TGS 2007: Metal Gear Solid 4 Hands-on

Sep 20, 2007

We've all been watching the trailers and scrutinizing the footage that was shown at the Metal Gear 20th anniversary party, and eagerly awaiting our first chance to step into the boots of Old Snake in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. At TGS, our wish was finally granted, as we were given an hour of hands on time with the game demo behind closed doors. The demo started close to the beginning of the final game with Otacon calling Snake over the new Codec. Not only is the Codec in full 3D now, but Snake can fast forward and rewind messages sent over the Codec in case important information was initially missed. What's more, certain comments via the Codec may sometimes spur some flashback memories for Snake from previous games. By hitting the Circle button, we were able to witness some of these hazy memories for the grizzled warrior, including snapshots from previous Metal Gear Solid titles.

Of course, as we watched the video briefing from Otacon, we gained more of a sense of what the situation was that Snake was placed in. As the game starts, Liquid Snake is found to be the head of Outer Heaven, which is an organization that manages every Private Military Corporation in the world - somewhat like a militaristic Illuminati. Old Snake has been dispatched to the Middle East because he gains intel that Liquid is in the region with a deployed PMC known as the Preying Mantis that's battling the local militia, and his best opportunity to eliminate Liquid is within this war zone.

One of the things that we noticed is that Snake has a number of new maneuvers that he can use within battle. The first thing is that the triangle button is now a context sensitive catchall button for many in-game actions. If you want to hop a wall, go into cover or activate an item, you simply hit the Triangle button. Even better, once you've used this, you don't have to hold down on multiple buttons to remain in cover while you're taking a shot. As soon as you release the analog stick, Snake slides back to the wall. Now, if you hold the Triangle button, you can make Snake play possum. As long as a patrol hasn't seen you lie down or you're immediately in their way, you will be ignored by the enemy and be able to take them by surprise. Tapping the X button will place him in a crouch, which he can then use to run slowly and stealthily across an alleyway or corridor. You can also run over to dumpsters or windowsills in this position, and because of the crouched posture, many enemies won't actually notice that you're there.

If you've ever played a Metal Gear title, you know that the alert status of your enemies is crucial to the success of sneaking around each location. In MGS4, the alert situation has been refined to a new system. Now, players only need to worry about the normal and alert situation for enemies - caution and evasion modes have been eliminated in favor of a more realistic AI system. When enemy soldiers are in normal mode, they perform their patrol routes and sweep different areas, talk with other soldiers and follow other routines. However, if they're alerted to something suspicious, they'll be cautious and call in other reinforcements, ensuring that the entire area is clear before they slowly let down their guard.

Since the overall alert status system has been changed, MGS4 now features a threat ring around Snake at all times that indicates where soldiers are as well as incoming threats. The ring spikes whenever a soldier nears Snake, so you can tell how many people are in the general vicinity of Snake by the number of raised peaks on the threat ring. The ring turns red, indicating the location that enemy fire is coming from if you're detected, so you can easily evaluate how you're doing with how red or clear the ring happens to be.

All of that will play into the new health and evaluation bars for Snake. There will be three separate processes that will govern how Snake is handling the rigors of battle. The first one is his standard health bar, which dictates how much damage he can take from bullets, explosions and other injuries. The second bar, below the health gauge, is his Psyche gauge. Similar to the Stamina bar in Snake Eater, the Psyche gauge dictates how he's doing within the heat of battle. Based around actual studies on soldier's mental states in the midst of warfare, the lower Snake's Psyche gauge gets, the harder it will be for him to aim straight or perform other functions in battle. The heat of the locale will also affect Snake's Psyche, as the hotter a location is, the harder it will be for him to keep his concentration.

Finally, there will be a stress meter, which will govern how hectic a given situation happens to be. If Snake's stress level spikes, he can enter a combat high state, where he'll feel less pain and he'll shoot much more accurately. Again, this is a state that's based around studies from real battle data. However, there's a definite trade off to this adrenaline rush state - once the combat high wears off, he'll crash, with his Psyche gauge bottoming out to almost nothing. To raise his psyche once it's exhausted, Snake can read a magazine, checking out the pictures of scantily clad women. However, he can't keep looking at the same page for too long; Snake will need to flip pages to gain additional visual stimulation from new images in the book

We moved our way towards a bombed out building, and were confronted by a PMC armored personnel carrier, with a striker machine gun set on its roof. The striker swept an area in front of the APC, and any enemy presence that was detected by this pattern was immediately fired upon. Unfortunately, we didn't have access to rocket launchers at that point, and grenades were simply useless, so we were forced to run away. Fortunately, we were close enough that we could continue to a new area after a couple of close calls. This brought us back to the location we witnessed two months ago at the Anniversary party, and we were able to finally experience this level from start to finish. While we didn't attempt to grab anyone's balls, we were able to pull of the new CQC ground choke by grabbing an enemy soldier with our knife, then releasing R1 and flicking the analog stick in either the left or right direction before pulling R1 again. By holding the soldier down on the ground for ten seconds, we could knock him out. Holding any longer would immediately kill him.

In fact, we found that CQC and weaponry has changed within the title, primarily because Kojima Productions decided to allow players to perform CQC moves with two handed weapons now. You can take your MP5 and bash enemy soldiers with it, jarring their guns loose or knocking them unconscious. What's more, you can even customize your weapons to fit the particular need of a situation. We managed to equip the MPS with a scope for additional accuracy, and rig it with either a shotgun or a grenade launcher attachment, giving us secondary fire ability. Apparently, every weapon, including the knife has this option (with the knife imparting a stun feature that discharges electricity into a target), so players can adjust their tactics accordingly.

As we went through the rest of the demo and interacted with Otacon's Mark II, we received the Solid Eye system, which provided three different viewing modes which performed functions like highlighting enemy soldiers and displaying dropped weaponry or items. Snake could easily use this to plan out his attack strategy on PMCs, and make his decision as to how he'd choose to help out the militia. In fact, we found out that aiding the militia would be a huge bonus, because they would give Snake additional weapons, ammo or items. Plus, depending on the kind of battle that we engaged in, we were able to clear districts of enemy combatants, and the militia would hold those areas, permitting Snake to pass through as long as he remained an ally of the indigenous fighters.

While it had only been a week since Kojima Productions had implemented rumble support for the tech demo, it was definitely noticeable and a welcome addition to the gameplay. The recoil from fired weapons felt just as good as it did on the PS2, and blowing up an APC with a Javelin rocket or an RPG was extremely satisfying as the controller thumped soundly. The team still has a number of ideas on how they want to implement the vibration control, with everything from Snake's stress level to ambient gunfire and explosions triggering subsequent rumbles in the new DualShock 3. We'll have much more on MGS4 soon.