Metal Gear Solid 4: updated impressions

Once we were out of sight, we flattened ourselves against a wall or the ground and let Snake's Octo-camo suit blend him in with whatever he was next to. This happens completely automatically; all you need to do is hold still for a second, and the camo will do its thing. And if you like a pattern, you can save it for future use and bust it out manually in the game's camouflage menu.

After that, all that's left is to lie motionless and pray the PMC troops don't notice you. In our case, some of them didn't even when they brushed against Snake in their search for him. Other times, they approached him from the side and contemptuously smacked him down for sticking out so obviously. Angle of approach seems to have a lot to do with it, and in general, flattening yourself against the ground in a corner seems to yield the best results.

Probably our favorite moment came just after an all-clear was sounded by one of the soldiers we'd alerted. Thinking it was safe, we crept out of a ruined house, turned a corner and came face-to-face with about seven or eight troops who were walking away from the search area. A hailstorm of screams and bullets followed, but we were able to miraculously escape by hauling ass to our next goal, helpfully shown as a circle on the pause-screen map.

Later in the level, when fighting between the militia and the PMC had reached a fever pitch, it was still possible to trigger alerts. This was weird, to say the least; why call in an alert on Snake when three guys down the street are pelting you with automatic-weapons fire? By that point, though, we were in full-on Gears of War-style combat mode, ducking behind cover and rattling off rounds from a custom carbine, so it didn't really matter. And it mattered even less when we stumbled onto mortar emplacements and RPGs, which made short work of the soldiers, their armored Stryker transports and, at one point in the level, a helicopter gunship.

Amid all the chaos and sneaking, we got to check out a few things we hadn't seen up to this point, like Snake's iPod, which sits comfortably in his item inventory next to his cigarettes, cardboard box and copies of Playboy (yes, really). It's true that the iPod amounts to an in-game ad, but it works exactly like the real thing, with menus that can be navigated by rotating the right stick and clicking it to confirm selections. It's also loaded up with Metal Gear music (with more scattered around the game for you to find), so it's not really out of place.