Metal Gear Solid HD Collection – PS Vita review

It’s a testament to the skill of the original development team that the visual upgrades to Snake Eater HD are far more subtle than Sons of Liberty – the obvious change is the switch to 16:9, but many of the textures have received only minor adjustments to increase their definition. There’s more processing power for incidental detail, so foliage and background textures look sharper and more defined, but the characters and environments mainly benefit from anti-aliased edges and slightly more detailed textures.

It’s more refined, yes, but it was damn good to start with

Fans of the original games will feel right at home with the HD Collection on the Vita. The absence of four buttons (L2, R2 and the two thumbstick buttons) goes largely unnoticed, thanks to the front and rear touchpads. As well as letting you flick through your inventory and quickly equip weapons and items, you can also lean left or right in first-person mode. It’s not quite as intuitive as the buttons on a Dual Shock controller, but it works. We did notice that accidentally brushing the rear touchpad (easy to do on the Vita, even for those with small hands) happened far too often, causing us to miss shots or accidentally trigger a stabbing motion when we had the knife equipped.

There are plenty of extra features bundled with each game, including all the substance and subsistence content from the respective special editions, as well as emulated versions of the original metal gear and metal gear 2, but Vita owners are undeniably getting an inferior product to the console game. Peace Walker, Snake’s second PSP outing, has been removed completely in order to reduce the overall file size and match Sony’s policy on downloadable Vita titles, as has the original version of Metal Gear online. Japanese players get a coupon to download the original Metal Gear Solid, but Europeans miss out.

Big robots? It’s Metal Gear – of course there are big robots

The Engrish-sounding “transfarring” mode is really only relevant for die-hard metal gear fans – it lets you transfer your game save files from the vita to a ps3 so you can continue from the same point when you get home. Unless you plan on buying two copies of the game, you’re unlikely to ever use it.

Metal Gear fans arguably get more for their money by choosing the Xbox 360 or PS3 versions of the HD Collection, as they get the excellent Peace Walker as well as the two PS2 games. However, The Vita version is a very reasonable £20, and we think the updated textures still look better on a 5in OLED screen than stretched over a TV at 1080p. Those new to the series would do well to pick up the original on PSN (or indeed the improved Twin Snakes GameCube version) to familiarise themselves with the backstory before jumping in at the deep end, but there’s still plenty to enjoy here.

It’s the definitive portable version of the Metal Gear franchise, and it definitely deserves a place in your collection.