[This is part two of PSM3's huge MGS4 cover feature. Part one can be found here. Pick up issue 100 of PSM3 for the full feature, including extra info and loads of awesome new screenshots].
The good stuff
Some random observations: while the demo section's similar, there's now a battlefield tannoy at key moments, where a robotic female voice chirps propaganda to the PMCs (accompanied by a nursery rhyme jingle), reinforcing the corporate nature of war. You can wake up unconscious guards by standing over them and tapping w (the context-sensitive 'action' button) - far better than shaking them like in MGS2. It's incredibly easy to trip alerts.
We must've started 20 in the Middle East section alone, and since there are so many guards, you can't silence alerts like an 'Off' switch using CQC as you could in MGS3 - offending our inner Obsessive Compulsive/Autistic. Sound plays a major role, with a fine line between silent tip-toeing, and noisy treading - you need to be really delicate with the analogue stick. Impressively, it's much easier to sneak around in active battlefields, since the noise of war drowns out your footsteps.
More insight: the 'Stress' and 'Psyche' meters play a more important role than you'd think. In prolonged combat, or boss encounters, Snake's Stress level rockets (like a reverse countdown, with ours often hovering around the 80% mark), increasing his resistance and aiming accuracy.
The flip side, is that extreme stress causes Snake's Psyche to crash, which means his stamina heals much less quickly. It's really important to hoard Arsenal Compress or Recovery items (like a Ration) to restore Psyche - smoking and reading girlie mags has the same effect, but work less quickly.
There's a great in-joke where Snake's psyche drops a quarter of a bar during cut-scenes whenever anyone mentions how old he looks, or when Sunny threatens to take his cigarettes away.
Back to the game - once you've met the MkII robot (from the trailers), you descend into the Militia base, where the TGS playable demo ends. Snake finds a Militia outfit to replace his Octo-Camo, allowing him to blend in.
Be warned - we accidentally killed an ally, and spent the rest of our time fighting through the tunnels. Switching allegiance between warring factions is as simple as who you last killed. In one set-piece, fighting alongside the militia, a friendly soldier accidentally blundered into our sights - leaving you battling both sides as your allies turn against you. Highly annoying.
Make your way through the underground base - note the wailing injured militia and the still-wobbling wing of the Raging Raven robot birds on a tabletop - and you meet up with guns dealer Drebin, who outlines the game's Weapon upgrade/purchase system in a whopping cut-scene. See 'How Drebin Points Work' - but it's not dissimilar to the excellent weapon customisation system of Resident Evil 4.
Guns range from Mk22 tranquilisers, to M16s, to P90s to full-blown automatic grenade launchers - plus the usual RPGs, Javelins and C4 charges. Every weapon feels unique, and can be customised with stocks, sights and grenade launchers, creating your own personal attachments.
Fight the power
When Drebin's finished, you navigate a section we won't spoil, before bumping into Akiba - who's enjoying a toilet visit in a barrel, as seen in the last trailer. He sprints off, and you engage in an epic street battle, engaging snipers - either head-on using cover, or by finding a sneaky alternate route - before taking on a distant enemy tank, fighting alongside the militia.
Snake can use fixed mortar emplacements (press w, and align the trajectory path) - a neat new addition. By this stage, you really feel you're engaging in open warfare, reminiscent of the Sgt Jackson desert street/tank scene from Call Of Duty 4. When you destroy the tank, your militia chums celebrate in real-time, firing guns into the air and whooping "We did it!"
Snake infiltrates the Middle East Event Palace, navigating deadly laser trip wires and sleeping gas grenades, before meeting up with Meryl and the Rat Patrol team - as seen in the TGS 07 trailer.
This cut-scene's almost exactly like the trailer, with Meryl explaining how PMCs are controlled by SOP System nanomachines, allowing them to co-ordinate movements; while it gathers data, and regulates their body organs, fear etc - the 'total battlefield control' element of the trailers. Teaser: Meryl refuses to acknowledge Colonel Campbell as her father, calling him 'Uncle' and revealing he's re-married a woman of her own age.
"Womanising piece of shit! Men... selfish, egotistical pigs," she barks, eyeballing Snake. Her bitter tirade is interrupted by an attack from the FROGs, or Haven Troopers, as seen in the last trailer. The difference is, of course, where the trailer ends, the game lets you fight in real-time (See 'The Haven Trooper Shoot Out') - a thrilling set-piece, and the Middle East's defining moment.
After leaving the palace, and being teasingly introduced to the Beauty and the Beast boss characters - who brutally decimate a militia army, as seen in a previous trailer - this thread of the story ends with Snake trying to assassinate Liquid (his brother) in a cut-scene, but failing when he's incapacitated by a mysterious siren, causing everyone, bar Akiba, to stumble and foam at the mouth. "Brother!" heralds Liquid. "Rejoice! We're not copies of our father after all... we are free!". Snake's vision blacks out, to see Naomi at his feet, who injects herself, and drops the needle.
"If you won't be a prisoner to fate... go... fulfil your destiny," she teases. Choppers take Liquid and Naomi away, as Akiba rouses Snake in the final seconds of the game's first act. Without giving too much away, the Middle East level takes hours - the TGS playable demo section represents barely 15% - during which time we tripped 47 alerts, killed 95 soldiers, obtained 18 weapons, used 16 recover vitamins and watched 13 flashbacks.
The name's Snake...
That's the last piece of in-game action we'll share for fear of spoilers - but if you watch the previous trailers with eagle eyes, and freeze frame, you can deduce where the game goes next. Kojima's made no secret of MGS4 being like James Bond, with Snake travelling all over the world.
It's also well established that the game contains five major locations - including the Middle East, South America and East Europe. The remaining locations can't be revealed, but fans could make some educated guesses. Having finished MGS4, we can only recommend you watch the trailers again - but even then, the game's pregnant with hugely unexpected surprises. Not everything in the trailers is in the game as it stands, but, but... let's just say, Kojima isn't the business of disappointment.
Is MGS4 as good as we hoped? In a huge number of places, it's better. Some sections redefine the limits of interactive cinematography, with bravura changes of pace. It's rammed with surprises, and finishing it is only the start.
MGS4's only 'problem' - and we're as guilty as anyone - is its startling level of expectation, as a PS3 exclusive and, arguably, the most important next-gen game to date. Our base level of expectation was that it would be The Best Game Ever, with anything above that a bonus - a ludicrously high level of expectation, but such is Kojima's pedigree, and the fierce level of devotion MGS inspires in the most austere of critics.
As it stands, don't expect perfection - nothing this ambitious, or heartfelt, is - certain elements could be more clearly flagged, Kojima could self-edit more ruthlessly and the controls are still fiddly, if incredibly deep. But like GTA: San Andreas it's an unprecedented achievement, that you could spend months eulogising about in terms of unique moments, despite technical imperfections. That's how Metal Gear has always been - an intensely personal game, created with singular vision, not the bland, cold hand of focus groups that delete anything considered 'edgy', 'challenging' or 'obtuse'.
It's a game of contradictions, as fiddly as it precise, as genuinely funny as it is rambling, as beautiful as it is, at times, functional. There's something to delight - and frustrate - everyone, from newcomer to veteran, a welcome relief from the sea of bland, demographic pandering, shooters that placate myopic shareholders, but inspire devotion in precisely nobody. In short, it's a rallying point for hardcore gamers - or rather, anyone who thinks games have the potential to be richer than any other media. It's a Hollywood blockbuster, and obscurio indie flick rolled into one seething, imperfect, unmatched river of entertainment. And, er, it's not even quite finished, so might be even better than the version we played.
Ten years on from Metal Gear Solid on Psone, MGS4 feels like Kojima coming full circle, having previously insisted this would be his last Metal Gear game - a claim neither repeated or denied during our time in Nasu. "I want people to look back on themselves , to reflect on what has happened in between, and how you have aged", claims Kojima.
In that respect, MGS4 is a humbling, almost poignant success. The truth is, it makes MGS look like a crude artefact from an ancient age, echoing Kojima's theme about the thrill, and dangers of technological acceleration. In that context, two months is hardly that long to wait for the most anticipated next-gen game yet. When the game's finally available for review, you can rest assured that no-one will have played it more - handy, because when you've completed it, our real conversations about the staggering depth, and achievement, of MGS4 can begin.
