I picked up Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel last week but didn’t have a chance to play it until this weekend. I really enjoyed it. A lot of people complain that it has no voice work. I think that would detract from the experience. I don’t want to watch a movie. It works for me better as a interactive book.
The game mainly consists of a story mode. You can stop the story and search for memories anywhere in the game. A graph tells you if there are any memories in nearby pages, and the cursor spins faster when it gets close to a memory on the screen. Once you find memories you can go into the memory building matrix and connect them together. Putting together certain memories triggers a flashback that adds more memories to be found in story mode. Each memory has a brief explanation and it’s interesting to see how various people and organizations relate. It’s nice to be able to visualize the many agendas of the various characters and who is really working for what organization. It was also interesting that some of the memories started to spill over into Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Some of these memories started appearing outside the matrix itself and had dangling links. Perhaps a MGS2:DGN is in development and will interact with this one?
I finished the game completely. I found all the memories and completed the memory matrix. This was no small feat. I would play the game around 12:00am and then I would look up and it would be 4am! I think it took about 10-12 hours! And I loved every minute.
I also got a copy of Gran Turismo 4 (which is now only $20, so go buy it!). I have GT3 and I played a great deal through it. I remember the menus were very awkward at times. Having to click through a lot of extra buttons to get into and out of races. Gran Turismo 4 is a dream compared to this. The interface is extremely clean and efficient. There are also a host of new features, and everything looks much better.
I started out with a 1983 Toyota Corrola and have been tearing up the beginner circuit. I also took some time to pickup my class B license. It’s nice to have a game with no easy outs, you actually have to be able to drive in order to get anywhere.