Finally, Konami is not setting MGS4 to a solid release date just yet, but they are giving hint for an announcement coming late February, which is around the time of the Game Developer's Conference from February 18th-22nd.

So it is good to see something regarding MGS4 coming from CES, but going from Konami's word, something concrete should be coming a month from now.

hopefully ps3 will come out with bundle pack together with mgs4... after that, i will buy ps3.. heheheehh

I always wanter a purple PS3

There's one small feature - inconsequential, really - that we noticed during our playtest of the next Metal Gear Solid that really sums the game up. Maybe even the whole series. At certain moments during cut-scenes, when a familiar character appears or there's a reference to some past event, a button prompt appears in the corner of the screen. But it's not an invitation to skip (although you can - and for the first time, you can skip codec conversations, too). It's not some kind of simon-says scripted action moment, or 'cineractive', in the uniquely horrible term coined for them this year. No: it's a flashback button.

Another new feature to help you as you pick your way through the maps is the 'threat ring'. Not unlike the sound indicator in the PSP's Portable Ops, this is a faint white ring that surrounds Snake and distorts and quivers in the direction of enemies making noise. It's a really elegant and beautifully realised graphical device that goes some way towards giving you a real sense of spatial awareness without the need for a top-flight surround sound system.

The new stress meter - replacing the stamina meter from Snake Eater - was present and correct, and succeeded in stressing us out as we watched it creep up with every noisy blunder and awkward scuffle with the guards, although its precise impact on gameplay wasn't quite clear. The Close Quarters Combat unarmed fighting system returns in modified form, and felt more smooth and powerful than before.

By and large, in terms of features and controls at least, Guns of the Patriots feels more like traditional MGS than Snake Eater or Portable Ops did. Uninterrupted by the heavy menu usage and elaborate gameplay systems of both those games, it's a tense, exacting, crisp and relatively fast-paced stealth thriller, with a stop-start rhythm that harks all the way back to 1998. Its departures from what we expect of Metal Gear don't come in the form of some arcane new mechanic; they're more subtle, more general, but perhaps more fundamental.

The "no place to hide" strapline is a bit disingenuous - in this demo at least, there were places to hide absolutely everywhere. But the feeling of cover was much more fragile, and the option of shooting your way out much more realistic. Guns of the Patriots bring action to the fore more than any Metal Gear Solid to date has dared to. Snake is tooled to the nines with heavy hardware, and allowed to use it without necessarily having to run for cover in a querulous flap afterwards.

That will come as a relief to many players, but we're not 100 percent sure it's a good thing, yet. The fact is that the nine-year-old template for this game was not conceived as a full-bore shooter, and the controls and camera can't really cope with the action. Aiming is maddeningly imprecise, lock-on has a mind of its own, and the camera moves with a vague inertia which works nicely for taking in the view, but not for flicking around a battlefield quickly. It's messy, frankly, and the game feels much better when playing with the painstaking, inch-at-a-time precision you had to in previous instalments.

One thing you needn't worry about: Guns of the Patriots looks stunning. There are far more expansive, varied and showy game environments out there, it's true - the setting is almost drab in its realism - but the characters and their costumes are rendered and animated with an exquisite eye for detail, understated style and perfect, disbelief-suspending finish. Old Snake has the smouldering, craggy dignity of a Connery or Redford, and he's not even real. Metal Gear Solid has always been one of the sexiest game series, and Guns of the Patriots is just dripping with spy-fetish cool.

bundle means special edition? with the MGS pic printed on PS3 box...