Title: Metal Gear Solid HD Collection
Developed By: Kojima Productions
Published By: Konami, Mindscape Asia Pacific (Australia)
Based on: The Metal Gear Solid series by Hideo Kojima
Console: Playstation 3 and XBox360
Genre: Action, First Person Shooter, Stealth
Classification: This game has been classified MA15 for Strong violence and themes
Review Conditions: This review was done on an Australian Playstation 3 version of the game. There should be no differences between this version and the XBox360 version of the game.
Special Thanks: Mindscape Asia Pacific for providing me with a sample of this game
I think anyone who has played a Metal Gear Solid game holds their own fond memories about how or why they began playing it… to memories of actually playing it in this serious fourth-wall breaking with occasional sarcastic comedy game. For me, I have played the game series in a very warped chronological order having originally picked up Metal Gear Solid 4 several years ago under the guise of doing a school presentation on elements of the game and others in terms of some message (You know, where teachers insist on you picking up completely unintentional messages and values in someones writing, piece of art or game and pretend like you care long enough to expand upon it…) and while I do own Metal Gear Solid 2 on the Playstation 2 as well, haven’t played either of them for several years until picking this up… but boy did I enjoy it…. While I am sure many of the fans would have been happy with this release even without the “HD” bit, please feel free to read on for my review of the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection.
This game is essentially an almost complete collection of the Metal Gear Solid series, realistically only lacking Metal Gear Solid (PS1), Metal Gear Online and of course Metal Gear Solid 4. Instead you are treated to a healthy set of three games remastered into HD – Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker of which the original Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake which originated on the MSX consoles were also included but given their age have not really recieved much of an improvement – but are still enjoyable playthroughs. For the purpose of this review, while I will be discussing each of these games in some detail, I won’t be looking at them individually as 1. There are reviews on the original releases of the games themselves (I am sure you don’t want a 10,000 word review) and 2. Looking at them individually would detract from the whole “Collection” focus of the review.
The games remain more or less true to their original releases, so as this is a remastered release… what you saw in the game when it was released several years ago will be still in the game and untouched. This leaves you with perhaps the biggest issue you could be faced with as soon as you boot up the game. It presents you with a list of the three games in chronological order and not in release order, leaving you with the choice to play the game how it was mean’t to be played, play how the story is mean’t to be played out or do what I did and dabble in the three. There is no right or wrong answer to this but it is something to keep in mind. On the topic of the games actual storyline, it is perhaps one of the more complex plots you will find in a game with a vast variety of characters with a nice mix of ally and enemy, a plot that if it were not for the Metal Gear Solid Encyclopedia I have on my Playstation 3 would have had me lost at several points, many a plot twist and that sense of witty humor and fourth wall breaking that all combines into a plot that rewards you for your hard work.
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater which takes place in a 1964 which perhaps is a bit more technologically capable than in real life acts as a sort of beginning of the series and is a bit more interesting in that unlike previous installments that focus on perhaps more technological and “metallic” environments, it involves more traversing through the wilderness within a soviet union rainforest and considering that this is a stealth game, uses it to their advantage through means such as hiding in tall grass, camouflage and climbing up trees. The game comes in with around fifteen to twenty hours of gameplay within it depending on skill and difficulty level, and features two primary story missions, the Virtuous Mission where agent Naked Snake is sent to the forest of the Soviet Union in order to rescue a defecting nuclear scientist while the second mission “Operation Snake Eater” follows on from the event where he must hunt down his mentor “The Boss” who defected to the enemy ranks. The game comes with nothing in terms of extra content but is the game selection you want to access in order to access the original Metal Gear games.
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is the next game in the chronological order and takes place 10 years after Metal Gear Solid 3, however apparently only part of the game is considered canon. This release was probably the least favourite out of the three, which is spread into several chapters. It features Naked Snake who now runs a mercenary unit and focuses on an unknown army of soldiers that have taken over Costa Rica. These soldiers hold a nuclear warhead referred to as “Peace Walker” and of course our protagonist has been asked to deal with it with your normal collection of conspiracies and problems associated with it. While I was not so won over by the plot, in terms of replayability you could easily get double your main storyline time in gameplay with 128 Extra Ops (Side Missions).
The final main game in this collection is Metal Gear Solid 2: Son’s of Liberty, which takes place in 2005 and features not just Solid Snake in the games first chapter “Tanker”, but newcomer to the series Raiden in the second chapter entitled “Plant”. As I began the series with Metal Gear Solid 4, I felt more at home with this plot than the other two which has a bit more of a modern theme to it. Themes of information control and characters who do naked cartwheels around military bases are key to the plot but it essentially surrounds the characters attempting to stop a high-tech weapon falling into the hands of an elite resistance group known as Dead Cell, with a massive offshore facility sized by a group of terrorists under the name “Sons of Liberty” and use fear and bribery to get what they want lest the world meets a cataclysmic end. While all three games have decent storylines, I would personally advise you to pick up the encyclopedia application from the Playstation Network which acts as a fairly good guide to what happened in the main games within the series and can be unlocked with all the content upon completion of Metal Gear Solid 4.
On another matter entirely, the most important aspect to this collection is the design. Sure we all knew that the storyline and gameplay are good – but just how well did the HD remastering go? While I would not go anywhere near as far as compare them to the PS3 exclusive masterpiece of MGS4, they did a pretty damn good job at bringing the previous releases of the games and breathing new life to them in 720p / 60fps which is in no small part thanks to Bluepoint Games who were behind other HD collections such as the Shadow of the Colossus x Ico HD Collection. The update however did not completely bring it into HD, giving it a mixed look between current-gen and last-gen quality but without the blurriness of the older releases on newer televisions. A few texturing issues, a few awkward character through (X) moments and the lip syncing being off occasionally, but these didn’t detract from the overall game experience.
As this game is a stealth oriented game, you are encouraged to take the safe approach over going on a mad killing spree that most people will inevitably end up going on anyway (At least one of the games offers a gold trophy / respective achievement for not killing a single enemy throughout the game… from memory) so get out that cardboard box and try and tip toe your way past your enemies… otherwise the game offers you a sizable collection of guns, tools and other bits of equipment to tailor your first person shooting experience to your liking. As you may expect, each game attempts to bring its own gameplay mechanics to improve the experience – so while you have your normal codec system, depending on the game you will have different uses for it aside from the main story such as finding hidden music stations or the like… or alternatively Metal Gear Solid 3 has a medical system where you are no longer completely immortal and will at times need to suture, bandage etc yourself up to stop Snake from dropping in the red. At the same time, this means that control systems change between the games so reading the included ingame tutorials and manual are a must – but even then take a while to get used to when jumping games.
Personally, I liked the thought and detail that went into the game and not just the fact those newer to gaming won’t have to hunt around for individual copies of these series (No easy feat living in Australia) and that we get to play the game in HD whereas those with newer televisions might have struggled with the quality. NO! I am talking about the little details such as the fact they offer owners of Peace Walker on the PSP to transfer their save files over to the game…. the fact they have improved upon some of the gripes with the original gameplay by including features included in later re-releases such as the camera control fixes from Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence… and the simple fact that a game like this is still going strong after so many years. While we may not be seeing Metal Gear Solid 5 anytime soon, at least we have Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance to look forward to on the Playstation 3 and XBox360. Makes me wonder what other previous gen games we will see with HD Remasters….
Final Score
Storyline/Character Development: A-
Design: A-
Music/Voice Acting: A
Gameplay: A-
Replayability: B
Personal Opinion: A
Overall Score: A-
