Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots

4:28pm Thursday 3rd July 2008

Publisher: Konami Formats: PS3 exclusive Price: £49.99 Family friendly? 16+

AS LONG as Sony can boast exclusives like Gran Turismo and Metal Gear Solid, the PS3 will never be a failure. For many fans of the series, this review will be irrelevant. They dashed to their local game store and placed an order the moment Hideo Kojima confirmed a fourth Metal Gear adventure was in the works.

It's a tremendous piece of work on so many levels. A game that manages to move the series on while paying homage to its predecessors and tying up many of the plot elements so far unresolved.

In some respects the stealth-'em-up formula is starting to show its age.

Maybe that's why this is the most aggressive Metal Gear to date.

Sure, you can still sneak about staying in the shadows, but your weapons allow for greater effectiveness at range so if you are discovered it's a good idea to stand and fight rather than run and hide.

If you've played other games in this series you'll recognise some of the situations and pay-offs. Guns of the Patriots wears the MGS back story on its sleeve like a badge of honour.

These surprise and delight moments are available to a handful of popular gaming franchises (Resident Evil) and they are used to good effect here.

It's not perfect, though. Not when one character has a pet monkey who chain smokes, belches and lets off wind. Carry On-style humour sits uneasily with the generally gloomy feel of the main story and the relevance of its message.

Then there are the lengthy cut scenes, a staple of this series ever since MGS on the PSOne. This is the one area of MGS where modern games consoles, with their immense graphical capabilities, have left the series behind. At several points I felt frustrated watching an event play out via a cut scene knowing the PS3 had the processing muscle to make it happen in real time.

So, after ten years of unparalleled critical success it seems time and technology have finally caught up with Solid Snake.

Despite this slightly depressing thought, Guns of the Patriots remains a solid entry in the series and, until Gran Turismo arrives, is by far the best exclusive on the PS3.