With E3 around the corner, publishers are getting their lineups together and holding a collection of pre-show events. Konami had its pre-show event last night, and took the time to make a couple of new announcements. But the game that’s already finished and almost out the door cast a long shadow over the entire event. And rightfully so. After years of development, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, is finally complete and will be hitting stores soon. Konami’s Hideo Kojima was present to show off the early moments of what’s said to be Solid Snake’s final mission.
As soon as Kojima picked up the controller, part of me wanted to run from the room. While I’m typically not very sensitive to spoilers and plot details, something about the magnitude of MGS4 makes me want to play it on my own terms, in a dark room somewhere, after it’s already hit stores. But Kojima was skipping all of the cutscenes and codec conversations, making exposure to the game’s particulars minimal. Instead, it was much of the same stuff we’ve already seen, with Snake making his way through a Middle East battlefield, where PMCs face off with a militia. A lot of the early part of the game is about getting used to the environment, understanding how all the different camo options work, and blowing some stuff up along the way.
He also showed how Drebin’s Shop will work. Drebin, if you haven’t been following along, is the arms dealer with a pet monkey that you’ve seen in some of the trailers. Since all of the PMC weapons are ID-tagged and locked to outsiders, you can’t use them. But Drebin can provide you with plenty of guns, if you have enough Drebin points. As you pick up guns around the battlefield, you’ll see that your point total keeps rising, and you can access a weapon purchase screen at any time from the pause menu. You can also customize your weapons with flashlights, laser sights, grips, grenade launchers, scopes, and so on. The last thing we saw was a special gun with an extremely high cost. Kojima stated that most players would need to play the game three times through to get it, but the payoff is a weapon that calls in a huge tornado that destroys everything in its wake.
He also showed off some of the product integration that MGS4 will have. Remember how you could find bikini magazines and leave them laying around to distract soldiers? Now they’re actually branded with the Playboy name. You’ll find music tracks hidden around the game, and Snake can play them on his 30GB iPod. You can then equip the iPod to listen to any of the music you’ve found while playing the game. That’s weird and I’m still not sure how I feel about it.
After the demo, I took the opportunity to play a little Metal Gear Solid 4 for myself. This just reconfirmed that it isn’t a game you can play for ten minutes and really get a feel for. Besides, my interest in the game is more about seeing how this long, weird saga finally wraps up than in the particulars of its gameplay and control.
Lastly, Konami announced that it would be taking pre-orders for what it described as a “very limited” PlayStation 3 bundle for North America. This is the gray metallic PS3 and Dual Shock 3 that we’ve been seeing bandied about for the past few months. Pre-orders will open on the 19th of this month. From the way they kept saying “very limited,” I’d expect that it’ll sell out on the same day. So get your web browsing hand ready for action if you hope to pick one up.