Christmas has always gone hand in hand with gaming in my experience, and this year will be no different.

Metal Gear Acid Trip

I have played a lot of Metal Gear in my life. Hideo Kojima’s masterfully created series has been with me at every step of my gaming journey. We played Metal Gear Solid endlessly on the PlayStation, although my earliest experiences were watching my brothers play rather than taking the controller up myself. We even borrowed a PS2 to play MGS2: Sons of Liberty. I loved it so much that I bought the bloated PC port of the Xbox version, MGS 2: Substance, from Makro in Dunmurry. It was a compromise as all ports are, and not at all suited to keyboard and mouse. The install size was also insane compared to PC games of the time. That didn’t stop me from playing it to death.

We were an Xbox family growing up. Xbox, then the Xbox 360. We dabbled in other consoles before, but the seventh generation console spanned about ten years of gameplay for us. Ten years, and a handful of Xbox 360’s because, thank god, they don’t make them like they used to. For those who grew up around the 360, we lived in constant fear of the “Red Ring of Death”. The RROD was an inevitability as the consoles aged and achieving a permanent fix was unlikely for the average person.

But I digress. Metal Gear Solid was tied firmly to Sony for many years. I was tied firmly to Metal Gear, so something had to give. I took the logical approach of buying a console every time I wanted to play one of Kojima’s back catalogue. By the time I was playing Metal Gear Solid 3, I was able to pick up a PS2 slim and a copy of the game for less than the price of a new Xbox 360 title (probably about £35 to £40 total with Max Payne 2 thrown in for good measure). When I eventually got round to playing Metal Gear Solid 4 I picked up a PS3 slim. Starting to see a pattern emerge?

It’s not particularly relevant to this discussion, but the PS3 slim looks like a draining board and feels like it was produced for 50p. This is not a premium product. However cheap it may feel, it has stood the test of time and continues to be an eyesore and shaped in such a way that it cannot be stacked with any other appliance. It has that much in common with the PS5 at least.

By the time Metal Gear Solid 5 rolled around, things were better for multi-platform releases. I was able to play MGS5 on the Xbox 360 and later on the PS4 Pro. There were two instalments that evaded me throughout my gaming golden years. Metal Gear Acid 1 and 2.

The reason was the PlayStation Portable (PSP). The PSP was the ultimate object of desire. It looked great, was amazingly powerful for a handheld, and had a Metal Gear series of its own. What more could you want?! Mario. Pokémon. A lower price tag. Two screens. A touchscreen. Yes, you could want a Nintendo DS.

The PSP couldn’t really compete with the DS in the end and didn’t do enough to justify the higher cost. Consequently I saw Nintendo handhelds everywhere but only knew a few people who went for the PSP. I came close to buying it on several occasions but could never really justify it or the PS Vita. And so I gave up my Acid dreams.

For some reason, buying the PS5 got me thinking about Metal Gear Acid again. It had been over a decade since I’d even considered it, but I started down a rabbit hole looking for PC releases. Unfortunately it was never ported over to the PC, but emulation has gotten so good that it was a cinch to get setup with a virtual PSP. Add in a PS4 controller and you’re golden. It was finally time to jump in.

And it’s…weird? I guess I shouldn’t have expected anything else from Hideo Kojima.

The cutscenes are very reminiscent of Nintendo DS games such as Phoenix Wright but do a good job of setting the atmosphere. We’re thrown into the mix with some creepy dolls immediately who appear to have taken over a passenger plane using a weaponised muscle relaxant.

We start in the distant future, the year 2016. A plane carrying a prominent politician, Senator Viggo Hach, has been hijacked and the terrorists are demanding Pythagoras. Apparently this is a secret government project being conducted in the Moloni Republic in Southern Africa. The US government does not negotiate with terrorists and have taken the sensible approach in a world where Solid Snake exists. It’s time to spring into action. There’s just one thing about this game. It’s a card game!

Calling it a card game would be disingenuous. Metal Gear Acid is a turn-based strategy game employing a card-based approach for actions. All the Metal Gear Solid games have been third person stealth-action, so switching to entirely turn-based combat is quite a drastic change. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t spend the first hour dying repeatedly after accidentally turning the wrong direction and ending my turn.

Movement is taken in blocks. For each card in your hand you can use the action on the face, or use it to move instead. There is a “cost” to each action and the higher your accumulated cost, the longer it is before your next turn. I think. It’s not the most straightforward system and I’m only beginning to get to grips with it.

From the get go you have two actions per turn, and you can use that to move, equip an item, attack, use a special card, or many other options. Your cards are taken from a deck of thirty which are shuffled and dealt out at the beginning of the mission. As you use the cards you automatically draw a new one at the end of each round. If you’re in a safe space then you can keep skipping turns in order to get some decent cards.

A typical turn might include walking up to a wall, tapping to draw an enemy towards you, then moving out of sight again. All actions that you would have taken in Metal Gear Solid games, but you have to plan out the sequence in advance so you don’t get caught out facing the wrong direction from an enemy with no actions left. There is a lot of strategy in it which I’m not quite used to, as in other MGS games you can shoot your way out if compromised. It’s not quite so easy in this one so you’re better off avoiding detection completely if possible.

So far it has been a frustrating but rewarding experience, and I will share more as I get deeper into the game. And make no mistake, I will be playing more. Just because I’ve spent a lot of money on the latest console doesn’t mean I’ll put down this eighteen year old gem.

Stay tuned for another Acid trip…