If you haven't been getting along with Metal Gear Solid's blend of neck-snapping stealth and expository blabbering, the fourth (and sort of final) game in the series is unlikely to sway your opinion. CVG reports that Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots features 90 minutes of cutscenes and... wait, hang on. It doesn't contain 90 minutes of cutscenes, but rather, alleged 90-minute cutscenes. If your interest or your attention span doesn't stretch that far, you'll probably have a better time watching a Slinky make its way down a short flight of stairs.

Removing the element of sensationalism, however, it should be noted that the article fails to mention where said lengthy cutscenes (which can now be paused) fall within the game. For all we know, they're at the end -- you know, when you're done playing. Even so, this revelation is unlikely to turn away longtime series fans. If anything, we suspect it'll have them even more interested. We certainly are!

In other "Why am I waiting so long?" news, alleged images of a Metal Gear Solid 4 store display box have surfaced online, showing a required 4.5GB installation. We've requested comment from Konami.

[Thanks, Hashbrown Hunter]

Read -- Loooong cutscenes
Read -- Biiiig installation

An interesting Super Smash Bros. Brawl secret involving Solid Snake's famous codec can be found after the break.

We're the first to admit that we're not experts when it comes to things like video codecs -- we leave that job up to our friends at Engadget. Don't get us wrong, we know a little something about codecs (see above!), but eych-dot-two-sixty-four? Em-peg-four? Dubbya-em-dee-are-em? Yeah, these are all codecs that the Xbox 360 will support when the Spring Dashboard update rolls around next month but what do they all mean?

Lucky for us, the folks at Red Kawa -- makers of video conversion utilities like Videora Xbox 360, PSP Video 9, PS3 Video 9, and Wii Video 9 -- are experts in all things video conversion and they break the announcement down like this: "This puts Microsoft at the head of the pack in the Apple TV vs PS3 vs Xbox 360 video battle royale." Oh SNAP! They break down the details so we don't have to ... c'mon PS3, H.264 Main Profile only? All the kids want H.264 High Profile support nowadays!

Actually, the kids really want Xvid and DivX support so they can watch their torrents of bits, which Red Kawa reminds us this isn't. First, it doens't support the AVI container (so there!) and the 360 only supports MPEG-4 Part 2 Simple Profile while Xvid videos are encoded as MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile. Any questions?

The (unofficial) PlaystationTeam posts this list of media formats that are compatible with PlayStation 3:

• Blu-Ray (ROM, -R, -RE)
• DVD (ROM, -R, -RW, R, RW)
• CD (ROM, -R, -RW, Super Audio)
• MPEG-1
• MPEG-2 (PS, TS)
• MPEG-4 SP
• MPEG-4 AVC/H.264.
• ATRAC
• AAC
• MP3
• WAV
• JPEG
• GIF
• PNG
• TIFF
• BMP

Aside from obvious disc differences, PS3 and PSP accept a near-identical list of formats (PSP is compatible with WMA files). It is disappointing that PS3 won't support some of the popular video codecs (e.g., XviD, DivX) out of the box, but if this Linux proposal comes together, then presumably, the compatibility list would grow.