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Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots review
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What is it A re-release of Solid Snake's legendary final mission.Release date August 27, 2026Expect to pay $50/£40Publisher KonamiDeveloper Kojima Productions, KonamiReviewed on RTX 5090, Ryzen 7 9800X3D 4.7 GHz, 64GB RAM & Steam DeckMultiplayer NoneSteam Deck VerifiedLink Official site
It's no longer about avoidance, visibility, or tension. It's an endless series of "stealth action" games trivializing the uncertainty of sneaking and pushing players into open conflict. The age of camouflage has become the age of tall grass: stealth is no longer treated as a genre worthy of big budgets, but an optional feature of conventional action games. [Takes a long drag from a cigarette] Stealth has changed. And when the player's visibility is under total control… espionage becomes routine.
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was at the vanguard of the stealth action shift in 2008—but playing it today, the particular way it mixes mercurial stealth and heavy weaponry is anything but routine. Snake is outfitted with a tranq pistol, non-lethal CQC training, and the latest OctoCamo sneaking suit, an ingenious invention of espionage that automatically camouflages the user to their surroundings. In his other pocket are enough guns to arm a strike force—SMGs, shotguns, ARs, RPGs, a rail gun—customizable with Create-a-Class attachments.
OId Snake skulks through active battlefields, bewildered by the growing mundanity of war, as Kojima grapples with the undeniable appeal of getting in the shit. This is a stealth game that doesn't mind if you try to play it like Call of Duty, but going loud comes at the cost of stressing Snake the fuck out.
This Master Collection port, solid alone or alongside Peace Walker, is a genuinely thrilling object: proof that MGS4 wasn't a mass hallucination we all had in 2008, but a uniquely strange meditation on existential anxiety—of warmongering doomerism, automation, desensitized violence, and back pain—trapped for 18 years on a PlayStation 3. Konami has done good work here, though at times the bare minimum: you can now play MGS4 at 4K (yay!), but at a locked 60 fps (less yay).
Still, that's a lot better than the extremely unreliable 30 fps it once struggled to maintain, and the Master Collection launcher is less cumbersome now than when Volume 1 arrived on PC in 2023. Guns of the Patriots has gone so ignored for so long that it's hard to split hairs here—this is the new best way to play one of my favorites.
Man does it feel great to see Guns of the Patriots cleaned up. It's a special one for me: MGS4 landed just as I reached the age to enjoy games on a deeper level. It was also my first Metal Gear, which is a little hilarious in hindsight, given how obsessed the story is with its own past.
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In 2026 I'm seriously charmed by the 2008-ness of this world: from the fully functional iPod (still intact here, but lacking Konami's official Metal Gear hype podcasts) to Kojima's infatuation with the XM8 and P90 (objectively the coolest guns ever made). Hindsight hasn't done wonders for its meandering plot and sometimes dull cutscenes, but Kojima's vision for a world consumed by greed and accelerated by decision-making AIs is uncomfortably spot-on. More than anything else though, MGS4's long exile has given me a new appreciation for its extremely balanced stealth.