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Metal Gear Solid 4 on the PS3 is one of the most cinematic, graphically intensive games ever created. Released almost a year ago it was a dubbed as “the savior of the PS3″ and was the first real AAA title on the console. The game’s producer Hideo Kojima often bragged that MSG4, with its breath taking graphics and hour-long cutscences, could not be done on any other console but the PS3 as the game is a whopping 50gbs (the size of a Blu-Ray disc) and it fully utilizes the Cell Processor which is the heart of Sony’s system. It seems ridiculous that now, less than a year later, MGS4 is being remade for the iPhone in the form of Metal Gear Solid Touch.

On paper, turning a 50gb stealth action game into a 100mb shooting gallery seems incredibly stupid, and incredibly stupid this game is. Metal Gear Solid Touch attempt to recreate MGS4 is certainly bold, but ultimately it falls flat on its face… then gets shot in its back. From the second you load the game you’ll notice idiotic presentation issues. First of all the game’s menu screen is displayed in portrait mode, which makes no sense as the actual game is played with you holding your phone held sideways. Also accessing anything from the main menu requires you to double tap, which isn’t told to you and is incredibly rare for an iPhone application. Initially I thought the game was broken as tapping the menu options as normal does nothing, I wasted around half an hour restarting my system and constantly re-downloading the title attempting to get the game to start. It wasn’t until I frustratedly searched Google (where I found others suffering from the same problem) that I discovered I had to double tap. These minor problems do not affect the gameplay in any way and the double-tapping issue is no problem at all once you’re aware of it but they do show lack of foresight by the developers and I feel these issues should have been brought up and rectified during testing.

Touch follows the same story as MGS4, only instead of 45 minute cutscences that will bore you to death players are treated to a still image from the PS3 game and a paragraph or two summarizing the plot. I personally prefer this approach as I felt the story in MGS4  dragged on for too long and became far too convoluted. The iPhone doesn’t handle complicated genres too well due to it’s lack of physical buttons so I understand why Konami chose to make a light gun shooter instead of a stealth action game but what completely ruins the game for me is the over complicated controls. You control your aiming cursor by dragging your finger across the screen, tapping the screen softly makes Snake shoot, pinching the screen put you in to sniper mode and doing nothing makes Snake take cover. The game would have been a hell of a lot more enjoyable if you could aim and shoot at the same time by controlling the cursor with one thumb and firing with the other, however if you try to do so the game misinterprets your two thumbs as a pinch and forces you unwillingly in to sniper mode, not ideal when you’re in the middle of a heavy gun battle. So instead you have aim, go into cover, pop out of cover and then shoot! This wastes valuable time and in later stages usually result in you getting shot in the face and dying.

The game tries to compensate for its sluggish controls by displaying a ring over your enemies indicating when they’re going to shoot. While the ring is yellow you’re safe to line them up and gun them down but if it turns red and you’re not covering you instantly lose a life bar (of which you have 8). It’s not all bad though as you can easily regain health by either taking cover for a few seconds or by shooting Rubber Ducks which appear randomly on the battlefield. There is also random Rubber Frogs for you to shoot which depending on the mission will reward you with either temporary invincibility or a single RPG shot, vital for taking down choppers and Gekos both of which have the ability to destroy your cover leaving you completely venerable and unable to gain health unless luck sends a Rubber Duck your way. On it’s release the game only has 12 missions taking you up to Act 3 in the MGS4 storyline, Later missions are set to be released later via a free download. Racing through the current 12 missions takes about half an hour but Drebin Points which can be used to buy wallpaper for your iPhone may give players incentive to replay mission in order to gain more points and achieve a higher rank.

To conclude, Metal Gear Solid Touch is a competent shooting gallery app but as a Metal Gear game it’s severely lackluster. It doesn’t retain any of the traits that made the original game so phenomenal and it saddens me seeing the Kojima Productions logo on such a mediocre product. With improved controls and greater mission variety I would have recommended this title to Metal Gear fans who have $8 (or £3.50) to spare, but as it stands I suggest that anyone who like fun and hates frustration does their best to stealthy avoid this game.

Story	7
Graphics	7
Gameplay	6
Sound	6
Value	7
Overall	6

Written By Carl Daniel

Gamertag & PSN ID: KRyPTceltrix // Email: CDaniel@TheKoalition.com