MGS4 database on PS3 Store today

By Robert Purchese Published 19 June, 2008

Only confirmed for the US so far.

Sony will be popping a special Metal Gear Solid 4 database application on the US PlayStation Store today.

It's free to use and has an official brain that knows everything about Metal Gear, according to the Sony US blog. That means complete storylines, character profiles, relationship diagrams and more.

So if you want to play MGS4 but were a bit worried you knew nothing about the series, this will be a good place to start.

The program also sounds as if it knows when you finish Metal Gear Solid 4 (it is a brain) as until you do, spoilers will be blacked-out to avoid ruining your summer and maybe your life.

And yes it gets more exciting with an extras option in the main menu that gives you access to free downloadable content. So far there is a new camouflage for Snake plus some music to play on your in-game iPod. More to come, apparently.

There's no word on whether Europe will also get access to the database, but we're literally checking right now. Besides, you could always be cheeky and set yourself up with a US PSN account anyway.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots came out last Thursday and became the biggest-selling PS3-exclusive over its opening weekend so far.

Head over to our Metal Gear Solid 4 and Metal Gear Online reviews for a detailed look at what to expect.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (19) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • RobPulsar #1 4 years ago

    What are Sony playing at? Something else decent for the PS3 - made my week this has.

  • DavidBoring #2 4 years ago

    a european release is very likely. even the japanese version has german text for example.

  • Shrui #3 4 years ago

    As someone who finds MGS4 a turn off due to the massive backstory this may be promising...

  • consignia #4 4 years ago

    Is it a relational database?

  • RoddyCool #5 4 years ago

    This is great but why don't people just play the old games???? They are actually good, well except for MGS2 that is!!!!

  • dominalien #6 4 years ago

    This is actually a very smart move. Shows a lot of goodwill and it comes out just in time (at least for the Americans).

    I haven't played much, but I really like what I've seen so far.

  • betahoven #7 4 years ago

    Post deleted at 09:36:16 17-12-2011

  • DFawkes #8 4 years ago

    I really like the spoiler-proofing system, but the dlc thing we already get anyway. Not that the camoflage patterns are any real use at the start of the game.

  • tonynibbles #9 4 years ago

    This is fantastic!

    Still, Im surprised EG bothered to post this with those review scores, ahem.

  • cathalzx #10 4 years ago

    @consignia - I think it's OLAP actually

  • Raziel #11 4 years ago

    Sounds nice. I'll get in with my US account if its not on EU later today.

    Now they just need to offer MGS1 (Japan has this I think), 2 and 3 for download, and there's no reason a MSG fan won't buy the PS3.

  • the_dudefather #12 4 years ago

    good idea, I've finished the other games but i still have trouble remembering who's who and what happened when

  • Machetazo #13 4 years ago

    /optimistically checks RSS feed of Three Speech for news of EU plans
    ...
    xD

  • Beats12 #14 4 years ago

    @tonynibbles

    Because an 8/10 game doesn't deserve to have news reported on it? Bitter are we?

    But as someone who played MGS, but (inexplicably) missed out on the PS2 games and don't really have the time to play them now, this is excellent!

  • tomacwhite #15 4 years ago

    Just tried the database (available on Japanese store, running on Japanese PS3), and its really cool. Firstly, it picked up my UK gamesave and asked if I wanted to hide MGS4 information, and it did. Basically, its like a super in-depth wikipedia guide to the Metal Gear (Solid) universe. Characters, items, locations, relationships, everything you can think of. There are links within entrys like a wiki so you can jump around very easily.

    The best thing is that everything MGS4 specific is blackout so you can't ruin the game for yourself.

  • firefly #16 4 years ago

    @Raziel

    Plus the two MSX games. I'd love to play them but I don't want to shell out for Subsistence in order to do so.

  • Penguinzoot #17 4 years ago

    I'm not a big MGS fan, (haven't played since MGS2), but I really like the idea of this. I'll probably give it a look later. Maybe it'll spur me into giving MGS4 a go ;-)

  • Darren #18 4 years ago

    Neither the Japanese nor US MGS Databases pick up my UK save game on my UK machine either, which is a shame really. Why it doesn't allow you to override the lockout I don't know. What if someone just wants to check out the entire history of MGS without having played the latest game at all? A ridiculous suggestion maybe but it is a database after all and doesn't require the game to be present to access it for anything except MGS 4.

  • Darren #19 4 years ago

    @Arbiter - I've been told by a developer that the 360's HDD is actually slower to access data in most cases than the 12X DVD drive - it's the reason Marketplace demos don't load any faster off the HDD than the final disc-based games. So having MGS 4 install onto the HDD would actually be slower than running the game off the disc. Thus if MGS 4 did come to the Xbox 360, it would have marginally slower loading times (if 360 DMC4 vs. the installed PS3 version is anything to go by) and likely have one Act per DVD meaning the game would come on five discs with prompts to change them at the point where the PS3 installs data. If anything that would be quicker than the two minutes PS3 owners have to wait. The PS3 version has been confirmed to be 32 GB which means each Act is approx. 6 GBs, which will fit on a single DVD9, even the 360's restricted proprietary format. All hypothetical, of course, as no-one knows for sure one way or the other but it does sound very feasible from my experiences with other multiformat games on both systems.