Much has already been said about the woeful state of Metal Gear Solid Master Collection: Volume 1. The idea is certainly enticing on paper: for £50/$60, Konami promises us seven main entries in the series in one package for current-gen and last-gen consoles plus PC.
The content here is not the issue. We get the PS1 classic MGS, with the VR missions pack included, we get MGS2: Sons of Liberty and MGS3: Snake Eater, with enhancements from the later Substance and Subsistence versions. And to sweeten the deal, there’s the MSX2 releases of Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, while both NES Metal Gears make a rare appearance too for a series collection. That takes us from the series’ inception in 1987 right up to MGS3 in 2004, with room for a Master Collection Volume 2 to expand beyond that.
There are omissions of course, but it would have been enough if each game had been ported to current-gen consoles with the love and attention they deserve – but sadly, this isn’t the reality. Regardless of which platform you buy the Master Collection on, and despite some admittedly nice extras on the front-end, this release could and have been so much more.
The bottom line is that the Master Collection presents the core Metal Gear Solid 1, 2 and 3 games with limited enhancements over any previous release. The older MSX and NES games are largely fine as they are – given their 2D sprite-based nature – but the series’ move to 3D from the Playstation era onwards does demand a more involved update. The first MGS, for example, runs via an emulator at the same 240p resolution and frame-rate as original PS1 hardware. Meanwhile the Playstation 2 duo – MGS2 and 3 – use code from the 2011 Bluepoint HD Collection versions for Xbox 360 and PS3. The changes to their visuals in the Master Collection are minimal at best, meaning we still get a native 1280×720 presentation on both games for PS5, Series X/S and Nintendo Switch.