I got to play Metal Gear Solid 2 this morning at Konami's Tokyo Game Show booth, the game part of the company's HD collection of the older titles in the series.
Having not played it since it was first released, I was curious to see how things had changed and/or been improved for this latest iteration of the classic stealth action game.
Hit the gallery above for gameplay footage and screenshots of Metal Gear Solid 2 HD.
It doesn't take long to see it hasn't changed much at all. Which depending on how you view your HD re-releases is either a good or bad thing.
Some games, like Halo Anniversary, go to town, adding so many new features it looks and feels like a new game. Others, like Ico, keep the bones of the game the same but spice up the visuals just a little.
And then there's Metal Gear Solid 2, which takes the approach that if it was good enough for the 1990s, it's good enough for now, and changes almost nothing.
In some ways, this sucks, as the muddy character textures and low polygon counts look awful on a big HDTV (the level art, being blocky by design and better lit, doesn't look too bad). In others, though, it's awesome, as you see things like hairy armpits (pictured in clip above) in greater detail than ever before.
As for how the game plays, well, it's Metal Gear Solid 2. The controller is mostly the same on PS3, so everything gameplay-wise is how you remember it. It's funny, having recently played Deus Ex, which owes so much to the Metal Gear series, Metal Gear Solid's stealth mechanics have held up surprisingly well.
The other Metal Gear games getting the HD treatment (MGS3 and Peace Walker) are playable here as well, i'll try and at least get footage of those, if not get my hands on them.
You can contact Luke Plunkett, the author of this post, at plunkett@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.