Background
Gamers who have experienced the Metal Gear series of games will know that there is no way to anticipate what challenges they will face in the games of the series.
They have always been based around a simple concept of Hide and Seek, avoiding guards and security systems to reach your objective. Adding to that there have always been challenging boss fights that sometimes reached out to you outside of the limiting box of the TV.
It has always had great cinematic aspirations and a ridiculous and over the top storyline that you cannot help but love. It is over the top because it is a videogame and it knows that it is.
Experience
When people describe MGS IV they may not be able to just call it a game and they may say that it's an experience. Because of the abundance of cinematic scenes with no player input it is hard to draw the line and say that they are games.
But they are. They are games because they speak to you the gamer through the characters. You are part of the story that is played out. Movies almost never single one person out in the audience but games can since you are holding the controller. You are the one lured to play along guided by the hidden agendas of the Patriots.
MGS IV does this more effectively than the other games in the series because it wants to finish telling the story to you. It wants to answer everything you've been asking and it wants to wow you when it does.
It's all about loving you. You who have loved it.
Detail
Since MGS IV is filled with surprising and over the top sequences that you would never expect it is hard to talk about the game without spoiling it.
Some of these sequences are what will split the audience and what will cause people to be negative about it. I think there is no reason to. Some people will think that it is moving too far away from the core concept of MGS, but then MGS has moved from the core with every game but also improved on the core.
The game wants to go out with a scream, not to stay as a simple sequel that plays exactly like the other games in the series. It doesn't want to be a lazy sequel.
But even so, the reason MGS is excellent is because of the core game being fun and rewarding and IV is the game that has perfected and honed the core game to excellence. It no longer has a cramped camera view, it no longer tries to force you to never to use weapons and it now leaves that up to you to a ridiculous amount. It literally has dozens of weapons and plenty of them can be modified and it is up to you to chose to use these weapons to kill your opponents or to use the old boring tranquilizer gun. It is also suddenly more dynamic, things change as some of the stealth scenarios now play out in the middle of a battlefield. And while it is still a linear game it now allows for more choice and exploration. And the exploration is rewarded with small events and hidden secrets.
These events and secrets are what makes the game memorable. In other games the designers only create events that they now all players will see every time they play the game. Which is a ridiculous way to design games making the player only want to play the game once.
Knowing that players will play the game several times MGS IV takes it up a notch from the other games, rewarding exploration even more. Rewarding multiple playthroughs by giving you almost all the equipment you had when you finished the game. Even special equipment that you received from boss-fights. Some parts of the game aren't really that catered for multiple playthroughs as they are very 'on-rails' and some are too emotive and tied to the story.
But it's all about having fun and being connected to Snake.
Fade
The story of David will never fade and you will remember his sacrifice.
