War is, at the end of the day, an ugly business. We spend our time entertained in movies, books and games at the prospect of taking the life from some random unnamed collection of pixels for our own amusement. The harsh reality is that nothing good ever came from starting a war. However, going for the ultra-realistic approach and standing around in a desert in unbearable heat, wearing full combat gear, drinking litres upon litres of water, waiting to get randomly shot at or watch your friends die from a homemade petrol bomb wouldn’t exactly be entertainment.

We’ve watched and heard on the news as some kid blows away a bunch of other kids in some school and how Counter-Strike was blamed. Hell this even happens when it comes to movies. People need scapegoats. The media that’s lying around the house is a good start – maybe next the parents. Whatever. The games industry, much like other industries since this has started happening, find more ways to remind the kids (or young adults as they should be half the time) that it’s just a game. Ignoring those that get a rated game bought for them to play underage that is.

While I’ll talk further on this in the review, the reason I bring it up is that I don’t think I’ve ever played a series that has managed to balance a lot of the issues as gracefully as the Metal Gear Solid games. While hitting home some quite major topics, they still manage to put in all the humour and little references to remind you that at the end of the day – it’s still a game people!

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is a third-person stealth game set in 2014, 5 years after MGS2 finished off. Nanotechnology has become almost standard within the military to enhance a person’s natural ability while providing a link between soldiers. This system is called Sons of the Patriots (SOP). The Private Military Companies (PMC) spend their time fighting proxy wars over their business interests, the largest of which are currently controlled and operated by Liquid Ocelot who has been amassing an army rivalling the size of the United States, preparing to launch an insurrection by taking control of SOP. Snake, who is currently aging rapidly, is sent to assassinate Liquid.

From the start the MGS series has always been on the epic side: the long and complicated storylines, cutscenes and dialogue. If anything, MGS4 blows the others out of the water for the sheer volume of content. After playing through Sons of the Patriots I can truly appreciate why they filled a Bluray disc. It’s massive.

So we start with our opening cutscene about how war has changed, about how everyone on the battlefield has been enhanced other than you, Solid Snake, looking like he’s about to have his 60th birthday. Rather than kill some time hitting the VR machine for training you head straight into action to learn it on the fly, with a little help from your friend Otacon. I’ve always found that to begin with the control schemes are a little awkward, although this quickly resolves itself as you get into the groove of things. They’re pretty much the same as they’ve always been, except now of course you need a nice HDTV to be able to see the fonts clearly (we know, we tested it) if you want to know what does what in the menu.

I’d say the largest couple of changes that have been added to your arsenal of gameplay mechanics are a camo suit that matches your environment and a mini Metal Gear you can use to scout with. The camo suit in itself is very cool way of adapting the camouflage system that was already in place in the previous titles. Regardless of what surface you touch the suit will reset and match the texture of the floor you’re on or the wall you’re hugging. Snake can now additionally lie completely flat, which helps him remain undetected by enemies. Of course it’s not just about visibility these days. Now they can smell you if the wind’s against you, follow you if you leave tracks and hear Snake if you make a noise.

The mini Metal Gear that Otacon uses to go into missions with Snake can act as a scout to go in your place. It can disable traps or set them off, tap on walls to distract an enemy, shock enemies and turn off lights as its main features. As Snake can’t use the Metal Gear Mk I (II and III come later as different versions with the same features) while in a vent or under a car, it’s important to remember that he’ll be vulnerable to attack, so finding a good location is important. There is also a limited range that it can go from Snake, which is why it predominantly acts as a scout over any heavy-duty work.

One other change to the game has been adding a stress gauge that lets you know Snake’s current state of mind. If he gets too stressed it affects his performance (no jokes please) and so keeping our hero happy throughout the game is another factor to worry about. There are items throughout the game that will help with this and it’s not too taxing. It also acts as a visual aid to how Snake feels about a certain situation.

As you progress through the game, some familiar faces will crop up from the previous titles, and you’ll also meet a couple of new ones that will aid you on your way. The most prominent of these is Drebin, a gun launderer that can unlock the weapons currently ID tagged to the PMC bod you’ve nabbed it from, buy any copies of these off you for points you can spend in his shop and offer you weapons and ammo at any point during the game. It’s a good little system that gets you guns and ammo as and when you need it during those all important “click click click” moments. He can also provide new weapons or upgrades for existing ones for a price.

As you might expect from the 4th major addition to the series, they’ve got a lot to wrap up and explain, and jebus don’t they do just that! The cutscenes are immense, not just in their length but in how well animated they are, and how good they look using the game engine rather than pre-rendering. Sure, you might get a couple of amusing moments where you’ve just been hugging a drain and have to look all heroic garbed in something used to play marbles on, but it gives it that element of realism and dynamics that we’ve come to hope for.

While the way you move around levels remains pretty much the same, with similar animations and enemy behaviour to boot (although don’t think you can climb a ladder or get up a few crates to escape these days), the one thing that stands out are the graphics. It was great to have a little flashback during the game where you briefly get to play MGS 1 again and remember those graphics. Even on a bog standard TV our next-gen Snake looks pretty damn nice. As mentioned, the animations are fantastic. From Snake hitting his lower back when crouched or after a barrel roll, to missing his footing on jumping out of a helicopter, showing that he’s getting older and loosing that one-man-army-cool-factor.

This is why I opened with such a morbid statement. There is an important message behind how the games story presents itself; that war isn’t great. However, where there’s that serious edge, there’s also the comic. Parts where Otacon might turn around and say “Hey Snake can you put in Disc 2 please…oh wait it’s Blueray now” or bosses trying to move your controller. Not forgetting that the people you encounter tell you how to carry out an action by what buttons to press rather than prompting you outside of that dialogue. They keep hammering home it’s a game.

I find the whole smoking thing interesting as well. Sure, we’ve always known that Snake smokes and smuggles them into the game if need be. While providing a way to see lasers it has always decreased your health slowly if you use them. Now, with the quite longwinded install times we have at the start of the game, as well as in-between acts, you get Snake standing there chaining some cigs. The health warning that pops up amidst the hints on the screen states that you should be considerate to others while choosing to smoke.

I think that’s it these days. Back in the 50’s everyone smoked, it was weird not to, you saw adverts for them on billboards and TV. Then we were, and in most respects still are anti-smoking – banning it in public places etc. However, I think the new angle amongst people, rather than the government, is that it’s your right to choose. A film like “Thank You for Smoking” was a good sign of this, and MGS was another. Don’t get me wrong, Ultra Ninjas don’t endorse smoking, it kills a lot of people, but I like to think we do endorse the right to choose.

Throughout the game Snake will constantly reach for a cigarette and not give a damn what people think. Half the time of course his smoke is nabbed, dropped or he doesn’t get to finish it – but the point’s there. Anyway, I’m fairly sure it’s a way to promote the hero with a flaw. He’s dying and so why should he care? Well I guess you’ll find out at the end of the game, about 30 hours later at a decent pace.

One of the best things that happened to the MGS series was getting Harry Gregson-Williams to get involved with the soundtrack. I knew after hearing the theme to 2 that he was going to bring a deserving score to any future games. While Harry co-writes alongside Nobuko Toda, the composer for Metal Gear Acid 1 and 2, the themes always stand out as being very much his. Not that I can say song you hear at the end is worth completing the game for – if anything it’s worth knocking a point off. Yeah, you’ll just have to hear it.

Another big element to the game is Metal Gear Online (MGO) that features 16-player online stealth action that heavily encourages teamwork. As it stands this comes as a sort of starter-pack of which we should see a standalone release later this year. It works a lot better as a variant on the usual online tack-on you get with most titles and is definitely worth a go.

As we’ve brought up before, sometimes we don’t find the time to finish games, or have no interest to. Then, along comes one that gets its shiny little hooks in and pulls us along for the ride. With Metal Gear Solid 4: Sons of the Patriots I took the bait and asked for more. I find it difficult to give it any other score.