Granted, watching near-superhuman heroes and villains gloriously beat, slash, stab and shoot the living crap out of each other for 15 or 20 minutes while surrounded by exploding vehicles, decapitated biogenetic war machines, and psychotic soldiers is always entertaining. However, that willingness to be drawn through lengthy action-rich cut scenes quickly fades once characters begin repeatedly engaging in bouts of mind-numbingly preposterous exposition revolving around the horrors of war, political influences, world domination, nanotechnology, A.I. mind-control systems and the morality of genetics... that can last for upwards of 45 minutes at a time.

While many critics and gamers are applauding director for his supposedly masterful skills as a storyteller, Guns of the Patriots finds his wet-dream influence manifesting itself more in the guise of a hugely successful and self-absorbed novelist lauding themselves above the vital input of an editor. Whichever way you cut it after trying to pick the narrative thread from hours and hours of utterly confusing back story, should not have allowed Kojima to relay the core story through dour face-to-face conversations and Codec communications, while papering over their pointlessness with the addition of token camera controls and button-prompted flashbacks.

Yet, and here comes the rub, if Konami had reined in Kojima's indulgences and forced a more defined focus on gameplay immediacy, Guns of the Patriots would be a veritable laughing stock in the gaming community. And why? Because, without its reliance on almost never-ending cut scenes, 4 would merely be the promise of a great game, a skeletal outline of a studio's ongoing towards a defining moment in videogame evolution. Indeed, without the nonsensical padding - that only serves to feed the desires of dedicated series fans while offering no such handle of association for first timers - Guns of the Patriots would be a woefully short gaming experience not worth the wait, not worth the hype, and certainly not worth the money.

Videogames cost considerably more than DVDs or and, despite the insistence of those fans calling Kojima's creation an interactive work of art, gamers pay far above the odds to play, not watch what's channelled through their expensive silver discs.

When a game's quotient of cut scenes begins to outweigh its actual gameplay content, and (albeit stunning) in-game feels like half-baked filler designed to move the player from one dreary spell of exposition to the next, it's time to seriously question exactly what it is we're looking for from the publishers and developers we pump so much cash into.

Do we want to pay serious money to abandon the game controller in favour of watching a pseudo-interactive animated slice of anime that falls well short of modern animation standards and all-but deprives us of integral influence? Or do we want to lose ourselves in a videogame world of creative escapism where our interactions and decisions actually allow us the illusion of driving scripted narrative? This reviewer opts for the latter.

Beyond the annoyance of its overly long cut scenes, Guns of the Patriots also suffers from some surprisingly linear level design that only opens up to encourage a sense of exploration in the latter half of the game. Challenge is also fractured somewhat by such easy access to devastating weaponry, which can get the player out of any scrape without incurring any crippling gameplay penalties for suddenly raising alarms or blowing away guards. A.I. is also occasionally patchy, with enemy grunts guilty of standing static in clear line of sight and allowing the player to riddle them with lead rather than seeking cover. And, adding to the disappoint are the game's boss encounters, which are oddly predictable attack and defend exchanges that see bosses all-too quickly expose the player to their specific weaknesses.

While Guns of the Patriots boasts lashings of in-game invention and creativity that's largely wrapped up in superb style and execution, it's all so unforgivably tainted by jaw-dropping gameplay brevity that it's truly difficult to raise the many, many good points above what is, for the most part, a succession of cut scenes that leave the player with an overwhelming sense of disconnection from one of gaming's most compelling characters and interactive franchises. It's a sad way to bid farewell to Solid Snake, he - and we - deserved much more.

Also published on M&C

80%

By Stevie Mostyn