Snake? Snake! Nooooooooo…

Thanks for tuning in to the fourth issue of PTD Magazine. We’re pumped to produce our first themed issue about summer movies! I hope you enjoy reading as we pan film tie-in videogames left and right. Well, that was the anticipated plan, at least.

Even though summer time in the States is synonymous with summer movies and bad videogame licenses, there are a few non-film-related titles that we thought were important enough to merit making space in this issue. Among them is Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, a title that millions of Snake fans have been waiting for since they first graced our imagination with the early footage oh-so-many E3’s ago.

Guns of the Patriots brings me to the point of this month’s editorial, which really is a continuation of thoughts from July’s editorial. Last month, Will pontificated on the importance of a good storyline trumping superior graphics. While I was playing through the beginning of MSG4 (I haven’t finished it, and you’ll see why shortly) the argument came back to me very clearly once again. Here I was, playing through what was supposed to be the defining title of the Metal Gear series, and I couldn’t decide if I was really enjoying it.

About a day after coming to that non-conclusion, I popped MSG4 from the tray and moved on to other, less hyped summer titles like The Incredible Hulk (a great game). Since then, I have not come back to finish MSG4, and the reason is simple enough: I just didn’t enjoy 4 as much as I enjoyed the first 3 titles in the series. All the elements were there, but in my opinion the dev team fooled with the core of what made the MGS series fun. Somehow they messed up the sneaking bit — the part that I often profess my love for in public forum — by layering on extra junk that, in my opinion, took away from what the heart of the game used to be.

When PK heard my rants and rambles about my lackluster experience and saw that I was originally lined up to write the MGS4 review, he suggested I take a break and let him have at it this month. A smart move on his part since he loved playing the game and loved writing about it as well. As the ‘critics’ have uniformly given rave reviews to it, I can’t call PK out of line, but I used to consider myself Snake’s #1 fan and I just couldn’t get into this one. PK did make a mistake this time though… he forgot that I was writing the editorial this month. So I get to say right here that his opinion and mine, in this case, just don’t agree.

Maybe I am burned out, but I believe that I’m usually fair with the code that comes across our desk. I would like to hear from you, however, and get your take on Guns of the Patriots. Am I crazy, or are the tastes of other video game consumers out there becoming more sophisticated? I’m probably crazy.

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