Will Metal Gear Solid Master Collection be a bad port? New details highlight unacceptable gameplay performance

The upcoming Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 1 is one of the most highly anticipated remasters coming out this year. This bundle packages together the trilogy of the most celebrated MGS titles in history. In other words, players will be able to enjoy those classics on modern platforms. However, there is a massive catch.

Publisher Konami has recently released performance metrics for the collection across all platforms and fans are rightfully not happy.

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How does Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 1 perform on all platforms?

To start, it is not looking good for any of the platforms the collection is headed to. Here is a rundown of what players on each system can expect:

• PS4: 1080p 60 FPS
• PS5: 1080p 60 FPS
• Xbox One: 1080p 60 FPS
• Xbox Series X/S: 1080p 60 FPS
• Nintendo Switch: 1080p 30 FPS (docked), 720p 30 FPS (handheld)
• PC: 1080p 60 FPS

The bunch that are getting the best deal is the PS4 and Xbox One platforms. A straightforward 1080p resolution and 60 FPS target for all the games is expected. But why are PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and especially PC getting the short end of the stick? 60 FPS is understandable as these are old games and running them above that threshold may cause issues with game logic and animation.

The resolution being 1080p only, however, makes no sense. Even backward-compatible games on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S receive a boost in resolution. So the image quality being locked for these current-gen machines despite possessing more than enough power to run PS2-era (and older) games at 4K is baffling. On that note, what is going on with the Nintendo Switch rendition?

While Nintendo's hybrid portable supports 1080p as its highest target resolution when docked, why are these old games only 30 FPS? Even the Tegra X1-powered handheld has more than enough headroom to churn out a blistering 60 FPS. Yet that is not the case. This is made worse by the fact that Metal Gear Solid 2 ran at 60 FPS on original PS2 hardware.

In fact, even the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection on the PS3 and Xbox 360 had these games targeting 60 FPS. So there is no excuse here for the Nintendo Switch version. Something has clearly gone wrong during the development of this rendition. The likeliest possibility is this could be emulation instead of a native port across all platforms. This is not uncommon with older games that are ported over.

For example, Pikmin 1 and 2 on Nintendo Switch are partly emulated. But this does not explain why players are stuck with just 1080p on modern machines. Furthermore, MGS1 is confirmed to not receive any enhancements and will appear as it did on PS1. The PC version also does not support a keyboard or mouse, although the developers have confirmed they are looking into it after fans' backlash.

All in all, players have more than enough reasons to be outraged since this collection costs full price. Top it off with the fact that Nintendo Switch is still getting worse performance than the original hardware, and players should be vary of this bundle.

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Metal Gear Solid Master Collection includes the following games: Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, and two MSX titles Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. More goodies like artwork, music, and more are also included in-game. It launches on October 24, 2023, on all systems.