A polished Metal Gear themed shooting gallery
The game is polished, especially for an iPhone game. The interface is clean and easy to use. Starting a new game begins with a nice visual explanation of the games controls, which consist of using the touch screen to move an on screen reticle and tapping to fire. Pinch to switch to the SVD (sniper rifle) and zoom in, then again, tap to fire. Pinch out to return to the M4 (assault rifle) the default weapon. Snake is generally position behind a barrier and will take cover if you take your finger off the touch screen. Taking cover also recovers a small amount of life. Overall the controls work well, but in heated battles the pinch in and out mechanism can feel cumbersome.
Enemies are shown with an indicator of when they will fire, their distance (to help you choose which weapon to use), and their remaining health. The fire indicator adds a bit of strategy but becomes overwhelming when you have several enemies on screen. I occasionally decided to disregard it and just concentrate on eliminating enemies. I found it most useful when fighting some of the more powerful enemies.
The visuals consist of pre-rendered sprites. The scenes are interesting and contain atmospheric objects (i.e. leaves and dust) that add depth. The animation is mixed; some sprites only have 1-2 frames of animation, while others have more. At times this gives the game a flat lifeless feel.
The music and sound effects are very “Metal Gear” including the trademark urgency of the theme played when you are killed. The weapons sound great. Overall the sound adds a lot to the game. In fact I enjoyed the game a lot more when I played with headphones. And they actually helped, providing clues to enemy locations. The complete lack of any voice work and some forgettable enemy death effects would be my only complaints with the sound.
MGS Touch follows the Metal Gear Solid 4 story line and is broken into three Acts, which consist of several missions. In between missions a static graphic with a text overlay reveal key story elements. This is really where the game falters. The inclusion of video or even simple animations would have gone a long way to helping hold my interest in the story. As it stands the game simply doesn’t capture the “Metal Gear” feel and ends up being a series of text summaries stringing together several themed shooting galleries.
Each Act concludes with a boss fight of varying difficulty. Having not played MGS 4 and relying only on the text explanations, the bosses had very little meaning to me. Regardless they boss fights add variety and some challenge and help break up the repetitive game play.
The end of the third Act teases Act 4 as coming soon as a download. I can only assume in the form of an update to the app. I’m hopeful that upcoming levels will add more variety and enemies.
On one hand MGS Touch doesn’t capture the feel of a “Metal Gear” game, and could just as easily been a generic shooter without any attempt at story. But on the other hand the game play and controls are good and held my interest. If you take MGS Touch for what it is, a MGS themed shooting gallery, its an entertaining and polished game that stands out amongst the hundreds of generic games that are available on the iPhone.
