Metal Gear Solid HD Collection Review

Posted April 19, 2012 by Jallen (366)

The Metal Gear Solid HD Collection has the following games; Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. So just to be crystal clear Metal Gear Solid is not included. Which does make me a bit suspicious that they’re planning a full remake, but it probably just means that Bluepoint Games didn’t want to go through the effort of making it pretty enough and/or couldn’t get the rights to rerelease the Gamecube remake; Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes.

If there is one thing the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection proves without doubt; it’s that graphics are completely superfluous when compared to gameplay. If it wasn’t for the “HD” tag on the box I wouldn’t feel obliged to bring it up. As it stands though this isn’t a remake, this is simply a slight polish to all the games. All they’ve done to the games is made it so that they don’t look awful on your large HD TV screen.

So let’s knock this review out of the park, to save you some time. If you’re a fan of the Metal Gear Solid franchise, and don’t own any of these games, then pick this collection up. If you’re fan and you only own one of these games, then pick this collection up. If you own two, then it’s a bit harder to say. If you own all three then you don’t need to pick this game up. If you would like to know more; here are three pages for you.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is the oldest game in the collection; released way back in the yesteryear of 2001 (are you waving your hands in the air to help you visualise?) It saw Snake caught up in quest to hunt down Metal Gears and, in one of the most controversial moves in videogame history, replaced Snake as the main protagonist for the majority of the game. Yes for about 3/4ths of the game you’ll be playing as girly man Raiden in his quest to save the President.

Due to the age this is probably the hardest game in the group. Not due to the difficulty of the game but because of the controls. If you haven’t played the game for the past 10 years then you might be in for a shock at just how clunky everything seems. This isn’t bad porting; this is just the way the game originally played and it takes some getting used to. Bizarrely the tutorial is in the second half of the game too, so if you choose to play Tanker-Plant then you’ll be playing blind for a while. So if it’s been a while take my advice and check out the hints hidden in the “Special” section of the main menu.

A question that often goes around at this point is “how is the gun aiming handled?” See on the original PS2 the buttons where pressure sensitive; you could raise your weapon by lightly pressing on the button and fire by pressing all the way down. But the 360 has analogue buttons so that isn’t possible. Well you can now aim by clicking the Right Analogue Stick however once you fire off a shot the gun will go down; so if you want to aim again you’ll have to click again. Takes a little getting used to (like all the other controls) but it works well.

The version in the collection is actually the Substance rerelease. That means it includes loads of additional extras. As well as the main game you’ll have Snake Tales, Boss Survival, Casting Theatre and of course the 300 VR missions and 200 Alternative Mission missions. The game however is missing an extra; in the original there was a skating mini-game based on ‘Evolution Skateboarding’ where Snake and Raiden could ride around a Big Shell themed skatepark but it doesn’t appear here.

Graphically the game looks alright. Honestly I wouldn’t mind if some modern games looked this way. The visuals are a bit simplistic, and you can really notice that in the textures, but other than that I think it looks great for a game over 10 years old. I mean compare it against the XBLA rerelease of ‘Perfect Dark’ (2000) which had to have a major overhaul just so modern gamers wouldn’t vomit at the mere sight of it! Or the rerelease of the original ‘Halo: Combat Evolved’ (2001) which again required a massive overhaul to get you to buy the same game twice.

While not the easiest game to adjust to this game still holds up as a gaming classic. Once you look past the controls you’ll find a fantastic game to enjoy.

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About the Author

Jallen

Spends his days reporting on games, talking about games, thinking about games, watching videos about games and reading about games. So much so has little time to actually play any of them.