It seems pretty safe to say, at this point, that video game publishers have no problem essentially selling the same game multiple times, in the form of remakes and ports to modern systems. On some level one would almost expect the Metal Gear series to be immune to this trend. After all, series director Hideo Kojima is somewhat infamous among fans for mocking fans for wanting more sequels in his games. Yet, the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, featuring ports of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, and Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, is a thing.

The HD Collection is just that, a collection of those three games on a single disc, for PS3 and Xbox 360. The games are ports, not enhanced remakes: they look and play pretty much the same way they did on the PS2 and the PSP. However, the graphics are updated to take advantage of the PS3’s HD and widescreen capabilities. Thus, while the games have PS2 and PSP textures, they are very nice-looking and sharp PS2 and PSP textures. The widescreen support is also a very nice touch for the PS2 games; since they originally had no widescreen support, and the games would go into a “letterbox” widescreen every cutscene, trying to play the games on a widescreen TV often meant having a big black border around the action.

In addition, many of the features from the special editions from Sons of Liberty and Snake Eater are present in the HD collection. Sons of Liberty has the Boss Survival, VR Missions, and Snake Tales from its special edition, and Snake Eater has the Theater mode as well as the original Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake games for the MSX2. However, the Secret Theater and Snake vs. Monkey modes are missing. Peace Walker doesn’t include any new content, per se, but the PS3 version of the collection allows transfer of save data between the PS3 and PSP versions of the game. Finally, all three games (not counting the MSX2 games) have Achievement/Trophy support.

Now, since these games are mostly straight ports, they’re not likely going to change the mind of anyone who’s already made theirs up. People who hated the games the first time around should probably skip this, and fans who are willing to pay again for essentially the same games should find everything just as they remembered. On the other hand, for those who missed the games the first time around but still want to try it out, this is the perfect package (and, since it’s available on two platforms, it now has a wider possible audience).

Ultimately, the HD Collection really doesn’t try to do very much. This is not meant as an indictment: the product knows what its narrow focus is (HD ports of PS2 and PSP games) and does it well. Still, the missing features from Snake Eater hurt a bit. Furthermore, people who own the original games and are content with playing them as-is have no real reason to get this collection. Ultimately, the collection is nice, but it might have been interesting to see a bit more.