At E for All, the longest wait for any game was Metal Gear Solid 4 (Brawl had shorter play sessions and 4 players at each station). The hour-long wait was well worth it though as Konami did its best to give everyone a worthwhile experience, even if you weren’t very good at the game. Once the long wait was over, Ray and I (and 10 others) were escorted into a room with 12 stacks of sandbags, each with a set of headphones and a Sixaxis controller on it. These were our seats for a 10-15 minute gameplay demonstration given by a Konami employee. This demonstration showed us both the similarities in control with previous MGS titles as well as new features we would see in our time with the game (like the ‘Threat Ring’). Kudos to Konami for going the extra mile with the briefing before playing the demo. Honestly, an expo isn’t exactly the ideal place to enjoy a new video game, so familiarizing us with the game before our short 15 minutes of play definitely helped us enjoy our time more.

Though our 15 minutes were too short, a few things were evident. First, this was one of the prettiest games I had ever played. It was fluid, detailed, and sharp. Also, I was impressed with how quickly I became immersed in the game. We all had headphones on, so the noise of the expo wasn’t a factor. The visuals, coupled with the music, gunfire, explosions, and more subtle sounds definitely made this an enjoyable experience and a highlight of the show. At one point, a grenade went off right in front of me and I literally jumped back when it went off. My only complaint was that when I was spotted by the enemy (and that happened quite a bit), Snake ‘ran’ pretty slowly and stayed slightly crouched down as if he was sneaking away. Maybe I was doing something wrong, but I really wanted him to go into a full sprint to distance himself from the barrage of fire. All in all, a great experience, both from Konami’s presentation/booth and from the game itself.