Next, please.
Springtime is always a quiet part of the calendar as far as the entertainment industry is concerned. Not early enough in the year to try for a head-start on the competition, not quite late enough to sap all the money from parents with kids on school holidays. 2008, however, has been unique. In film, we’ve had Iron Man and Indy 4, the format war’s bloody ending has brought us a lovely bunch of coconuts HD titles on Blu-Ray, and even the games industry has flowered early due to global warming.
I’m talking of course about the blockbusters of April-June. GTA, Euro 2008*, Ninja Gaiden II, the list goes on. Hell, I even enjoyed HAZE for a good 90 seconds or so. But all these games (with the possible exception of GTA) should have been delayed by the publishers for tactical reasons, and that is because Snake is back. Rule 1 of picking a game’s release date is to set it as far away as possible from a Metal Gear Solid title, but Harmonix, Nintendo and Ubisoft didn’t fucking listen.
*I know it’s not a major release, but it will go down in history as the title that finally topped Pro Evo.
I’ve just read Metal Gear Solid 4’s review on IGN and, though brief, it does restore my faith in the plot. In most trailers for Snake’s last hurrah, we’ve seen freaky bio-bots, battlefields, and a whole lot of brown. Some in-game action on the PSN a few months back visually informed me that I’m going to be staring at Snake’s arse for a very large portion of the gameplay. Needless to say, I wasn’t too excited. Maybe the overwhelming as-yet-uncompleted-by-me Snake Eater was also to blame, as I’ve never cared for the jungle-obsessed title as much as I did the first 2 gems. Don’t get me wrong, MGS3 was brilliant, but it lacked the je-ne-sais-quoi of its predecessors. but I degress.
My point is that I was looking forward to Guns of the Patriots, but I wasn’t hyped up for it. IGN’s review changed all that. It described the game as the pinnacle of Kojima’s vision of what games are supposed to be. It classed the title and the ultimate Metal Gear experience, tying up all loose ends and running alongside a plot that is perhaps better than the great Shadow Moses itself. So colour me fucking excited.
3 years ago