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After getting through the Frogs, Snake and the Rat Patrol split up, and the game slows back into stealth mode where Snake infiltrates the Praying Mantis compound to locate and kill Liquid. Upon arrival, Liquid has a little surprise waiting for Snake and the soldiers. Suddenly all of the soldiers and Rat Pack members begin to drop to the ground and lose bodily functions. Some soldiers attack other soldiers and some collapse in pain. It seems that Liquid has discovered the ability to violently disrupt the soldiers' Nanomachines, and as Snake moves in to take a shot at Liquid he too becomes affected. Inches from successfully completing his mission, he fades into unconsciousness as Act 1 concludes.

At the end of each act, your in-game statistics are displayed. The game tracks such information as your total play time, continues, alert phases, kills, recovery and special items used, number of weapon types procured, and flashbacks watched. You can also earn bonus Drebin points in certain areas, including continues used, weapons procured, flashbacks watched, and use of special items. This means that making the most of your time using stealth, CQC and holding up soldiers will keep you fat with Drebin points.

Snake wakes up on Otacon's ship, and while I can't explain anything further with what happens in the game, I can say that between each of the acts Snake will be briefed on his next mission. Mission briefings are laid out in a unique multi-window view, and you can toggle between a number of different camera views as the briefing takes place. When all of the windows are open, a ticker gives you updates on other in-game stats as crawling time, crouch-walking time, time spent in the metal drum or box, and more. You can also pilot the Mk. II through the ship to find items, switch stations on a radio, and find other little secrets. Since these briefings are quite lengthy scenes, the interactive qualities make the experience much more interesting, yet we quickly learned that trying to focus on the story while fishing for hidden elements proved tricky at times.

Ultimately, for the next two days, we'd play the game from 8 a.m. until around 11 p.m., with two breaks for lunch and dinner. After dinner each night we could either go back and play, or relax, enjoy the onsen -- a lava-heated underground hot spring -- grab a cocktail, or go to bed early. Yet except for the first night, everyone blew off enjoying the surroundings and boarded the bus to go return and play until late in the evening. No one could get enough.

When originally shown in trailer form at Tokyo Game Show 2005, MGS4 more or less set the bar for what people could potentially expect from the PlayStation 3. From the first act alone, it's apparent that Kojima Productions has gotten a good handle on PlayStation 3 development. Everything in the Middle East oozes with atmosphere even though the environments are primarily brown, crumbly and drab. Snake looks phenomenal, and whether switching from a crouched position into dive, rolling into a lying-down state, then rolling onto his back to inch closer to an enemy -- whom he puts out flat with a CQC move -- everything comes together seamlessly. Sounds are crisp, and I often found myself lifting my headphones to check if sound was in-game or happening in the actual world around me. Fans of the previous Harry Gregson-Williams' music will also be in for a treat, as the soundtrack's score is brilliant.