Been following the by-now epic Metal Gear saga from the beginning? Once you recover from the realization that we're talking twenty years (man, ur old), get ready for another whallop to the head: Even with its dings and inherently silly aspects, Solid Snake's swan-song, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, is arguably the most technically impressive videogame ever made -- and certainly one of the best PlayStation3 titles currently available. As long as you're happy sitting back and watching lots and lots of cinematics.

Unlike so many video game protagonists, Solid Snake has actually aged, and quite visibly. In fact, the failing state of his mortal coil is one of the central notions of the game -- as is, thankfully, getting back to the basic fun of skulking amidst the bad guys one minute and working them over the next. Long-time fans needn't worry too much about changes to MGS's core hokum charm, however; the story is still goofily philosophical and overblown enough to fit the time-honored Metal Gear bill.

Set a mere six years in the future (where nanotech is firmly in place), the game plops players right into the middle of a raging conflict between private military corporation troops and a local rebellion. Pitting one side against the other for your own gain is as crucial as it is entertaining; cranking off a few well-placed rounds and watching the other suckers start wailing on each other starts off easy enough, and helps you get around without attracting unwanted attention -- but sparking these conflicts directly affects the price of available weapons and ammo. You'll want to resist the temptation -- and it's there -- to make haste to the next checkpoint as more and more hell breaks loose around you; an accelerated conflict makes for increased weapons costs. Or don't you watch the news?

The basic gameplay remains largely unchanged, but it is slightly improved. If you've done your Metal Gear tour of duty before, you'll feel right at home -- except that now, a maid's gone through the home in question, and made it more fluid and natural to run, walk, sneak and crawl through the place. Combat with guns can take place from either a removed or first-person perspective -- both equally useful depending on which weapon you're using in which circumstance. A subtle new addition to the radar scheme lets you keep your eyes more continuously on the central action rather than a distracting corner of the screen as previous Snake games were wont to do.

Getting online with the "starter pack" isn't as slick and painless an experience as the single-player game, but 16 players can at least go at it on 5 maps in conventional game types. It should be enough to hold most gamers over until Konami kicks down with more downloadable content later this year; this tease of online enablement is a strange choice and it feels tacked on... because it is tacked-on.

Meanwhile, anyway, you've still got a game that's frankly stunning -- in its sheer technical brilliance, good looks, lengthy but awesome cinematics and (finally!) some halfway-coherent ANSWERS to too many long-time plot holes, dangling character back stories and general dramatic mysteries. If you're a game designer like Kojima-san who's made up his mind to call the final curtain on an epically long-running game series, this is the way to do it: With a bang.