November 10, 2004 - Warning! Danger, Will Robinson! Danger! There are spoilers ahead.

Konami recently invited us to its offices to play a good bit of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. We were allowed to experience roughly five hours of the game, which equated to two "boss fights" spread across two major scenarios. This preview will summarize all five of those hours, so if you do not want the beginning of this tactical espionage epic ruined for you, please cease reading this preview immediately. Consider yourself spoiler warned.

Just like the demo, Snake Eater begins with a drop behind enemy lines. The setup is the same, but elaborated upon. An unnamed special operations agent is inserted into Soviet territory to rescue a scientist named Sokolov. The agent is "Jack," codenamed Naked Snake. Naked Snake shares some similarities to Solid Snake (David Hayter is doing the voice once again), but during the course of our play he wasn't revealed to be either Solid or Solid's progenitor, Big Boss. He's just "Jack" for now.

As the story goes, Sokolov defected to the United States some years ago (Snake's commanding officer, Major Zero, aided in his escape). Unfortunately, he was later traded back to the Russians in exchange for Khrushchev's pullout of Cuba during that missile crisis. Apparently Sokolov is very important to the Motherland. Now Major Zero, also known as Major Tom, has orders to retrieve Sokolov. It's only later that Snake, Zero's sole operative, learns that Sokolov was wanted so badly because he plays a pivotal role in the completion of the Shagohod, a new kind of weapon capable of launching a nuclear device from just about anywhere. In addition to swaying the balance of power and staving off the red menace, the success of this rescue mission will also allow the Major to form a new special operations group known as the FOX unit, or at least it will legitimize that unit. And so the game begins.

The Pain Likes Bees

The Major, an appropriately named doctor that goes by Para-Medic and a legendary American soldier referred to as The Boss, initially supports snake over the radio. Through a variety of conversations, we learn that The Boss is Snake's mentor and happens to be a woman he also idolizes (and probably fantasizes about). These characters all work together to deliver a staggering amount of story to Jack, as well as aid in his mission. They inform him of critical gameplay developments and provide him with a variety of context sensitive hints to circumvent specific problems. Using the radio works exactly like the Codec from previous Metal Gear titles, so no worries there.

In terms of content, the initial portion of our play was very similar to the recently released demo, save for more in-depth cutscenes that further detailed the origins of the mission, Sokolov, Volgin, and their roles in the game. These extra bits of story even depicted conversations between President Johnson and Khrushchev and laid some groundwork that further developed the relationship between Snake and Major Zero (who is actually a real person and not some kind of fervently patriotic ghost in the shell).

It's daylight. Jack jumps out of a plane. The Soviet Union is below him. Begin gameplay.

The first segment of play is the same as the demo. It's what Konami calls an extended tutorial. There are several sparsely populated areas that eventually lead up to a bridge, and then later to a ruined complex where Sokolov is purportedly being held. It's here that we come to grips with the mechanics. Of course, the biggest portions of play are now eating, sneaking, camouflaging, healing, and close-quartered fighting.