Metal Gear Acid for PSP Reviews by Gamers

I was excited when I first heard the news that there was a Metal Gear game coming to PSP. Then, right after that I heard it was a card game, and I wrinkled up my nose and said, "Card game?" This meant that it wouldn't resemble its heavily lauded PS2 cousins of "Solid" fame -- it would be Yu-Gi-Oh with a gun. I was confused. I was unenthused. But eventually, I got over it; if anybody could woo me with a card game, it was Hideo Kojima's team at Konami. I wanted this to work because I'm used to looking forward to all things Metal Gear. And when it came time to review MGA, I did my best to remain open-minded. After all, it carries the Metal Gear name, and I was convinced this would be a memorable experience.

Well, I got an experience alright. I can't stress this enough: this is not the Metal Gear you know. You want it to be, and at times, it mimes Metal Gear, but it thwarts you every time you assume you can play it like Metal Gear. However, part of trying to appreciate this game means understanding that it's new territory. Unfortunately, even that, fails eventually once the realization dawns on you how contrived MGA really is.

The story here is that at some time in the near future, a jumbo passenger jet is hijacked by a mysterious baddie. He uses a dangerous muscle-relaxing gas to subdue all the passengers on the plane, one being the very important senator/presidential candidate, Senator Hach. It all links back to "Pythagoras," a clandestine research project being conducted on Lobito Island, a fictional republic near southern Africa. This evil-doer wants the U.S. government to get "Pythagoras" for him (or her, hmmmm), or the passengers will die. Time is ticking, and the only man that can save them all Solid Snake. And before it's all over, he'll have to stealth his way through a hostilely occupied lab with a spunky female sidekick named Teliko, a.k.a. Swallowtail Butterfly.

If you haven't noticed by now, the only connection to the classic Metal Gear storyline here is the odd animal-based naming convention. This is a series known for its intricately twisting storyline, and suddenly, a major game like this high-profile PSP game comes along and pretends to exist in an alternate universe. The Game Boy Color game MG:Ghost Babel did something similar (in fact, this PSP game exists somewhere in that same post-MGS1 timeframe), but that was a Game Boy game, and this is a PSP launch title. Snake is a gofer here, easily convinced to go to the middle of nowhere. The storyline presented is still engrossing and well-written, but it's a stretch to pretend that this isn't a pretender of the classic series.

When it's time to play, you're given a selection of six cards. Each card has its own attributes, including the ability to move. Some cards give you guns to kill, or grenades to blow stuff up, others give actions, or extra turns. Each move is counted by Cost points which are indicated by the numbers in the top right corner of the card. You can only play a certain number of cards per turn, and depending on how much the cards you used "Cost" you, you will have to wait that long until it is your turn again while others on the stage are moving around you. Ultimately, the object is to move stealthily in a chess-like environment, making the best choices you can with the cards dealt to you. The enemies make movement and attack decisions based on cards as well. It's all turn-based, and it is slow and rather tedious. You're constantly waiting on the game to carry out the individual decisions, and even the speed-up assists and other features can't help the repeating animation sequences and drawn-out enemy movements from getting repetitive.

This being a card/board/puzzle game, there are elements of realism that this game can almost be excused for being left behind. Dividing the stages up into blocks of a game board works well enough, but the detailed graphics and environmental effects suggest a sense of animated reality, while the characters remain stiff and unnervingly patient, performing actions such as waiting without reacting on a turn to shoot back at someone that has just shot them in the face. It makes for an odd juxtaposition of reality and phoniness. You'll see enemies take entire clips in the back and head because of the special body armor they have equipped that gives them protection. They'll fall, get right back up, and wait until their turn to shoot back. Even better, they may "faint" after getting torn apart with bullets and then get little dizzy stars that encircle their head. There are moments where I just felt robbed for my efforts -- defeated by one or two missed hit points. There are points in the game where your goose gets cooked, for sure, but the heat of battle stays tepid.

Call it awkward game design, or call it the nature of a card game -- there are just some things here that will push patience no matter how one looks at it. Even though I found myself trying to like this game, there are things that almost pushed frustration on me. There are so many annoyances that are just screwy intrusions that do nothing for the game's reality. For instance, having your move progression interrupted by a codec message from Roger, and then losing the rest of the moves you had already selected after he's done talking to you. Or waiting on certain cards to come up when you're in a tight spot, like a firefight. Or simply needing to progress through a door and you're waiting for the "Level 1 Key Card" card to come up (you can edit the order of the cards, but in certain contextual situations, you haven't been given the chance). Or how about how it sends you back to the main menu after your quick-save, only to have you select the option to continue. Just the way that this game mixed up the X and O button so consistently -- one to make a choice at one point, then suddenly canceling the choice the next screen over -- had me losing my faith.

Although gameplay can be frustrating, Metal Gear Acid does have its sweet spots. I love Teliko's character design, for one. Also, there are some outright funny moments in this game. When Snake first confronts Leone, the menacing mercenary/ terrorist leader of Metal Gear Acid, Leone is clownin' snake, calling him a loyal dog of the United States. Snake just chills, looks at Leone's weapon of choice and coolly says, "A ridiculously large gun, huh?" That gave me a good laugh. Obviously Leone is overcompensating for something else, or the lack thereof. Little things like that throughout this game give it some life and personality after such inert gameplay sequences.

If you are looking for a handheld game that treats you like a man instead of a boy, you know you have found it when you get a load of some of this game's villains. I find the two murderous dolls, Elise and Francis, creepy as all hell! But if anything, those two speak to the legacy of Metal Gear -- the heritage of memorable characters. These two dolls may be the most sadistic Metal Gear villains of all time. Small children and doll-like entities are scary enough in movies, but watching them stare blankly from the PSP as still pictures as you read their disturbing dialog is chilling. These are some of Metal Gear's darkest moments to date; what they do and talk about makes the skin crawl.

One of the features I was most looking forward to ended up falling flat: the Ad-hoc link battle leaves much to be desired. Once you have "unlocked" this VR mode, as it were, you and a PSP buddy (who must also be at or beyond that same stage...unless you trade him your save file via USB and your home computer) can link your games and compete against each other. It seems a perfect fit for a card battle game to have a two-player mode where players simply battle, but instead, it's just wonky.

Enemies are sprinkled through-out the battle space (you must kill three of them before your opponent does), but you can only see them if they're in your field of vision. It's as if you are playing the game as an enemy soldier instead of using the omnipotent "Snake Cam" from single player mode. That might be fine, if it weren't for a million and one exceptions that broke the rules. I would walk right up to where I thought an enemy might be, go around that space after looking right at it, and when my turn ended, all of the sudden there he was behind me in that previously empty space with a machine gun blasting away at my spine. Why? Because I wasn't facing him at the end of one of my turns. There were times when enemies were in my field of vision and I couldn't see them. Why? Because there are instances where a character can lose the ability to see an enemy depending on how an enemy attacks them. It's an infuriating nuance that confuses the hell out of you in the middle of a game. You will be using your typical sweep-and-clear techniques, luring soldiers into traps and hunting down the opponent, and all of these things that you have come to depend on working a certain way in both MGA and MGS (never mind that they are also real-world tactical maneuvers) fail you in Link Battle mode. And since there is little to help you our with how this all works (it just starts up when you link up, and you don't have any other indications or hint menus on what to do -- there are clues later in the main game, and a short description in the manual, but the multiplayer mode itself has nothing to go on), it's no good for the kind of jump-in-and-fight-anytime play that is best for multiplayer. You have to be experienced before you can have fun (good luck getting a newbie to play you again if the first match doesn't make any sense to them.) An actual physical board game would be faster, more logical, and more fun.

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