Metal Gear Acid

2025-05-08
Metal Gear Acid starts off as whatever the opposite of an acid trip is, all walls of boring text, and slow stealth. Slow stealth that’s turn based and has C A R D S. Yeah that’s right, we all like to think Slay the Spire or Hearthstone or Gwent or whatever kicked off card-based games but no it was Metal Gear Acid and uhhh Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. And despite my proclivities for Metal Gear and card-based games I was on the fence. Sure it had that patented Metal Gear batshit plot with psychics and marionettes and acronyms like CHAIN and ACUA and quotes like “Snake I need you to infiltrate that building and get Pythagoras back from Clown.” (Actual quote.) And Acid even looks the part, somewhere near MGS2’s visuals but in handheld form. Even the music is kind of banging. And even if turn-based gameplay actually makes a lot of sense in Metal Gear, a series of games where you’re often waiting for the perfect moment to move or attack or hide–it starts off feeling so slow and boring. You’re waiting for cards to move and you’re waiting for cards to shoot and you’re waiting for cards to, well, wait. Or wait less. Listen, there’s a whole turn-counter thing and you can spend cards to go before other people, blah blah blah. It’s not important.

What is important is that at some point they give you a rocket launcher. And you’re like “This is a stealth game. I’m not going to use the rocket launcher.” And then you use it, ‘cause, come on you gotta try it just once. You can always redo the level since they’re pretty short. And an hour later you have a deck that’s full of rockets and you’re just FUCKING shit up. This is Snake not on Acid but on PCP. He is not mellow, trippy stealth he is twitchy, teeth-grinding chaos. He is the yawning mouth of Hell opening to feast upon the unwitting, nameless soldiers of–where is this again? Moloni?--yes, to feast upon the unwitting nameless soldiers of Moloni. And it’s so god damned fun. The card-based design means each mission is a chance to dip into your toybox of guns, stealth suits, rockets, and sweet, sweet cost reduction cards and see what new form of sin you can unleash on the unsuspecting mercs around the FAR base.

Listen, there’s plenty to quibble about here. From levels that are too long, exacerbated by waiting to draw cards that allow you to run to the exit, or to draw cards to open the exit–in fact there are some levels where if you don’t have a certain card in your deck you can’t finish the mission…and the game won’t prevent that from happening. Or the terrifically bad tutorials that range from very poorly explaining the confusing ass “Equip-type” weapons to waiting like 5 hours into the game to explain to you how to see the fucking sight lines of enemies in a STEALTH game. Or even just the lack of an undo like when you fat-finger-select a high cost card or move into the worst position on the map and have to watch helplessly as the aforementioned nameless rubes dunk on you. Metal Gear Acid will frustrate you. But if you’re like me and enjoy a game that’s seemingly built to be broken with myriad permutations of all of its cards then you’ll probably come away with a great deal of affection for it too. And not just because one of the main characters has a portrait that’s 50% chin and yells “PANSY” at you.