With the end of the year fast approaching and the imminent release of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty on the Playstation 2, you may find yourself wondering wanting more deliciously bad-ass Solid Snake action.

"But Rev. Mofat!!! I don't wanna go through MGS for the Playstation AGAIN...."

First of all kid, shut up. MGS for the PSX is possibly the best game MADE for that system, so it won't hurt you to play it again before MGS2 is released. But since you'll probably keep on bugging me, try this, MGS for the Game Boy Color.

"But Rev. Mofat!!! I thought the GBC was only for crappy kids games and Pokemon?" Even though it mostly is (thank you very MUCH, you bastard game companies who couldn't BOTHER making a decent GBC game before the GBA came out...), MGS is amazingly true to its roots on the PSX.

This MGS starts in the wilderness of Alaska, 3 years after the events in the original MGS (or I think...the game is sort of vague about time discrepancies...) with Snake living much of the nomadic life and enjoying it, that is, until friend and retired Colonel Roy Campbell comes back to tell him Metal Gear has resurfaced...again. Apparently military top brass have bungled up a top secret project and have lost a prototype and nuclear materials (presumably in a high stakes poker game... they REALLY wanted that PS2...) to a small country in Africa that is being occupied by UN forces and the government is none to pleased. They give an ultimatum : get the hell out or we use Metal Gear to blow up stuff. With peer pressure like that, it's no wonder Snake says yes and begins yet another endeavor to can Metal Gear's ass.

Almost all the elements of its bigger brother make it intact, from the radar to the Codec to creeping along walls. No sparse NES-style gameplay here. It even manages to make some of the more useless items in the other games (like the cardboard boxes) extremely useful and even required. Even the VR Training modes made it in, for which Konami gets high praise. And amazingly, there is a 2-player mode in the game, which any GBC game that supports 2 players earn heavy points, especially on a game that has always been traditionally one player. Suffice to say, 'Gear heads will want it.

Graphics are really good, with a dash of bad. The backgrounds and settings for the game look great and the cut scenes are nothing short of spectacular for a GBC game, plus it's really cool to see all the effects from the PSX version shrunk down into this one, such as the Chaff grenade shrapnel, but the characters due to the nature of the game and size of the GBC's screen make it hard at times to distinguish which way you are facing or more importantly, which way THEY are facing. Also the radar is really hard to view, but the fact that it is there in the first place is admirable. Admittedly, these problems are reduced to eliminated when you play on a Game Boy Advance's wide screen mode, but for those of you not lucky enough to have one yet, it is an annoyance that unfortunately couldn't have been gotten around.

Sound is also good with a dash of nitpick. The musical score is fairly good, certainly Konami's standard in the least. The sound effects are cool too, like the Chaff grenade effect again (What can I say? I thought it looked and sounded cool!) and the "Hey, there he is!, You've been spotted, stupid!" sound effect is there to annoy Thankfully, nothing is TOO overly repetitively used, but it's not a sweeping chorus of melodies and crazy effects. This IS a GBC game after all.

Controls are pretty much superb. Controlling Snake is as spot on as a GBC game is going to get and it shows. Pressing Select acts almost like a menu button that performs multiple functions at once and with ease and Start acts as your crawl button. This can cause confusion when you're looking to pause to switch weaponry in the heat of battle, only to find yourself laying on the ground like a dope. Other than that, within minutes, you should be sneaking through corridors and busting guards open like pinatas.

And that is that. MGS is a fine buy for anyone who needs something to do while waiting for MGS2 or just wanting a new game. It's obviously not going to overthrow it's older brother on the PSX, but it's a lot better than most would give credit for and it helps shatter the myth that there's nothing on the GBC but crappy Olsen Twin games. It looks like a lot of work went into this one, won't you kids give it a try?

Wanted : One (1) Military-Issue Sneaking Suit, preferably sprayed with Febreze and with minimal blood stains. Light refracting Stealth Camouflage unit or Nikita Missile launcher optional, but highly preferred. Will trade Final Fantasy 7 playing fan-boy. Inquire at GH, ask for the Reverend Mofat Jones.