Thursday, June 12, 2008

Guns of the Patriots

Today being the release date of Metal Gear Solid 4, I got my stuff done at work and took off an hour early to give myself some quality time with the game this evening. I purchased the limited edition at (sigh) EB/GameStop. First impressions: wow!

I've spent about four and a half hours with the game so far, between the attract mode (the PMC advertisments), virtual weapons range and mission briefing, and the main game. First off, the controls have been improved tremendously, though taking cover on walls and shifting between standing, crouching, and prone remain kind of clunky. Camo is much improved over MGS3. I got a kick out of Snake's Ipod, and the new Drebin weapon upgrade system looks like it's going to be pretty deep. I chose to play through my first time on the 2nd of the 4 difficulty levels offered.

Prior to today, I'd been concentrating my efforts on Etrian Odyssey, and will continue to do so on days I take public transport to and from work. I've made it down to B22F as of this writing, and it was awesome to get down into the fifth stratum and uncover more of the truth about the labyrinth. It was a pleasant surprise to make it down there without having the secret spoiled to me beforehand (though I had my suspicions). Though B25F is where the main game ends, there is actually a sixth stratum that goes down to a 30th floor with extra hard bosses and such. I wonder what its motif might be...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm buying it this weekend! No spoilers!

Is the length of the cut scenes a problem for you?

Count Elmdor said...

I've been in one or two so far where I consciously thought about the length, but I wouldn't say it's a problem.

There's kind of a lot right when you first start playing, or maybe it just seems that way because it's doing the credits interspersed with 2-3 minute chunks of you controlling Snake and moving around the area.

I actually felt more "in the game" than usual for MGS while running around the urban battlefield area (the one from all the released media). It's really cool. It's almost COD4-esque with all the action going on around you.

Count Elmdor said...

FYI, Be sure to actually save your game before you quit, and not rely on the checkpoints as an autosave (because they don't actually save anything). I lost about an hour or so of progress in Act 2 because of that.

Greg said...

I made a half-assed attempt at picking up a MGS4/PS3 bundle at bestbuy but I didn't even have a chance. The crowds lined up early, much earlier than I was willing to for the midnight opening. Oh well. As it turns out, my 2001 Toshiba CRT tv belched up a lung and died so, I'll be using that cash for a new set.

I thought Toshiba's were supposed to be better than that...Now I will be spending about a thousand on a 40-inch Samsung 720p LCD HDTV. I was planning on a tv upgrade soon anyways with the upcoming switch to digital broadcasting.

Count Elmdor said...

ooh yeah, I can vouch for Samsung HD TV's. I bought a 23 inch 720p model when we moved here in October 2006, and it's very nice. I only wish I had gotten a bigger size though, since I feel like I need to be closer to it than really works well in our place. Good going on the 40', and welcome to next-gen!

I finished Act 4 of Metal Gear last night. Two words: HOLY SHIT. The whole of Act 4 was just flat-out awesome. There's a part at the start with a song. I got chills. It also had a couple of the most awesome MGS boss fights yet.

I should finish in the next couple of days.