Senile, jeriatric espionage

When I think of the best games of all time metal gear solid comes to mind. It is in a class among the likes of zelda and final fantasy. The problem with these games is you always have your personal favourite. Mine has been Zelda- Ocarina of time for around 10 years now. I take this game as a comparison for all other games to see if they can come close to it. So far nothing has. When I picked up MGS 4 I honestly thought it would be rubbish. Its predecessors (MGS 1 - 3) were all fantastic games in their own rights and I guessed they were due for a bad one!....I guessed wrong.
MGS 4 is the best game you can buy today...better than Zelda ( It hurts me to say that). Never have I been so entranced by a game. Here's why:
Story - THe stories for MGS games are always great, well written and sometimes confusing. With this game all lose ends are tied up and on more than one occasion I litteralli had to stand up in shock (not sure why but t seems to help). The story revolves around Solid Snake, who is now aged beyond his years due to a virus known as foxdie. You really need to play the previous installments or read about them to understand. Basically however you are a steath operative seeking to save the world (as you do). The world needs saving from your evil twin brother. He is trying to take control of the world from the patriots. The patriots being similar to the illuminate!
Graphics - WOW! THe best graphics any game has ever produced. Not only are the actual gameplay graphics amazing but the cutscenes are movie quality. In fact one cutscene is around 1 and a half hours, the good thing being that it at no point becomes a bore to watch the cutscenes.
Gameplay - MGs has a unique style of gameplay. It can be hard to work with at first but a quick 10 minute practise and your good to go. In this new game the camera has been drastically improved from previous games making it easier to plan your next move. The AI of the enemy can be set at the start of the game. Even on easy mode however you dont want to make too much noise as they investigate the smallest noise. There are many routes you can use to complete your missions which take place among various ladscapes. This means you get more of a choice of how to play the game. If you want to blast through the enimies taking no prisioners you can. However you may want to complete the game without harming anyone, this is possible to (very hard though).
Lifetime- Thisgame took me 20 hours to complete on the normal difficulty. This is reasonably fast and newcomers may take nearly 30 hours. However the replay value to the game is huge. You will miss so much on you first runthough you will need to do it again. A second runthrough should only take around 5 hours(if you skip all cutscenes)
Music - As with all the games the music is fantastic. It can get the adrenaline going or it can have you on the verge of tears ( i know its a game but it has an emotional quality to it). Even though it has become normal to have a fully orchestrated score no game has done it so well before.
Price- Play.com have it for £30 which is a bargain and a half! If you shelled out the £300 for a PS3 and dont have this game stop reading goon play.com and hit the button that says "buy now"...you cant miss it.
To summarise...this is the greatest game of 2008 and possibly all time. I dont think it does anything as revolutional as mario 64 but all the same it is fantastic.