Kojima wants to rumble

Hideo Kojima, legendary developer and creator of the Metal Gear Solid series, has revealed his disappointment at the lack of a rumble feature in Sony's PS3 SixAxis pad. "I miss the rumble," he's said in a recent interview, adding "even now I hope it will come back."

The reasons behind Sony's decision to create the SixAxis controller without rumble haven't ever been officially confirmed, although most suspect that the cost of including the rumble technology put off the PS3 creator. It seems, though, that developers like Hideo Kojima are eager to welcome back the feature.

There are plans, however, for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots to use SixAxis' motion-sensing capabilities, with Kojima confirming during the chat with Official PlayStation Magazine UK that he "can't say how we'll use the motion-sensing functionality specifically but we'll use it for sure." Will we be wrestling with the pad to choke a guard? We'll just have to wait and see.

Kojima also hinted at some interesting gameplay aspects of MGS4, suggesting that it will be possible to make mid-game allies: "You may decide to stick with nation 'A' or 'B' in the game's war, or you could destroy both".

This will have interesting consequences in-game: "Sometimes Gekkos (the weird, hooting robots in the trailers) will spot you as you're the enemy, but sometimes you're not necessarily the enemy to them". Whatever the word on rumble, Kojima's Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is certainly promising to rock our worlds.

November 27, 2006

Ben Richardson is a former Staff Writer for Official PlayStation 2 magazine and a former Content Editor of GamesRadar+. In the years since Ben left GR, he has worked as a columnist, communications officer, charity coach, and podcast host – but we still look back to his news stories from time to time, they are a window into a different era of video games.