Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is incredible. It’s subversive, ambitious, epic, absurd, and was once the planned culmination of Hideo Kojima’s vision for the legendary franchise. We now have the hindsight of knowing he would return to the well several more times, but back then it felt like the story of Solid Snake was coming to a definitive end.

The anticipation behind this PS3 exclusive was unimaginable. Each trailer was a technical showcase, designed to highlight specific mechanics and story beats while never giving too much away. The mystery surrounding it was ever-growing, keeping the biggest players obscured until the time was right, and we had the experience in our hands.

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It was painfully self-indulgent, perhaps even more so than the celebrity cameos and piss grenades of Death Stranding. Guns of the Patriots saw Kojima on the top of the world, crafting a masterpiece that abided stringently by his vision even if it meant cutscenes that bordered on the length of a feature film and so much exposition that only the most hardened of fans could really understand what was going on beneath all the melodramatic bravado.

Funnily enough, it was also my first foray into Metal Gear Solid, which made understanding its intentions even more difficult. I knew who Solid Snake was and glanced at a handful of dense wikis as the game was installing, but everything else about it was nonsense. I loved every minute of it, strapping in for a globe-trotting rollercoaster ride as Old Snake, Otacon, Sunny, Naomi, and a few other unexpected heroes team up to take down Liquid Ocelot.

I lacked context for the game’s more grandiose moments, but that only made getting lost in it that much easier. As a kid, I viewed its military technobabble as lofty intelligence, drawn in by an ideological conflict that had something to say even if so much of its inspiration came from classic films and literature. Kojima is the sort of dude who reads the Wikipedia page of a tank and nods to himself before saying, ‘Yes mate, I know all about that now’ and proceeds to throw it into his next game. Guns of the Patriots reeks of that outlook and it’s so bloody brilliant. Everything, no matter how over the top, is considered and placed with purpose.

Old Snake disguises himself in the midst of a middle-eastern warzone, avoiding bipedal cow mechs that, for some reason, are called Geckos while trying to establish a neutral position in a local conflict he ultimately plays no part in. Quieter stealth missions on the rain-drenched streets of a European city where plodding movement and considered observations replace an otherwise frenetic focus on combat. Each new location is an exercise in compelling game design and unrivaled variety, showing that Kojima had so many ideas and refused to stick to any of them. But instead of it all remaining unfocused, this constant shift is precisely what makes the game so special. Octo-Camo was also ahead of its time, a costume that allows Old Snake to adopt the colour scheme of any surface in the game just by leaning against it.

This game rules, and will always be my favourite in the series because of how utterly unconventional it manages to be. Each new hour brings a surprise, while Kojima is never afraid to indulge in overlong plot sequences and absolutely batshit lore because it all serves the story he is trying to tell. We might not understand any of it, but the tapestry is woven with such confidence that we can’t help but feel enraptured by it all. MGS4 was so ahead of its time, not just in its visuals, mechanics, and scope of its world, but in how it considered games to be capable of more. Nowhere is this more true than in the opening.

It doesn’t open with an explosive set piece or a cutscene drenched in proper nouns - those are coming soon, don’t you worry - but the player is instead given the freedom to scroll through a selection of television channels that reflect this game’s reality. We see dystopian advertisements for military companies and surveillance technology, cooking programmes drenched in soviet imagery and a dour perspective on humanity, or meta-textual talk shows focusing on our obsession with celebrity and how we need something to distract ourselves from the miserable state of our own reality. This sequence is slow and deliberate, and you are encouraged to flick through channels instead of viewing an advert or programme in its entirety because there is no right answer here. Kojima has created a universe that reflects our own and wants us to bask in it, eating up the obvious satire and playful jabes that aim to predict a future that, at least in part, has already come to fruition. Its creative genius at work.

Of course, this is also an experience with sexualised female characters and loads of juvenile fart jokes, so don’t expect Hideo Kojima to ever grow up, I guess. Don’t even get me started on the Beauty and the Beast Corp, a selection of beautifully designed boss fights whose true identities are actually abused women who have been through so much that their only possible recourse is perpetuating more bloodshed. It ain’t subtle, it ain’t clever, but I’ll be damned, it sure does work within the confines of this eccentric blockbuster that is never afraid to get both silly and serious when it matters. Peace Walker and The Phantom Pain weren’t interested in building upon what it achieved. Sure, they improved the shooting and stealth mechanics, but the sheer oddity of its storytelling and vision of the future was left untouched, like Guns of the Patriots was lightning in a bottle, never to be captured again.

To this day, it remains trapped on the PS3. It is one of the best looking and most technically accomplished games of its generation, which makes the abandonment of its legacy a bitter pill to swallow in 2022. Metal Gear Solid 2, 3, and Peace Walker are available on additional platforms nowadays, but the original and 4 are stuck in a strange limbo where older hardware or emulation is required to play them at all.

It’s a clear refusal from Konami to preserve some of its greatest achievements, and given its tattered relationship with Kojima, I worry the company is too wrapped up in its own dignity to ever let it see the light of day again. I would kill for a remaster, or even just a simple port, or something that means I don’t have to dig up a console that inevitably is going to bite the dust one day, bringing all of its iconic exclusives along with it unless I’m willing to jump through the illegal hoops of emulation. It deserves better, as do we, and so does this entire medium.

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Jade King is Lead Features Editor for TheGamer. Previously Gaming Editor over at Trusted Reviews, she can be found talking about games, anime and retweeting Catradora fanart @KonaYMA6.