Though the release date for Meta Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is a week away, reviews are already starting to trickle in. The question is how reliable are these reviews, I will guide you through these reviews.
There have already been reports that Konami had given restrictions to some reviewers about the technical part of the game. According to Electronic Gaming Monthly, IGN UK, and Eurogamer, they have all confirmed that there were restrictions while others such as GameInformer and Playstation: The Official Magazine so they weren’t told anything. So apparently Konami knows about issues with the game, but doesn’t want the focus of the reviews to be on the problems right before the release date. At post time,Konami hasn’t responded to our emails.
We used Metacritics for this report, the interesting thing is there is a huge discrepancy of scores, out of eight reviews that were posted at the time of this writing, six of them had a score of 95 or higher. The bottom two both were in agreement and gave the score an 80.
Obviously the marketing hasn’t quite started, so it will be interesting to see where they land, but I would have to admit that I would be suprised to see if they market the game on either of the sites that scored the game an 80.
Another interesting fact is one quarter of the reviews are from the Playstation Official Magazine UK and Playstation: The Official Magazine (US). Official Magazine of Playstation?? Yea thats going to be ubiased. Future plcm, the publisher of the two magazines has to have a license to be able to publish under that title, so how how long would you last if your going to trash some of the games that is suppose to be the pride and joy of the company you have a license from.
A quote from the review of Game Masters UK is this: "Despite its flaws it’s a largely successful of marriage and plot and play, a towering achievement and one of the finest action games ever made." Unfortunately I havent seen the full review yet, but to have that quoted from the review, I find it suspect that the score is a very high 97.
I quote Eurogamer’s review "Guns of the Patriots is a frustrating, fractured game that turns Metal Gear Solid’s world upside down several times over, but never changes it. It just burrows deeper into what fans love and detractors hate than ever before, and it will make few converts." So my reading over the whole review is, that the move to PS 3 graphically was successful, but it seems that MGS 4 may not bring it like it has in the past.
Next-Gen seems to have alot of the similar sentiments as Eurogamer, stating "MGS4 is not the game it could have been; nor is it the game it would have been had the series grown with the benefit of hindsight; nor is it the game it should have been if you believed that early trailer. But it is faithful to its fans, its premise and its heart, delivering an experience that is, in so many ways, without equal." So for the MG faithful, it maybe what they need to quench the yearning, but maybe it won’t drawn any new fans
I always wish good will towards all video game publishers, whether they are the largest companies to the one man gig, but I have a huge issue if there is pressure from a publisher to pump up the score, and the sites who allow it to happen, due to possibly not getting a marketing contract. Until we stop this practice, it is going to be okay that games are churned out unfinished or with errors. This is a call to all gaming sites, journalists, reviewers, etc., stand up for what is right and not for money. The more we stand the less games that have issues are going to be passed off on the general public.
