Review By

Gene Park

Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes is filled with the joy of filmmaking, which is both its greatest selling point and, inherently, its biggest problem as a videogame.

Too many cutscenes and too little game is a common criticism for Director and Producer Hideo Kojima's games, but that's not what I'm referring to. Instead, Twin Snakes' goal seems to be thrilling players with over-the-top theatrics largely inspired by recent action film phenomenon The Matrix. Twin Snakes is a recreation of 1998's Metal Gear Solid, largely considered by some to be the best of the PlayStation generation, if not of all time. This installment updates the game with gameplay ripped right out of its sequel, Sons of Liberty, and injecting it with, if I may be so bold as to use Kojima-speak, Next Generation Special Graphics.

While that goal was achieved, the cutscenes only spotlight the creakier action gameplay aspects of what is still a relatively exciting stealth system. The original game was a pioneer in storytelling and presentation, as well as mainstreaming the currently well-populated stealth genre. Its sequel introduced new ways to play in what Kojima envisions to be a videogame hide-and-seek game, including hiding in lockers, hiding bodies in lockers, hanging off ledges, first-person shooting and shooting from cover. Sons of Liberty is still considered by some to be the finest example of stealth gameplay still, and that winning formula has also been applied to Twin Snakes.

This GameCube redux's playability functions just as well as its older sequel did. Players raised on the PlayStation 2 controllers may find Nintendo's setup to be a little awkward, even if it had the two buttons missing from the original PS2 layout. The biggest problem may be how the original game's level design was not designed specifically to take advantage of the newly introduced game mechanics. To give the illusion of choice, levels do have an added railing here, a row of lockers there. But since none of the set pieces have any drastic departures from their original designs, if a row of lockers weren't necessary in the first game, they sure as heck won't be necessary in Twin Snakes.

But otherwise, a Metal Gear Solid by any other name still plays just as sweet. The cutscenes are a completely different matter though. Directed by Ryuhei Kitamura, most famous for his four-year-old martial arts film Versus, the cutscenes take on an otherworldly flavor as Solid Snake, the game's protagonist, backflips out of any sticky situation.

Kitamura's eye for flair is evident, especially in the brilliantly choreographed fights between Snake and the Ninja, and Liquid Snake's flamboyant gestures to match Cam Clarke's lilting voice acting. But the Snake and Ninja fights bring a new problem into the game. Their amazing feats bring a disappointing contrast to the one-two chop-chop combos of the actual gameplay. The original cutscenes felt much more believable in terms of gameplay-to-movie transitions.

Curious too is the rerecording of most, if not all, the voice acting in the game, and even some rewritten lines. While some of the performances are on par with the originals, the voices of some cast members feel less … international than they did before, particularly Mei Ling, Snake's "chattering nanny" and the Russian weapons specialist. And my personal favorite line in the game, nuclear expert Otacon referring to a character flaw, had been changed for the worse. They sound more like rough Japanese translations than clever writing.

Playing this game was like witnessing the Broadway musical of Metal Gear Solid. Or maybe it's more like the movie adaptation of the book. You don't learn anything particularly new things about the characters or the story. During the second time around, with updated graphics, engine and cutscenes, it's a decidedly weird experience. For first-timers, in this case, I'd say read the book first.