The Metal Gear Solid 4 Remaster Can Finally Deliver On The Promise Of Its Earliest PS3 Demo

Last week’s State of Play revealed something quite remarkable: a port of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, enhanced for modern consoles. The original is an intriguing artefact from an era where Sony aimed high with its hardware but fell short in terms of execution – and perhaps MGS4 is the most obvious example of this, with often disastrous performance. The opportunity to remaster the game and liberate it from the confines of PS3 seemed like an obvious route forward – and yet it never happened. Until now, as MGS4 is one part of the new Metal Gear Solid Master Collection, Volume 2.

The immediate takeaway from the footage comes from the 60 frames per second target, the irony being there’s strong evidence that this is what Hideo Kojima wanted from the original game to begin with. Early demos showed a heady combination of HD visuals and a flowing 60fps, but the final product was far from it. In fact, in the earliest days where I was experimenting with frame-rate testing (literally by losslessly capturing an HDMI feed, counting the unique frames and dividing them by 60), analysis results from MGS4 were coming in with averages in the early to mid 20s.

This was borne out in tests carried out years later, where the game’s double-buffer v-sync was exposed. MGS4 would either run at 60fps (rarely), before plummeting down to 30fps, 20fps and even 15fps (or, rather, 66.6ms frame-times). The constant hard jumps between these levels of performance made the game very difficult to play and the visual inconsistency was off-putting.

So to see the game running much more smoothly is obviously welcome – but it opens up questions about how Konami’s developers have done it. In looking back at the first volume of the Master Collection, the developers had past work to build on, whether it be emulation or Bluepoint’s excellent HD remakes of Metal Gear Solid 2 and its successor. Aside from rumours of an early Xbox 360 port, we know of no existing work Konami has to draw from in order to port MGS4 – so it must be a fascinating story in how the game code was ported away from the Cell processor and in particular its SPU satellites.

And remember: this port isn’t just for current-gen systems. Konami is also making MGS4 available on the first Nintendo Switch. From a technological point of view, that’s a piece of hardware with much the same graphics power as the PS3 and a significantly less capable CPU. Let’s just say we really want to see that.

Still, there are some elements of the reveal trailer that didn’t stand out as particularly positive. Although in-game action targets 60 frames per second, some of the cutscenes do seem to be capped at 30fps. Are they repurposed video clips? That may be the case and that’s a shame as dropping down to 30fps for narrative cutscenes after playing at double the frame-rate is jarring.

Still, what does stand out is the artistic quality of the original assets. Unlike many of its seventh generation console peers, Konami’s work has aged gracefully – just as it did in Metal Gear Solid 2 and MGS3: Snake Eater. Resolution is temporary but class is permanent.

Foundational design choices and core art direction were excellent for their time and still look good today, so we’re hoping that the native port will build upon this strong base and we can finally appreciate a game where there’s strong evidence that its creators really wanted it played at 60fps – but just couldn’t deliver that with the hardware of the time.

Also included in the second volume of the Master Collection is Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker – a game designed as a full series entry, but built with the technological limitations of Sony’s PlayStation Portable in mind. Here, there are no real mysteries about the nature of the port: Bluepoint has already created an HD version for the PS360 generation and what we’re seeing here looks similar. The original ran at a minuscule resolution at a locked 20fps, with very limited memory, so modernising this one to hold up on modern hardware is a nigh-on impossible task. But there’s some fan service in this collection too with the inclusion of Metal Gear Solid: Ghost Babel – the original, story-driven Game Boy Color game.

Ultimately, we’re obviously looking forward to this one. This collection can be seen as a testament to a renewed commitment from Konami to its classic franchises, finally affording Metal Gear Solid 4 the opportunity to realise its technical potential on modern hardware and allowing a new generation to access this historical work without its original compromises.