Playing through the first Metal Gear Ac!d, the gameplay was both refreshing and very unique. We had a stealth franchise that is being played out in a mix of tactics and card-based gameplay. This was all encompassed further with a well-written storyline that had a lot of curves to it. But still the game had huge flaws that ruined the overall flow of the game. Within months of the original’s release we hear word of the development of a sequel, and with this sequel we have an experience that should have been what MGA1 offered.

The storyline occurs right after the Pythagoras event and Snake still hasn’t recovered from his amnesia. Like with all game clichés, Snake is on a pursuit for his lost memories. From there the plot quickly picks up and unexpected connections with Metal Gears are revealed. Although the storyline doesn’t live up to the predecessor, it still is worthy of the series and is enjoyable to see the events pan out.

By far the gameplay has gone through the most drastic improvement. You still take control of Snake, and later on as Venus also. And you also take turns operating with the A.I. What has changed is how everything is operated. Now instead of the cumbersome movement, we have an improved system that allows for more sophisticated movements. Before in the first game you would have used 3 cards in order to walk to a vent, then crawl into it. But the movement controls have been seamlessly integrated to where you can walk up to a vent, crawl in for some cards then crawl out. The controls have all been integrated in a context-sensitive fashion with different options appearing for the correct situation. It was a real burden trying to do this in the first game but now it is safe to say that the game no longer suffers from the slow-paced gameplay of the past. Another thing that held the game down was the sheer amount of time spent waiting for your opponents to finish their turns. Although this is prevalent in the game in certain levels, its really based on how many enemies there were. Now the fast-forward button actually works and with a simple press of a button you are zooming through the enemy’s turns and back to your own in a matter of seconds. Talk about seamless gameplay.

One of the greatest appeals the original had was the amount of cards and the little “extra” they had. For those that enjoyed this feature, there are now 4x the quantity of cards bringing the total up to a little over 500 unique cards. Each card corresponds to a specific Metal Gear age ranging from the original classics to the unreleased MGS4. Onto the little “extra,” whenever a certain card is used a video of the corresponding card is played. For instance using the Metal Gear Ray card will display a short clip from MGS3. In all the feature really is interesting for the first couple of views per card but I can bet that anyone nearing the end of the game will probably skip the animations. With that the original game had some slight issues with skipping the movie accompanied by a slight delay. But the sequel has certainly fixed any prior issues and it is now a breeze.