Fans of MGS and PS3 owners alike cannot wait for June 12th to arrive. Who could blame them though? MGS4 looks amazing, is a great series, and this is the last time we will ever get to play as the venerable Snake. Supposedly.

As someone who has loved playing these games over the years and who unfortunately does not own a PS3 yet, all I can do is just gaze in awe at the gorgeous screenshots and very cinematic trailers. These new screens are no exception. Enjoy.

Konami has announced the availability of a limited edition Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots PS3 bundle for North America. Featuring a Gun Metal Gray 40 GB PS3 with matching DualShock 3 wireless controller and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots Limited Edition game. The bundle will be exclusively available at Konami’s website for $599.99.

Pre-sell for the bundle begins on May 19th and limited supplies are available.

Here are the stats pulled from the Konami site:

• Due to limited quantities, orders will be limited to 1 (one) bundle per household
• Shipping costs are higher than normal on this item, due to product size. Please review the shipping costs, during your order process
• Please review our Return and Warranty policies before purchase
• Gun Metal Gray PLAYSTATION 3 with a 40GB Hard drive
• Gray DUALSHOCK 3 wireless controller
• Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots Limited Edition
• The Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots game, which includes Metal Gear Online, enabling you to take part in the ultimate multiplayer squad based tactical shooter
• Exclusive Blu-ray disc including over 2 hours of additional content – “Hideo Kojima’s Gene” a behind-the-scenes vision of Hideo Kojima’s production team & game and “The Making of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots” documentary
• The official Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots CD Soundtrack, including 16 never-before-released tracks by Harry Gregson-Williams (Shrek, Armageddon, The Rock), Nobuko Toda, and Ennio Morricone

To order, get more information, or just salivate over it, click here, and under “find products” click game platforms, and then PS3 and you should see it right away. For some reason I cannot get any of the links directly to it to work. Or, you can just click the link Rick posted in the comments section below. HTML is a cruel mistress sometimes.

Hideo Kojima, the man behind the Metal Gear Solid series, has always acted like a Hollywood movie director. So it kind of makes a lot of sense that this new trailer for Metal Gear Solid 4 looks like something you might actually see in a theater, right down to the “movie trailer voice.” The trailer basically sums up the general story behind the game: Liquid Snake (through Revolver Ocelot) has found a way to control soldiers mind, and Snake is sent to stop him. Okay, that’s like the most incredibly basic way I can explain the story; if I went into further details, I’d probably have to write a full novel. As always though, the game looks awesome and makes me even more excited to finally get my hands on it.

Konami has revealed the first ten minutes of the upcoming Metal Gear Solid 4, and I think this goes without saying, but still: SPOILER WARNING. Obviously if you want to wait to get the full experience when the game comes out, don’t watch the video above. But if you’re more like me, then you’re too excited to wait that long. The video shows the opening cut scene along with some short gameplay moments, which sets up how Old Snake made his way to the middle of a raging battlefield. The footage also reveals that hiding in boxes will most likely just get you killed this time around (particularly if you’re Hideo Kojima, apparently). This game just cannot get released quick enough.

G4 TV has released a new gameplay video of the long awaited Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. The footage demonstrates The new recon droid for MGS4. It also gives gamers a good look at the real time gameplay and the wide variety of weapons that are available. You can ship to a weapon and auto to first person with ease. In this video, your allies, Meryl’s Rat Patrol team, demonstrate smart AI that will actually help you in combat.

Check out the footage narrated by G4’s Adam Sessler:

You can look forward to grabbing MGS4 for the PS3 June 12.

This past weekend, I headed out to the New York Comic Con to see all of that latest and greatest in the Comic Book community. To my surprise, Komani was there showing off Metal Gear Online. Not only did I have to play it, but I made sure I got footage of myself completely sucking at… er.. I mean pwning the enemy! We all know that folks who play video games for a living must be good at all of them…right?!

I must say that I was completely surprised at how well the game handled. It stayed true to how Metal Gear Solid feels, while finally adding a multiplayer component to it. The game was setup as a local 4v4 LAN match. As you’ll see in the video above, this was the first time I ever played MGO, so I didn’t quite have a grasp on what the controls were yet. I did like how you can change weapons or accessories by simply press the R2/L2 buttons instead of having to hold it down in order to select what you want to use (even though I can’t recall at the moment if that was something previous Metal Gear Solid games did).

Playing Metal Gear Online was fun for the short time I got to try it out. Thanks to this hands-on impression, not only am I looking forward to MGS4, but I’ll also probably be checking out MGO whenever I have the chance.

Today, PS3 owners the world over eagerly fired up the new Metal Gear Online beta…and promptly found themselves denied. The beta was supposed to begin worldwide today, but it seems Konami has been forced to limit it to Japan for now, due to an overwhelming demand. They plan to re-open the beta in other regions once they can stabilize the servers in Japan first; and who knows when that will be? On the plus side, the developer has stated they will now be extending the beta period by five days. Konami released this notice on the issue:

IMPORTANT NOTICE for all
METAL GEAR ONLINE PREMIERE BETA players

We would like to thank all players for their keen interest in taking part in the beta test. However, we regret to inform you that due to extraordinary levels of traffic from all around the globe, we have been unable to run the service to the level we expected. As a temporary measure, we will be deferring the start of the US public beta test until we are able to stabilize our server.

We would like to apologize for all inconveniences as well as confusion caused. We would like to add that due to the above reasons, we will be making the following changes to the schedule:

1) Starting date: TBA. We will be making another announcement on 22/4/2008 23:00(PDT)
2) Beta Test closure: This will now be on 11/05/2008 at 24:00(PDT) rather than 06/05/2008 at 24:00(PDT)

IMPORTANT: Please note that your voucher code will only be valid up until 05/06/2008, so please make sure to register them by then.

Well, I suppose it’s a good thing this is just a beta test and not the actual release of the game. Right now, someone in Konami is holding a clip board with some note paper, and right next to the words “More Servers?” he’s checking the box marked “Yes.”

Via Kombo

The beta for Metal Gear Online starts tomorrow, at which time we’ll probably start to hear it’s actually any good. Until then though, it looks like Konami has posted the entire instruction manual for the game online. The instructions are also included in the beta program itself, but for those of us that aren’t in the beta, they offer a closer glimpse of what to expect from the final product. You can check out the instruction manual by clicking the link below, and the final version of Metal Gear online should ship with Metal Gear Solid 4 on June 12th.

Via Konami

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots has now received a rating from the wonderful ESRB. Konami’s much anticipated final chapter in the series will be rated “M” for Mature, which means that if you are under 17 you should not be allowed to purchase it as the game will scar your minds, sully your souls, and make you commit random acts of violence on over the top enemies.

It is no surprise though considering 98% of all Metal Gear titles have been rated “M” – the only other titles for the series to be rated anything other than “M” were for handhelds. Anyway, here is the info pulled from the ESRB site, enjoy the boredom it brings to your world.

• Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
• Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc.
• “M”
• Blood, Crude Humor,Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence
• PlayStation 3

Via: ESRB

With Metal Gear Solid 4’s release date now set for June 12 in North America, gamers are ready to get it on with some new Metal Gear action. But if an interview with Hideo Kojima is correct, the game’s quality isn’t quite what it could have been thanks to a lack of storage on Blu-ray discs.

You read that right – a lack of storage on Blu-ray discs. I never actually thought I’d have to type that – at least not this soon in the PS3’s life cycle – but Kojima apparently wasn’t satisfied. Perhaps you should try better compressing your game, Mr. Kojima?

Makes me wonder how they managed to fit Oblivion on a single DVD.

via Evil Avatar