It was a pretty good game, though I don't feel its the best in the series.

While I felt the story was pretty damn awesome and emotional throughout, I was sad that the game decided to stick to a small Codec group, and that Rosemary had to be one of them... So, much like MGS2, MGS4 had very few memorable Codec conversations. The rest of the cutscenes were amazing and towards the end you just felt your stomach turning from watching Old Snake suffer. The story really picked up starting from the meeting with Naomi til the end of the game, though I do feel the scenes with Sunny sometimes felt out of place in parts.

My only real issue with the plot was just the final scene at the cemetery, (SPOILER)I don't really see what the point of killing Big Boss was. I was happy to see him come back but I was prety annoyed it was only long enough to make some speech and then die comically in Snake's arms. I felt it would have been better if Big Boss and Major Zero had lived and just retire from the world in some excluded place now that the whole Patriot argument was over. Killing them there and so painfully cheesy really killed the mood and ended the game on a bad note for me. Otherwise I felt the plot was great and easily the best part of the game.

My real beef with the game comes from the gameplay side. I felt Kojima catered way too heavily to the action fans and I felt stealth was mostly non-existent in the game. I'm not used to playing FPS, whether real or faux like MGS4's control scheme but I found the controls made stealth a little more difficult than it should be, combat was easier despite the funky and dense controls (I have to hold down how many buttons to fire in First Person?) and not to mention the game literally makes "running and gunning" the norm rather than a last resort. I'm especially annoyed that CQC is little more now than a throw as it was completely lobotomized from what it was like MGS4.

The ally system was a neat idea but poorly implemented since your only options were to either side with the rebels or ignore them. I originally was given the opinion you could choose either side of the conflict but that's wrong since the PMCs will never see you as an ally. The other problem is that not siding with rebels and using them is kinda silly especially since it makes gameplay ridiculously easy. For instance, in the Middle East city, you get to a point where the rebels and PMCs are having a huge shoot out in the streets, your options is either to take a side road and use stealth or help the rebels punch through. Going through the side roads has you dealing with a few patrols but also several snipers that can always spot you before you can see them and are difficult to shoot down. I died a handful of times there and finally decided to try and sneak my way through the main street, which ended in me helping the rebels beat a tank and they gladly let me walk by. It only took me five minutes to help them overwhelm the PMCs and go on my way. Outside of bragging rights, why not take the easier option?

In South America, I did some demolition duty and despite the rebels not even seeing me sneak into the complex, they gladly recognized me as their savior and helped me through the rest of the scenario with little problems. I constantly tried to use stealth but was either easily spotted and ended up fighting my way through hordes of enemies rather easily despite trying to learn the controls or I ended up accidentally helping the rebels cause the PMCs proved a problem for both of us and the rebels ended up making some of the difficult scenes pretty easy. Basically, I felt the game doesn't give you any real incentive to use stealth, you can easily fight off a small army of soldiers and helping the rebels allows you easy access to where the story wants you to go next. Stealth, felt completely optional and generally silly to even bother with.

If it wasn't for Prague I would almost say their is little stealth in the game. Prague is where the game really picked up for me but that didn't last long and I was back to running and gunning again. As for weapons, I never felt much difference between the various types of weapons, outside of minor changes from ammo and stopping power I never saw the point to use different guns for different scenarios. The infinite ammo of the tranquilizer gun was also a bad move. I almost never used other handguns except to try them out.

On the bright side, the boss battles are still Kojima epic and I really adored all of them. Laughing Octopus, the Metal Gear duel and the Final battle are all easily some of the most intense and fun battles in the series. I also adored the moments where Kojima blended movie cinematics with gameplay as with the various chase sequences as well as the scenes in Shadow Moses and Outer Haven. The music and graphics are also excellent as the norm for the MGS series.

It was a great game that tried a few new ideas of which some really worked and others didn't but it was still a nice send off for the original Solid Snake. I would rank it as my third or fourth favorite entry, depending on whether I want to tie it with Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.