Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots Review - Fan Disservice

The problem is when someone that didn't care anymore about the characters tries to add "fan service" without understanding what the fans actually WANT.

This is a great review, and your focus on the War Economy (MIC) aspect of the setting/story, and point about that being the most relevant idea in the entire game, backed up with solid numbers etc, was fantastic, and an avenue of criticism I haven't heard anyone else level so clearly and, politically speaking, bravely, in other critiques of this MGS4. You're making great content, I bet these will start getting a lot more views within the next year.

What a breath of fresh air. Your reviews are far from the usual Supperbunnyhop esque "the first 3 games are holy perfection and all else is literally Satan" nonsense. MGS4 is an incredibly flawed game and so are the rest but darn is it rare to see someone give all the games equally just treatment. I still have some disagreements here and there with you but that's fine. Overall, these are the best reviews on the series thus far. I hope you keep it up.

REALLY great review, mate! The editing is REALLY good here (lost it at the constant cuts to JD 'XD) and you manage to say a lot of interesting talking points I hadn't considered! I think I agree more on this than your MGS3 one but there's still some things I don't fully agree with. The biggest point being the action. I don't think the action is nearly as "toothless" as you think it is, or any worse than MGS2 or MGS3 TBH. Enemies are slow to react but the combination of over the shoulder gunplay and switching to lockon, side jumping away from bullets and shooting back has always been very fun IMHO. Even when you talked about it being too slow, you show a clip of you punching through a bunch of PMC's, getting knocked to the ground and gunning down blokes from the ground. That looked pretty fun to me. :P I also dunno if I fully agree about the cutscenes. Sure, there's WAY too much bloody exposition and I think you make some really good points about Meryl, Raiden, Naomi, FoxDie and Big Boss. But I also don't remember being frustrated or bored when I play through MGS4. I thought it struck a nice balance of character moments with exposition, as well as having a bit more humor than MGS3, which you yourself showcased. I'd probably rate MGS4 higher than you (and certainly didn't seem to hate MGO2 the way you did 'XD) but I think this was a VERY good review! Might be my favorite of all the ones you've done so far! Nice work! Can't wait to see your next one! :D

Great work editing the video.

I know it’s a mess but I still love this one. There are few games as batshit insane as MGS4

omg that skull face kill me when naomi is speaking killed me

I've been watching your reviews in reverse order and I expected you to be a lot harsher on mgs4. As someone who has played most of the metal gear games numerous times and mgs4 at least 26 times, I'm agreeing with most of this. One thing you forgot to mention is Big Boss just stood there as Snake was putting the gun in his mouth despite saying he has respect for him and wants him to live the rest of his life in peace. Things I disagree with are the psyche meter and some of the fanservice (key note some). The psyche meter and stress percentage help encourage the player to want to stay stealthy. Being in alert causes stress to go up, and when your stress is high your psyche goes down causing you to have worse aim and chance for Snake to screw up his rolls. In terms of fanservice I feel Act 4 does it well by having a location known to fans become a more decrepit and dreary place with good atmosphere. And the final fight despite breaking from good game design of testing all the players abilities, does fanservice in a way that doesn't seem patronizing and more like a celebration of the series with these 2 old guys beating each other up to the tune of previous games soundtracks while using the health bars of said games. I think there are other instances of good fanservice but to be fair I haven't play the game since I pretty much went pc only which was a while ago so my memory on it isn't the best. I just wanted to mention the ones I do know. With all that said and done, I'm looking forward to watching your other videos.

Id disagree that Old Snakes foxdie sub-plot is irrelevant, cos its a core part of his character in this game, giving others chances at the expense of himself. The rest I agree with though.

There are many songs composed for this game by Gregson Williams that are quite literally ripped from soundtracks he did for movies over the years. "Father and Son" is in Team America: World Police when a puppet dies about 5 minutes in.

I'm glad I stumbled upon these Metal Gear reviews 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽

Watched your MGS 5 video last night, first time coming across your work. I really enjoyed that video. I'm gonna watch it again tbh because I fell asleep during the last 25 minutes or so. This is really good too. Good work, I'm subscribing

1:43 That’s the issue with MGS games; MGS1 gave you one type of each weapon and that’s all you needed; MGS2 gave you tranq versions of the pistol and PSG1; MGS3 onwards are gratuitous. To paraphrase Yahtzee, these games gave you a 100 million tools to do things that aren’t that complicated.

I'm a bit late in this video,but damn,you are a really good reviewer (idk if this word exists). I just finished your 2 hour review of MGSV and came in here because i wanted to see your opinion o MgS4,even thou i don't agree with most of it,its just fascinating how you can get your point across. Mgs4 may actually be my favorite game of all time lmao yeah,i actually loved all the fanservice shit and all,but well,i understand why you disliked it. I may be one of the few people who actually loved all the MGS games and always look foward to listening to other people opinions,now i want to binge watch all your goddamn videos because they are soo good. Anyway,sorry for my english,i'm brazilian,have a nice day or whatever and keep on the good word!

I may not agree fully with the final scoring, but this is one of the best reviews I've ever seen.

Great analysis. I loved mgs4 but it definitely had it's flaws. I got to meet Phil Laamar back in 2014 at a con, and he talked about how his voice for vamp was the most difficult he's ever done because it allowed him to actually challenge himself vocally and find the right tone

14:00 thanks for the shout out, good review of 4

This is such a great review! Kojima suffers from Tetsuya Nomura's problem: they have good ideas for a story but they aren't writers and they don't allow writers to actually make the stories well structured, adjust the pacing, turning them into something cohesive and intelligible by removing padding, repeated elements and prioritizing relevant messages over others that arent adding anything to what they are really trying to say.

Writing is showing AND telling. Showing rather than telling works in most cases but it's subjective and doesn't apply to all movies and games, etc. I do agree that MGS4 is somewhat messy from a writing perspective. If it were a movie it'd get more flak.

What a great series of reviews. Like them all, especially the fact that they' re far from typical "first three games are gold, the rest are bad" . Personally i think that most of fan service has a point and was made to show what happened when you let things outlive their natural lifespan. Returning to Shadow Moses is prime example of this.