Review: Metal Gear Solid HD Collection (360)

You know, I had never played a Metal Gear or Metal Gear Solid game before this Metal Gear Solid HD Collection. Nearly thirty minutes after I started the first game in the Collection, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, I finally understood the inside joke within the gaming community about the length of the Metal Gear Solid series’ FMVs and cutscenes, since I had yet to actually play the game. What I can also say is that I finally understood the respect and admiration within the gaming community about the beauty of those same FMVs and cutscenes. Aside from the beautifully updated cutscenes and FMVs, the games themselves seem better than what the original platforms were generally capable of.

I was very surprised by the quality of the graphical update, from the in game graphics to the cutscenes and FMVs. Aside from some occasional issues of tearing, there seems to have been a great deal of effort put into bringing the visuals of the game up to par with the expectations of a current generation title. Watching the opening scene of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, where Naked Snake performs the HALO jump into Russian territory, I found myself very pleasantly surprised by the smoothness of the textures and of the character animations. This pattern continued through the rest of the included titles in the HD collection (Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker).

Now, I say that these are HD updates of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, but these two titles are not updated from the original games, but from the enhanced versions, titled Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance and Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is updated in its own right, since it never received an enhanced edition.

The gameplay is, for the most part, the epitome of the stealth genre. There is a heavy focus on camouflage and stealth movement combinations, resulting in various types of costumes, face paint, and loadouts. If you’re seen, your best bet is to disable your enemies as quickly as possible, then hide in a fair safe area with a high camouflage index until the alert and caution timers run out and the rest of the guards in contact with your downed enemies return to a state of general patrol. Everything in these games punishes you for breaking stealth as much as possible, so staying secret and quiet is the best way to stay safe and achieve your objectives.

The Metal Gear Solid series has been one of the frontrunners in stealth gameplay for as long as I can remember, all the way back to the original Metal Gear games on NES (which I HAVE played, and are the primary reasons why I always think of Big Boss as an asshole and a villain, regardless of his protagonist role in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker). While the graphics have the occasional glitch, for the most part this game looks like the kind of game that belongs, if not on the forefront of the current generation, somewhere comfortably within it. It is a smooth and well done graphical update, and should be held as one of a few examples of how HD collections should be done. When you throw in one of gaming’s classic stories, with twists and turns galore, packed within three massive games for a discount title price, you end up with a winner.