I have to agree, MGS3 was, for me, the best edition in the MGS series so far. I enjoyed it immensely.
That said, I'm hugely looking forward to MGS4 even if, as you say, it's gone a little too futuristic. I can live with that as it seems a natural progression in tech & cloning over the passing years within the storyline. However, I must add that we (gen public) have only been shown the very first scene of the entire game, all the previews etc are all from the opening act. So, from what I've seen, I'm willing to accept that this release will certainly be the best one.
Now, after bigging up Konami, I'm now going to dump on him.
You pr*ck! If you offer a free beta of MGSO to the whole of the EU/JAP & US don't you think an upgrade in your servers might be in order? Hmm, just how many players do you think will try to login to play? Seriously, one of the most anticipated games to come to the PS3 and you assume your crappy servers could handle 3 million + people trying to login within the space 10 hrs.
Dammit! Ya Ya, I know that these things happen in a BETA but still, pretty shoddy. You allowed me a couple of hours game time, I suspect to tease me
and then pulled the service down. I just hope the relaunch works.