Konami’s recent re-release of the iconic first three games in the Metal Gear Solid franchise, dubbed the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 1, has generated as much excitement among the gaming world as it has raised eyebrows thanks to some folks feeling (rightly) disappointed in some aspects of the company’s porting efforts.
One of the biggest sticking points comes from the game’s resolution and performance metrics, particularly on modern platforms like the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S as well as PC where the ports of Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater are stuck at a maximum of 1080p resolution. While Konami hasn’t outright said it, a commonly-held theory is that there are technical limitations baked into the games themselves that prevented any further enhancements without breaking certain visual effects or causing other issues.
Now though, its more the willingness of Konami to go the extra step in its porting efforts that’s being called into question with modders taking to the PC version of the game and producing a plugin that bumps the resolution in both games up to 4K and doing some less than a day after the compilation launched.
The mod in question is aptly named the MGSResolutionPatch and can be found right here, with its creator saying that it’s “recommended for play with MGS 3 at resolutions 1920×1080, 2560×1440 and 3840×2160. The plugin is compatible with MGS 2, however increased resolution introduces noticeable bugs to the UI.”
That somewhat confirms that there are some issues in running the games at higher-than-anticipated resolutions, but given how quickly this mod was turned around it’ll no doubt be very soon that we see the community fix the side effects and effectively do what Konami probably could have done in the first instance. You can see some comparisons in an article from PC Gamer here, and the difference is quite stark from just the resolution bump alone.
For what it’s worth, we still think that the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol 1. is a worthy bundle for fans or those who never got to experience these games the first time, scoring it a 7.5/10 in our review and saying, “Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 does precisely what it claims to do – bring the first three Metal Gear Solid games to all major platforms after a much-felt absence. While the technical updates given to each game are scarce, this still represents a great way to get into one of the most important and prolific series in video games. Could there be some more touch-ups to modernise these games? Absolutely. But it’s hard to ignore the quality of the games included in this package, and it’s a testament to their strengths that, even with slight improvement, they’re still as compelling as ever.”
