May 14, 2003 - The year 2003 marks a series of firsts for GameCube. Square returns to Nintendo's court with a first Final Fantasy offering, Capcom begins work on a brand-new, exclusive Resident Evil title for Nintendo's system, and Konami is back in action with its first Metal Gear title since the early NES days. You may not realize it yet, but Nintendo is actively pursing the kind of third-party support that gamers want, and that's just a sampling of proof.
But when Nintendo joined forces with series creator Hideo Kojima to quickly inject a Metal Gear title into the Cube library, publisher Konami wasn't up for the task. Kojima's team is currently deep into development on it's third MGS sequel for PS2 titled Snake Eater, and the majority of the Cube crowd is still too naive of Solid Snake's recent missions to jump straight into the third iteration. Weighing these factors, Nintendo turned to second-party developer Silicon Knights (Eternal Darkness) to jumpstart the series by revamping the original Playstation Metal Gear Solid title for the GameCube audience.
Shortly following the title's official announcement two weeks ago, curiosity arose on exactly how this upgraded classic -- now renamed with the "Twin Snakes" suffix -- would look and play on Nintendo's more powerful system. Given Silicon Knight's proven technical and artistic ability, expectations are certainly running high around the IGNcube offices. We're huge fans of the first MGS game (which we still consider to be vastly superior to the second), and we've been anxiously awaiting today's E3 opening to finally get a look at the title running in real-time on the GameCube hardware.
As Nintendo opened the floodgates at 10 AM this morning, we finally wrapped our hands around the Twin Snakes controller and played straight through the entire E3 demo. The game boots up to a standard Konami logo and then promptly displays the Silicon Knight's shield and crest. The logo screen follows with the name "Trial Edition" below the Twin Snakes header, and the background slowly animates with dark and gritty imagery of twisting, cylindrical snake hides. Hitting start jumps the action past the first cut-scene and introduces Snake as he surfaces from the Alaskan water and sneaks into the cargo docks of the first level. At this point, the translucent water effects are clearly much smoother than the original PSX title, and the Solid Snake character model looks even better than the second Sons of Liberty title on PS2. Snake's face in particular is very impressive, with chiseled cheekbones and articulate facial animations bringing the covert warrior to life like never before.
The rest of the visual package still looks extremely early, however. Texture detail remains identical to the original PSX version, and, despite the added resolution boost, all walls, beams, and objects are rendered in the exact same style of the original. We realize that the game is still very, very early in development, but if there were one visual gripe that we'd like to see addressed before completion, it'd be the reworking of nearly all in-game textures. Otherwise, the Snake character model is currently the shining point of the visual package, while much of the remaining polygon detail has been seemingly increased to a lesser degree. Square edges are noticeable in many places, such as Snake's scuba mask, which appears very angular and rough. There's also a noticeable lack of anti-aliasing that should be corrected in the final build. And, like most early software, the game's framerate is clearly not yet optimized to its fullest, as slowdown runs thick through the entire playable demo. In its current form, Twin Snakes still has far to go before it reaches the quality of visuals that Silicon Knights prides itself upon, but we have no doubt that the team is hard at work behind closed doors to deliver Nintendo gamers exactly what we want.
On the plus side, Metal Gear Solid's awesome presentation remains intact and even improved in nearly every possible way. All cut-scenes have been completely redirected in the exact same style used in the past MGS 2 title to pump up the adrenaline and cinematic sweetness of Snake's dark and tense story. Cameras pan and zoom quickly as Snake crouches behind crates and takes aim at the white-clad snow troopers around an exterior helipad. We're also thrilled to say that the original voice work is back in full effect, and the script remains perfectly intact here in the Cube version. When Snake bites his final bullet, you'll still hear Campbell's chilling plea: "Snake? Snaaaaaake!" Classic. It's still too early to tell if Nintendo will censor any of the more violent scenes that unfold later in the game, but given the trailer that debuted at yesterday's press conference, we're guessing not.
Along with the improved Snake model, the Silicon Knights design team is definitely including other improvements and styles established in Konami's second game. For example, players can now pick up, move dead bodies, drag them into a dark corner, and then drop them to shake up a spare ration or ammo clip. Using the GameCube controller, piloting Snake is very comfortable. Have a look at the current button configuration below:
One interesting note is that players can now "cycle through targets in first-person view" using the B button. While we didn't experience this functionality for ourselves, it could be a form of auto-aim planned that wasn't in any of the previous MGS titles. Due to the lack of a Select button, Cube players must press A + Start simultaneously to bring up their Codecs, but it quickly become natural. Otherwise, controls feel very similar to the original and are even intuitive to fans such as ourselves who played through the game back on the PSX. Digital fans will also be glad to know that Snake controls with the D pad, too.
The E3 demo plays through the cargo dock area, up the elevator, through the snowy base exterior, and then ends as Snake enters the ventilation shaft and begins infiltrating the facility. All of the same awesome Codec conversations are viewable (and skipable), along with plenty of newly directed cut-scenes that look totally awesome. The storyline, script, and voice acting in the first MGS are still considered by many (including ourselves) to be the best of the series, so Cube gamers should definitely be in for a real treat. If Silicon Knights pulls together the technical side of the project before it ships later this year (as we know it will), then Twin Snakes will assuredly be a must-own title for Nintendo fans and a big reason to own a GameCube.
We'll report back shortly from E3 with more details and behind-the-scenes information on Metal Gear Solid's development and translation to Cube, so stay tuned!
-- Cory D. Lewis
y gracias por los videos ![[ginyo]](/images/smilies/nuevos/guinyo_ani1.gif "guiñando")
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A ve si nos sorprenden con unos gráficos de la ostia para cuando salga 
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