Full Review

28 October 2006 - Konami and in particular Metal Gear Solid has had a strange relationship with the PSP so far. The first Metal Gear Solid was a card game and this, its second outing is a comic book.

It's not the first time we've seen a comic on the console, but it's still a fairly new concept and one that is interesting none the less.

Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel is based on the existing Metal Gear Solid comic book and the first game launched on the PlayStation One, so if you're a keen fan who has already invested there won't be anything new here.

With no moving images and highly rendered drawings complete with speech bubbles, this is a comic in every sense of the word - just Flash based.

Taking it digital has allowed ambient noise to be added and the photographic Burns effect as seen in Apple's iPhoto slide shows to be added to slides so you pan in to the image or pull back to reveal the arch nemesis.

As viewers, we would say gamers, but perhaps viewers is more appropriate, progress through the story, they can zoom in and out of the images using the analogue stick to move around the page, and use the control buttons to zoom in on specific points of interest.

With over 200 chapters available there is the option to jump to a specific spot rather than having to start at the beginning and you can also save your position so you don't have to worry about finding the right chapter to jump to.

Furthermore viewers will also be able to save images in a library of facts to build a Metal Gear Solid library if that's what excites them.

VERDICT
The drawings are very detailed, just as the comic, and as we said at the beginning the concept is interesting. However on closer inspection we just aren't sure whether anyone would want to read a comic on the PSP, especially when it costs £12.99. One for the fans.