Being one of the most if not THE most anticipated game of 2008, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots has unsurprisingly made headlines, ranging from the usual, boring, and boastful figures on how much money it has made so far to the rather bizarre such as…just read on. The newest Metal Gear, or MGS4, brings us back to the world of Solid Snake, a covert operative that is part of a super secret kick-ass organization called Fox Hound. Their job? To save the world of course! Seriously though, MGS4, as with all the other Metal Gear Solid Games, steers away from the conventional and highly redundant plot of good versus evil. Game Director and Creator Hideo Kojima has added non-conventional story telling, resembling Hollywood movies with intricate plots, to give gamers a startlingly unique and satisfyingly original gaming experience. Despite Kojima’s apparent vanity, his name is always written all over the games he made (and we mean ALL OVER), he’s somewhat always forgiven and given his leeway for providing us a really good game.
During it’s lengthy production, MGS4 stirred quite a controversy a few weeks before its June 12th release. Reportedly, in a blog from gamespot.com, game reviewers were invited by Konami (the game’s publisher) to attend a “Metal Gear Boot Camp,” where videogame journalists stayed at a secret location where they were held at gunpoint to do nothing but play and review MGS4 and say how wonderful it was. Kidding aside, this sort of invitational previewing raised some questions about Konami’s sly tactics to secure prestigious marks about the game. (Yes, the so called “Boot Camp” was slightly true, but no secret location or guns).
When it was finally released, another wave of questionable reportage concerning the final product followed. People, other journalists as well, started wondering why the reviews for the game were so varied. Unsatisfied by initial arguments such as “reviews are based on opinions,” articles around the internet started to surface, saying that some reviewers who gave the game a perfect score–or close to perfect– were most likely influenced by two main points. One, they were Playstation 3 fanboys. And two, they have a thing for Hideo Kojima. As for the ones who gave the game a surprisingly low score, they were thought of as being Xbox fans boys, and anti-Kojima extremists. If only they could’ve stuck to the first argument to make things simpler. Reviews will be reviews will be..reviews. If they think that reviewers got it all wrong, then they should just make a review of their own.
Presently, MGS4 has sold over 476,334 copies in the land of the rising sun. This figure includes “copies spread across the various editions, including those bundled with hardware,” as stated by Kotaku.com Also, the release of this long awaited game seemed to have raised Playstation 3 Hardware sales by a considerable amount, 77,208 for the week–to be exact.
If all that news isn’t enough for all you Metal Gear heads, it appears that Hideo Kojima has caused such a stir over his games that he was rightfully included in a Korean aptitude test for English. A text, dated from 2002, traces the Game Director’s life, from his childhood years up to his creation of Metal Gear Solid 2. Did you guys know that he wrote FIVE 600 page science fiction novels when he was just in middle school? Or what about the time when he was a wee pup and loved to play a hide and seek rendition called thief-and-detective?
For those of you who played past MGS games, you’re most likely aware of those in-game jokes such as “trapping” an enemy troop with a nudie magazine. In MGS4, the game goes product placing with one of the most widely recognized men’s magazine ever, Playboy. Now players can look to playmates for help in getting past those annoying guards.
hollywood opportunities new hot stuff make the news
