Metal Gear Solid Mobile dropped today and, since I happen to have a Verizon phone, I had no excuse not to pick it up. Except, of course, that it's a cell phone game.

I don't typically play games on my phone. Its purpose is to make and receive calls, after all, and I've never seen a whole lot of appeal in it. I have a DS for portable gaming. Why would I download overpriced cell phone games?

It's Metal Gear, that's why. I've put a little bit of time in now and I have to say that I'm rather impressed with the translation to this format. Controls aren't anything to write home about, but my basis for comparison is puzzle games and Diner Dash, so it's really hard to say that they're either great or pathetic.

The stealth aspect is in full force. It's the same sort of gameplay we've come to expect from the series, with lots of Codec conversations, while throwing in occasional minigame interruptions. The story seems to take place somewhere between the events of MGS and MGS2: Sons of Liberty, but probably isn't canon anyway. The music, which is all cribbed from assorted MGS soundtracks sounds pretty damn good for such little speakers.

Now, the feature of the game that most interested me was integration with a phone's camera. The premise, as explained by a few gaming sites I read about it on, was that you could take pictures of your real-life environment and then Snake's active camo would use the pattern of the image you took. Now, it could be that I'm just not far enough along in the game, but it seems that this feature uses an in-game camera and not the phone camera. Disappointing.

Anyway, I'll keep plugging away at it and see if it was actually worth the $11 I paid for it.





In other things, my new Penny Arcade shirt arrived and it is as full of awesome as I imagined it would be. The colors are a bit more muted than I expected based on the original art, but that just adds to its vintagey charm.

And one final note: Today I started work on what I expect to be my most ambitious cBlog undertaking. It's a new series that I'll be starting next week and I hope will be epic. Stay tuned.