MGS4: Finished. Game is fun to play but all story elements overdosed on cheese. Some of this I could laugh at (exclamation mark hair, endgame Drebin, breakdancing master Raiden) but too much of it was just oh god make the retconning stop. Epilogue was a labored infodump. If you're gonna subject us to an overhaul of series history, Kojima, please don't implement it with a sledgehammer. Yeesh.
Game is worth playing but definitely not on a par with Snake Eater. Probably loses out to MGS1 too just for the needlessly convoluted story. Yes, even by MGS standards.
STOP. Spoiler time:
Chapter four stuff: Nostalgia time! Crawling through the ruins of Shadow Moses Island and dodging flashbacks. Good times. Well, except for the gimmick with the Vamp fight. That was lame. Being able to go on a mad rampage with Rex balances this out, though. Also, portable railgun? YES, thanks.
Chapter five stuff: Dammit Meryl, not again. Mantis fight was kind of a hassle, but Otacon's call? Brilliance. "...You put the controller in the second port, right? You didn't think that would work again, did you?" Will definitely look forward to employing Mantis's dolls on a replay. Fight for me, my zombie army!
Endgame story had way too much Xanatos Gambit and It's All Part of the Plan. On the plus side: Crawling through the radiation corridor was gruelling and brutally effective at driving home the whole "Yeah, this is it. Snake's done once this is accomplished" angle. Also, ahahaha Meryl has a gun holster even on her wedding dress.
Will probably replay it at some point just to try out all the other weapons. Anti-material rifle = holy flurking shit. Boss fights should be fun to do again as well. They were definitely the highlight of the main game.
EDIT: Oh yeah, a couple things I neglected to mention. Firstly: argh, MGS4, stop forcing weapons into my active inventory just because Snake was using them in a cutscene. Secondly, there was this one part where I needed to snipe a couple guards to move on and thought I would have to line up two shots really quick? And instead a single bullet went straight through the first guard's head and proceeded to kill the second guard as well. This is admittedly a joy few other games can provide. In fact, I may as well ramble about weapons while I'm at it. Most used:
1. A silenced sniper rifle is all kinds of broken. Not so much in the last two chapters because of scarab swarms and perpetual alaert phases, but this badly owns the earlygame.
2. The shotgun is love. Excellent for taking down frogs. One shot knocks them off their feet, the second kills.
3. As for rapid-fire weapons, the P90 (submachinegun of choice for Liquid's female battallion of death) wins out. Fifty-bullet clip? Yes, thanks.
4. RAILGUN. Take that, gekkos.
Surprisingly not useful? Rocket launchers. You'd think they'd be useful for taking down gekkos (bipedal mechs), but they're really not.
