Metal Gear Solid Mobile is a Metal Gear game for mobile phones. It was announced at the Metal Gear 20th Anniversary Party. It is available for download in Japan and North America. For now, the North American version of the game is exclusive to the Verizon network. On February 14, 2008, Metal Gear Solid Mobile won the "Grand Prix" and "Operator's Choice" awards at the 2008 International Mobile Gaming Awards.

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Gameplay

The player controls Solid Snake using the keypad on the phone. Gameplay is a combination of Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3. For example, the player can take pictures using the phone's digital camera and transfer them onto Snake's sneaking suit, creating an all new camouflage to wear. The camera also controls the in-game camera, and will also be able to aim Nikita missiles. Hanging off ledges and hiding in lockers will also be possible. VR missions are also included. The game has the fewest boss characters in the overall series, only having one.

Plot

The story takes place between Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2, and follows the early days of Philanthropy. Ocelot has leaked all the technical information for Metal Gear REX onto the black market. As a counter-measure, Solid Snake and Otacon form Philanthropy. It isn't long until Otacon receives his first lead on development of a new Metal Gear.

Victoria Reed, an AI (artificial intelligence) programmer, learns that the technology she has been developing will be used in a fearsome weapon of destruction. She becomes a whistle-blower and attempts to escape from a black ops military research facility. She places her trust in Otacon, and now Snake has been dispatched on a solo mission to infiltrate the facility and rescue the scientist.

Upon reaching the facility, it becomes evident that the military holding the plans for the new Metal Gear REX is non-aggressive. Despite this, Snake infiltrates the facility and eventually reaches the basement, where he is captured in a cell. Snake is contacted via Codec frequency 116.66 by the terrorist leader, named simply the Commander. It is revealed that Victoria was an AI program herself (Victoria's initials are VR), created by the terrorists to lure Snake into the facility and deactivate their security system, allowing the terrorists to essentially walk right in, kill all the soldiers, and commandeer the REX stored in the basement. Snake escapes his cell and makes his way to the REX, avoiding the Semtex charges now lining most of the base and machinegun mounted sentries along the way.

En route to the basement, Snake uses C4 to open a cracked wall and when he walks through the newly formed hole, the room flashes green and blue and becomes blurry and artificial. Strange codec calls come in from not only Otacon, but also Victoria and the Commander, breaking the fourth wall and urging the player to turn off their cell phone. The real Otacon then contacts Snake, alerting him that he has been drugged, kidnapped and placed into a virtual reality simulation, and he is in the process of hacking the simulation to save Snake. He says that he's been trying to reveal the identity of the group that kidnapped him, but has been unable to do so, however, due to the technology used in the VR simulation. He comments that judging by the complexity of the program, the programmers must have near-unlimited resources, hinting at the group being the Patriots. He then remarks that since Snake is so far into the simulation, it may be easier to just complete the objective and destroy the fictional Metal Gear than to even bother hacking him out. Snake agrees, encounters the Commander on top of a VR Metal Gear REX, and easily dispatches him using the Nikita rocket launcher.

Snake then wakes up to unnamed voices speaking. They say that while Snake did prove useful, he failed to provide them with the battle data they needed for the project, and they instruct someone to erase all memories of the simulation and release him back where they kidnapped him. One unnamed voice then says that they already have the second test subject lined up. One of the voices then says, "...Let's see if Jack can do better."

Stance in the Metal Gear canon

Although Metal Gear Solid Mobile is set between Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2, as well as being announced during the Metal Gear 20th Anniversary party, its stance as being part of the series was often disputed. The game's events are not acknowledged anywhere else in the series or the Metal Gear Solid 4 Database, and were not included in the Metal Gear 20th Anniversary: Metal Gear Solid Collection or Metal Gear 20th Anniversary - Metal Gear Music Collection. In 2010, Kojima Productions confirmed in a podcast on Hideo Kojima's blog that the only canon spinoff game released up to that point was Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops.[1] Despite this, however, artwork for Solid Snake meant for this game was used in the July 2007 issue of Famitsu Wave DVD as part of coverage for the series 20th anniversary.

Gallery

Promotional images