Gaming Revolutions

The following was originally used on Gamespy. It was just too good to chop up and re-use!

"Here's what we know so far: Snake's body is aging rapidly, and this mission is his last chance to stop Liquid Ocelot, the bizarre fusion of his dead brother, Liquid Snake, and Russian gunslinger Revolver Ocelot. Liquid's last known whereabouts are in a Middle Eastern country. He and Otacon must use their respective brawn and brains to find Liquid and take him down. That's easier said than done, of course. Amid the hostile fighting between private military and rebel forces, Snake can unwittingly put exclamation points above the collective heads of either faction with a single misstep.

One of the biggest transitions from the military technology of Metal Gear Solid to now lies within the realm of nanomachines. In the first game, Snake's nanomachines were high-tech and gave him an edge over the Genome soldiers he faced on Shadow Moses Island. In MGS4's hostile Middle Eastern environment, Snake's like a tuna fish swimming in a shark tank. Private military corporations rule the battlefield, and their money buys the best enhancements for their troops. From a gameplay standpoint, it justifies tougher AI that'll do its damnedest to sniff you out by any means necessary. From a plot standpoint, it makes things more believable.

One of the first things we noticed about MGS4 is just how refined the gameplay feels. The first twenty or so minutes are a little disorienting to anyone who hasn't played MGS3: Subsistence, or really any MGS games, for some time. The HUD is fairly minimal, since Snake starts off without the Solid Eye enhancement. Instead, he'll have to rely on a ring of energy that detects enemy movements. It's pretty jarring stuff; MGS4 is much wider and more open-ended than any of its predecessors. It's no GTA, but there's much more freedom to explore than before. If you're not careful, you might end up running in circles and collide with a PMC exclamation mark. In some ways, the early (and tough; we hope to see the final product give players a few minutes of mercy before tossing them in the deep end of the pool) sections of MGS4 are a little reminiscent of the Virtuous Mission section of MGS3: it's the prelude to a wider experience.

That experience starts to fire up once Snake has eluded a few waves of PMC soldiers to acquire some gifts that Otacon has planted on the battlefield. In both the Solid Eye and the Mk II robot (which resembles Gillian Seed's Metal Gear assistant from Snatcher), you'll get invaluable tools for gameplay. These items, like Naked Snake's radars and motion sensors in MGS3, run on batteries that you'll have to recharge. Mk II, a miniature Metal Gear-like tank, can do recon of certain sections and make sure the coast is clear for Snake to proceed. It's an invaluable device if you play MGS with ardent devotion to stealth. The Solid Eye system gives Snake a Swiss Army knife of sorts. It's a versatile device that functions as an all-in-one goggle system (night vision, etc.) and gives visual information as to what's going on in the heat of battle, such as enemy stats, guns, etc. Throughout the game, it's very likely that Solid Eye will be your lifeline. 

Kojima has said lots about the first-person shooting mechanic in this sequel, and although we don't agree that you could play through the entire game in first-person, the evolution of first-person aiming in MGS4 makes its predecessors look rather crude. Sure, it's no Call of Duty 4, but zipping into first-person for an accurate headshot is much more easy and intuitive now. Also, Kojima has implemented an auto-aim system that you can toggle on the fly with a tap of the Square button. Although some of our fellow game critics complained that it was a bit of a crutch, there were moments during the Middle East level in which it helps to switch between the manual over-the-shoulder targeting and simply flipping on auto-aim to run and gun faster. It's all a matter of style and technique, and it's a testament to MGS4's careful design that the option's even available.

Visually, there's little doubt that MGS4 is one of the most handsome games yet for this generation of hardware. There's still a little aliasing on certain textures, but nothing that won't get a final clean-up before the game hits gold. The cut-scenes look marvelous. Character details such as eye movement (which many HD-era games get wrong) rival the likes of the Half-Life games for realism; Snake, Otacon, and Meryl all have the same sort of liveliness that Alyx and Eli Vance demonstrated. The attention to detail in the characters is so precise you can see the marks on Otacon's face where he shaves.

It's not just about visuals, though: MGS4 does plenty with sound. There's craftsmanship at work here that's as pleasing to the ears as the eyes. Whether it's surround headphone jacks or your personal 5.1 rig, MGS4 is going to play a lot of tricks on your ears. It's another deeply immersive aspect of the game.

While playing we encountered one of the new linchpins of the MGS4 experience: Drebin. He's the mysterious blond-haired gentleman with the cola-drinking monkey we saw in the last trailer. He describes himself as a "gun launderer" who can unlock the complex codes that tie soldiers to a personal weapon. He buys and sells guns according to Drebin Points, the weapon currency that MGS4 will utilize.

Here's how the Drebin system works: Every time Snake downs an enemy, he can pick up the combatant's weapon and immediately convert it to Drebin Points. You'll hear a chime when you pick up a gun, letting you know that you've got credits. You can buy the ability to use grenades for a smattering of points, which you'll want to do early on. Eventually, you can use the points to acquire new weapons, as well as upgrades like scopes and grips. Most importantly, Drebin Points can be used to purchase ammo, a relief to anyone who's ever run out of bullets during a huge boss battle. The Drebin Shop even has discount days; during our sections, discounts hit on Wednesdays and Sundays, but that could change in the final product. The best part? The Drebin Shop is always available within the pause menu. Among the dramatic departures that MGS4 makes from its predecessors, the Drebin system is one of the most significant to gameplay. 

Beyond the Drebin system, this latest demo marked the first time we really saw the Psyche Gauge and Stress Meter at work. The Psyche Gauge resembles MGS3's stamina meter. If Snake's psyche is in good shape, he'll begin to slowly heal himself if he sits still for a while. He can also use items to spike his psyche and prevent stress. When Snake gets into a firefight, his psyche starts to dwindle, and his stress levels increase. Ultimately, if he gets too stressed out, it affects his shooting accuracy quite negatively, unless he overloads on stress and hits a combat high. It's the equivalent of chugging energy drinks after you've had two hours of sleep: you'll hit maximum accuracy for a while, but you'll ultimately crash and burn hard, and reducing your stress levels will be tougher. The idea of combat stress seems to be a method that Kojima Productions is utilizing to quietly push a stealthier style of gameplay in the same sense that MGS3 quietly pushed non-fatal combat (ask anyone who had to fight through lots of ghosts in The Sorrow battle).

During Kojima's MGS4 presentation last summer, he espoused the concept of not only killing only as needed, but also that ultimately, Snake might be better off joining the rebels instead of indiscriminately attacking anyone he encounters in this Middle Eastern slice of the game. During our initial playing, we didn't heed that advice, and paid dearly with several restarts. The PMC soldiers will have little mercy on you, so it helps to aid any of the guerrilla forces you encounter. In some instances, Snake can get items, like rations and ammo, simply for practicing good karma on the battlefield. At one point, if you snoop around enough, you might even get lucky and pick up guerilla camouflage, which helps keep you safer if you've erroneously killed a few freedom fighters.