The more Metal Gear changes, the more Metal Gear remains the same.

By Joe Fourhman | June 20, 2008

But I had to post this next-gen screen of a long-standing problem. There’s two guys, standing guard somewhere outside. Although clearly they’re not fantastic guards since I’m already behind them. I tranq the one on the right, he crumbles to the ground… and his pal on the left barely notices. I see this as part of the series’ charm. Slacker guards are to Kojima as hapless guys named Martin are to Tarantino. What’s the word for when you love something because of its flaws? I’m positive it’s French.

I’ve got to talk further about this. Is it a spoiler? Maybe, but it’s more of a feature spoiler, definitely not a storyline spoiler. And Gearheads take note, it’s something that I almost missed and I too have been studiously avoiding most MGS4 articles online, so maybe it’s the kind of spoiler you’ll appreciate in the end. Either way, it’s safely after the jump so you can sidestep it if you wish.

You’re still with me? Cool.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots has a 2P camera mode. 2P.

Maybe everyone already knows this but like I said, I’ve been avoiding Metal Gear news of almost all types. So this was news to me when I found it… but I did almost miss it, and it deserves to not be missed.

I fully expected MGS4 to have a camera, because that’s become a series staple. I have PS2 memory cards filled with snaps of tranq’ed seagulls from Sons of Liberty. As great as an in-game camera is, there’s a problem with the classic Metal Gear implementation… it’s classified as an item, so to use it, you have to turn off your radar or binocs or whatever. And who has time to take photos during a boss fight? Somebody with a lot of rations on hand, that’s who.

But when I found the camera item in Guns of the Patriots, the game surprised me with a message describing the 2P mode. Yes yes yes, a second player can use a second controller to take photos while you’re playing. There’s an intentional split-second freeze as the shutter is snapped, but it’s nothing that will get in the way of a particularly intense scene.

Here’s why I almost missed it: the camera item was hidden on Otacon’s giant private jet, which is where all the long Mission Briefing cutscenes take place. While Snake and Otacon are jawing about the new mission, the player is allowed to screw around driving that little robot guy all over the cutscene (you may remember him from the first MGS4 preview movies). You still hear the cutscene audio - in fact you can park your robot right under Snake’s butt if you want and watch from an extreme low-angle ass-cam - but there’s definitely fun to be had scooting around the jet hunting for hidden items. You’ll find plenty of ammo, but the real treasures are items like this camera and MP3s.

Once you take a photo, it lands in your album, where you can perform minor iPhoto-style picture quality adjustments or save it out as a jpeg. A la Pokemon Ranch, except that you can’t save directly to external media… you have to save to the PS3 hard drive and then copy over to an SD card if you want to take your jpegs somewhere else.

There are two sizes of jpeg export available, “Upload Size” is 512 x 288 (on HD screens) and “Normal Size” is a beautiful 1024 x 576. Konami helpfully applies a copyright stamp on each image.

Here’s some largely spoiler-free shots, taken mostly by my wife.