Metal Gear Solid is one of those phenomena that marked an entire generation of gamers and several generations of machines. A cinematic fresco, stemming from the fertile brain of Kojima-san, the MGS saga played a major role in building the stealth genre, while proving that video games could rely on a deep and moving storyline. , a sprawling plot and unforgettable characters. Yes, without a doubt, Metal Gear Solid has changed the small video game world. Therefore, the creation of an HD compilation was inevitable. If only to introduce these exceptional titles to owners of Microsoft machines, who have not had this chance so far. And yet, some might find it difficult to get into the swing of things. Indeed, the first episode of the series is conspicuously absent from this Metal Gear Solid HD Collection. Whatever the reason which pushed Konami to deprive itself of this founding episode, one can ask the question of its legitimacy, as this first opus is necessary for the understanding of the series. Players are therefore offered HD remakes of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, i.e. episodes 2, 3 and 5 of the saga. The neophyte could be totally dropped. Suffice to say that this compilation is above all intended for fans, who would already know the adventures of Snake(s) inside out.
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Apart from this still substantial narrative obstacle, the quality of the selected titles is obviously not subject to caution. Sons of Liberty and Snake Eater are games of rare dramatic intensity, with precise and efficient gameplay. Games that can still hold their own against much more recent software today, especially after a quality graphic facelift. Unfortunately, on this point, the work of the BluePoint studio has been quite uneven. MGS 2, originally released in 2001 on PlayStation 2, has indeed not been particularly spoiled. If the whole remains very (too?) clean, the cutscenes, real trademarks of the saga, suffer from many slowdowns. Which is slightly unpleasant when you know the number of cut-scenes in the title. Moreover, the HD is not really felt and the shells already present in the subtitles of the original version are still there. A detail that is still difficult to accept in a reworked version... The difference in quality with Snake Eater is therefore quite remarkable. The challenge was however daunting: Metal Gear Solid 3 was already one of the most beautiful games of a PS2 at the end of its life. But BluePoint managed to raise the bar even higher. If some textures remain a bit old-fashioned (wood, some floor coverings), the title has gained incredible fluidity, thanks to a high-flying frame-rate. Snake's mission in the heart of the Soviet jungle then takes on a whole new dimension. Backed by the manual camera already present in the Subsistence version, the result is truly stunning and you would sometimes swear to have a PS3 title in front of you. Only the discrepancies between the dubbing and the movement of the lips during the cutscenes (decidedly) comes to cast a shadow on the board.
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Remains the biggest bet of this HD Collection, the adaptation of MGS: Peace Walker, best episode of the saga on PSP. Rather well received by critics when it was released, the one that should have been Metal Gear Solid 5 was then weighed down by the lack of a second stick on Sony's laptop. Error fixed with this home console port. As we suspected, the playability with the DualShock controller really changes the game. The gameplay becomes more flexible, more responsive and suffers much less from the heaviness of Big Boss. In view of the precision required by certain phases of infiltration, this is not a luxury. Too bad BluePoint didn't take advantage of the "profusion" of buttons on the PS3 controller to bring back certain functions like crawling or dragging corpses. On the production side, of course, Peace Walker is a bit below the other two opuses, despite the very good graphic overhaul work that has been done. The game remains quite playable without attacking the retina, even if we obviously do not touch the peaks. And performing a port of this quality despite the technical gap between the PSP and the PS3 remains a small feat. Note the presence of a backup transfer system between the two machines, which will allow players of the portable version to resume their game where they left off.
