Solid Snake infiltrates the Game Boy Color – and this time, he’s not using a cardboard box.
But that’s for later.
Released in April of 2000, this little cartridge features the continuing adventures of Solid Snake… sort-of. You see, this game sprung into existence when Hideo Kojima was asked to port Metal Gear Solid over to the Game Boy Color. Realizing that the PS1-based masterpiece would not translate well over to the handheld, Kojima re-vamped the entire game – keeping some elements of the game, and changing many others. The result, of course, is the game before you – Metal Gear: Ghost Babel.
“But, Newtype!” You say, “This is titled ‘Metal Gear Solid!’ Why are you reviewing something different?”
Well, reader, it turns out that in order to capitalize on the release (and fantastic success) of Metal Gear Solid in the US, the name was changed to MGS for the US-release. In Japan and Europe, it’s still known by the original name.
In any case, this game starts the timeline for MGS almost anew. Like in Metal Gear Solid, our hero Solid Snake is called out to the battle once more – with the same horrid history of Metal Gear and Metal Gear: Solid Snake behind him. However, Snake’s not being called out to a local Alaskan base this time.
This time, Snake is going to the fictional country of Gindra in Central Africa.
The opponent? The Gindra Liberation Front, always referred to as the GLF from that point on.
The location? The GLF’s home base – Galuade… formerly known as Outer Heaven.
For those of you who know the Metal Gear Mythos, the term ‘Outer Heaven’ instantly brings up the familiar little ‘!’ over your head. That’s right – Solid Snake is returning to the place where he originally took down Big Boss so many years ago.
Just like in Metal Gear Solid, Snake isn’t alone in his journey – Roy Campbell and Mei Ling both ‘return’ to be Snake’s backup crew. In addition to them, a mercenary called ‘Weasel’ and a Government agent named McBride round out the backup crew.
As for the events of the game… holy crap.
While it seems simple enough – invade Galuade, take out the GLF… it gets more complicated before the briefing even ends. Not only have the GLF taken hostages, but they even have their own Metal Gear – everyone’s favorite weapon of choice for causing nuclear devastation.
As a fun note, the Metal Gear for this game, Metal Gear GANDER, was one of the original designs for the Metal Gear REX in the PS1 MGS game… but wasn’t used because of the amount of curves on the design – forcing them to go with a more blocky design to spare the poor PS1.
Personally, I found GANDER a whole lot more intimidating than REX, but that’s me.
Along with Snake, a strike team referred to as ‘Delta Force’ is also sent inside Galuade to take down the GLF as well. Unfortunately, they’re almost completely wiped out before the briefing ends as well. Whoops.
On top of all that, there’s even a team of Mercenaries that bear a distinct resemblance to the villains of Metal Gear Solid… Slasher Hawk, Australian with a massive boomerang and a hawk familiar. Marionette Owl, assassin with a preference for darkness. Pyro Bison, big guy with a flamethrower. And Black Art Viper – one of the hardest bosses I’ve ever faced.
While there are many surface similarities with the PS1 game, the plot itself completely drops away from the original MGS’ plot quite quickly… however I won’t spoil any for you. Instead, all I can say is that this game will be one hell of a roller coaster before it’s over.
I’m certain that some of you are thinking that this game certainly can’t look that great, simply because it’s on a handheld, right? Well, you’re surprisingly wrong. In fact, this is probably one of the best looking games on the Game Boy Color – though admittedly, this may not be a fantastic claim.
The animations for the characters shown onscreen are surprisingly deep, even showing the movement of Solid Snake’s probably-trademarked Bandana as it flows behind Snake. Admittedly, the detail on the characters themselves is not perfect – heads become mostly blobs on top of bodies, and bullets are nothing more than dots on the screen, but I can’t complain when both of those things are easily seen on the colorful screen anyway.
Unfortunately, the sound isn’t quite as good as the visual appearance of the game. While the sound is fantastic for the Game Boy Color, the tunes themselves get more than a little repetitive after a while – especially the plain ‘wandering’ music, which is played in almost all of the stages in the game.
However, the music is still fantastic in this game – but I just wish some of the music wasn’t as boring as it became.
Luckily, despite how packed the game is already, the controls are surprisingly sharp. Almost all of the motions used in Metal Gear Solid are here, and the mechanics work just as well as the console game… in some cases, a little better.
While the Game Boy Color only has two buttons, start, select and the D-pad, the controls are mapped out surprisingly well. A is the action button – punching things, as well as hitting elevator buttons and detonating C4 among other things. The B button becomes the firing button – using any weapon Snake has in hand. However, there is no ‘choke’ feature in the game, which would have been admittedly hard to do in the first place.
Here’s where it gets odd, though – while pressing ‘start’ brings Snake down to a crawl, pressing ‘Select’ brings up a new menu – and it can be a little confusing. Hitting up or down scrolls through the items Snake has, whereas right or left scrolls through the weaponry Snake carries. Hitting ‘Start’ from here will bring up the Codec (where all the controls are pretty familiar) and hitting ‘Select’ again will take down the menu.
It’s a little confusing, but one gets used to them rather quickly.
My only honest-to-god complaint about how the controls work, though, is that the hit detection is a little off – sometimes Snake can be hit by bullets that don’t hit him, and sometimes whacking enemies with Snake’s fists can be a little hard to pull off. However, those moments are few and far between, luckily.
I must confess – if the game was just what I’ve described so far, it wouldn’t have scored nearly as high as I have. Which can only mean one thing – bonus secrets.
As you clear stages of the game, a Stage Select will become available from the main menu. This will let you speed through those parts of the game and practice for another time through the main game – perhaps getting a better rank the next time around. However, after completing the game, the ‘Special’ version becomes unlocked – featuring three variations of the stages you’ve gone through. While some are mundane (like moving through the stage in reverse, or not taking damage in a boss stage), others are decidedly unique. One special stage variation becomes a game of Donkey Kong, just to name one example.
On top of the Stage Select, there’s even a VR Mode that many people who’ve bought the VR Missions PS1 game (or the PC game) will recognize many stages of. While it’s more limited than its console variations, there is still a decent amount of depth. Sneaking mode can be played through without a weapon, and later with the Five-seveN (the pistol Snake uses in this game). Of course, the Five-seveN is an unlockable feature as you go through plain sneaking.
Weapon Mode is also available from the start – featuring every weapon Snake uses in the single-player mode, where the player shoots down the familiar diamonds and boxes to progress. When that’s beaten, the Advanced Mode is unlocked – where actual guards appear.
On top of all that, Snake can either go through any of these levels in either ‘practice’ or ‘time attack’ mode – which further pushes up some of the replay value.
Finally, as expected, beating the game also adds a ‘Sound Sampling’ mode to the options screen.
The final mode for the game is something I’ve never gotten the chance to use, sadly. The VS Mode is something that requires both a link cable and a second copy of the game – as well as a friend to play against. Sadly, none of my friends had a Game Boy Color or a copy of this game for me to try out the mode. Ah, well – it’s only an extra mode.
In all, this is a wonderful game – in almost all respects. My only complaint is that the single-player story is more linear than the plot we saw in MGS3. However, considering this is both a handheld game, and the sheer amount of extras crammed into this game, really balance that out.
If you can find this game used or in a bargain bin somewhere, it really is worth what little cash you’ll need to shell out for it. It’s not the best Metal Gear game in existence, but it certainly is up there.
Final Score:
9.5 Out of 10