Metal Gear Solid: The Essential Collection

"Metal Gear?!"

It always seems there is someone taking a swipe at MGS for some reason or another. It may be stealth, cut scenes or the fact that despite your amazing arsenal of weapons firing a single one unsuppressed alerts the enemy to your presence. Despite it's problems though Metal Gear Solid is an amazing series has never truly failed to disappoint and this collection is no exception. Metal Gear Solid The Essential Collection is the three games packed into one handy little pack for a small price. Anyone interested in getting into the series should be sure to pick this one up, and heres why.

MGS1 starts the "Solid series" starting off after Metal Gear 2 in which Solid Snake has left FOXHOUND to retire to Alaska. Snake however is pulled out of retirement to stop the group he left 6 years ago. Now I won't dive to into the plot since I don't want spoil anything but needless to say you'll be spending the next eight hours or so sneaking through the a military base on the frosty Alaskan island of "Shadow Moses". Despite criticism that the age of the game causes many flaws in game play, I honestly think that even though it's been more than 9 years since it's original release on the PSX the game is still as good as it's always been. True the graphics are dated and the voice overs for Snake and Ocelot may sound different then later games, but it still does not fail to deliver wonderful story through cut scenes and codec conversations. Overall this game still plays just as well as it did in1998

MGS2 takes place 2 years after MGS1, but I don't want to go into plot. MGS2 essentially play like an upgraded version of 1. Most of the weapons remain the same with some nice additions such as the M9 and the PSG1-T so you can now put your enemy's to sleep rather then killing them or knocking them out for only a short time. Truly everything about MGS2 is better than 1, it has better game play, story, sound, the whole deal. The greatest thing about MGS2 was that it added a interactive environment with the ability to drag enemy soldiers into lockers and well shoot things to see what happens. Some examples would be shooting a glass bottle and it breaks to where you can see the shards. Now I know that sounds boring but since it's not the whole game you don't really have anything to worry about. But the greatest thing about this addition of MGS2 is that after you clear through yet another awesome story mode, you have a ton of extras to do such as the VR Training missions, Snake Tales which are essentially short story modes with MGS's protagonist Solid Snake, or even a Skateboarding minigame. Overall though, this is yet another amazing stealth action game with loads of fun extras.

MGS3 goes away from the basic principle of sneaking into a military facility and places you in the middle of the jungle. In the jungle you'll be using camouflage to hide from the enemy and capturing your own food. It has by far the best game play of any Metal Gear Solid and alot of it comes from the new fighting system know as CQC (Close Quarters Combat). CQC can be used to sneak up on an enemy and place them in a choke hold similar to the method in 1 and 2, however instead of just killing them in this way, you can now interrogate them to find knowledge such as how to open locked doors, where to find armories and food storage and even radio frequencies to call off alerts. Slightly destructible environments also add to the fun with the ability to blow up food storage and armories with TNT. The game actually serves as a prequel to one but you should still play in numbered order to to certain ingame jokes. But one of the biggest disappointments of 3 release in this collection was the lack of it's second disk chocked full of bonus features such as minigames, bloopers, and the original Metal Gear games, but in all truth none of them are really worth it anyway. Overall, even though it's the core game with the new a camera adjusted by the right analog stick, it's still amazing without all the extras.

To conclude, The Essential Collection is 3 amazing games for the price of one and anyone new to the series should not miss out on this before Metal Gear Solid 4

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/25/08

Game Release: Metal Gear Solid: The Essential Collection (US, 03/18/08)