First Impressions: If the Big Shell was a simulation of Shadow Moses, what the hell is Twin Snakes? Oh, a remake.
When Sony PlayStation fans start discussing their favorite PlayStation games, it takes very few seconds before Metal Gear Solid is mentioned. The 1998 PlayStation masterpiece by game designer extraordinaire Hideo Kojima is the benchmark for the current story-driven, cutscene rich video games, and gave birth to the current trend of mixing as many stealth elements as possible into titles. MGS simply innovated and pushed the boundaries of what a video game could be.
While many may deem remaking Metal Gear Solid a silly move given the original is only 5 years old, and many more might consider doing it blasphemy, that’s what’s going on – and it won’t even be on the PlayStation – while the PS2 crowd will get a brand new adventure next year with Metal Gear Solid 3, the Nintendo GameCube, already home to the great Resident Evil remake, earns the right to play the MGS remake, with Twin Snakes added as a subtitle, signifying that this is not just a mere remake, but instead a revitalization of the PS classic.
The pedigree of the talents involved in this game borders on a fantasy of loony gamers than reality – Twin Snakes is actually being developed by Nintendo-owned Silicon Knights, of Eternal Darkess fame. However, Kojima himself is still overseeing the project from Japan, making sure that the game lives up to the Solid standard. Making it even sweeter, Nintendo designer overlord Shigeru Miyamoto is also lending a hand to the project, doing his part to add that Nintendo touch that he’s famous for. Seriously, with a group like this handling Twin Snakes, how can this possibly turn out for the worst?
For the uninitiated, Metal Gear Solid places you in the sneak suit of Superbadassspyguy, Solid Snake. Formerly in retirement, Solid Snake is lured back into the field thanks to a bit of pressure from his friends at FOXHOUND and other individuals in the US Government. Snake travels to Shadow Moses, where his job is to infiltrate the facility there, which holds not only a whole lot of nuclear materials, but also the latest Metal Gear model, Metal Gear Rex. With the off-site assistance from his companions Mei Ling, Naomi Hunter, and Col. Campbell, and of course, Grey Fox, also known as the Ninja, Snake has to work through a motley crew of terrorists, including Liquid Snake (who is the other half of the Twin Snakes – makes sense when playing the game) and Revolver Ocelot.
Given that Twin Snakes is a remake, the majority of the game will not be surprising to those who’ve put the game through its paces on the PlayStation – instead, the idea is to deliver a game that relives the magic of Metal Gear Solid, and of course, look much, much better thanks to the power of the Cube. It’s highly likely that the Twin Snakes team will figure out some new stuff to mix things up, a la Shinji Mikami’s Resident Evil remake – though probably not quite as extreme.
Twin Snakes, while not a complete stealth game (such as a Splinter Cell, which is like the Madden to MGS’s NFL Blitz), definitely requires a fair bit of sneaking around, avoiding the armed guards who could slice you and dice you in a 5 on 1 firefight. Obviously, many times you must fight, but in most instances using caution and making sure you can sneak around without being detected is the best way to advance through the game. While not as creative in its stealth or action compared to Metal Gear Solid 2, Twin Snakes should still deliver plenty of sneaky action and torrid firefights.
When the original MGS was released in 1998, it essentially redefined how stories progressed in video games, and the depth a game story could be. Twin Snakes will maintain this element, with equal parts of hands-on gameplay, and descriptive storytelling, be it through lengthy, dramatic cutscenes or text-heavy Codec conversations, adding a truly epic feel to a Hollywood-esque storyline, complete with thrills, chills, deception, revenge, and retribution, covering the gamut of emotions. It’s a true roller coaster ride, and in many ways is superior to the occasionally cryptic story of MGS 2.
As MGS:TS is set to release in the crucial Christmas holiday season, and was only recently announced, it’s obvious that Silicon Knights have some help with this remake – most likely the original PS MGS engine. However, SK is making sure that Twin Snakes exposes the hardware to its fullest, creating a game on par with the PS2’s MGS games, and most likely surpass those games when the game nears completion. With all the neat tricks the PlayStation game showed-off 5 years prior, the remaking of these effects should be outstanding. Concerning the audio, hopefully the Twin Snakes crew will retain, if not re-use, the original voices and voicetracks from the original. Not only did MGS redefine video game storytelling, it also demonstrated that video games didn’t always have to have crappy, B-movie level acting that Resident Evil made famous. There’s no reason to mess with a good thing, so hopefully the same actors shall return in all their glory.
