Metal Gear Solid 4 Shows its Bits and Pieces

By Tyler Barber















Three nights ago, Hideo Kojima showed off to the world the first glimpse of actual gameplay footage of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. After watching the video on gametrailers.com (check it out here), it was obvious that Kojima has been taking notes on Western game development, which has been a recent trend in games coming out of the Land of the Rising Sun.

The demo starts off showing some sneaking bits and Snake's new Octo-Cam suit. One thing that really caught me off-guard was the number of homo-erotic jokes thrown in the demo. Now, Japan is known for its quirky humor, and Kojima himself has always understood the value that humor adds to cinematics, but given that of the five-to-six jokes thrown in the demo, three of them are a bit gay. I don't mean that in a derogatory sense -- rather, Snake grabs some sausage and biscuits twice, and once performs a "judo-choke-hold" that looks more like a man-love-hold. Still, this is Metal Gear, and things like bisexual enemies and effeminate leads are standard.

The demo heats up when Snake goes into MGS4's biggest innovation: stealth on the battlefield. Here, Kojima showed two sides having a fierce fire-fight including not only ground troops, but also un-manned bombing raids, artillery fire and armored vehicles. All these, added to the ballistic hailstorm that showered down on the battlefield with sound effects, are as engrossing as the visual stimuli.

Overall, being a big fan of the Metal Gear series, I'm excited for this title to drop. It is the game that will make me, and many others throw down on a PS3. And while I think the whole rumor of MGS4 coming to the Xbox 360 carries weight, there's no way in hell I'm going to wait one extra hour to play this game. Especially since this is the last Metal Gear. It's fitting that the series which brought me back to gaming (Metal Gear Solid, PS1), is now bringing me back to Playstation. Good on ya' Snake!