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> Results: Metal Gear Ac!d
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Solid Snake. A complex plot full of twists and turns and conspiracy theories. Bad guys with peculiar names. Stealthy missions that explode into periods of weapon-based combat. It sure sounds like a regular Metal Gear game. A quick glance at the back of the box, and it certainly looks like a regular Metal Gear game. But what the heck?! This is a CARD GAME?!
The Metal Gear series of games has been around almost twenty years, with titles on just about every platform (see a Gamerdad take on one for the Gamecube). The basic idea has stayed the same ﾖ you control Solid Snake, elite special forces agent, and must infiltrate some enemy compound or fortress to go up against some heinous plot to takeover the world or somesuch, usually involving the possession of gigantic military "robots" named Metal Gears. The story is invariably advanced textually in a series of conversations you have with other characters over the CODEC, a communications device to stay in touch with base. You're given access to a wide range of weaponry to take out enemy soldiers, but every Metal Gear game stresses the need for stealth and to avoid combat wherever possible. Nevertheless, tense gun battles are a staple of a Metal Gear game. So how on earth do you take that and apply it to a card game? Well, it does work, and the gameplay stays surprisingly close to the other games. I'll forego a full plot description ﾖ honestly, half the fun of Metal Gear games is watching as the story unfolds ﾖ but suffice to say, you're up against terrorists. Possibly psychic doll terrorists. Hey, this is Metal Gear, expect weird bad guys. So Solid Snake is brought out of retirement again, with a new support team back at base but the same tell-me-what-to-do-via-the-CODEC instructional advice. The only difference is that now you and the bad guys are going to be taking turns, and everyone's actions are governed by what hand of cards they hold. There are over 200 different cards in the game, split into categories ﾖ weapons (such as the SOCOM pistol, chaff grenades, and Stinger missiles), actions (Spin Kick, Head Shot, support cards (Evade, Climb, Reduce Cost ﾖ more on Cost later), items (Rations, body armor, the infamous cardboard box disguises from other Metal Gear games), and characters (people from earlier games such as Meryl, Olga and the Cyborg Ninja). Some of the character cards activate one-shot special abilities, and you'll be given a short video clip of them in action from the game they were in, while other more mundane characters such as the Genome soldiers are just played like any other card. The majority of the weapon and item cards are also based on things from Metal Gear games ﾖ as you can tell, this is a real fan's dream game. Like any collectible card game, you're given a few cards to start out, but you'll amass more and more as the game progresses, either as bonuses for completing a mission quickly / without being seen / without killing an enemy, picked up as items during a mission, or by purchasing them at the card shop using points you gain during play. The card shop offers theme packs of cards where you spend your points and get a random selection of cards. Initially you'll only have access to the Metal Gear Solid packs, but others will become available later. Eventually you are also given the ability to purchase single cards, usually the more desirable cards, at a much higher cost. The card shop, and the deck editor for actually adding these new cards to your deck, is available during the intermission periods. At the start of each mission, you are dealt six cards from your deck. Ordinarily, you can play two cards per turn, though this can be increased using certain cards, and you can choose to play just one or no cards if you wish. At the start of each subsequent turn you will get at most two more cards, and you can never hold more than six cards at a time. Most cards will allow you to either use their effects (such as attacking with your SOCOM pistol) or use them to move, some cards will be used instantly, some cards will be equipped to one of two equipment slots you have, and some cards will allow you to just move. Each card has a number in the corner, and this is the card's Cost. Using a card will add its Cost value to your total Cost for this turn. After you've used your two cards, it will be the next player's turn (think of each visible enemy as another player, each with his own deck of cards), and it won't be your turn again until your total Cost has been reduced to zero, which happens as the other players are taking their turns. If you have used some high Cost cards, it's quite possible that the enemies will have multiple turns before the game switches back to you. As you can see, controlling your Cost is key to victory.  Sound complicated? I agree, and it's not particularly well-explained in the manual or the introductory missions, either. It's very much a "pick it up as you go along" game - you'll be given further details during the intermission screens for the first few missions, so new features are slowly explained. But just when you've become comfortable with the flow of combat and firearms, everything changes, and you're given the ability to much greater variety of weapons such as the M4 and the USP. These weapons are not single-use cards, instead they have to be equipped to one of your equipment slots, then activated by using a card of the same type. This is poorly explained in the game, and it's very likely you'll spend time looking for ammo cards as that's what the game suggests. In reality, there's no such thing as an ammo card, and you instead use another weapon card that happens to use the same ammo type to load your gun. It's situations like this that make you think that Konami could have improved the accessibility of this game, especially for newcomers to the Metal Gear series - upon starting the game, it will be a good 15 minutes before you actually start playing, because you're given a demo of the gameplay (but it's not Solid Snake in action.. I'll give you a hint, this won't be a one-man mission) and some story introduction. This could be quite a shock to anyone who isn't already familiar with the Metal Gear way of furthering the story via text dialogs. If you're the type of person who skips through scenes like this, you'll be missing out on the whole story. Actually, there are times when you can't skip ﾖ and this is infuriating when you're repeating one particular mission later in the game. Once you become familiar with the rules, it becomes a nice blend of collectible card game and turn-based strategy. However, it's this blend that throws up one of the gameplay problems. In any card game, you have to accept that luck is a factor, not just skill. The problem is that AC!D isn't a pure card game, as there are instances in the game that are set pieces and you need a particular item to proceed, which means you have to sit and wait until that card is dealt to you. I was sat waiting for a good 5 minutes just discarding cards until some C4 came up and I could blow up a wall. It's times like this that make it a little unfair that your mission rating is based on speed when you've been waiting for a particular card.  Graphically, AC!D is quite impressive, with 3D scenes that sit squarely between Metal Gear Solid and its PS2 sequel ﾖ lots of corridors and compounds, with a bit of the outdoors. The only real complaint about the graphics is that many areas of the game are quite dark, so you'll either be pumping up that screen brightness or you'll only be playing in darker environments so that you can see what's going on. The camera can be a bit of a frustration. You can rotate in 90 degree increments with the shoulder buttons, and you use the analog nub to look around, but on missions with multiple levels you find yourself longing for a first-person view mode, or the ability to tilt the playfield. On the other hand, the UI design is crisp and clean, and with large fonts used as a design element, you certainly won't be squinting at any menus. Sound is well-represented too, with many of the same alert sounds, bleeps, and alarms that Metal Gear fans know and love, and similar musical pieces ﾖ slow and suspenseful during the sneaking phases, ramping up to frantic uptempo pieces when guards have been alerted. One disappointment in the aural department is that there's no spoken text at all. It's understandable that disk space and load times are a concern on the PSP, but a few phrases would have been nice ﾖ at the very least, I miss hearing some form of "Snake? SNAAAAAAAAKE!" from my comrades when I die. But even without the work of David Hayter (voice of Solid Snake in previous Metal Gear games), the personality of Solid Snake shines through in the text dialog. Despite the small problems (many of which could be addressed in the upcoming sequel announced at this year's E3), I love this game, and it's spent more time in my PSP than any other. I haven't even tried (and thus exclude from review) the two player mode that is unlocked after you have played for a while. If I were to add my own Metal Gear fan bias, I'd be scoring it even higher, but speaking objectively I still believe the game deserves the score I've settled on, and anyone prepared to put some effort into learning the system will be well-rewarded. 
It's always tricky to gauge appropriateness in a game with shooting, and when it plays like a board game it's even harder. Blood is shown when characters get shot, and while the argument can be made that the impact is lessened by the player not being in complete control of the character, it can still look intense as the screen shows you unloading an automatic weapon into the bad guy. The twisted actions of the psychotic terrorists are pretty hardcore too, although they're described in text more than shown onscreen. There is also a bit of lewdness to some of the more light-hearted exchanges with Snake. Still, I think the M rating on this one might be a tad too high, and I would let an older teen play this.
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