Love it or hate it, you can't deny that Metal Gear Solid is still one of the PSone's most memorable titles. Back in the day it set new standards for graphical excellence and stealthy action. It was followed by the immensely beautiful, but ultimately plodding sequal, Sons Of Liberty, a meandering joruney through hours of cut-scenes and cliched story lines.
Under the watchful eyes of Shigeru Miyamoto and Hideo Kojima, Canadian developer Silicon Knights (Enternal Darkness) is attempting to combine the beauty of the second game with the action of the first to create Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes.
Even more exciting was the admission in an interview with the developers that they have a lot of ideas for ways to link up play between Gamecube and GBA, and that this is something that Dennis Dyack and his team are looking into. A feature like that will really make Twin Snakes a unique game.
Looking at the game certainly brings back a few enjoyable memories, but now the games looks absolutely stunning. What I was prepared was the inclusion of all the Sons of Liberty manoeurves like first-person aiming and hanging from railings. This could add some much-needed variety to the puzzle solving and sneaking, and it will also mean that even Metal Gear veterans (like me and you) will have the chance to play a slightly different game, but in the similar surroundings.
In the movie footage it shows our hero Solid Snake landing in the cargo area of the island and has two mission adjectives of saving two hostages as well as gathering information about a secret nuclear project and the terrorist threat.
The Controls look smooth, but yet they always look smooth on video footage, however browsing through Magazines and other websites they say they have played a demo version of the game and they too say the controls are very smooth and not as rough as the orginial MGS on the PSone. On the video footage it shows Snake going under a hot water pipe straight after the FMV intoduction. Aftwards Snake pushes his back to a wall to evade beening detected buy the enemy. After sneaking around for a few minutes Snake get's seen buy a genorme solider and is instantly placed into battle wtih his fists, the genorme soliders carry the same weapons used in Sons of Liberty. While watching the video i noticed the ehanced graphics and smoothness of the characters, this should be another great game for the gamecube, but it is still just an upgrade just like Resident Evil that came out ealier this year, which after awhile i found boring since it was the same game and i knew what was going to happen next, i fear that the same might happen to Twin Snakes, but we will just have to wait and see.
Some of the odd problems still remain though, i noticed these problems while watching the movie footage for a second time. Aiming in third-person still looks a little awkward and the camera still doesn't show you want you want to see. But this game is not due out till next year, so lets hope that Hideo Kojima can add some new specials features to make the game more intresting and abit more different from its two predicessors.
