The worlds first official reviews for MGS4 are coming in. Here is what they have to say about this epic title:

Gamepro Magazine-

5/5 'Every once in a long while, a game will come along and change all the rules. Final Fantasy VII transformed the RPG genre, Resident Evil helped create a new sub-category of gaming--survival horror--and Grand Theft Auto III single-handedly reshaped the gaming landscape. And now comes Metal Gear Solid 4, a game whose potential influence on the current state of gaming is nothing short of tectonic. This game is videogame storytelling at its absolute best and represents a new watermark for the craft, easily surpassing the superb Bioshock and the subversive Grand Theft Auto IV. It sets new standards for graphics, sound, gameplay, and storytelling and it may be years before it is equalled, let alone surpassed. You will not play a better game this year, maybe even this decade. MGS4 is without a doubt, one of the greatest games of all time.'

Official PlayStation Magazine UK- 10/10 'Guns of the Patriots is almost intimidating in the consistent quality of its ideas, invention, and execution...Even by the series' stratospheric standards, MGS4 is a remarkable high point.'

Official PlayStation Magazine US- 10/10
PSM Italy- 10/10 'The end to an epic saga.'
Official Playstation Magazine Dutch- 9.6/10 'An emotional, intense and worthy closure to one of gamings greatest series.'
Joypad France- 19/20
JeuxVideo- 18/20
Chief Magazine Belgium- 9.7/10
Hobby Consolas Spain- 9.6/10 (Same as GTA IV)

LEVEL Sweden- 10/10 'Metal Gear Solid 4 is Hideo Kojimas best and most touching game ever. After 3 hours of playing, which was still a long way from finishing the game, but what I had played till that point already convinced me: Metal Gear Solid 4 is the best action game I have ever played, and can be considered an instant classic. There is no game at all that comes close to its quality. It's so far ahead of its competition that its competitors seem downright pathetic.'

Current Metacritic review average: 98/100

IGN - IGN Are Prob The Most Awaited Reviewers Of This And Other Games, Its The Ultimite Gaming Site

So
IGNS SCORES FOR MGS 4

Presentation 10/10
From the opening videos to the end credits, the attention to detail throughout Guns of the Patriots is astonishing, setting new standards for production values in games.

Graphics 10/10
The visuals in MGS 4 are as cutting-edge as you can rightfully expect from the latest videogame blockbuster, boasting as much style as technical expertise.

Sound 10/10
The surround sound effects are stunning, having actual in-game effects, from using birdsong to detect enemies to choosing your own tunes.

Gameplay 10/10
Guns of the Patriots is the definitive MGS, taking stealth mechanics to new heights and throwing in so much more that you just have to discover it for yourself.

Lasting Appeal 9.5
Aside from the fact that the cut-scenes bear repeated viewing, you’ll want to play through MGS 4 again and again, simply to unlock ever more exotic weapons, items and player rankings.

OVERALL
9.9/10 Incredible

Metal Gear is the name for a series of fictional mecha in the Metal Gear series of video games. While each game has a new Metal Gear with a different role, they are typically autonomous nuclear launch platforms which the player must destroy in order to save the world and complete the game. Often (but not always), confronting the latest model of Metal Gear is one of the final challenges of each game.

Metal Gear TX-55
A technical diagram of the original Metal Gear; from the Japanese manual of the MSX version of Metal Gear.
A technical diagram of the original Metal Gear; from the Japanese manual of the MSX version of Metal Gear.

The original Metal Gear (featured in the eponymous first installment), sometimes referred by its full codename Metal Gear TX-55 (or alternatively, TX-55 Metal Gear), is designed at Outer Heaven by the Eastern scientist Dr. Drago Pettrovich Madnar. Dr. Madnar is coerced into developing Metal Gear, after his daughter is held hostage for blackmail. Metal Gear's weakspot is its feet, which could only be destroyed by placing plastic explosives over them in a determined order. This Metal Gear is destroyed before completion; the final challenge in Metal Gear is instead a battle with Big Boss and a race against time to escape the self-destructing base.

The Metal Gear mecha does not appear in the NES version of the game. Instead, the player has to take out a Super Computer which controls Metal Gear prior to the final battle with Big Boss. In Snake's Revenge, the non-canonical sequel to Metal Gear, mass-produced versions of the original Metal Gear appear, alongside Metal Gear 2, its successor. The wreckage of the original Metal Gear itself also appears in Stage 11 of Metal Gear: Ghost Babel.

Metal Gear D
A technical diagram of Metal Gear D, from the manual of the MSX version of Metal Gear 2.
A technical diagram of Metal Gear D, from the manual of the MSX version of Metal Gear 2.

The Revised Metal Gear D appears in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. This version of Metal Gear is designed in Zanzibar Land again by Dr. Madnar, although this time willingly. This Metal Gear, armed with a vulcan gun (a light machine gun) and a six-missile pod, is piloted by Gray Fox as he raids nuclear disposal sites for Zanzibar Land. Despite its formidable armament, its legs are lightly armored; the player, as Solid Snake, must attack this weak point with grenades in a confrontation near the end of Metal Gear 2.

Smaller, non-nuclear-armed Metal Gears, referred to alternately as Metal Gear G or Metal Gear Gustav, were designed for Metal Gear 2, but were cut from the game due to time constraints. [1] They are mentioned in the game by Dr. Madnar as being under development, but not yet deployed.

The original blueprints for Metal Gear D are visible on Granin's desk in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater along with the REX blueprints.

Metal Gear REX
Metal Gear Rex design drawings; by Yoji Shinkawa, from The Art of Metal Gear Solid. Shinkawa said that much of REX's design was based around technical limitations of the PlayStation system; hence the large, flat panels which make up its structure .
Metal Gear Rex design drawings; by Yoji Shinkawa, from The Art of Metal Gear Solid. Shinkawa said that much of REX's design was based around technical limitations of the PlayStation system; hence the large, flat panels which make up its structure [2].

Metal Gear REX, designed by Dr. Hal Emmerich, is the model of Metal Gear that appears in Metal Gear Solid. It is characterized by a railgun that, as is revealed in the game, can deliver undetectable nuclear warheads to anywhere in the world. In addition to its railgun, REX differs from the preceding Metal Gear D in that its legs are heavily armored and reinforced, not vulnerable like its predecessors'.

The Metal Gear REX has near-impenetrable compound armor, a pair of vulcan cannons, anti-tank missiles, and a free-electron laser, to protect itself from conventional forces. Its prim

[part 1]
[The story]
I first met him in the Middle East...
In a town - once prosperous - now ravaged by conflict.
...a feckless power play between militiamen and PMCs.
War has become a commodity - a packaged good.
Battlefields are open markets, trading in blood.
Only one man stepped into that war zone for his own reasons.
An old dog of war...
Solid Snake.
Once hailed as a hero who'd saved the world...
Now damned as the vilain who would lead it to ruin.
Exhausted from a life spent waging war, the old man picks up his gun...
Fighting to purge the world of his cursed bloodline and alone for his sins.
Let me tell you about this old Snake - about the shadows of his past...

[part2]
[info]
20th Metal Gear Anniversary...

[part3]
[BIG BOSS (NAKED SNAKE) the birth of snake
A certain document first brought Solid Snake to my altenton.
It described a truly remarkable soldier...
Big Boss.
Military men and mercenaries alike dubbed him 'the greatest soldier who ever lived'
They all knew of him, but few had met him in person.
Many doubted his existence.
Most legends have their roots in myth, but Big Boss was the real deal - a true living legend.
An olfficial military dossier verifies his existance...
In the 1960s, he helped invent 'Close Quarters Combat' - CQC.
Then, ordered to covertly mend the growing rift between two global superpowers folowing the Cuban Missile Crisis....
He sipped into the Soviet Union on a solo sneaking mission.
The docunment claims that Big Boss prevented World War Three....
That he was a true patriot.
This document detailed the entire affair.
At last, the military had revealed Big Boss's virtue to the world.
The man i seek is his successor....
The man i seek is Solid Snake.
To maximize on its most valuable asset.
the U.S. military began experimenting with cloning in the 1970s.
Dubbed 'Les Enfants Terribles'....
This project created a man nearly identical to Big Boss in physque, prowess, and potential.
That man was Solid Snake.
Born from the Pandora's box of human cloning, he was a second Big Boss.
Original and facsimile....
Big Boss and Solid Snake....
first met on the battlefield.
In the early 1990s, Big Boss devised a plan to controal all the world's wars.
Thus, a mercenary dispatch company, Outer Heaven, was born.
It was there that Big Boss began developing a new secret weapon...
Metal Gear.
A bipedal tank that could launch a nuclear attack from anywhere on earth.
The very esistence of Outer Heaven threatened to upset the fragile balance of nuclear deterrence.
The world's military powers responded.....
And shortly thereafter, sent a single man to infiltrate Outer Heaven and bring Big Boss down.
That soldier - a rookie member of FOXHOUND - was Solid Snake.
Defeated by Solid Snake, Big Boss fled to Zanzibarland to resume development of Metal Gear.
Solid Snake returned to infiltrate Zanzibarland, kill Big Boss, and dismantle Metal Gear.
And thats's just what he did.
Snake completed his mission without ever knowing Big Boss was his father - his genetic blueprint.
No one told him he was Big Boss's clone.
The Outer Heaven uprising...
The Zanzibarland Riot....
That's how history records these events.
But history doesn't know that they were two chapters in a tragic of patricde.

[part4]
[LIQUID SNAKE] the second snake
After eliminating Big Boss, Solid Snake was relieved of duty, retiring to Alaska.
Where he planed to live out his years in peace and solitude.
But fate had other plans.....
A second clone of Big Boss appeared..... Liquid Snake.
Allow me to shed some light on the so-called Shadow Moses incident....
The crisis that make Solid Snake a hero to the world.
It all began with an unprecedented crisis: the hijacking of a nuclear weapon.
In 2005, the special forces unit sationed in Alaska on the remote Shadow Moses island staged a revolt.
Their ringleaders were Liquid Snake and the new members of FOXHOUND.
Taking hostages and securing the isl