Konami delivered a pretty good compilation of remastered Metal Gear Solid games a few years ago, aptly titled Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1. That “Vol. 1” always made the package feel intentionally incomplete, and the absence of Peace Walker made it pretty obvious that a second collection would eventually follow. What I wasn’t so sure about was whether said collection would ever actually see the light of day, largely because of the licensing and technical hurdles surrounding former PS3 exclusive, and genuine killer app, Metal Gear Solid 4. How would Konami get that thing remastered and running on every other console to begin with?

Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2 feels, as such, like a small miracle. I can now play Metal Gear Solid 4, in fully remastered glory, on a Switch 2 of all things. Sure, the collection also includes Peace Walker, which is still a great game even if it’s far from my favorite entry in the series, but that wasn’t what impressed me the most. The real highlights are the inclusion of the seemingly impossible Guns of the Patriots, as well as Konami actually remembering that the Game Boy masterpiece known as Metal Gear: Ghost Babel exists, and that it absolutely deserved to be remastered and included in this package.

Metal Gear is a serious franchise about serious topics, I swear.

So, let’s take a closer look at all three games included in Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2, as well as one particular title I feel is sorely missing from the collection.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008)

Look. There’s no need to sugarcoat it. I wanted this collection because of Metal Gear Solid 4. This game was the reason the PS3 started to feel like a worthy competitor to the then-leader Xbox 360 back in 2008. It was THE killer app for the system, a superb showcase in terms of graphics, physics, and so on, with visuals and gameplay features that still feel modern to this day. The graphics never felt like something out of a PS3 title, they felt like they were already a generation ahead of everyone else.

This gameplay is sublime, even if there’s more cutscenes than actual gaming content.

The only thing the original Metal Gear Solid 4 suffered from was its framerate. The thing struggled to reach a consistent 20 or 30fps, due to how visually and technically advanced it was. You can also blame the PS3’s notoriously complicated hardware for that. Thanks to this remaster, you can play this masterpiece at a rock-solid 60 frames per second, no matter the amount of crap happening onscreen. A true miracle.

Naysayers love to mention that Metal Gear Solid 4 is more of a visual novel than a game, due to its insanely long cutscenes. Look, I get it. I agree, the cutscenes are long. But this is the closure of a gigantic and admittedly borderline incomprehensible storyline. The fact that Hideo Kojima was able to craft a finale that was impactful for fans, left absolutely no plotholes behind, and was still entertaining as hell when it was being a videogame, is commendable. The amount of weapons, strategies, steath options, and interactivity, all in a game from nearly 20 years ago, is staggering.

I ship them. I ship them so hard.

Not to mention the fact that the plot, in true Metal Gear Solid fashion, feels astonishingly accurate to today’s world. It’s a story about media manipulation, artificial intelligence taking over human functions, questions about mortality and your place in the world. It was something out of this world back in 2008, but we were teenagers when this beast first dropped. AI wasn’t a threat back then. It is now. As an older gamer, Metal Gear Solid 4 feels more relevant than ever. If there was any reason to buy this collection, this is the one. A must-play for basically anyone with a modicum of interest towards gaming history.

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (2010)

People love to call Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain a true trailblazer for the series, but most of its base management functions and mission-based gameplay loop were actually introduced years earlier, via a handful of PSP titles. Portable Ops was the first game in the franchise that allowed you to develop an army and recruit enemies for your cause, but it was 2010’s Peace Walker that cemented the gameplay loop as the true future of the Metal Gear series.

I like it, but where’s Portable Ops, Konami??

I like Peace Walker, but I don’t love it. I don’t vibe with it as much as other fans of the series. Look, I don’t mind the byte-sized missions and “gotta catch them soldiers” structure; I actually dig this concept a lot. But I feel like Peace Walker only tells half of a story, the reason as to why Big Boss, well, became Big Boss. And I honestly have to put the blame on Hideo Kojima for not wanting to acknowledge the importance of Portable Ops‘ story, and how that led to the creation of the Big Boss we know and love today.

To be fair, the lack of an inclusion, or acknowledgment of the existence of Portable Ops, hurts the overall quality of Peace Walker. Without it, this feels like a somewhat disjointed transition for Naked Snake: how he went from reluctant war hero to deified military lunatic. The origin of how Outer Heaven was created, and how Snake’s vision of a future stronghold for soldiers, those elements were all initially planted in Peace Walker‘s predecessor. This actually pretty good remaster of what’s possibly the most technically impressive PSP game of all time is only fully enjoyable if you’ve played Portable Ops beforehands. And, sadly, Kojima and Konami kinda want you to forget about it.

I used to hate these cutscenes back in the day, as I wanted the game to feel more like other mainstream Metal Gears. I now love this art style to death.

As for the remastering efforts themselves, this is a straight up port of the Bluepoint remaster of Peace Walker, released in 2011 in the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection. That is not a particularly bad thing. That remaster was already pretty damn good, running at a smooth 60fps, and with completely revamped controls, perfectly tailored for a proper gaming controller. There was no need for Konami to change anything about that remaster in particular, so I’m glad they basically copied and pasted that piece of work into Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2.

Metal Gear: Ghost Babel (2000)

This might be news to younger fans of the Metal Gear franchise, but there was a Metal Gear game developed by Kojima himself and released for the Game Boy Color back in 2000. Ghost Babel wasn’t a mere port of the then-recent PS1 Metal Gear Solid for a portable, it was actually its own thing. It’s non-canonical, but it’s a completely original story centered around Snake invading another enemy fortress and taking down yet another Metal Gear, all while defeating a gang of wacky animal-named villains. In essence, an alternate reality to what happened in Metal Gear Solid, but set in Africa, not Alaska.

Ghost Babel rocks.

Even if it’s an 8-bit, sprite-based 2D game, this looks and feels like a proper Metal Gear Solid game. Ghost Babel is shockingly complex for a Game Boy title, with detailed animations, long Codec dialogue sections, hard boss battles, and all of the mechanics Snake used in its PS1 adventure. You can crouch, crawl, hide underneath vents, lean onto walls, lure enemies towards you by knocking on walls, use a smoke device to reveal lasers, and so on. It was really impressive back in the day (it was actually my first ever Metal Gear experience), and it holds up surprisingly well nowadays. Hell, it even features more than a hundred VR missions, just like its PS1 brother!

Extras and missed opportunities

There isn’t a lot in this collection in terms of extras. In fact, there’s nearly nothing. You have access to a music player, and some documents. That’s basically it. This is the kind of compilation that lives and dies by the games it includes, not the extras. This is not a Digital Eclipse kind of compilation, as much as I wish it was.

That being said, I feel like this collection offers a bit less than its predecessor in terms of volume. Even though Metal Gear Solid 4 is bigger than, like, two PS2-era games combined, the aforementioned lack of Portable Ops feels like a massively missed opportunity for the collection as a whole, as it is, as of now, the only game that isn’t a true spinoff to not be available anywhere but its original system. Well, there’s also The Twin Snakes, but I’m well aware that game will never be remastered, as much as it pains me to say so.

Looks like a Game Boy game, but it honestly plays like a PS1 title.

For a third Master Collection, if Konami ever bothers to make one, I hope they decide to include Portable Ops, Metal Gear Acid, its sequel, and the masterpiece that is Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. If Snake’s Revenge and Ghost Babel managed to see the light of day once again, I see no excuse for these four games to make a comeback in the future.

The final verdict:

Even if it features fewer games in absolute terms, and basically no extras to speak of, Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2 somehow feels less “lazy” than its predecessor, even though that collection was already pretty great to begin with. The inclusion of a fully remastered Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, which has never looked or played better, is worth the admission ticket alone. A remastered Ghost Babel is another fantastic addition, while the inevitable inclusion of Peace Walker rounds out the package nicely, even if, as previously mentioned, it still feels like only half of the complete Big Boss story.

Again. Serious franchise. I swear.

There’s no denying that Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2 is a must have collection for fans, and I’m genuinely glad Konami was able to pull it off. I just hope this isn’t the last time the company decides to revisit the franchise with another collection of remastered titles. There are still plenty of spinoffs deserving of another chance in the spotlight, and I certainly wouldn’t complain about a Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain compilation for modern platforms. Bringing both to the Switch 2 would be especially noteworthy, finally allowing those games to appear on a Nintendo console for the first time.

Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2 is available now on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, Switch and Switch 2.

Reviewed on Switch 2.