Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel 2006 Konami Official Kojima Productions Website Buy It Now

I’ve really got to hand it to Konami for taking UMD’s in a completely different direction that what has been seen in the past, and it’s surprising that other companies have tried to jump on the digital graphic novel bandwagon. Previously Konami unleashed their first digital novel, The Silent Hill Experience, which was a perfect tie-in to the film that not only featured digital versions of the Silent Hill graphic novels, but music from the soundtrack and interviews. However, if horror isn’t your thing, maybe action is.

The Metal Gear Solid Digital Graphic Novel is next in what hopefully will be a continuing trend for Konami and the MGS franchise is without a doubt one of the most successful series’ ranking with other greats like Final Fantasy, Metroid, and Super Mario. Metal Gear however wasn’t always a fan favorite and although the two games that were released on the Nintendo Entertainment System had a fairly loyal fan base, it wasn’t until Metal Gear Solid was released on the PlayStation that the game was drawing more and more gamers to the title that everyone was talking about.

The Digital Graphic Novel retells the story that many of us are quite familiar with, but this isn’t quite the MGS that you have played through time and time again. The story written by Kris Oprisko, fills in some of those holes that are found within the game, not that the story isn’t perfect already, but there are some behind the scenes moments to be found here. The artwork found in this MGS presentation was created by Australian artist Ashley Wood also known for his work on comics such as Hellspawn and various Spawn properties, but this isn’t some digital flip book.

The Metal Gear Solid Digital Graphic Novel is animated, though in this case we pan through the various panels of the comic as word balloons and sound effect spring to life on the PSP’s screen. The comic also includes music and sound effects, so it gives a completely different dimension to the work, even if you’ve already read the comic a number of times. Just reading a paper version of a graphic novel is one thing, but here we find that Konami has gone the extra mile and wanted to impress not only fans of the game and the comic, but draw in new fans to the series, though the number of MGS fans will continue to grow even without reading (watching) the Digital novel.

There are actually different modes of “play” found here. The VR mode simply allows you to read through the story, but in many panels you will have the option to do what is called a mental search. In this mode, you can zoom in or out of the panel and find different memory blocks.You’ll know when you find them and there are panels that have more than one block in them, though there are some that seem to have none (though I may have missed them.) You’ll have a lot of time to look for these as you’ll discover as the novel itself plays out in around two hours, a mere fraction of the time that Metal Gear Solid takes to go through, but that’s fine.

So, what’s the big deal about collection all of these bits of memory? Well, as you get them, you will be able to enter into the memory building mode. This will give you information on all things Metal Gear, but more importantly this will allow you to see flashback of the story that relates directly to the other games in the series. The good thing is that even if you’ve finished with going through the novel and you haven’t found everything, you can simply select which panel you want to go back to and search more. Some of these things can be a little tricky to find, but that’s part of the challenge. In case you don’t figure it out, panels with a flashing cursor are the ones to be searching and within the panel, simply paying attention to what the magnification does should help point you in the right direction. Hey, I’m not going to give you EVERYTHING that you need to play through this game.

SO where does the Metal Gear Solid Digital Graphic Novel fall into the grand scheme of things? It’s not quite a game, it’s certainly not a movie, but throw all of those thoughts aside. This is a Metal Gear that is at the forefront a new revolution of both graphic novel and digital entertainment, and not only do I think we will see other Konami products of this nature start appearing in the future (such as the Sons of Liberty novel and Death Jr.) but other companies will soon be trying to follow the path that Konami and Kojima have laid out before us.

-mike-