Konami and Kojima Productions are holding a Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes boot camp in Nasu, a lovely hot springs town in Japan's Tochigi prefecture, and the first impressions are filtering from attendees via Twitter.

Power Unlimited Editor Samuel Casado was definitely impressed by the game's story:

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes. Just saw the ending. Goosebumps. Disbelief. Shock. *reboots game* I'm going back in.

It's lovely to see how intense @HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN's passion is for proper, epic, emotionally driven, high-end productions.

The VG Resource's Dazz Brown mentioned his impressions on the engine, gameplay, and about the "two hours long" controversy:

I'd like to point out that this game is not a 2 hour game... Ground Zeroes is a great demonstration of the FOX Engine.

The game now really requires you to look at your surroundings. Objects make noise and get knocked around. Nice on @Konami.

Every soldier in Ground Zeroes has a unique appearance. Their faces, taken from real photos, appear only once per game.

Play Magazine's Sam Smith was more precise on what kind of completion percentage you're going to by finishing the game in 90 minutes. He also mentioned that there are less cutscenes and a lot is narrated via audio tapes and gameplay:

Finished GZ for the first time in about 90 minutes. Total game completion? 9%. I think that tells you all you need to know.

A lot of exposition that would have been in cutscenes before is now on audio tapes. Don't have to pause to listen, thankfully

The whole thing feels faster paced as a result, less reliant on cutscenes with more storytelling through gameplay. It's great.

Sergio Pennacchini commented on the length of the game as well:

To finish mgsv in 2 hours is like going out for dinner with charlize theron and take her to mcdonalds.

After completing the main mission and a side mission in 4 hours the game says I'm at 10% completion. Sounds good to me

@DouglasNerd added more to the debate about gameplay time, and talked about controls and the PS4 version of the game:

So yeah, the main mission of Ground Zeroes is short. BUT, you really are not going to find and discover everything in 2 hours.

Controls are much, much better than in MGS4. Really easy to do all the stuff you want, easier to interrogate enemies etc.

Btw, the frame rate is butter smooth on PS4.

I'm only playing on PS4, but I think Mr Kojima has already said that the PS4 version is smoother than the One version.

They have PS4 and Xbox One here, I don't think I've seen a last gen version.

Finally, Giacomo Vaccari praised the stealth gameplay and facial animation:

Completed a full-stealth run of MGSV:GZ. Stealth is the best it's been yet. Controls are more fluid while staying true to MGS.

I'm finding 3-5 distinct ways of achieving every objective using only stealth. Going for gun-down run next.

Fox Engine's facial animations are the best in the industry. Ending to MGSV:GZ is extremely impressive and emotional.

That's definitely high praise, but we'll have to wait and see for ourselves how those early impressions will hold up when the actual game will be available on March 18th. Personally, I'm quite optimistic.

Hideo Kojima and his team have yet to deliver a bad (or even mediocre) game, and while this one may be a bit on the short side, the same can be said about movies. That doesn't prevent us from enjoying our DVDs. Time will tell.

Update: more impressions and opinions have been shared, and you can find them here.