Honestly, the demo wasn't the total disaster I was expecting. My biggest problem with Peace Walker, aside from the basic design philosophy, is the button aiming. That's still a problem in MGS3D, but I found switching to first person mode helps a lot. Maybe it's a weird psychological thing, but moving the first person gun in tiny increments with the buttons bothered me a whole lot less than swinging the cursor around in third person. I was able to consistently shoot guards in the head, which is something I found fairly difficult in Peace Walker. Yet another reason to get the Circle Pad Pro vanishes.
Perhaps I've forgotten how good MGS3 looked on the PS2, but I was pretty impressed with the graphics, especially since my last MGS experience was Peace Walker on the PSP. It's certainly not the Naked Sample, but I think it will do. The one graphical sticking point is the framerate. While I didn't notice any slowdown, it's clearly not 30 fps. I'm not a big framerate stickler as long as it's consistent, so it didn't bother me that much. The rest of the presentation is great, though. Moving all of the menu and HUD stuff to the bottom screen is obvious, but it's appreciated. The demo made me appreciate 3D again after the pretty mediocre implementation in Resident Evil and Tales of the Abyss, so that's cool, I guess.
I'm much more optimistic about the game now. I still don't think I'll run out to buy it for full price, but I look forward to a price drop. Still, that's better than a few weeks ago when I thought it was a horrible defacement of a venerated classic.
