New Metal Gear Acid shots

Although we'll probably only know how PSP title Metal Gear Acid works for certain when reports seep out of the Tokyo Game Show next month, a bunch of new screenshots which surfaced on Japanese gaming websites recently have given us all sorts of cause to speculate wildly. Which, given it's a Metal Gear game, we're only too happy to do.

As followers of the series will already know, MGA is a turn-based card-strategy sort of affair, in which familiar moves, weapons and characters form the basis of a deck of cards, from which Solid Snake - and, it seems, a new female protagonist - can draw various abilities over the course of the average sneaking mission.

The new screenshots give us a better look at some of the cards, which appear to be split into categories like Character, Item, Weapon, Action and Support. Some of those are obvious (Weapons include the SOCOM pistol, Item is health-boosting rations and body armour, and Characters include the likes of Ninja and Metal Gear Ray), while Action and Support cards seem to apply to things like headshots and hanging moves respectively. How the game actually plays - how movement works, when the cards are drawn, how you pick them and use them, etc - remains a mystery, but on closer inspection we now reckon MGA isn't particularly narrative-driven compared to its predecessors, using characters from all the MGS games to date, and showing off Snake in his sneaking suit and his jungle camouflage.

Still, all will doubtless be revealed in late September when the game is on playable display at the Tokyo Game Show. In the meantime, go chew over those screenshots, and don't forget to download the tiny Metal Gear Acid E3 trailer from Eurofiles if you haven't done already.