January 28, 2006 -  Sony's playstation 3 may have been the place to see Konami's Metal Gear Solid 4 trailer, but Konami offered browsers of its own a closer look at the title towards the end of the first public day of the show. The company held a stage event, or a play if you will, devoted to the game itself. To everyone's surprise producer/director Hideo Kojima appeared on stage to discuss this game, and to play the beginning.

This play started with the official airing of the E3 trailer which, as you know, confirmed the development of MGS4, and that it would be created for the playstation 3.Continuing the trailer of MGS4 was a clip called "Metal Gear Raiden: Snake Eraser". In this clip Raiden goes back in time to attempt to take out Big Boss. His goal in this was to "steal", if you will, the lead role in MGS4 from Snake.

After the airing of the E3 trailer booth, Kojima and the MGS4 staff ran a demonstration of MGS4 running off an actual PS3 development kit! This kit contained a PS2 Dual Shock used for control. The segment that was played was taken from the trailer, and consisted of Snake holding a gun, as he prepares to hide in a ruined building. However, mid-way through staff paused the game and zoomed in and, and rotated the camera to show how extreme this game play actually will be.

That by it self would have been plenty enough of a demonstration, but good old Konami didn't stop yet. In addition to the camera angles they played around with lighting settings, shadows, and new effects. "I've always wanted to do self-shadowing, but couldn't," explains Kojima. The lighting in the scene shifted off and on, to show off the game's new self shadowing routines, and how realistic they are. "I can finally do it!" exclaims Kojima excitedly.

This game is packed with action, and realistic actions, and all around views. However, there's a lot more to come. Konami has some pretty big surprises in store for MGS4, and takes every advantage of the soon to be playstation 3.