DONE BY: Kojima Productions

IT’S FOR: PS3

YEAR: 2008

Sometimes I think about killing Hideo Kojima. Usually when I die. I sit there, staring at the continue screen, and I fantasise about killing him. Sometimes I hit him with a club. Sometimes I stab him with a knife. Sometimes I simply grab his neck and squeeze until his head pops like an enormous pimple. And as I visualise the last vestiges of life draining out of his body, I imagine myself saying to him, “This is what you get, you little shit. You haven’t learned a damn thing...”

I imagine these things because Metal Gear Solid 4 is so idiosyncratically Kojima that its flaws – the same flaws as always – feel like insults. The shitty controls? Kojima did that on purpose. The murderous difficulty curve? On purpose. The 40 minute fucking cut-scene that’s more or less a Powerpoint presentation on magic nanomachines? Totally on purpose. Every fuck up is also an implicit fuck you.

Naturally, the reverse is also true: where the game excels, it excels because of Kojima. His personality – his fetish for detail, his penchant for the absurd, his love of gratuitous fan-service – is stamped indelibly over the entire experience, and it is precisely what makes it great. Just the other day, I discovered that by tilting the control-pad, I could make Rosemary’s breasts jiggle while talking to her. Now I do it all the time. She’ll be sitting there, talking about solider psychology or some other SERIOUS and IMPORTANT topic, completely unaware of the two melons struggling for dominance beneath her blouse. That’s Kojima.

It might not be your thing. I sympathise. I understand why some people hate MGS4 so violently. By rights, it should be an incredibly shitty game. Take this (spoiler-heavy) review by Tom Chick at Crispy Gamer – I don’t think there’s a single unjustified criticism in it. The cut-scenes are ridiculous, the story is nonsense, the characters are transparent clichés, and the game mechanics are clumsy and frustrating. All true. And still I love it. Whether I love it despite its flaws, or because of them, I’m not entirely sure. But what I do know is that it’s like the opposite of Communism: terrible in theory, awesome in reality. (I am good at analogies. Can you tell?)

Interesting fact: in Snake’s inventory, there’s an honest-to-goodness first-gen 30Gb iPod. It has a scroll-wheel, a monochrome screen, a logo on the back – the whole deal. And when you listen to it, Snake’s mental-health gauge goes up, and his stress-level drops. Konami has even made special in-game podcasts for it. Detractors call it cynical and mercenary, but I fucking love it. Like Rosemary’s jiggling chest-meats, it’s emblematic of MGS as a whole. Think of it as a litmus test of sorts: if the idea of lying down in the middle of a frantic boss-fight to listen to a bit of bubblegum J-pop sounds appealing to you, then this is probably your kind of game. Otherwise, go play ... I dunno ... whatever it is boring people play. Halo or something? Doesn’t matter: the point is that MGS4 is not for you.

(You boring douche.)

Oh, don’t screw your face up like that. You ARE boring. Just admit it – there’s no reason to be ashamed. If you like steak and potatoes, then you go ahead and have steak and potatoes. I certainly won’t begrudge you your taste. Not when you’re the one who’s missing out.

SUDDEN AND UNCHARACTERISTIC PANG OF JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY: Those of you who have never played a Metal Gear Solid game before are probably wondering exactly what sort of game it is. What do you do? What’s the story? Where’s it set? Who’re the characters? Are the graphics good? What’s the multiplayer like? I haven’t answered any of these questions for a reason – they don’t matter. What matters is whether or not you want to jiggle Rosemary’s tits and listen to a virtual iPod. The rest is details.

FINAL SCORE: 5000 Drebin Points