In March 2008, Konami invited 16 lucky game journalists to its corporate retreat in the sleepy mountain village of Nasu, Japan to play through Hideo Kojima's long awaited PlayStation 3 opus, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Given the intense veil of secrecy that has shrouded the game since its announcement in 2005, this remote setting felt weirdly appropriate: We spent our days soldiering through the game at Konami's onsite office (imagine: a Bond villain's lair crossed with a Zen garden, stocked with an endless supply of canned coffee and whipped cream sandwiches) and retired to the adjacent Konami resort hotel (imagine: The Shining's Overlook, but with relaxing volcanic hot springs in lieu of bloody elevators) to eat, sleep, and babble incoherently about the mind-blowing things we'd seen and done.
_____________
Preview: 1up