The pad sat in our hands; we eagerly tapped at the buttons in a vein attempt to speed up the loading process. The Konami rep to our right was into his rehearsed sales patter - something about history of the series or Kojima has total control - when the game finally booted up. Loading over, the screen brightened to reveal Old Snake crouched among the debris of a Middle Eastern town and we were in.
The bad news first: this is the same level we played at the Tokyo Games Show four months ago, the same Middle Eastern war zone, the same grey ruins, the same glimpse at the Metal Gear MKII robot quirkily controlled by Snake using a PS3. So, same old, same old? Not quite. We're not sweating it out at a Tokyo trade show, the throng isn't crowding us and the nice man from Konami isn't pressuring us for time. We have time to explore the game.
Open-world espionage What is clear about this level from the game is the degree of freedom you'll get to explore Snake's new world. Old MGS levels were fairly linear, albeit with multiple routes, these levels are more open. You're given a goal and tasked with getting there by any means necessary. Our first foray began stealthily enough, pressing Triangle to activate the camouflage suit and mask Snake's body to the environment, then crawling past guards unnoticed. We then discover Snake has more weapons and ammo than in past games, so out came the big guns and after a rattle of fire from the AK 102 assault rifle, in came the tanks and soldiers.
It's here the controls felt a little awkward. Konami has simplified the button configuration in an attempt to make Snake easier to handle, but in doing so has assigned dual functions to many of the buttons - Triangle also makes snake hunker against a wall and also changes the camouflage, in a heated gunfight this can lead to irritated scenes of Snake going through the 'change' as bullets rain down on his vulnerable body.
Controlling Snake when crawling is a little odd too, like the old Resident Evils, the Left thumbstick moves Snake around on a fixed point while the right moves him forwards and backwards. It's the same system used in past MGS games, but could have done with a revamp.
Control quirks aside, and on the whole, MGS4 feels robust. The overriding feeling was this looks and feels just like the trailers Konami has been releasing over the last year. There are few glitches and Snake has some nice touches that help create the feeling of being in a real physical world, such as the way he'll trip over dead bodies.
Hush puppy Back to the level, we ditched the gung-ho approach and reverted to classic MGS stealth. Gaining higher ground, we used the sniper rifle to stun a couple of guards before dropping to ground zero and shaking them down for booty - health packs and ammo. Stunned enemies will only be out for 30 seconds or so - add to this the new war zone setting - and no place is ever truly safe in MGS4.
Guards were on to us in seconds once their mates failed to complete their patrol patterns. We jumped in a bin to escape the unwanted attention.
From here we could use Sixaxis to lift the bin lid, but oddly couldn't look around once the lid was ajar, narrowing Snake's view of the outside world and so making this yet another frustration to add to the list; albeit a minor one.
The second stage of the demo began in the heat of a raging street battle. The task is to get to the checkpoint at the end of the street, as enemy soldiers tussle with rebel forces - both of which will shoot Snake on sight unless you can change the situation.
Using the MKII, and cloaked for stealth, we snuck up on three visible soldiers and shocked them into a slumber, if a soldier touches another as he's being electrocuted they both take a nap.
Back in Snake's boots we scurried down an alley and away from the rebel forces, needing to make friends and shift the balance, we took out a tank with a rocket launcher.
The rebels acknowledged our aid and now the tide was turned. How much of this is scripted and how much is open to experimentation is hard to tell, but the blending of story events and freedom to play how you want is one of MGS4's major strengths, as even heavily scripted moments can feel improvised.
Friends reunited It's here where the demo came to an end with Snake meeting up with Foxhound and Meryl (hitting X as she reveals herself leads to a flashback of the PSone's key MGS scenes). It's also here where Kojima's humour takes over. Amid the gritty dialogue and rambling thoughts on genetics and old age is a rookie trooper with a raging case of the squits. That's what the MGS series was missing - some hugely unsubtle toilet humour.
MGS4 is impressive. There are some issues with the controls, but mostly this is shaping up to be everything we could want and more importantly everything Konami and Kojima has been promising for the past two years.
The game feels incredibly solid and the character design and interaction is second to none. Our only gripe is that we wanted to play more; more of this level and more of the other stages yet to be revealed. Expect a glimpse of the South American levels very soon.
What a suprise, the controls are poor just like the last few games. You can put in all the neat touches and clever effects that you like but if you can't get the main character control right, what is the point?
I hope Konami listened to this magazine's thoughts and I hand it to them for pointing this out instead of the usual response to Metal Gear games, i.e. - ignore all the flaws.
The beautiful graphics of two years ago, just look like the standard of graphics you'd expect in 2008. In fact, after looking at the screenshots again, I'd say that it doesn't look as good as COD4, which to my eyes has a far broader colour palette and more detailed textures.
The game sounds as though it plays more or less the same as the old games, and there are criticisms over its control system, so I'm not really sure what we're supposed to be getting excited about here.
Ah, the hype machine can sure do wonders for a wanky game...
It is the ridiculously convoluted story that turned me off this series. Metal Gear Solid was a superb game, but something about this MGS doesnt look appealing. I think it is the environments. I liked sneaking around a military base, I love Splinter Cells varied scenery, and clever environments, this to me seems to have given up a lot of the stealth appeal that I looked for.
And I sooo want a reason to buy a PS3 right now, I hope it gets a good, unbiased review.
I love MGS but never really liked the controls or the way your view always felt restricted. Splinter cell got it perfect u had full control over a 360 degree cam & the buttons layout felt perfect. MGS is always over complicated & you constantly end up getting caught due to you wanting to do something but game ends up doing something else. But having said that MGS games are beautifully put together & have character design & an overall look that makes it all its own.... this is gonna be the last MGS with Snake & Hideo, lets hope his new IP will be multi format.
Most of you idiots posting above are simply Xbox fanboys no doubt and have no interest in the Metal Gear series. Button it and go away.
I for one am extremely excited about MGS4. And why is it deemed so strange to like MGS for the stories in the games? I love the world of Metal Gear, it is many times more inventive and original than generic Gears of War, Halo or Ghost Recon.
Psycho Mantis, Grey Fox - This is the work of a creative genius.
Let's just hope the cutscenes that no doubt make up 95% of the game make it appear to be a reasonable film because as a game, I'm getting ready to LOL.
I remember this looking amazing when I first saw it... Just goes to show you how far console graphics have come since then, being that it now looks a bit 'meh'.
The bad screenshots are most likely just an effect of bad capture/resizing/compression whatever. If you look at the latest gameplay demos, including the cam-recorded ones from CES 2008 you can see that it looks much better. Sure, the graphics won't be revolutionizing by todays standards, but I'm pretty sure it will be a very beautiful game. Those screenshots look awful and it's obvious their suffering from some image effects.
I'm glad their working on the control scheme, they claim there will be more customizability this time around. Although I will stick with the classical controls I'm used to for sure. Imho the problem has never been that the controls are bad, just that many western gamers have found them anti-intuitive, seems like it will be more western style in this game, which worries me a little since I loved the previous games controlls. I can understand many western gamers complaining since they're used to controlling the camera alot, which seems strange for japanese people.
It's pretty obvious that when your playing a game as complicated as this for the first time there will be a learning curve. The comments on the control system seems to be more of personal taste than anything else, not that their unresponsive or something like that.
To all you haters I would reccomend you read the second half of the post. Don't get stuck on the minor control nitpicks in the beginning of the text. The overall message seems to be that it's great.
well done cvg for being honest about the controls , i myself have always struggled with the mgs series, having said that though i never stopped until i finished them all. And the graphics look amazing even by todays standards.
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