| Metal Gear Ac!d review |
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The Metal Gear series has been astounding the general public for a good two decades now. From NASA-funded ninja teams to anti-freezing peptides (and no, Mister K. from Tokyo, we have no intention of ever letting you live that one down so stop mailing us), every time you think you've seen the definitive benchmark moment at which the world turned around and said "Holy crap, these guys have lost their beans," it turns around and perpetrates something even more shrieking. This, of course, is old news. The reason we're mentioning it is because the unhappy task falls to us of telling you about Acid, the Metal Gear collectable card game.
Acid's gameplay is relatively simple. Each round you are dealt two cards which cover weapons, gadgets, actions and characters. Each card can be used or sacrificed to move Snake around the map. In the case of weapons, the most basic like the SOCOM or the FA-MAS are one-shot deals whereas others can be equipped for the purpose of returning fire when you are attacked. Gadgets cover mine detectors and (wince) cardboard boxes. Actions allow you to perform dodging, acrobatics and stealth techniques. Finally, character cards manipulate the rules of the game; Mei Ling's card jams soliton radar, Ocelot's card improves your gunplay, Sniper Wolf's your hit rate, and so forth.
Wedded to this is an excellent time-based system whereby each action incurs a different amount of delay; 4 for doing nothing, 6 for discarding cards, and incrementally more for shooting and fighting. The more you do in a turn, the longer you have to wait for the next one making for some deep thinking and fraught decision-making if you want to avoid some fatally costly mistakes.
(Dramatic pause.)
SO WHAT WENT WRONG?
Let's talk for a second about card games, or (more specifically) card game conversions. Take Megaman, for example. Megaman is full of switchable powers, customisable characters and goofy villains. Capcom realised it would be card game gold, and they were right - Megaman Battle Network is ace. Take also Phantasy Star Online; billions upon billions of rare items, exotic weapons and near limitless potential for customisation. That worked too. Both projects worked because the makers were programming a card game that resembled their source material and not the other way round. Both had their gameplay base converted to one-on-one strategic battles with multiplayer capability. Acid, on the other hand, has been created without one single concession to the card game ethos, and Sapristi Pompett does it show.
It would be bad enough if this were simply a case of having to hide in the shadows until the card you need comes up. This at least would have been consistant with card gameplay. It's not - Acid keeps to the linear puzzle-based gameplay of the rest of the series, so should Snake come up against a destroyable wall he has to stand there like a lemon endlessly throwing cards until his C4 explosive card comes up. Identical situations arise waiting for keycards to appear in your hand so you can equip them to get through doors. Anyone who has ever played a card game or a card game spinoff could tell you this was going to happen from instinct, and this makes the pill all the more bitter to swallow that Konami were on the brink of a masterpiece (what could be more engrossing than a turn-based Metal Gear conversion?) and decided to bugger it up for no explainable reason. What, tell us, what would have been wrong with a straight turn-based strategy game? Doubtless there's some industry jobsworth out there with plenty to say about pushing the envelope with experimental gameplay, or maybe this is just how you get when you've spent years surrounded by people telling you that you're God and Your every idea is pure money. The fact remains, though - Konami have peed with the seat down with this one, and no mistake.
Other niggles beset the game at every corner. The camera is nearly impossible to control and occurances such as blowing your stealth award because you walked into a guard who was right in front of Snake but that YOU couldn't see because there was some scenery blocking your view are commonplace in the more complex maps. Loading times range from annoying if you're lucky to daft if your PSP hates you. Furthermore, we all know that the PSP is a piece of crap for playing games in natural daylight, but this applies doubly if you're playing a Metal Gear game where the graphic artists are fired if they use any colours but grey or cyan.
Sorry if it appears that we've been overly negative regarding Acid. It's a fun little game that many will no doubt enjoy. Things do improve as the game goes on with cooperative play between Snake and his contact, and with new Metal Gear decks becoming unlocked along with hilarious parody TV ads for each booster (the MGS2 pack, for example, contains moves specific to that game such as hanging and head shots). Two things ruin it though; the first is that the seeming blank refusal of the designers to refit the game's format so that it works as a card game. The second is that it's simply dogged by so many wincingly schoolboyish mistakes that it would be unconscionable to score it higher than that "Buy by all means but be forewarned" number six. If you're an MG fan who's after more Snake and buckets of fanservice into the bargain, then go for it. Just make sure you're not buying it because you're after a decent turn-baser (stick to Disgaea or FFT), stealth game (stick to Hitman or Splinter Cell) or card game (stick to Megaman or PSO), because it's none of the above. |
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System: Sony PlayStation Portable
Genre: Strategy
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Players: 1
Version: Japan
Reviewed: Mar 2005
Writer: Simon Dominguez
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Pros:
- Excellent music
- Gorgeous watercoloured art
- Buckets and buckets of MG fanservice
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Cons:
- Terrible execution
- Slow and fiddly
- Doesn't work in any of the genres it attempts
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