Metal Gear Solid: HD Collection Review (8/10)

Does this HD repackaging warrant a purchase for fans or newcomers?
Konami certainly have a hard time on their hands convincing those of us who have never played an entry of the Metal Gear Solid franchise before to part with £30 of our hard-earned cash for three HD remakes of some of the series' most 'hardcore' titles. That said, having now played a significant portion of Sons of Liberty, Snake Eater and Peace Walker, I can confirm that if you're willing to put up with a few tired and generic control mishaps carried over from the previous generation of consoles, as well as cutscenes so infamous for their agonising lengths and complexity that perhaps no game can ever top them, then you'll find a quality package worth every penny of its RRP and infinitely more. Sons takes place primarily on an airborne base with new protagonist Raiden attempting to dismantle a corrupt organisation's efforts to provoke nuclear war. The limited setting of the second instalment in the series does get tiresome quite quickly, it has to be said, but to be fair the plot makes such good use of its surroundings that you'll be pretty surprised at how quickly the halfway point seems to come around despite it being around fourteen-fifteen hours in length. In fact, if anything the entire HD Collection represents astounding value in terms of the replayability and general first-play length of time you can and likely will invest in it if you give it the chance it deserves. Snake Eater, meanwhile, sees the father of the series' Solid Snake (called Naked Snake- yep, try to keep up!) on a mission in the jungles of a Soviet-held country during the Cold War, once again trying to prevent armageddon. There are various shifts in tonal and emotive style in each of the three products enclosed here, but it does have to be noted that there is a certain degree of repetitiveness found not only in the often overdone storylines, rather in the gameplay itself: bear in mind that the first two games were released on PS2 and Xbox, while Peace Walker debuted on PSP, and none of those consoles can now be said to be called 'cutting-edge technology', so you will have to put up with fixed camera angles, awkward AI and glitches along the way. Moving back to Peace Walker, though, fans of the saga who've played Guns of the Patriots (the recent PS3 sequel) will be able to start seeing the roots of that great next-gen shooter here, as we get a more brief mission-based sequence of events that was clearly in keeping with its portable format. Admittedly, the bite-sized chunks of storyline are to some degree even more convoluted than their PS2 forebears, yet my goodness, they're easier to keep up with than the other two. This collection really isn't for anyone but the hardcore gamer like myself to either relive nostalgia or learn for the first time why the Metal Gear Solid series lives on to this day. Sons of Liberty, Snake Eater and Peace Walker are great games, warts and all, but those warts are going to be mighty hard for anyone who was born and bred on Call of Duty to ignore.