Metal Gear ACID
Oh come on, I thought Portable Ops was next!!! I gotta play this one instead?…..well I knew this day was coming. So for those of you who have kept up with my blog all these years, you might recall during one of my reviews of Metal Gear Solid 2 that I deemed Metal Gear Acid to be the worst game in the franchise and I still stand by that opinion. Though Konami has done a lot of stupid things with the franchise over the years, Metal Gear Acid has got to be the absolute worse. Worse than MGS2, worse than MGS5, even worse than MGS Survive. It is that bad!!!
So how did this game come about? Well….I have no idea. There isn’t much information on the production of MGA which is really frustrating because I just wanna know where the idea for this game came from. I guess when Kojima tasked Shinta Nojiri with creating a Metal Gear spin off that broke with series tradition, this is what he came up with. A game that boggles the mind in more ways than one. What’s wrong with Metal Gear Acid?.....I honestly don’t know where to start….actually I do. I always start with the story.
Story
So Metal Gear Acid takes place in a continuity where the MGS series didn’t take place. Hell, I don’t even think the original Metal Gear happened. Anyway, the game sees a plane carrying the young daughter of the US President highjacked by some bizarre terrorist for the purposes of ransom. The terrorist demand something known as the Pythogorous Project, which refers to something being created by a South African Republic. When they refuse to cooperate, the US sends in a group of CT Soldiers to take it by force as well this game's version of Solid Snake who is sent in behind them. Before long, s*** starts to get weird as Snake and the only surviving CT Soldier, Teleco find themselves wrapped up in a whacked out conspiracy.
So the common joke I hear people make about the plot of MGA is that the game is on Acid…..and that’s a fair statement because MGA is on all kinds of crazy s***. Now Metal Gear games have always been a little weird but Acid takes things to a whole new level. The game is often playing with the reality of the world it takes place in with strange villains that wouldn’t be out of place in a Batman Cartoon. The heroes are also constantly getting f***ed with too, especially Snake. He’s got this whole weird split personality thing going on and it’s just bizarre. Snake’s character is complicated as is so trying to do something like that is absurd. I don’t know if Nojiri was just having fun or if he and his writers were actually getting high and reading psychology books but it just doesn’t work.
The characters aren’t really there either. Though this might look like Snake, he really isn’t. In previous games, Snake has layers and a complex backstory but that’s not the case here. Here he’s just described as a legendary soldier but they don’t go too deeply into his backstory. Maybe that was intentional to make players buy the whole split personality deal but if they were going to do something like that, why not just use a completely different character? None of the other characters are worth talking about either. Teleco is forgettable, Roger is just a stand in for Campbell and the villain is…confused…..and confusing.
I don’t know if there are any people out there who enjoy this story or not but I’m not one of them. Maybe if I was high I’d get more out of it.
4/10
Graphics & Sound
I will say this though, MGA is a damn good looking game. The in-game graphics look like something right out of MGS2 or the Twin Snakes and the pre-rendered graphics they use for the cutscenes look great. They are different from the typical artwork you see in a Metal Gear game in a good way and it does give the game its own unique look. That being said, it does at times not feel like a Metal Gear game. Again, it can be a little too weird at times and which again, is saying quite a bit for a series that sees a clone of the world’s greatest soldier fighting cybernetic ninjas, deadly vampire assassins and giant nuclear armed robots.
There is no voice acting here either which is disappointing considering….well…..this is Metal Gear. What is it with PSP games not having Voice Acting? Wasn’t the benefit of the UMD format that it could have voice acting? The sound effects are alright though but what really rocks is the music. MGA has a great soundtrack no matter how you slice it. I was curious if these composers worked on anything else but they don’t even have Wikipedia Pages. I wonder if Kojima brought them on to work on other games.
The graphics are a little out there but they are strong and the sound design is awesome. However, the lack of voice acting really bugs me. Especially considering later PSP Metal Gear games would have voice acting and a lot of it.
8/10
Gameplay
Some of you guys might be wondering why this game is called ACID. Well according to the game’s producer, Acid is actually an anagram: Active Command Intelligence Dual. The game is basically a turn based strategy game where you give Snake and later Teleco commands that cause them to move around the map, attack enemies and perform a variety of other actions. And right there is the problem. I don’t know who the lame brain is who came up with the idea but the thought of playing a Metal Gear game in a turn based format sickens me. Stealth games by nature are very slow paced games so what we are basically doing here is slowing and already slow game down to a crawl. The f*** guys?
Being a turn based game is bad enough but it’s even worse than that because Acid doesn’t play like say Fire Emblem, XCOM or even Advance Wars. No, instead, Acid is a card based game. Yup! So the actions you can perform in the game are all based on what cards you have in your hand. Thankfully certain actions like movement can be accessed with just about any card but other actions such as attacking, defending or simply opening a door require a certain card. So if an enemy spots you, you can’t take them out if you don’t have an attack based card in your hand. Come to a door that you need a keycard to access it but don’t have the keycard in your hand? You aren’t getting through that door. And no, you can’t build your own dack. You just have to make do with what the game gives you. With the turn based crap the game moves at the pace of a crawl but with the card system, it slows it down even more!!! This game doesn’t crawl, it f***ing limps dude!!!! The f*** guys?
The enemy encounters also suck. Stealth and TBS don’t really go together and MGA is a case study and why that is the case. You see, when you are playing the game in real time, you can react to things in real time. For example, in just about every stealth game, enemies operate on a preset path and they deviate from that path when they detect that something is out of the norm. Normally you are trying to work around their path without alerting them but when you do alert them, you can react to what they do on the spot. In MGA, if you alert an enemy, you have to guess what they are going to do. For example, let’s say you are hiding behind a storage crate with an enemy on the other side. He’s blocking your path so you knock on the wall to get their attention. In any other MGS game, you’d just go in the opposite direction. Here you have to guess which way he goes and then pray you made the right choice.
Seriously guys, WHAT THE F***!!!
1/10
Difficulty
Oh sweet son of lifeson, THIS GAME IS BORING!!!! It’s sooooooooo ssssssssslllllllllllloooooooooooowwwwwwww!!!!! You spend so much time waiting to draw the cards you need and even then, there is so much trial and error that it’s ridiculous!!! This has seriously got to be one of the most boring games I have ever played in my life. It puts Death Stranding to shame….by the by Kojima, no one wants a sequel to that game. Please make something else. How bout a spiritual successor to Snatcher or Policenauts? That would be awesome!
1/10
Content
Metal Gear Acid clocks in at just 20 hours and while every minute of it was pain, that is still a lot of game. The game usually goes for 30 or 40 dollars which is a bit pricey in my opinion. Especially considering you can get the HD Collection for that kind of money. I’d say if you really have to play this game, emulate it.
7/10
Verdict
I’m not going to sugarcoat it folks: Metal Gear Acid is complete and utter garbage. While the game might look good, everything else is just awful. THe story is a complete and utter mess and the gameplay is so misguided that I found it hard to believe that Kojima was actually a producer on this game. I don’t know, maybe Nojiri was sharing his drugs with Kojima in order to get this one past his watchful eye. Simply put, this game is s***. If you are a fan of the series, don’t bother. I give Metal Gear Acid a 4.2 out of 10.
