Players blast Metal Gear Solid Master Collection for missing options, vanished Steam pages, and muddy textures: 'absolutely poor and not worth its asking price'

24.10.2023 - 15:15 / pcgamer.com

The Metal Gear Solid Master Collection is here, bringing Metal Gear Solid 3 (the best one) to PC for the first time in a package that also contains MGS 1 and 2 plus the original MSX Metal Gear games. It's a day I've been hotly anticipating for literal years: The Metal Gear games are some of my favourites ever made, and to have the classics finally start trickling over to PC should be great.

Except, ah, these ports leave something to be desired. A few hours out from release, all three Metal Gear Solid games have grim beige «Mixed» ratings on Steam, and players have drawn up a long litany of complaints about Konami's work. Having played a little of the collection myself I can't help but agree.

Let's start with MGS 3, given that the Master Collection marks the game's PC debut. Ol' Snake Eater currently has 42% positive reviews on Steam, with players reserving particular ire for the game's visuals, controls, and general lack of options. «Game itself is great but this port is extremely lazy,» reads a highly rated review by a Steam user named Aninefivesiix, «If I can find a way to modify the config file to allow me to run at 1440p I'll not refund but this 'remaster' is essentially a rushed port of the PS3 and Xbox 360 remasters by BluePoint (which you can emulate!).»

That's pretty representative of the reviews in general. Another, from a user named Owlet VII, does a good job of summarising the complaints that are currently littering the game's user score section: «Locked at 720p. 'Mouse support' is just emulating the right analogue stick. Keyboard controls are nonsensical and can't be edited. Selected button prompts get reset to the default Xbox ones every time. The manuals are web pages that aren't even aware of the above option.»

Given that the Master Collection versions of MGS 2 and 3 seem to be very direct ports of the Xbox 360 Bluepoint remasters, pretty much all the complaints people have about 3 also apply to 2: no options, bad keyboard controls, muddy graphics, the works. The review that currently sits at the top of the pile on MGS 2's Steam page is by Howard Heyman, and reads in part, «This release is absolutely poor and not worth its asking price in any capacity. Upon purchase, you'll find that the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection releases have no options of any kind for PC players. 

»No way to switch between windowed and full-screen (this feature will reportedly be added on a future update), no way to switch resolutions, no way to change audio settings, no way to change the size or aspect ratio of the screen, no way to change audio settings, no way to exit back to the menu while in-game, and so on. Even the most mediocre of remasters offer the bare minimum I have just listed here."

MGS 1 is a