IGN has provided us with a very informative article here. This is well worth the read and devoid of any even minor spoilers.

Most notably covered are the ease of controls, ability to play in first person mode throughout, the Drebin points system, differing environments, HUD and weapon customization, stealth vs action emphasis, depth of CQC, and last but not least the interesting difficulty setting names.

Also, make note that at the end of this article IGN says they look to continually update this article in the future before release.

Animation of everything, from Snake to the actions of the PMCs to the evasion of Gekkos and FROG soldiers are incredibly fluid and slick. For the most part, what we've seen ran at a stable 60 frames a second. There were only a few instances in which the framerate dipped for a second or two, but that was typically caused by large onscreen explosions coupled with screen effects (such as dirt being kicked up on the camera lens).

As for visual fidelity, the trailers that have been released for the game are just a brief indication of what the game truly looks like. The title looks much sharper than trailers or screenshots show.

There are four initial difficulty levels available in Metal Gear Solid 4: Liquid Easy, Naked Normal, Solid Normal and Big Boss Hard.

jmac353 via ps3.ign.com »