Review: Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (GC, 2001)

Developed by Silicon Knights, Konami

Published by Nintendo

Story- 9.8/10

Gameplay- 10/10

Design- 10/10

Control- 8.9/10

Music- 10/10

Fun Factor- 10/10

Overall- 10/10

If you’ve owned any generation of the PlayStation, then surely you’re familiar with the Metal Gear Solid series. For you Nintendo people- well, you haven’t seen a Metal Gear since…. NES. Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes is a nice port of the first two games in the Solid series, but does it do the originals justice, or does it fall victim to FoxDie?

The panel has decided: this game is #$%^&*#@ awesome.

Story- 9.8/10

Tactical Espionage Action- Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, if you’re a stickler for titles, is a remake of the first Metal Gear Solid game for PS.

Snake is forced out of a seven-year retirement by Col. Campbell after hearing news of FOXHOUND, their former unit, taking control of Shadow Moses Island in Alaska. The military base houses a new nuclear-based prototype weapon, Metal Gear REX, a mobile version of its predecessor. Campbell sends Snake on a one-man infiltration mission to stop REX from activating, and to save DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) Chief Donald Anderson and ArmsTech President Kenneth Baker.

Gameplay- 10/10

Before playing Metal Gear Solid, I had a vague sense of what a stealth-based game should be like. After playing Metal Gear Solid, I had seen that a game had perfected stealth-based strategy.

THEN I played The Twin Snakes, and everything was surpassed again.

If you went into this thinking it was another run-and-gun military game, you’d be rudely awakened in the first five minutes of gameplay. If you aren’t sneaking around, shooting out cameras, or subduing enemies and hiding them in lockers, chances are…. you’re doing it wrong.

I mean come on, it even says it on the box: Tactical Espionage Action.

There’s one hinderance that I had, but without it, Metal Gear Solid wouldn’t be Metal Gear Solid- the cutscenes.

While beyond crucial to the story, and very well-directed, the cutscenes sort of “break up” the game, making it a little less fluid than would it could be. I’m sure someone somewhere said that these games could do without the cinematics… at the sacrifice of a good plot. I just don’t feel like watching a 30 min (exaggerated, but pretty close to) cutscene before fighting the final boss.

For first-time players who are just getting their feet wet, you may find this game to be very difficult, especially if you’re cocky enough to turn the radar setting to “Off”. That’s just a setup for failure.

Even for the veterans, there are many nostalgic moments of “How the heck was I supposed to figure that out?!?!” i.e. Psycho Mantis, which soldier is Meryl in disguise, how to escape the torture room, etc.

“What do you mean ‘You have a :30 time bomb in your inventory’?!?!’”

Design- 10/10

If there’s nothing to conceal yourself within an area, you just aren’t looking hard enough. If you need a better weapon, simply go and find one somewhere.

As small as it is, Shadow Moses has plenty of places to explore. There are plenty of Easter eggs hidden throughout The Twin Snakes that push you to search and explore almost everything: there are a few Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem posters here and there, there’s bobbleheads of Mario and Yoshi in Otacon’s lab, even Hideo Kojima, Shigeru Miyamoto and Denis Dyack have small cameos.

Weapons and items are littered everywhere, but it’s just a matter of looking for them. Even if you miss a weapon the first time, you can simply go back to that area and check again. Besides, the game will probably make you do that anyway…

Everything is incredibly detailed via the GameCube’s updated rendering: environmental conditions have been updated, blood doesn’t look like a C4+Ketchup contraption just exploded, and characters actually look like characters, not just weird compilations of polygons.

The inclusion of the first-person view from MGS 2 was a huge step up from the original, as you will use it more frequently than you think.

Control- 8.9/10

I’ve always wondered why “Start” wasn’t simply the Codec. Instead, “Start+B” brings up the Codec… Yeah.

The controls, albeit sticky at times, like crawling, get the job done. There isn’t much customization, so you’re stuck with what you got. most of the options have to do with switching into first-person view: reverse Y-axis, sensitivity and whether you wish to hold down Z, or tap Z to enter FP view. I could never figure out how to reload on the fly, and to be frank, you only use firepower in sticky situations.

Music- 10/10

The music does a swell job at capturing the essence of the game, though it lacks a little variety. Maybe “variety” isn’t the right word, but after a while, the background music gets repetitive. It’s a mixture of choral symphonics and robotic techno; doesn’t sound like it would mesh, does it. Every musical selection matches every in-game event perfectly; it enhances the games movie-esque quality to even higher levels of what you’d expect.

Fun Factor- 10/10

There are several references to actual, real world events in The Twin Snakes; yes, they’re crucial to the plot. I’m mentioning this, because games that run along a parallel reality generally turn into a chore to play; a boring, learn-about-politics game wrapped in a shiny wrapper.

This isn’t one of those games.

This, is one of those games that you pick up the controller with the intent of playing for about an hour, only to find that you’ve been playing for six.

Overall- 10/10

I’ve always been boggled as to why some people never liked the Metal Gear series; I suppose it’s the extreme emphasis on stealth.

Metal Gear Solid is a classic, a staple, a genre-defining piece of artistry. Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes does just that again, but with better graphics… and it’s on GameCube.