Resident Evil (2002)

The original Resident Evil was a groundbreaking title, mixing together survival and horror in a way that was never seen before. The PlayStation version was a product of its time, and the developer remastered it for the GameCube generation with a significant overhaul to its visuals and several quality-of-life changes. The fixed camera angles meant better pre-baked reflections and textures, making the visuals a step above what was possible with a free camera.

The original game was released on the PlayStation, and Konami tried to capitalize on that runaway success with a remake called Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes in 2004. As many might be aware, it was a very divisive game amongst fans – and was widely criticized on many aspects ranging from cutscenes to direction and much more. With Metal Gear Solid making a comeback in the form of Delta Snake Eater, we thought it would be a good time to revisit this classic and try to understand how it has aged after all these years.

Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes is basically the original remade in the Metal Gear Solid 2 game engine, so the story is obviously a one-to-one recreation albeit with a few changes. Most of the original cast returned for the remake to re-record their voice lines, but the end result is notably inferior than before. While Metal Gear Solid was known for its impeccable voice acting, the Twin Snakes version doesn’t seem to have the same level of quality when it comes to delivering the voice lines. It feels somewhat bland in comparison, which can be off putting if you have spent some time with the original.

In addition to this, Twin Snakes changes up the cinematics to make it feel a lot more over-the-top than the original. These changes were made with the intent of the game feeling like a blockbuster action movie in a way that simply wasn’t possible on the PS1’s hardware, but the resulting cutscenes tend to rely too much on slow-motion action sequences which can get repetitive after a while. Again, it’s not too much of an issue – but it is definitely annoying on some level. And jump to the modern times where we have mostly done away from this kind of slow motion-driven action, returning back to it can also feel awkward in some sense.

As for the story itself, Metal Gear Solid’s narrative continues to be an excellent showcase of how to use enormous amounts of expositions and subplots to make you feel like you are going down a never-ending rabbit hole of mysteries and conspiracies. The many characters that you meet during your operation are pretty distinct from one another and have understandable motivations for their actions, which makes getting through the story a really engaging affair. Even after such a long time, experiencing Solid Snake’s first adventure remains an entertaining affair through and through in Twin Snakes – minus the over-the-top cutscenes, of course.

Moving over to the gameplay side of things, Metal Gear Solid takes the solid foundations of the original and brings it up to Sons of Liberty standards. The moment-to-moment gameplay revolves around the familiar loop of making your way through complex maze-like levels while avoiding enemies by hiding around corners or crawling whilst hidden under cardboard boxes, which remains as fun as ever before. The movement mechanics feel a lot more responsive and smooth thanks to an updated engine, and the difference between the original and the remake is pretty noticeable.

As you make your way through the many enemy-infested areas, you will be treated to a bunch of amazing boss fights that will stay with you long after the credits roll. The many bosses on offer not only look different in a visual sense but are also functionally distinct and require markedly different strategies to defeat. Psycho Mantis can get into your head with his insane fourth-wall breaks, the mano-a-mano fight against Liquid Snake will remain in your head for the coming days and weeks, and other boss fights have similar eccentricities that made them so memorable in the first place – and continue to be so even after all these years.

Metal Gear Solid Twin Snakes also introduces new gameplay elements into the mix, including but not limited to weapons like the Tranquilizer Gun. You can also aim in first-person mode, allowing you to finely target your shots. But those things can feel at odds with the original design of the game, and what happens is that Twin Snakes ends up being an absolute cakewalk with little to no semblance of difficulty unless you self-impose a challenge or something else.

And now coming to the visuals, Metal Gear Solid Twin Snakes is a big step up from the original Metal Gear Solid. It’s obviously dated by modern standards in a conventional manner, but it isn’t so dated that going back to it would feel cumbersome in any sense. And part of that praise can be attributed to the clean visual direction that’s timeless, which coupled with the astounding attention to detail makes going back to it an absolute breeze. The sound has also been changed in Twin Snakes with a soundtrack that’s mostly composed of electronic beats, and some fans might feel that the original felt more fitting with the overall theme of the game – but that’s a really subjective discussion and I feel that it’s equally good.

Looking at Twin Snakes as a whole, there are elements of the game that make going back to it a more convenient task – including but not limited to the visuals and updated control schemes. But it’s also important to understand that those features also have a knock-on effect on the game balance and tend to change the vibe of the experience – which can be off putting if you are familiar with the original release.

But looking at it in a vacuum, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes is a great stealth action-adventure game with a strong story, crisp gameplay, and memorable boss fights. Despite it being almost 20 years old at this point, it holds up surprisingly well in most aspects and would still suffice as a great stealth game if it had been released today.

If you don’t have much nostalgia associated with the original rendition, I see little to no problem in recommending Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes if you wish to experience the humble beginnings of a blockbuster franchise without having to settle for inferior graphics or a cumbersome control scheme. Metal Gear Solid is also an interesting case study for how it laid the groundwork for the modern stealth game. Many of the defining mechanics like vision cones that have become staples of the genre can be traced back to this game, and it would have been a great stealth experience even if it was released today.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes fell in the latter category, and though it’d be unfair to call it a bad game, it’s fair to say that it doesn’t have the best reputation, especially among the hardcore Metal Gear fanatics. Though liked well enough by critics upon its release, the GameCube title, which launched six years on from the original Metal Gear Solid’s launch, has by now become cemented as one of the most commonly known examples of a remake that fails to do justice to its excellent source material.

But what exactly is it about The Twin Snakes that draws the ire of so many Metal Gear Solid fans? It’s a game that’s not without merits, and on paper, the idea of being able to play Metal Gear Solid with improved visuals, redone cutscenes, and enhanced gameplay sounds like an excellent one- so how is it that The Twin Snakes can check all of those boxes and still fail to live up to the immense legacy of the original game, much less surpass it? Well, it’s simple really- a lot of those checkmarks come with caveats, and some pretty significant ones at that.

Take the gameplay improvements, for instance. Launching six years after the original PS1 game and three years after Metal Gear Solid 2, The Twin Snakes decided to enhance the MGS1 gameplay experience by adding in features and mechanics from Sons of Liberty in an effort to bring both games to an equal footing. Given the fact that Metal Gear Solid 2 was – and still remains, incredibly enough – one of the greatest and best-playing stealth games of all time, there’s absolutely no way that they couldn’t have enhanced the MGS1 experience, right? Well, that may have been the case if that idea had been executed in much more comprehensive fashion.

The Twin Snakes boasted all of the gameplay enhancements of MGS2, from improvements made to the enemy AI to players now being able to enter first person mode, but in spite of those improvements, the level design remained completely unchanged. The balance of the experience was broken, and though it wasn’t necessarily a consistent issue plaguing every step of the experience, it was one that reared its face way too often. The difficulty was cheapened, the environments and the objectives instantly became less interesting (even to the point of feeling like busywork at times), and even some of the boss fights were ruined, with Revolver Ocelot being the most egregious and infamous examples.

That’s never good news in any game, but for a game like Metal Gear Solid, which is so well-known for its incredible boss fights and its stellar stealth gameplay, those issues were almost a death blow. Say what you will about the recent The Last of Us remake, but as disappointing as it may have been to see it not include some of Part 2’s biggest gameplay improvements, it made sense that Naughty Dog was unwilling to do that without radically changing the level design as well. If only the developers of The Twin Snakes had shared that thought process.

Those problems would have been bad enough on their own, but The Twin Snakes had issues in other areas as well, its redone cutscenes being chief among them- which, again, is an area where a Metal Gear game absolutely can’t afford to have any stumbles. Bizarrely over-the-top obviously isn’t something that MGS cutscenes have ever not been described as, but The Twin Snakes took that to even more ridiculous heights, with stylistic choices that just didn’t fit the story, or even the series as a whole. Yes, we’re more than used to seeing silliness and over-the-top stuff in Metal Gear cutscenes, but the series has never tried to position itself as an embarrassing knockoff of The Matrix, which is pretty much exactly what The Twin Snakes ended up being, thanks to obsession with Solid Snake doing backflips pretty much every chance he got (among other things).

It didn’t help that the voice acting in The Twin Snakes was also a bit of a letdown for many – which was a surprise, given the fact that most of the original game’s voice cast returned to reprise their roles – while the music, too, had its fair share of detractors. Add to that the fact that the cleaner look of the remake also made the grimier environments of Shadow Moses Island lose so much of their visual identity and atmosphere, and what you had was a game that deviated from its source material far too much.

Of course, it’s worth remembering that many of The Twin Snakes’ issues are likely to stand out this starkly to you only if you have a comprehensive familiary and deep love for the original game. For someone who doesn’t care about the original Metal Gear Solid too much, even though issues like the unbalanced gameplay and ridiculous cutscenes will be plain to see, they might not be as keenly felt as they would be for a longtime fan. And yet, even so, if someone was looking to experience the original MGS for the first time, it’d make next to no sense to recommend The Twin Snakes over the PS1 classic. In spite of all of the former’s technical improvements, the latter has a timeless quality that has persevered through the years, even now, two and a half decades on from its launch.

We are, of course, getting another Metal Gear remake not long from now, courtesy of Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, and unlike The Twin Snakes, it looks to be taking a much more cautious and conventional approach, from little to no story changes being made to the voice over work of the original game being brought over unchanged. There’s still plenty that we don’t know about the game yet, but as things stand right now, there’s reason to be optimistic. We can only hope that Konami will be able to do a much better job of living up to MGS3’s legacy than it did with MGS1.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 2

Of the many titles that convinced fans of the GameCube’s power, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 2 sits near the top. Improved texture work, more detailed ships and increased draw distance all provided substantial upgrades over its predecessor. But it was the addition of bump-mapping that provided that extra bit of oomph, pushing photo-realism that much closer to the films. Even if you weren’t a Star Wars fan, Rogue Squadron 2 had to be seen to be believed.

Though, what about Silicon Knights’ remake of the same? We’re talking about Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, which released exclusively on the Nintendo Gamecube. Why the exclusion here?

Kojima Productions’ Sean Eyestone in their latest podcast provides some answers:

That was a remake made by Silicon Knights. We supervised it but we didn’t create it directly and we wanted to make sure that everything in the HD Collection was canon. Everything that goes into there is something created directly by Kojima Productions and Kojima himself. So that is the reason why Twin Snakes was not included in HD Collection.

That begs the question though: Why didn’t Kojima Productions do their own HD translation? Beggars can’t be choosers, it seems.

Source: Examiner