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Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel is said to be the birth of a new genre. Is it worthwhile or should the experiment be forgotten? Read EDR's review to find out...
Somewhere in the western United States...
When I associate the words 'Kojima' and 'digital comics', I always think of Hideo Kojima's two graphic adventure gems that not many people have had the privilege of playing. There was Snatcher, which did receive an English translation on the Sega CD. Its sequel (or prequel if I correctly remember), Policenauts, never saw the light of day on European and North American shores - that is, if you didn't know how to read Japanese.
Now there's Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel, which is nothing like a graphic adventure. At its core, it is simply a digitized graphic novel - a dynamic recompilation of the IDW-published Metal Gear Solid comic book series written by Kris Oprisko and illustrated by Ashley Wood. Kojima Productions did attempt to implement some gameplay elements into the digital graphic novel, but make no mistake - through and through, it is mainly just a digital graphic novel.
Solid Snake is no pushover.
Colonel, this is Snake. Can you hear me?
Don't let that discourage you, however - if you are a fan of the Metal Gear Solid series and you also own a PSP, you should strongly consider picking this up. The comic book series is a remarkably faithful retelling of the original Metal Gear Solid, which appeared on the PSX and PC (eventually seeing a remake on the GameCube as Twin Snakes). It does take some liberties with the story in certain places (for example, the Psycho Mantis episode), but they are well done and fit comfortably within the Metal Gear universe. Story-wise, it strips away most of the bulk of the original plot (including many, many... many, many codec conversations) and fleshes out some parts (for example, Otacon's attraction to Sniper Wolf). If you are not familiar with the Metal Gear Solid plotline or, at the very least, its universe, it may get confusing rather quickly.
The real star of the digital graphic novel is its hyper-stylized, very kinetic presentation. Ashley Wood's illustrations are often highly abstract and expressionistic and they fit very well with the multi-layered 3D layout of the digital comic. Instead of just showing a comic book page frame-by-frame, the digital graphic novel animates the comic elements and gives it a unique and often very exciting look. For example, boss battle fights are wildly animated and quite chaotic - with debris (drawn, of course) flying all over the place and bullets being fired left and right. It's truly something that has got to be seen.
Assisting its dynamic presentation is the use of music and sound effects which fit the content of the comic quite well. It is no mystery why Kojima Productions picked this animated style for the cutscenes in the upcoming Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops - they are a hell of a lot more exciting than some rendered cutscenes or codec conversations (plus, it seems more suitable for the portable). Unfortunately, you won't get any voice-over - you still have to work to follow along. Thankfully, you can manually turn the pages at your own pace. You also have the ability to bookmark your progress by hitting the L button. On the negative side, I'm not sure why this game doesn't have a main menu to boot into, as it will jump straight into the beginning of the comic after showing the title screen. It is one of the few times where I had to read the manual to understand how the interface worked. Considering that the MGS series was quite good at teaching the player interface and gameplay mechanics, it is a mystery why the interface is not user-friendly initially.
Revolver Ocelot
Hand-to-hand. It is the basis of all combat.
The gameplay elements are only suitable for the hardest of the hardcore MGS fans (and perhaps those anal-retentive completist gamers). Its bulk consists of looking through each comic page for data that is hidden throughout the game. In this mode (Mental Search), you use a reticule to scan for these hidden elements; fortunately, if you are interested in Wood's illustrations, this mode also lets you examine the artwork featured on a comic page at your own leisure. To help you identify if there are any memory elements on a page, you can activate a VR Simulation Sync Rate meter which will fluctuate when there is something hidden in the frames. You can then analyze these memory elements and link them with other memory elements in the Memory Building Simulation mode (which gives me a Coded Arms vibe, for some reason). In this mode, you can link memory elements to find out more information about the Metal Gear Solid storyline, as well as being able to discover and unlock more memory elements. These gameplay modes are a welcome addition, but they are clearly not the focus in this 'game'.
Hello, little brother!
At $19 U.S. (I actually found it for $19 CDN, so do shop around), I'd recommend the Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel for MGS fans, comic book fans, or people who want to watch something that is a little more exciting than Dodgeball on UMD. It is similarly priced to some UMD discs, yet it is more interactive and certainly more game-related. I find it difficult to recommend this title to everyone due to its content and format - I'm sure not everyone will appreciate a digital graphic novel and I know there are some Kojima haters out there (I'll show you, you damn thirty minute cutscene). If you're open to a new experience, this digital graphic novel may be right up your alley.
If anyone from Konami is reading this (...sniff), please convince Mr. Kojima to release a graphic adventure with this art style. It could even be a sequel to...
Snatcher.
