Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008) - The Hero's Journey to R/Childfree

I know video essayists have been running a long term public brainwashing campaign with works such as "Metal Gear Solid 4 Is The Most Brilliant Middle Finger In The History Of Gaming," but we are impervious. As the series shows, people with pure hearts and strong minds can resist any and all psychic programming. Make no mistake: this is easily the worst mainline entry in the series. Depressingly, it marks the first (and perhaps only) time an entry in the "Solid" series fell victim to the worst design practices of its era rather than setting a new creative standard. 

Drebin breaks primate law by keeping a monkey as a pet, and it's not even the worst thing about his character. Dr Naomi Hunter drags the plot down so much that it actually calls Frank Jaeger/Grey Fox's legacy into question. I'm not saying he should have just sliced her head off back in Mozambique, but he'd definitely feel ashamed about how her amazing plan to save the world involved having sex with a Romanian man whose job can best be described as Woman Murderer. Weapons that correspond with player progression are gone, replaced by the repulsive Drebin and his disgusting store. Perhaps worst of all is the Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer maps that make up all but two of the game's five levels (one of those two is just Shadow Moses).

This game has so many problems, none of which are aided by the PlayStation 3's bizarre technological shortcomings, or the fact that an exhausted Kojima only took the lead on this thing because NeoGAF moderators threatened to come to Japan "to teach English" if he did not. But through it all, Guns of the Patriots somehow manages to give Solid Snake the send off he so richly deserved. At the end of the day, this is not a very good Metal Gear game. But that does not make it bad, or even mediocre. And you know what? it's still better than any Splinter Cell released after 2006.

Take your nanomachine shot, get yourself a repulsive egg dish prepared by an orphan who lives on an airplane, and remember not to have heroes, because they'll only get microwaved. We're going to see how much war has changed since high school, and maybe, if war has heard of our highly niche but highly acclaimed comedy politics podcast that takes a kaleidoscope view of the news.

Art by Josh Lynch. Theme song by Brendan James, inspired by the work of Tappi Iwase, Kazuki Muraoka and Norihiko Hibino.