Pros: Graphics, new abilities, sound, still the same old MGS you love
Cons: Not designed for the new abilities, overdone action scenes, no extras
The bottom line: It's definitely wise to purchase this over the original MGS, but it's not as great as it should've been.
The Intro:
As I'm sure a lot of you know, Metal Gear Solid is an untouchable classic. The game that defined stealth action for years to come. And while Metal Gear Solid 2: The Sons of Liberty was a great game when it came to gameplay, the story got way too zany to be taken seriously. The original however had an awesome story with unexpected twists that made sense and didn't seem thrown in just because it's a plot twist like MGS2.

Now, Konami hired former Nintendo second-party, Silicon Knights to create Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, a hybrid of the 2 games. The improved gameplay of MGS2 but the superior story of the original MGS all on the Nintendo GameCube as sort of an introduction to those Nintendo players who never had a PlayStation to enjoy the original. Anyways onto the review.

The Good:
The graphics have been MUCH improved. They're MGS2 quality and then some. Animations are way better, sequences have been... redone. I wouldn't necessarily say they're improved but they're definitely a lot more exciting. Action buffs should get a kick of Ryuhei Kitamura's direction. For those who don't know, he redirected every scene from the original Metal Gear Solid for this game.

The sound is very much improved for the most part. All the actors came and re-recorded all their vocals for this game. The original's voice acting was incredible and this doesn't disappoint, it does make a few improvements as well. David Hayter (the voice actor who plays Solid Snake, the main character) actually delivers a much better peformance than he did on the original PlayStation version. Improving some of his lines that were a little cheesily delivered and making it sound more serious. Mei Ling's heavy (fake-sounding) Chinese accent has been dropped to a much easier American accent. There's only one character who hasn't improved, but that's for the bad.

As expected, the amazing story is intact, even adding a few lines to make allusions to characters in the sequel, and some just for dramatic effect. To give you a summary, basically special agent Solid Snake (that's you) is sent to a nuclear weapons disposal facility in Alaska to stop FOXHOUND, who's supposedly holding the world for ransom with a nuclear bomb. MUCH more happens, many surprises and crazy monologues but it'd ruin it if I mentioned any of it here, but there's your basic set up.

The control is just fine, as it always was. Your character is responsive and does what you want him to, when you want him to. There's more controls now, since they've added all the abilities from MGS2. You can now aim your gun in first person mode, drag bodies around to hide them. You can use lockers (which also can be used for body hiding as well as hiding yourself) and you can hang on railings. Anything you could do in MGS2, you can do here.

The A.I. as well has been improved. Guards aren't complete blockheads anymore, if you alert their attention, they will call for back up and search the area. Also, on Hard Mode it really becomes interesting. Hiding under things does not make you hidden like it once did. Guards can see above and below them pretty well. The coolest hint of the A.I. was when I got out of the water and a guard noticed the drops of water I left behind and investigated. Swank.

The Bad:
The new scenes I think are terribly overdone. Everytime I see these amazing acrobatic feats I'm reminded of the comically overdone final battle scene from The Matrix: Revolutions where they tried too hard to make it dramatic and made it hilarious, in contrast. This is exactly what happens most of the time. Sure, the animation is smoother but some of it is just stupid. Prime example: Snake is hiding on one side of a door with a CLEAR view of his enemies, talking about top secret plans. For some reason he finds it appropriate to do a physically impossible and unnecessary FLIP over the door to get to the other side so he can see... exactly as much as he could see before.

The other thing that went awry is the new abilities. Sure, they're handy, but the game obviously wasn't designed for them the way MGS2 was. So you find no real use for railings, and aiming in first-person mode makes things incredibly easy in some cases. They didn't redesign the game enough to incorporate these elements properly and so it's only a half-hearted attempt at the original vision.

My final problem which is a bit more minor is that the voice actress who does Naomi, doesn't do as good a job as she did before. Naomi in the original got all emotional and teary near the end of the game, and it was convincing, throughout the whole game she's got Amidala-syndrome and has the same tone of voice no matter what she says. Yawn. Guess you can't win 'em all.

Oh yeah, there's no extras. So for all of you who think getting every dog tag does something... it doesn't. Just completes the list of dog tags. How lame.