Breaking news! It has just been revealed that the big secret from Assassin’s Creed wasn’t just the whole time-bending thing. It turns out that Altair is really Solid Snake from the Metal Gear Solid series! Okay, so obviously this is one really elaborate April Fools joke. It looks like Ubisoft and Konami collaborated to bring us the coolest five-minute gaming video ever. Either that or some game enthusiast out there went to an insane amount of time and effort to mod a game that hasn’t even been released yet. Still, Altair fighting Metal Gears with an Assault rifle? So…awesome. And oddly this gets me even more excited about MGS4.

This isn’t entirely unexpected, but it’s still pretty cool. Konami recently announced that they would be releasing the first three Metal Gear Solid games in one collection, dubbed “The Essential Collection.” The package will include Metal Gear Solid for the PSOne and it’s two respective sequels for the PS2 for a packaged price of $29.99. Konami hopes this will give gamers a chance to experience the full saga right before the release of Metal Gear Solid 4. Kind of wish they could have gone the extra mile and ported The Twin Snakes and then added the “Substance” and “Subsistence” versions of MGS 2 and 3, respectively. Of course, for anyone who hasn’t already played these games, this is a must-have.

Via GameTactics

UPDATE: I’m now hearing that “Substance” and “Subsistence” will actually be included in the collection.

I’m starting to believe that Konami (and more specifically, Kojima Productions) are masters at getting people to buy the same game twice. Ever since Metal Gear Solid 2, it seems like every other Metal Gear game has gotten a re-release with almost a second game’s worth of extra content. Thus, we get Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops +, which looks to add a lot more than just a mathematical symbol to the game’s title. As this trailer shows, you’ll now be able to work through levels with a completely different set of objectives and you can now recruit enemy soldiers over to your side, forming a squad of your own. Then you’ll be able to take these characters, with their own special skills, online to battle it out with others on some new levels. It should at least tide you over until MGS4 finally arrives.

Reuters has an interesting article up today exploring the question, is Metal Gear Solid 4 destined to be the last of the great third-party exclusives? Video game production costs are rising these days, costing between $10 million and $50 million to make a quality title. Assistant producer for MGS4, Ryan Payton, says that the game will need to sell a million units on day one to recoup production costs. That’s quite a tough mark to hit, since only two other PS3 games have sold that many to date. Thus, many game developers are going multi-platform, a fact that Sony has been observing for some time now:

“We understand publishers are needing to recoup their investment,” said Peter Dille, senior vice president of marketing for Sony. “From our perspective, as long as the games aren’t going exclusive to other platforms, PS3 gamers are not actually losing anything.”

For my money, I doubt MGS4 will be the last great third-party exclusive, but they are becoming rarer these days. Still, as long as the console makers have enough money to lure developers to their camp, I’m sure we’ll continue to see the occasional major title remaining exclusive to one console or another.

Via Reuters

The Sony conference has just ended and not surprisingly a sizable chunk of the show was devoted to the upcoming Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Hideo Kojima, the famed director of the series, took the stage to discuss the game and unveil a new trailer, along with a tentative release date of “Early 2008.” We should have the trailer up here soon, but it mostly revealed some more of the story with the usual vague references and foreshadowing. Unfortunately, the trailer did not have any gameplay footage — just a cut scene — but Kojima stressed that he would be showing off a demo in Tokyo next week. It seems the plot will revolve around Snake and some pals (including Meryl from MGS1) being hired to assassinate Liquid, who of course seems to have taken over Revolver Ocelot’s body entirely. There was also a surreal fight scene between a ninjafied Raiden and Vlad from MGS2, in which they both get horribly sliced up and broken, but still continue fighting. One noteworthy surprise during this scene too was at one point when Raiden slashes off the leg of a smaller Metal Gear, exposing flesh and blood. Be sure to check back here to see the trailer; it seriously gave me chills.

Sadly, Kojima also made the announcement that this game will end the story of Solid Snake, and that it will be the last game from him in the series. I doubt this is the last we’ve heard of him in the gaming world, but it’s still unfortunate to lose such an influential visionary from the ground-breaking franchise.

Rumors have been flying around that the highly anticipated Metal Gear Solid 4 might be heading to the Xbox 360 as well as the PS3. So what did Konami have to say about this? Well, unfortunately not much really. Digital Spy recently tried to get an answer out of them, but were only told that the idea was just “speculation.” So they didn’t confirm the rumor, but they didn’t deny it either; so there’s still a chance it could happen. My guess is that maybe the idea of bringing the game to the Xbox after it’s had a run on the Playstation is currently in talks. We’ll just have to wait and see.