Konami’s long awaited iPhone Metal Gear series title Metal Gear Solid Touch($7.99) is now available for download at the iTunes App Store!

Kojima Productions drops you into the battlefields of "Metal Gear Solid 4 Guns Of The Patriots". For whoever doesn't know the background story behind the game, here is a little briefing about soldier "Solid Snake" and his mission:

"Solid Snake" is a clone of the world's greatest soldier "Big Boss," Snake's body suffers from severe side effects and has aged rapidily. At the same time, war has changed from being the government's obligation and responsibility to being managed by privatized military businesses. PMCs (Private Military Corporations) are now the norm in war zones around the globe. Under these severe conditions, Old Snake is asked to complete one last mission - the assassination of Liquid Ocelot. After vanishing several years ago, Liquid has resurfaced as the head of the world's major PMCs. Taking advantage of his power, he is once again preparing to strike...

Many fans and mostly critics were not really happy, or better said, probably didn't really know what to expect from an iPhone version of Metal Gear Solid (MSG). Games like MGS, that have such a large and committed fan base, are risky to expand to new platforms like the iphone and can often times turn out really bad for the game and company.

But don't worry, Konami and Kojima Productions did an amazing job and for those who don't know it yet, the iPhone is capable of producing some sweet graphics. The pocket sized Metal Gear Solid touch turned out to be a beautifully done “touch to shoot” game that definitely sets new standards and benchmarks for in the genre on the iPhone platform.

[YouTube Version]

Nicely detailed 3d layer backgrounds, high frame rate, great animated enemies with sound effects on the point and unique functions like the ability to shake your iPhone to brush dust and debris off of your screen are some of the things that gives the game the spice of a premium title

[More Screenshots at Flickr]

The gameplay is easy but a bit more complex than most other touch-to-shoot games on the iPhone.Touch the screen, drag your finger to move the aiming sight,and finally tap to shoot at the target.To snipe enemies faraway, pinch out with 2 fingers to use your sniper scope (Zoom-in). Pinch in to return to the normal view (Zoom-out). To get a better overview take a look at the tutorial pictures below.

But the main downside of MSG touch is that the game is really short. I played the game completely through in one hour. I think that while the game has many great features, the fact that its is so short makes the $7.99 price-tag a little bit overpriced but is still totally worth it.

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