[Open Critic] Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 Reviews (61%)

I think their point is they did this in the laziest way. MGS2 and MGS3 are just the HD collection ports they made back in 2012 with maybe some bug fixes. MGS 1 the thing they were working on only goes up to "1080p" with 4:3 resolution. This is just a fundamentally worse collection that is meant to collect as much money as possible seeing as the Legacy collection was just a better package. They are clearly just going to sell a Master Collection Vol 2 with maybe MGS 4, peace walker, and the other ones ( a bit unfortunate we never see ports of portable ops, twin snakes (yes yes its just a worse 1 but I think its still a valid part of MGS history even though its the odd duck), and the MG acid games)

Edit: don't even get me started on some of the content that gets cut out due to licensing issues. We as players will never see Metal gear online 1, Snake vs Ape, and the guy savage stuff from MGS 3 alone. Hell there was also that pro skater mode for MGS 2 that never made it over with the hd collections.

Most of them acknowledge that directly, and are specifically lamenting the fact that this is all it is. That the opportunity wasn't taken to do more.

That's not an entirely invalid criticism either if you take a look at older MGS rereleases and how much some of them added to the originals (MGS2 got an entire skating game mode, MGS3 got a short parody campaign plus the first official english releases of Metal Gear 1 and 2 for the MSX with updated character art), and especially if you consider how many rereleases most of these have had already.

It wasn't very long ago that game rereleases were generally expected to be more than straight ports. Hell, now it doesn't even need to be a port (making the original code work on a different device), sometimes they can just slap the old game in an emulator and sell it as a rerelease.

For the high regard the series is held in and the fact that Konami doesn't have much else going on in the video game scene, it's not ridiculous that some people see this as a basic cash grab.