After a long time, the Metal Gear Solid series finally has so🉐me new projects coming down the pipeline. The Snake Eater remake looks incredibly promising, but at the end of the reveal trailer, another thing was announced. Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1, which contains the first three MGS games, is coming to the PlayStation 5, and according to 🍃Konami on the official website, it’s releasing on “the latest platforms.”
This hopefully means Xbox Series X|S, Switch, and PC as well. Xbox already confirmed Snake Eater would be crossing the great console war divide, and the collection probably will too. While this is good news for people who’ve never experienced the games, thos𝔍e who played the HD Collection on 360 or PS3 might speak a different tune.
With the release of the Master Collection comes new Trophies and Achievements, 🎐and this will strike fear into the hearts 🐽of players who maxed out their scores back then. As a person who marathoned the series last year and obtained all the achievements in the Xbox instalments, I dread this collection’s release. Snake Eater is not too bad, and the Platinum can be gained in a single playthrough. MGS2 is where stuff gets nasty. It’s one of the hardest games in the series to complete, along with MGS4.
Great Dane is a notable hard Achievement forcing you 🐲to get almost every dog tag in the Plant chapter. This means you’ll have to beat every difficulty, including Extreme. It’s a fun challenge, though, and the dog tag process doesn’t feel extremely repetitive since each difficulty has major differences. This cannot be said about the hardest Achievement in the game.
Virtually Impossible will require you to beat every VR Mission. MGS1 contained 300 total VR Missions, which is already a total slog, and not going to be a good ti꧙me for Achievement hunters or me when the collection drops. You might think that MGS2 would also contain 300, maybe even 350. Nope. There are 511 total missions. This is the biggest grind in the series, even more so than some of the Achievements in Phantom Pain. What makes matt𒆙ers worse is the sheer repetition. Let’s break down the mission types.
First off is Sneaking Mode. These consist of ten missions where you sneak by enemies and ten missions where you mus𒊎t eliminat🐷e them all while remaining undetected. These 20 missions must be played for five of the seven playable characters, and the maps are the same. Sure, these get progressively harder the further you get in the mode, but the changes aren’t that substantial. That is, until the last two characters, where you’re basically forced to abuse the knocking technique to get guards over to you. Be ready to wait for these guards to come over because you’ll be doing that a lot throughout the VR Missions.
Almost every character features alternative missions as well as VR ones. The two core types are Elimination and Hold Up, each with ten missions for most characters. These feel different enough, but the downside is that they're much harder and more annoying. You can feel yourself fading away as you knock and wait for a guard to come over and do that for each one on the map.
The next mission type is Weapon Mode. It’s not too bad in difficulty but still incredibly repetitive. For most characters, there are 40 missions, five per weapon. It feels like a complete grind because the later ones aren’t much harder, and again they’re the same maps for each character. One weapon, in particular, is brutal: the grenade. Combat in MGS2 isn’t the best by today’s standards, and nothing is more awkward than grenade tossing. By the end, you’ll have to destroy fast-moving blo🐭cks by accurately tossing your grenade and hoping the target’s nearby the time the grenade blows up. It’s just not fun.
Variety Mode is the last VR Mission type, and while there are many unique missions here, one specific breed sticks out the most. That’s the sniping levels. These are my worst nightmare. You’ll have to defend a specific object or person from guards coming from high above. The difficulty itself is savage, but your nerves are also a major enemy here. You𝓀’ll need precision to shoot the guards closing in at the bottom, and one wrong move on the analog stick can lead to mission failure. On🔥ce these missions are done, you’re never ever going back to them.
To put things into perspective, this completion process is such a pain that even Jirard The Completionist highlighted the achievement in his list as the main reason why he hasn’t covered MGS2 yet. When a person who literally completes games for a living is ✱like, “Yeah, I’m going to play something else,” there’s a problem. I’m getting the Master Collection this Autumn, but I’m not completing this dreadful mode again. I’ll just keep my 100 percent save file on the 3🐽60 version.
