When compared to the first Master Collection, it's easy to see why you might draw the conclusion that Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2 feels a little undercooked. The first volume consists of the first three MGS games — all games you would reasonably expect to see on any list of the greatest ever PlayStation games — as well as the original Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2.

Vol. 2 has got the one with the really long cut-scenes, a portable non-numbered title, and a non-canon spin-off a lot of people probably haven't even heard of.

Frankly, this is less a collection and more a long overdue parole for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, a game that has been languishing in PS3 prison for nearly two decades.

Guns of the Patriots finally unshackled from the PS3 feels momentous, and worth the price of admission on its own. Even if you don't like the divisive game — and plenty don't — it's absolutely a game worth experiencing at least once.

Like nothing that came before it, or indeed after, Metal Gear Solid 4 is a ludicrous exercise in excess, and whether it leaves you rolling your eyes or giddily awaiting the next credulity-shattering story beat, by the time it's over you'll definitely have something to say about it.

MGS 4 takes place five years after whatever happened at the end of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Snake is suffering from accelerated ageing and now looks like he's in his seventies, although why he's grown a moustache and exacerbated the problem is anyone's guess.

He comes out of retirement for one last job to assassinate Liquid Ocelot, a proper villain that is the body of recurring baddie Revolver Ocelot and the mind of Solid Snake's twin brother Liquid Snake, seemingly combined after an incredibly ill-advised arm transplant.

If you did a double-take at that last line then this game probably isn't for you. In fact, if you haven't played the first three Metal Gear Solid games, then under no circumstances should you attempt to play this one. Even for a joke.

It barely makes sense a lot of the time even if you have played those games, and if you haven't, MGS 4 offers little more than token gestures to get you up to speed. It also constantly calls back to characters and events both major and minor from the entire series throughout. It's wild.

The port here is mostly fantastic. If you haven't played MGS 4 in a while, it's easy to forget that the game originally mapped aiming and shooting to L1 and R1 thanks to the PS3 having comically inept triggers. Wisely, these controls have been switched to L2 and R2 by default and it immediately feels correct.

Performance is also massively improved. I'm not a digital foundry, and even I couldn't help but notice that, on PS3, MGS 4 frequently struggled to maintain 30 frames-per-second. I'm not sure it was hitting 20fps at times. Here, it appears to keep to a stable 60fps throughout. I certainly didn't detect any dips.

It looks fantastic too. The improved 4K resolution leaves the game looking surprisingly good considering it's a relatively early PS3 title, and at times it looks a generation ahead.

There are two cut-scenes in which the resolution appears to drop, leaving everything looking a little fuzzy. Hopefully, this will be patched, because otherwise it's a stellar port, and one of the two cutscenes in question is the iconic Ocelot finger-gunning bit, and we need to treat that with respect.

It's worth pointing out, too, that the story of Metal Gear Solid 4 has aged surprisingly well, thematically at least. While it's not quite at the same level, it's got that MGS 2 thing of the story feeling more prescient now than it did at the time.

The themes of self-perpetuating war economies, algorithmic information control, rampant privatisation, and invasive digital surveillance all feel eerily timely in 2026.

Just to put my cards on the table, I've always been a defender of Metal Gear Solid 4. Whether you like Guns of the Patriots or not will almost certainly depend on whether you play Metal Gear Solid more for the stealth gameplay or the Kojima nonsense, and if it's the latter then this game is a veritable banquet.

Master Collection Vol. 2 also includes Peace Walker, originally released for PSP back in 2010. This game has been re-released previously in the HD Collection on PS3, and like Metal Gear Solid 4, remains divisive among fans but for entirely different reasons.

More than any canon Metal Gear Solid game released up to that point, Peace Walker messes with the established MGS formula, introducing the base management aspects and a mission-based structure later adopted wholesale into Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

In other words, it's more of a Video Game™ than Metal Gear Solid 4. As a video game, it's a mixed bag. The base management mechanics and bite-sized missions seemed perfectly at home on a portable console, designed to be played in twenty-minute chunks on bus rides or when you're in the bath.

On a 70-inch telly in extended play sessions, the faults with Peace Walker are much more glaring. Missions are repetitive and uninspired, with an over-reliance on irritating robotic enemies or heavy vehicles that you take down in basically the same way over and over again.

The biggest problem, though, is the wildly inconsistent difficulty. Sneaking missions are way too easy, with poor enemy AI and the over-powered Fulton in your possession removing unconscious guards from the battlefield immediately via a big balloon, so there's no risk of investigation once you've taken someone out.

Boss fights swing the other way, and are largely annoying because the game is clearly optimised for online co-op play without significantly altering battles if you're playing alone. As a result, boss enemies have ridiculously overinflated health pools, and each battle wears out its welcome long before the dust has settled.

The story of Peace Walker is shoe-horned into the saga to act as a bridge between Metal Gear Solid 3 and the later games in the series timeline. The iconic Snake Eater ending didn't really require further elaboration, but we get it anyway, and it's fine.

Personally, as a big Metal Gear Solid fan, I've always been of the opinion that the post-MGS 4 games feel like an unnecessary addendum to a franchise that was utterly, demonstrably, sometimes exhaustively finished with 4. Still, Peace Walker gives you more if you want it.

Snuck into the collection via the bonus features app is Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, a non-canon, alternate timeline sequel to Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, originally released for Game Boy Color.

Ghost Babel's inclusion is more interesting as a curio than as an actual game. It plays like the original Metal Gear games but with a few mechanics lifted from the Solid games to spice it up. Its non-canon status makes it feel inherently less vital than the other games in the collection, but it at least gives hope that we might see ports of the Acid games if there's a Master Collection Vol. 3 one day.

One downside to this collection is that it isn't presented as one cohesive package, but rather three separate launchers. If you've played Master Collection Vol. 1 then you'll know what to expect here, the only saving grace being there are fewer apps to swap between this time around.

MGS 4 and Peace Walker have their own apps, and there's also one for bonus features. It gets a little messy at times because some things you might reasonably expect to be in the bonus features app are elsewhere, and vice versa.

For example, the MGS 4 Database — a sort of Wikipedia for Metal Gear Solid lore that originally launched at the same time as MGS 4 on PS3 — is on the MGS 4 app rather than the bonus features app. But then the digital soundtracks for MGS 4 and Peace Walker are on the bonus features app rather than the apps for their respective games.

It feels like this side of the collection could really have done with a little more care and attention. Yes, the main draw here is Metal Gear Solid 4 on PS5, and once you get into the games the presentation of the collection is long forgotten, but it would still have been nice to see something that felt a little less thrown together.