Metal Gear Acid, the PSP incarnation of the popular stealth franchise, was announced at E3 as a crowd-pleaser for Sony's PSP. Konami have released the first trailer for the game, available by following the download tab above, you can also view the first images from the game by following the Screens tab.
The real surprise however, is not the transition of the game from living room to palm or the sudden shrinking of Snake but the difference in gameplay. According to Hideo Kojima, a game like MGS cannot survive the transition to the handheld platform intact. The game will still feature the usual protagonists and will definitely look like a MGS game but it will evolve to a turn-based strategy title. Shocking though it may be, Mr. Kojima believes it is the only way to bring a Metal Gear Solid title to a handheld.
According to the plans, Snake will have a certain number of moves per turn, in order to achieve these moves he will have options revealed to him through the use of cards (screenshot to your right). The details are rather sketchy for the time being but it is expected that the cards will offer a variety of actions which the player will be able to choose from.
The change is fundamental and a risk for Konami who may lose traditional MGS fans. On the other hand the game sounds like something which could make it in Japan, the rest of the world remains a question mark. Such a change could also give rise to speculation that the MGS name and characters are used simply as bait to lure fans in to the PSP, while the actual product is not what they would expect.
Hideo Kojima however, is a master at producing captivating and addictive games so we will have to trust his judgement until we can try the game out for ourselves.