Longer version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vgvziMf_3Q
Plot in a sentence: Legendary super soldier, Solid Snake attempts to thwart Liquid's plan to take over the world.
Characters
Solid Snake is a genetically modified super soldier. "Snake", the second biggest badass in gamming history, except for the advanced aging do to tampering with his genetic code. He also seems to have fits of spastic coughing. He is the main protagonist of the Metal Gear Solid series.

Dr. Hal Emmerich AKA Otakon has the job of explaining the way the world works to the player.

Drebin 893 Introduced as nether enemy or friend, Drebin is a gun launderer. Since the patriots put nanomachines in every gun on the planet only people with the proper weapon ID can use weapons. The Drebin network comes in handy throughout the game, for every time you kill an enemy you can pick up their weapon. If you don't already have that weapon unlocked, Drebin will "Clean" it, but if you already do have the weapon it will automatically be sold to him for points you can use to buy more weapons or ammo.

Jack AKA Raiden He takes the role of the cyborg ninja. When he does show up Raiden has a spectacular battle with his longtime rival Vamp, but gets his ass kicked so he has to go get fixed up

Naomi Hunter: She designs the computer virus that takes down the patriots AI that control the world. She's the one that frees humanity from the patriots; best as I can figure, Otakon and Snakes plan was no further than to stop Ocelot from taking over the system.

Rat Patrol 01
Meryl: is never in a position to help you in your ultimate goal, but she and her team often clash with the frog troopers. She gives some insight on what it is like with the system in place.

Ed is the team sniper. He does not say much during the game, other than bitching that you're in his way.

Jonathan is the team's heavy weapons specialist.

Jonny AKA “Akiba” is the only other Rat Patrol team member that gets any character development. Apparently Akiba is dork in Japanese, and he does all he can to live up to his nickname. He is the tech support member of the team. Akiba admits he joined the team to pursue a romantic relationship with Meryl.

Liquid Ocelot: Ocelot he was one of the founding members of the patriots, but he despises the way the patriots shaped up. His first goal was to eradicate the SOP, but he finds out that eliminating the system outright would be devastating to his own troops. So he decided to take over the system.

Frogs: Ocelot’s personal army of female super soldiers, They’re jumping around introduces a fascinating third dimension of combat.

B&B Corps The Beauty and the Beast Corps named after the various members of the foxhound enemies from the first metal gear solid. Each of their fights is in two parts. First, you have to defeat their “beast” form, which one is unique into each one, and then you have to defeat their “beauty” form. Each of the beauty fights are the same though, they come out of their mechanical. You may dispatch the beauty in whatever way you like, but if you take them out with non-lethal means, you get to wear their faces (creepy). It is somewhat annoying, as they will dodge almost every time you pull the trigger. You can’t let them grab you or they’ll try to hug you to death.

Laughing Octopus uses the same camouflage system that you do to turn invisible. After the fight you pick up the face camo so you can change what Snakes face looks like it also gives you a bonus to your camouflage when you aren‘t wearing some body else’s face.
Raging Raven fights alongside a squadron of giant birdlike drones that also attack you with rockets that knock you down, so you spend a lot of the fight tossed around by explosions. When you take her down, you get her grenade launcher.

Crying Wolf: A sniper on sniper duel during a blizzard while frogs patrol the area. The prize for defeating her is a rail gun. It is so powerful it can take out a Gecko out with one hit.

Screaming Mantis: Mantis uses “Psychic Powers” to control you, Meryl, and all of the frog troopers that you thought you killed. After the fight you get one of her dolls that control peoples nanomachines.

Patriots: Originally, they set out to unite the world, but something went awry. The artificial intelligence put in place by the more and more paranoid founder of the patriots, by either fault or design, focused on only one aspect of human nature: war. They developed the nanomachines to enact their control over every aspect of people’s lives, even down to the very emotions of the individual soldier. So when Ocelot turns off the system, everybody under the control of the system has a complete emotional breakdown.

Pros: The best part of this game is how conclusively it ends its complex storyline, if you played the entire series it is quite enjoyable to see everything come to fruition. On easier levels, there are multiple ways to play this game. Of course if you play on the hardest setting you have to be all sneaky like the game is designed for but if you want to tone it down a bit and just Rambo through it you may. Staying true to all of the metal gear games I’ve played so far, the most unique thing about this series is the fact that, even though you have lots of guns to choose from, the point of the game is to avoid violence. They even stop and give you lectures about how the kids these days play such violent games.

Cons: Ironically, the worst thing about this game is the complex story line. So if you didn’t play or remember the last four games, many things will feel like they aren’t properly explained. The most annoying thing I ran across was every time that Snake dies, or someone dies that was supposed to survive the mission Otakon yells in your ear. It can get quite annoying when playing on the harder difficulties. And after you die you get full health and psyche back, but all of your weapon settings were back but all of your weapon and camouflage settings go back to what you had them at when you pass through the checkpoint. At the end of every cut scene they will switch your weapons around so you will have either the M4 rifle or the operator pistol, but I hardly ever use those weapons so I have to almost constantly be switching my weapons back and forth just for the heck of it. A serious flaw with this game is the fact that none of the actual story is told during game play itself. There is no point to playing the game, you could cut all of the game part and stitch the cut scenes together and get the same story experience. It a good story, it’s just a shame they couldn't tie the game into the story parts.

>>1 my biggest problem with your cons to the game is this:

Why would you play a game in a series known to be a great single player campaign game, and not play ANY of the previous ones? hell, i'll admit that i only played 1 or 2 of them before i beat MGS4, but unless you have not played ANY of them, you'll understand where things are going or where they've come from.

also, i'd like to expand upon your pros.

The storyline isn't just complex, it's mostly stemmed from a lot of conspiracy theories that the story writers created using REAL LIFE EVENTS, which makes it so that, other than the special powers the bosses have, the gamer feels like this could actually happen. reality aside, the game tries it's damdest to make you FEEL something by the end of it by watching the struggles of what could be snake's final days. i was literally on the verge of tears when i beat this game. it's graphic design is superb, especially for the time it was created, the music is beautiful, the controls (in my opinion) improved vastly from the other games, and it was a great game overall.

The Cons: Some of the more advances action are a bit tough to do and are easy to screw up, but that's how it's been for almost every MGS, so that's not quite as bad as other things. Sometimes the game FORCES you to be stealthy, which really shouldn't be a problem due to the fact that it IS a stealth game, however it is easy to see how someone used to running and gunning would e adversely effected by this, and, though i said your reasoning for saying the story was a con is not entirely correct in my opinion, there is an issue with it. Even if you do not play every MGS game, it can be really hard to follow what is going on with the story. it's by no means a game breaking experience, but it can get annoying at times. This last con isnt really a fault of the game itself, but it was meant to be the last game in the series. it was wrapped up rather nicely, and i was content with this being the end of the series, but then Konami went and announced that not only were they doing Raiden Rising (which in and of itself was fine with me, as it was a prequel to 4) but they also announced MGS5. this sort of kills it for me.