pixelrevolt

Thanks for all the great responses guys. I played the first twenty or so minutes of it to get a taste of the gameplay as someone suggested, skipping the cutscenes and codec conversations so as not to spoil the story. While stealth isn't usually my sort of thing, I could actually see myself enjoying it after a while, especially if I knew what was going on and was interested in the characters and where the story was headed. For this reason, I have decided to stop and try to get a copy of the first game to play before I carry on.

As for which version, I'm sort of leaning towards the Twin Snakes for a few reasons; nicer visuals would be good, the changes to parts of the game wouldn't be a bother to me as I have no prior knowledge of the series, my Wii is always set up whereas my PS2 is usually not, and I find the Gamecube controller a little more comfortable in general than the Dualshock. Though I was wondering - while I don't know much about Metal Gear, I have heard about the odd amusing fourth-wall breaking moments, like being told to set the controller down and watch it move, and some comments about save games on your memory card - are these elements retained in the Twin Snakes version, or are there some things I'll only find in the original PS version?

I bought a second hand PS2 and a bunch of games a few months ago, and among the games was this. I thought I might give it a go this week, but as the title of this post would suggest, I've never played a Metal Gear game before.

So, is Sons of Liberty a game I could get into easily and without being confused by the story? Or should I track down a copy of the first Metal Gear Solid and start with that? And if so, should I be looking for the original PS one game, or the Twin Snakes on GameCube? Any help would be appreciated.

I haven't played the Japanese version, but I have played the English DS version, as it's been out here in Europe for a month or two now. I'm only a few chapters in but I'm really enjoying it so far.

Like Killer7, the gameplay is the sort of thing that's not going to appeal to most people (it's a simplistic sort of explore and talk adventure game with most puzzles being relatively easy to figure out numerical based riddles), but, also like Killer7, the game really excels in the story and character department.

It's rich with the trademark Suda weirdness that makes his other games so great, so if you're into that and can look past the old-school point and click adventure style gameplay (or if you're into that, too) I'd definitely recommend it.

The music is excellent and the graphics, since they're in the same cel-shaded kind of style as Killer7 and No More Heroes, don't look half bad for a 3D game on the DS.

As long as you know what you're getting in to with it, you shouldn't be too disappointed. It's probably best to think of it as less of a game, and more of an interactive surreal detective novel – it almost seems like the sort of game you'd end up with if you tried to turn a Haruki Murakami novel (e.g. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle) into a game.

You might also want to check out the upcoming remake of The Silver Case – another early Suda adventure game being translated and remade for the DS.