experiments and build AI’s with 1975 technology. So… yeah.