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This feature comes from the latest issue of PSM3, on sale now.

You can take a look at the special custom iPad version of the magazine here.

We were in the front row for Konami's exclusive press event in Tokyo where Hideo Kojima unveiled Ground Zeroes and Kojima Productions' new Fox Engine, on which the game runs. The Metal Gear 25th Anniversary event was as much a celebration of the franchise as a reveal of two new Metal Gear games (including mobile game Social Ops) and a Hollywood movie.

The event, held at the upmarket Midtown complex in Roppongi, featured camouflaged actors hidden against the walls and drew attendees such as Goichi "Suda51" Suda, as Kojima made several presentations about the future of the Metal Gear franchise.

"I am often asked, 'What is Metal Gear for you?'" said Kojima. "Metal Gear to me is like competing in the Olympics. Just like an Olympic athlete, I make a game every four or five years and try to compete with the rest of the world."

The Olympics - and its parallels with Japan's struggling game industry - were a theme of the anniversary event. Japan had the world's strongest gymnasts in the 1960s and '70s, but from the '80s it suffered an embarrassing losing streak that lasted decades. But things have turned around again: at London 2012, Kohei Uchimura of Japan's Konami-sponsored gymnastics team took home the gold medal...

"They bounced back," Kojima said. "And videogames will be the same. We have to inspire the world like our Olympians. We will show the world our ability, driven by all our soul and passion."

FANTASTIC FOX-SAN

So what does this mean for Metal Gear? Well, the obvious first point is Fox Engine. Kojima is determined to not only evolve his beloved game franchise, but to prove to the world that Japan can still lead the gaming world. And frankly, after 15 minutes basking in the spectacle of MGS: Ground Zeroes, it was hard to disagree.

The game looks stunning from every angle. Kojima's vivid imagination is brought to thrilling reality in FOX Engine, creating a world as striking today as the Metal Gear Solid 2 demo was back in 2000. Rain falls heavily, bouncing off surfaces, streaking across faces in rivulets, soaking into clothing, drizzling from Big Boss' scraggly beard. As an XOF chopper takes off, its blades throw the rain in wide ripples.

The nature of the XOF organisation is just one of the questions raised by the demo. Chico and Paz return from Peace Walker, but why does the young boy - possibly Chico - have a hole in his chest? What year is this? Why does Kojima Productions art show a young Snake, while the demo features an aged Big Boss? Answers will have to wait a while, because as the camera cuts from the XOF choppers down to the ocean and then up the cliff face, you learn that Kojima has abandoned the linear nature of Metal Gear and created an open-world sneaking playground for you to traverse as you like.

"Because this is an open world, you can choose whatever route you like to infiltrate this camp," says Kojima, as Big Boss (well, officially so far it's just Snake) approaches Camp Omega, where his mission is to extract Paz and Chico, the young Militaires Sans Frontières fighters from Peace Walker. "Usually in a Metal Gear game, around now there would be some enemies to sneak past, but this is less that kind of puzzle game. It's more a real-time sneaking game."

Snake crawls along as he has always done, using similar crouching and crawling motions to those of Old Snake in Metal Gear Solid 4, but more graceful and fluid. Searchlights flood the ground ahead with light, just as when Solid Snake first infiltrated the compound on Shadow Moses Island in 1998's Metal Gear Solid, but here the effect is much more subtle - when the light nearly hits Snake he's not immediately seen, and a quick roll hides him just quickly enough to avoid detection. "This is what I'd hoped to do with the first MGS, actually," says Kojima.

What you're seeing with Fox Engine is much more than just an evolution in horse power; this is an engine designed to render the contents of Hideo Kojima's brain onscreen, from the most delicate refinements to the brutest insanity. The cutscene and gameplay footage you've seen online is all running in-game, according to Kojima, on a PC capped to PS3 specs.

That last part seems impossible, doesn't it? Can the PS3 really handle Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes? "This is not just a tech demo," stressed Kojima. "I'm not sure yet when the game will be released; we could make a linear game much more easily, but I wanted to set this game in an open world. I don't think you'll be waiting too long, but we're not going to release it until it's ready." If it follows the same development timeline as Metal Gear Solid 3 - a game which only hit PS2 because Kojima was frustrated waiting for PS3 and 360 - we could see it as soon as November 2013, running on current generation platforms.

And then an orchestra struck up with renditions of music from MGS4 and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, as attendees got stuck in to "camouflage salad" and spring rolls shaped like cigars, and a plethora of Japanese celebs - from Olympic medallist Uchimura to members of massive Japanese pop group AKB48 and a gaggle of game developers - took turns to sing Kojima's praises.

After 25 years at the helm of Metal Gear, Kojima is often accused by detractors of taking the easy route, sticking with the series when he could be inventing something new. But the Tokyo event made it clear that Metal Gear is just the framework for Kojima's bonkers ideas, and that he has a fire in his belly to continue competing - and winning - on the global stage.