Zero Hero, what I meant is there is an amazing amount of detail, more so than the majority of games you will encounter. But this isn't always a good thing in my book.
Take Uncharted, for instance, and the clothes getting wet bit: that's great attention to detail, especially when you take into account only the clothing submerged actually gets wet. More importantly, you don't have to dry his pants afterwards because otherwise his crotch would develop a severe rash, from where you'd have to seek the aloe vera tree and manufacture a balm to soothe the itch. Because that would be taking away from the core gameplay.
In MGS4, I feel there are a number of those situations where you are taken away from the action. That's what I meant. Attention to detail is great, but you have to remember, at the end of the day, when all is said and done, and yada-yada-yada, that we are playing a game.
Imagine if you had to make sure Snake had to take a dump, and have to wipe his ass clean afterwards, otherwise Snake would walk pulling out his undies every 10 steps or so, because his butt was itchy. You would have to make sure you actually wiped his ass clean every time. Yes, this would be amazing attention to detail. Yes, it would be realistic as hell. Surely, though, after a few times looking at the same canned animations and the same routine time and again, it would get old fast. It would also take you away from the meat of the game, which is sneak, stealth, or whatever word-du-jour they are using to describe the gameplay now.
That's what I meant. I'm not hating on the game - far from it. It also looks to be a great game overall, and I will still buy it. But you have to take the good with the bad, and since I'm not in love with this, or any game, I simply don't own a pair of rose-tinted glasses to see the MGS world by.
