Metal Gear Solid HD Collection PS Vita review

September 1, 2012

Metal Gear Solid HD Collection for the PS Vita features Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater; remastered in HD for the Playstation Vita.

The story and core game mechanics remain unchanged, however trophy support was added to both games.

In Metal Gear Solid 2, you play as Raiden (with help from Solid Snake) as they try to stop Metal Gear RAY, an amphibious Metal Gear, from falling into the wrong hands. In Metal Gear Solid 3, you play as Big Boss, the man cloned to create Snake as he tries to stop the world from plunging into choas. The events of Metal Gear solid 3 lead into the Metal Gear Solid Series, thus acting as a prequel.

Through both games you will be focussing more on stealth and avoiding enemies. In Metal Gear Solid 2, you can shoot pipes to blind enemies with steam and distract them by throwing objects. In Metal Gear Solid 3, a hand-to-hand system is implemented called “Close Quarters Combat”, and camouflage is also added where Snake has a “camouflage index” indicating how visible he is to enemies.

Also added to the games are some extended controls that have been integrated with the unique touch controls of the Vita. Holding your finger over the icons to both the bottom left and right of the screen, allows you to select items or weapons by sliding your finger up and down the list. Holding your finger over an item, gives you a short description of the item. Lifting your finger will allow you to equip whatever you had selected, and tapping the icon will toggle whatever you had equipped last, allowing you to quickly swap weapons.

With a swipe of the screen you can peek around corners, and with the rear touch panel you can stab unaware enemies with ease. You can also use the right side of the screen to zoom in and out when using binoculars. There are many such controls added to the game just waiting to be discovered.

The audio is done astonishingly well. Playing the game with earphones truly adds to the experience as the sound effects are coupled with rich dialog and storytelling. As you play through the game you will come to appreciate the great work done on the sound as you not only use visuals, but the sound to keep track of enemy positions.

There are some minor issues, especially with menu navigation. In Metal Gear Solid 2, you will need to completely quit and restart the game to go back to the main starting menu. This can get extremely annoying if you want to switch between the games. Luckily, in Metal Gear Solid 3 there is an option to go back to the main menu screen.

Since the games were only remastered in HD, and the game mechanics remain untouched, expect bugs that were present in the first games to be there in the HD collection. This is however not necessarily a bad thing, as you feel like you are actually playing the games as you remember them.

A very cool feature added with the port is “transfarring”. Transfarring allows the player to transfer save files between systems using the PS Vita USB cable. As a result, you can play your same game on the PS3 by moving your saves across.

This game is a must have for any Metal Gear Solid fan who wants to replay the series, or for anyone who wants to become familiar with the series. The games have been ported extremely well, and have aged very well over time. This title is by far one of the better Vita releases to date and comes highly recommended.