Play through the entire Metal Gear Solid 4 story, tap and zoom to kill bad guys and collect wallpapers in Kojima Productions’ iPhone take on the MGS franchise.
Though Metal Gear Solid purists and iPhone haters may never give it a second glance, Metal Gear Solid Touch seems like it may have something to offer everyone else based on new details revealed on the game’s nicely interactive official site.
For starters, if you’ve never played Metal Gear Solid 4 for whatever reason (maybe you don’t own a PS3) but you do have an iPhone, you might want to pick the game up, as it retells the entire MGS4 storyline from start to finish, possibly including the cutscenes, it looks like. That’s certainly a much more elegant alternative to watching hours of codec conversations and more on YouTube or parsing through a convoluted summary on Wikipedia. Trust me, I’ve tried it. It’s no fun.
But while the plot may be the exact same, the gameplay, as has been previously hinted at, is far from the tactical espionage action the franchise made its name on. No, this is basically an on-rails shooter where you control Snake as he pops bullets at an endless parade of bad guys. You tap the screen to shoot, or, if you want to take a methodical approach, do that little pinch motion to zoom in and snipe. Bosses from MGS4 feature prominently, including the lovely ladies of the Beauty and the Beast unit. It’s not clear if all of the bosses will show up, but if the game’s meant to retell the entire MGS4 story, we’d hope that they would.
Gameplay will be split into stages, and at the very end of each stage you’ll get to spend your points at the game’s take on MGS4‘s Drebin Shop, except instead of guns and upgrades you’ll be buying new iPhone wallpapers. Want to see a picture of Vamp every time you get a call from your mom but are too lazy to make your own in MS Paint? Here’s your ticket.
No, it doesn’t sound very much like an authentic MGS experience. But it doesn’t sound like a complete and totally shameless cash-in either. Besides, Kojima has already admitted that this game’s not exactly the genuine article. “This game really is nothing more than an entrance for us,” he said in an interview with Famitsu in December. “I’d like people unfamiliar with MGS to play it, and maybe develop an interest in MGS4 in the process – and if they if they foster a general interest in games from there, it’d make me all the happier.”
