First things first - the game looks great, from Snake’s scowl to the animation on soldiers’ limbs. Two years ago, MGS4 was an absolute jaw-dropper, and it’s somehow maintained that quality over time. There are some odd sections which look a little ropey, but by MGS4’s release (which Sony and Konami still insist will be "early 2008") it will have undergone the extensive polishing that marked its predecessors as some of the PS2’s finest graphical achievements.

The demo we played began in a sidestreet of a dusty, seemingly empty town. Then, the worst possible thing happened - the sodding codec rang. Snake duly crouched, tapped his ear, and about two minutes of dialogue (in Japanese, natch) followed with returning geek Otacon, eating into our precious playtime.

After that, however, the game proper began and Snake showed what an old pro can do. Several of the controls have been improved and Snake’s movement is fluid: among the most noticeable changes, when he gets close to a wall or other object, there's now a contextual icon that pops up - Gears of War-style - showing what he'll do if you hit the Triangle button at that moment. Other new additions include the "psych" meter, essentially a rage meter that makes Snake a more effective fighter as it fills up, and a "stress" meter that makes him less effective; if Snake has too many close scrapes and gets stressed out, the meter will fill and his aim will get shaky. The quickest cure is to find a safe place and let him flip through a girlie magazine, which should restore the old man's confidence in no time.

The streets had a few guards milling about, but after moving only a short distance an armoured truck rolled up and deposited about six or seven troops who began patrolling the area. We avoided the first few with relative ease, ducking behind some convenient burned out cars and into doorways, and there were several alternative routes around the street that could be used to hide before dashing around when the patrols were looking elsewhere. After getting a little cocky, one of them noticed our head peeping around the corner. Cue a ‘!’ above his head and the ever-familiar MGS chase music.

This was our first taste of combat, and it was shockingly quick - hold L1 to aim your weapon and R1 to fire. The enemy collapsed like a bag of potatoes after about two or three shots, but before we could celebrate our awesomeness, the remaining troops began running towards their comrade.

Here, MGS4 is far ahead of its predecessors – you can choose to move while aiming with reticle in a Resident Evil 4-style shoulder mode, or switch to auto-aim, which seems to give you guaranteed chest shots and allows for quick changing between targets. We quickly took down another three or four soldiers before the situation began looking bad (and here we thank Kojima Productions for allowing us a good 40 ration packs), and running away was in order.

After some quick zigzag chasing, Benny Hill-style, Snake’s diving roll put us in an alley with a dumpster. The screen immediately indicated that pressing the cover button would use the smelly hiding place, and after Snake’s quick entrance the camera changed to a first-person perspective with both hands visible on the lid. It worked, but we were completely blind as to what was outside, and we held our breath before jumping out to an empty street. (It was only later we found out we could have safely peeked out with a simple button press.)