Metal Gear Solid HD Collection Review

Say what you will about Metal Gear and its genius, scattershot creator Hideo Kojima, but nothing else flits so effortlessly between nude cartwheels, prescient yet excruciating 30-minute cutscenes and exhilarating, real-time, blade combat (alongside the most charismatic videogame hero ever) - and that's just in a two-hour stretch of MGS2. Don't even get us started on the La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo, or MGS3's one-hour boss battle, or tracking an invisible Tsuchinoko, or the pleasure of Peace Walker's Fulton Recovery System.


Not the official trailer, that can be found HERE but it's a little rubbish!

For all its madness, eccentricity, overwrought cutscenes and awkward, poorly explained controls, MGS is unarguably the most inventive, philosophical and infuriatingly indulgent game series of all time. It's a stirring antidote to the current raft of gritty, predictable war shooters, and a series that defiantly - clumsily - tries to say something about the nature of society, technology, human existence, genetics and politics. All at once. Hardly an accusation you could level at Modern Warfare 3.

The question is whether an HD collection of ten year-old PS2 games and technically-inhibited PSP spin-offs can cut it on 360. It treads a fine line - potentially too familiar for existing fans, but too arcane to sway newcomers used to a slicker diet of shooters with Jack-and-Jill tutorials and place-bomb-here objectives.



METAL GEAR SOLID 2: SONS OF LIBERTY

Snake's PS2 debut, Sons of Liberty, is the collection's oldest game (bar the 2D MSX ports). Unsurprisingly, it's aged the worst thanks to the low resolution of its assets (dictated by PS2's 4Mb texture memory), but there's still much to admire.

The nostalgia is powerful, evoking fond memories of pouring over the nine-minute E3 2000 trailer; marveling at the first-person aiming and thinking how incredible the effects looked. (The rain! The tanker! The mullet!) And then there was the big switch: after shipping a 20-minute demo (bundled with PS2 mech-battler Zone of the Enders) that starred Solid Snake, the final game forced you to play as Raiden, the blond FOXHOUND pretty boy, for the remaining ten hours. It was an audacious move that fooled the entire industry - one that would never survive a modern-day focus group.

MGS2 is a game of iconic moments - using the directional mic to sniff out Ames' pacemaker with Ocelot just metres away; Raiden's battle with an army of 80-foot robots; just about anything involving Dead Cell. Its script is an endearing, absurd mess, its plot a conspiratorial labyrinth. More importantly, it explores lofty concepts about the pervasive control of information (musing on the growth of the net), the impact of identity and, meta-fashion, the nature of postmodern game design.

Now the bad news: the blurry environment and character details are painfully noticeable in cutscenes, and the mechanics that enthralled ten years ago have been numbed by imitation, or evolution, today. That said, it all has little impact unless you're expecting to move while crouching, and in all other ways MGS2's clean, geometric visual style actually sits nicely in HD. Generally, MGS2's legacy - and infectious insanity - is intact.

METAL GEAR SOLID 3: SNAKE EATER

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater flings the series into the Cold War '60s, with Kojima now weaving historical events into series canon. Even today Snake Eater retains its place as the crown jewel: with artist Yoji Shinkawa's richest character designs yet, and a seductive, almost gratuitously cheeky period Bond film feel. It's Kojima's most personal and self-contained game; liberated by its prequel status and fizzing with invention.

Audacity is Snake Eater's driving factor, with perhaps the most diverse, perplexing and brilliant boss battles in history against the otherworldly Cobras. Most notably there's The End, the photosynthetic, century-old 'father of modern sniping,' and the mournful trudge down the riverbed to 'fight' The Sorrow.



The latter is less a boss battle than a slowly unravelling, self-reflective meditation on your own violence - you must dodge the ghost of everyone you've killed until that point, and are forced to do so at walking pace. By 2005, few games had confronted you so directly with the consequences of your actions: it held a mirror to the disposable nature of violence in all games.

The End's encounter is one of the most uncompromising, bewildering and inventive boss battles ever: a one hour sniping match against a foe you initially can't even see on a jungle map spanning many, many screens. Cruel trial and error leads to the odd tiny breakthrough, until the revelatory moment you understand - and hunter becomes hunted. Better yet, the battle is followed by a ten-minute ladder climb where all you do is press Up, while the Snake Eater theme whistles gently on the wind, like an aural illusion. It's boring, hypnotic and forces you to reflect on the enormity of what's happened - again, hardly a common device in MW3 or Saints Row The Third.

Sure, it's tough going for the first few hours, as you constantly trip alerts and juggle fiddly menus, but by the breathless (yet nearly two-hour) finale you almost feel guilty for not liking it more straight away. MGS3 is Kojima's finest blend of pacing and structure, marrying inventive gameplay to a truly filmic feel. This HD collection is worth it just for Snake Eater - and the lush, upscaled jungles impress even by today standards.



METAL GEAR SOLID: PEACE WALKER

Peace Walker is the most contentious: designed (brilliantly) to dodge PSP's inherently fiddly controls with smart use of byte-size missions, RPG-style team building and content unlocks via Wi-Fi hotspots. Snake's moves are limited - you can't peak around corners, for one - forcing you to approach the smaller scale stages with new tactics. Its quasi-MGS3-sequel plot unfolds via moving comic panels, which are disappointing compared to Kojima's norm.

Peace Walker needs to be played on its own terms - it's less about the solid but so-so action and stealth than managing the growth of Outer Heaven (Snake's legendary base) via a series of RPG elements. Recruiting soldiers is fun - knock guards out, then attach them to a Fulton balloon and float them off to your base. It's a far cry from painfully dragging guards into trucks as in its PSP forebear, Portable Ops. Refined controls that use both analogue sticks help immensely - especially in the gruelling boss battles as you grind down giant tanks and choppers.

Though Kojima wrote Peace Walker's story, it's less ambitious than usual, despite closing some psychological loose ends from MGS3. Its cast is unmemorable (dubious Paz scenes aside), but the singing AI mechs are a high point and look gorgeous in HD.



There's no question these games are still worth playing, even if the selection is incomplete. There's something to be said for stealth that still makes you tense up when making a mad, if calculated dash across open ground - and in those uncertain seconds lies everything good about MGS; its fine balance between success and collapse, indulgence and innovation.

If Kojima does walk away (as he's threatened to do on many occasions), you owe it yourself to experience the uncompromising vision of a developer who dared to scan your memory card for old Konami games, or ordered you to turn off the console since you'd been playing too long. If Kojima is famous for breaking the fourth wall, the one between game and gamer, the HD Collection is the keystone that held it all together.

9/10

Despite its age, Metal Gear Solid HD still does bang-up stealth, and couples it with some of the maddest storytelling ever pressed to disc. Still essential.

Fancied giving this a go anyway as I never finished MGS2 and missed MGS3 completely so will def. be giving this a look but most likely on PS3 as it will come with the original MSX games which the 360 version doesnt have.

They are on the 360 version now mate

Bonus