From what we could tell, the biggest changes to MGS4's gameplay are in the shooting controls, which have never been the strongest point in the MGS series. The game uses a low third-person camera like the one first seen in MGS3: Subsistence, so it's already more like a third-person shooter than the previous, predominantly stealth-oriented outings. Furthermore, you'll have an auto-aim setting that you can turn on, which will essentially lock your aim to the enemy most directly in Snake's line of sight. (You'll see a small hovering icon indicating which enemy you're locked on to.) Then you'll hold L1 to engage the lock so that you can fire at and strafe around that enemy while you're running around.

More-skilled players will be able to toggle the auto-aim with a tap of the square button, which makes Snake unable to fire from the hip. Why would you want to do that? Because with auto-aim off, holding L1 will bring the camera down to a Gears of War-style over-the-shoulder firing mode that lets you aim precisely for headshots and the like. You can also switch which of Snake's shoulders you're looking over, depending on the surrounding cover. You lose the advantage of being able to kill enemies on the run with the auto-aim turned off, but we found the manual-aim mode let us kill enemies much more quickly by aiming for the head. You'll also get quite a satisfying rag doll effect when you take troops down this way; they look like they go down hard with the impact of your bullets.