Grand Theft Auto IV and Wii Fit have scored headlines for shifting public opinions about videogames by deftly tackling the respective subjects that inspired them: crime and fitness. Now comes Metal Gear Solid 4 ($60; konami.com), whose major themes derive from a most unlikely place: President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address warning against the dangers of the military-industrial complex.

Well before last October’s hearings into possible abuses by real-world contractors like Blackwater, game designers became fascinated with the character of the hired gun, including such pro-mercenary titles as Raven Software’s Soldier of Fortune (2000) and Pandemic’s Mercenaries (2005). The appeal is perhaps obvious, but psychologically telling: placing you in the role of a merc gives you access to all the cool ordnance you’d find in the glut of Army games out there, but without having to deal with the annoying hierarchical command structure that comes with the armed forces.

MGS 4 isn’t the only game looking skeptically at the post-9/11 corporatization of military functions—clips and quotes from Eisenhower’s 1961 speech were prominently featured in the trailers for both Army of Two ($60; ea.com) and Cipher Complex (not yet released; ciphercomplex.com)—but it’s by far the most thoughtful, even if its premise is not particularly original. Yes, a villain from the previous games turns up in the Middle East with yet another plan for global domination and, yes, only your lone hero—the prematurely aging Solid Snake—can stop him. But creator Hideo Kojima clearly has more on his mind than a repeat of the hide-seek-and-shoot mechanics that have made him the master of the genre he calls “tactical stealth action,” which emphasizes patience and strategy over the simple pleasures of run-and-gun.

Now, we hate to draw lazy parallels between games and other media, so we’ll just list some of the influences we observed during our play-through of much of MGS 4’s first two chapters: the paranoid style of historian Richard Hofstadter; the covert-ops fetish of authors Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum; the grit and moral ambiguity of filmmaker Sergio Leone. Had Kojima simply larded the game with world-weary, Antiwar 101 dialogue (sample voice-over: “War has changed. It’s no longer about nations, ideologies or ethnicity. It’s an endless series of proxy battles, fought by mercenaries and machines”), we’d just give him a gold star. But Kojima didn’t become an industry luminary solely for his games’ signature: lengthy Socratic dialogues, in which two soldiers—Snake and one of his rivals—debate the nature of conflict, loyalty and human nature. He’s also a master of interactivity, and MGS 4 may be his best marriage of theme and gameplay yet.

The previous Metal Gear Solid games took place in remote enemy bases and outposts that were relatively underpopulated, save for the opponents and an ally or two. You acquired weapons and matériel by relieving enemies of their gear, or through exploration. MGS 4, however, is set on battlefields around the world crawling with both enemy PMCs (private military companies) and rebel forces. The latter will help you if you assist them—or turn on you if you attack them.

With a larger number of enemies in MGS 4 than in the earlier versions, there’s much more weaponry left behind by dead or disabled PMCs and rebels for you to pick up. But you can’t use all the booty right away: the ID-secured weapons of the PMCs are useless without the aid of a new character to the game. His name is Drebin, and he’s a “gun launderer” who’ll buy, sell and unlock ID-protected guns for anyone with money: state armies, PMCs, terrorists, paramilitaries and you.

It’s all part of what’s referred to in the game as the “war economy” (echoes of President Eisenhower). The price of weaponry fluctuates according to that economy, which rises and falls based upon the intensity of fighting in the area: stay out of your enemies’ sight, and the price of acquiring new gear will remain lower than if you cause a ruckus by shooting at everything. The result is that MGS 4’s gameplay vocabulary and rhetoric reinforce each other to achieve what games do best: radically simplify complex systems—in this case, post-9/11 hot zones—in order to entertain and possibly inform. So while no one could or should mistake MGS 4 for a presidential address, it’s another welcome sign that games can be more than just fun.