Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is full of deft little touches: here are some of our favourites.
OctoCamo
Snake could change outfits to blend into his surroundings in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. It certainly aided his guerrilla approach in the new jungle setting, although changing outfits required the player to pause the game and access the camouflage menu.
For MGS4 Hal ‘Otacon' Emmerich has developed an adaptable camouflage suit called OctoCamo. Dark blue in its inactive state, it mimics the texture of any wall or floor Snake presses his body against like a chameleon. Later in the game he picks up a face mask that increases the effect, and can even copy people's faces. It looks amazing, especially against the more interesting textures, such as a chessboard tiled floor in a derelict building, and each metamorphosis is accompanied by a great slurping sound that sounds like a mechanical mollusc sticking to a rock.
Metal Gear Mk. 2
While Snake is used to fighting against Metal Gears, in MGS4 he receives a micro version, designed by Otacon, to aid him on the battlefield. The player can send the Mk. 2 ahead on reconnaissance without fear of detection, thanks to the little robot's cloaking function, but its limited battery and signal range means you can't send it too far ahead.
If you turn to face Snake while controlling the Mk. 2, you can see him controlling his sidekick with a SIXAXIS Wireless Controller. And this isn't the only PlayStation product featured in the game: eagle-eyed players may have spotted a PLAYSTATION 3 on an upstairs table during mission briefings, and Sunny can occasionally be seen playing a PSP. She's particularly fond of Konami's Penguin Adventure - the first game Hideo Kojima ever worked on.
Despite being its first appearance in the Metal Gear series, Metal Gear Mk. 2 was first seen in the 1996 Japanese PlayStation game Snatcher - written and directed by Kojima - as a sidekick to the protagonist, Gillian Seed.
Threat Ring
The first two Metal Gear Solid games featured a radar at the top of the screen that displayed the location of guards and the direction in which they were looking. This was abandoned in MGS3, encouraging the player to use the first person view and take a more realistic approach to sneaking, but also making it more difficult to detect enemy threat.
MGS4's Threat Ring is a transparent circle that surrounds Snake while he is crouched or lying on the ground and it peaks in the direction of something threatening; the greater the threat, the larger the peak. Although it might seem a minor enhancement, it increases the pace of the game; it tells you if an area is deserted, and doesn't make things too easy during tenser infiltration sections.
Easter Eggs
MGS4 is crammed with unlockable extras, secret items and quirky in-jokes playing on the series' history. Here's a short selection of things we've spotted so far.
During the game's seemingly arbitrary opening sequence, you can use the right stick to cycle through television channelsPause the game and you will see Sunny aboard the Nomad; play Oishii Chuhan Seikatsu on your iPod and she will start dancingIf you die and continue, you can call Rosemary immediately after to have a conversation about what death feels likeIf, at the end of the game, you have killed or stunned over 50 enemies with the knife, performed over 50 CQC hold and been spotted fewer than 25 times, you'll unlock the clothing of another stealth expert that recently appeared on PLAYSTATION 3...MGS4 may be end of Snake, but not the end of series
Metal Gear Solid 5 in talks
