What We Know:

Moves and abilities:
In addition to some new sneaking animations and better transitions between his moves, Snake has also added a large number of slick new spy moves to his repertoire.

Wall-facing sneak-shimmy, which puts you in a better position to pop off a cap.

Jump-roll-crawl over gaps, which effectively lets you jump small distances.

Side-to-side roll or slower, side-wriggle.

Slow-approach wriggle on the ground with an amusing humping motion effect.

You can roll forward and fire from on your back. From this position, you can also wriggle forwards or backwards and toss grenades from behind the safety of cover.

Snake can swing down and dangle from a flat surface to an edge or overhang.

You can hide in trash cans but you'll come away a tad 'ripe' smelling, which can give you away to the enemy.


Copying textures with the OctoCamo:

When snake is on a surface that he can copy, a strange ring indicator with a wave-form effect appears around him. It's still unclear what this actually represents. He can then change the colour of his suit to blend in with the surroundings.


Snake now thoroughly pats down enemies for items and can perform a nasty crotch-crush move. Ouch.
Revamped CQC (close quarters combat):

Disarm from behind technique:
Choke-hold indicator gives you the option of killing your victim by hitting triangle.
Pulling victim onto the ground and getting on top of his back, you can choke him until he passes out.

Hold-up, with weapon-steal.

Frisking for weapons and 'nut-crusher' move.

You can align yourself with different factions on the battlefield for tactical advantages.

Aiming and perspectives:

Auto-aim helps line up headshots with the pistol equipped. New aiming perspectives are also introduced, including adjusted over-the-shoulder and first-person views.

While aiming, you can switch from left side to right side orientation.

While in first-person view, you can tilt around corners using the motion-sensing built into the Sixaxis controller. According to Kojima, the whole game can be played in this view, so if you've been put off by the mainly third-person perspective before, rest assured that MGS4 has you covered.

MGS4 also features a full 3D camera, in addition to the simplified, westernised control scheme that is fully customisable - a move that should make the cumbersome MGS3 controls a thing of the past.


Metal Gear Mk. II:

Uses include stealth recon, thanks to built-in optical camouflage - effectively, the semi-transparency from earlier games in the series.

While not an offensive weapon, the Mk. II allows players to take out guards and enemies with a non-lethal electrical charge, much like Snake's new knife.

We're pretty sure that the Mk. II will end up sporting upgrades to its abilities at some point during the story, too. Will they be offensive improvements, or merely tweaks to its reconnaissance abilities? Or none at all? We shall see.


Weapons:

Mosin Nagant Sniper Rifle with 5 rounds-cap and 3x Zoom:
Unsilenced sniper rifle for snipey-good times.

RPG-7 with 2x Zoom:
Your standard rocket propelled grenade launcher.

Books / Men's Magazines
Apparently, in addition to containing naughty pictures of women that distract enemies, it can also cure nausea. Go figure. Now you can actually flick through the pages, just like a real magazine! Good to see where the research and development budget that should've gone into fine-tuning the AI went! Just kidding, guys. Sort of.

MK-2 Pistol with 300 rounds-cap:
'Anesth' bullet selection lets you anesthetise your enemies instead of killing them. Since you can change ammo types, we'd bet that there are a few different varieties of rounds you can pick up, in addition to standard bullets and Anesth.

P90 machinegun:
The coolest feature of the P90, in addition to a high degree of accuracy thanks to the pop-up reticule, is the grenade launcher.

Stun Knife with C

US, January 4, 2007


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A few weeks ago, rumors started floating around regarding the PlayStation 3's biggest gun: Metal Gear Solid 4. These rumors speculate Metal Gear Solid 4 will be losing its PS3 exclusivity as it will be heading to the Xbox 360. After Sony's rough launch with the PS3, it would be no surprise that Konami is looking at the 360 as another viable platform. Though the MGS series has seen great success on Sony platforms, the amount of people who will actually own a PS3 when the next Kojima opus is released may not be enough for Konami to turn a profit. This wouldn't be the first time something like this happened - just last year Assassin's Creed was supposed to be a PS3 exclusive, but months later, it was announced that it will be released on the 360 as well. If this is indeed the truth, this could potentially mean more than just another benchmark title for the 360, it may be a huge hit to Sony.
What's your opinion on the matter? Would you applaud Solid Snake appearing on a Microsoft system once more, or would you consider it heresy? If you own both consoles, which version would you prefer to play? If the game remains a Sony exclusive, would you buy a PS3 just to play it? Considering the mediocre sales of Metal Gear Solid 2 on the Xbox, would it even be worth bringing Metal Gear over to the 360? We'd love to hear what you're thinking!