Did you get your Metal Gear Solid 4 pre-order in yet? We did. If you drop some cash on the game now, you get a pretty cool Metal Gear Solid Vol. 2 DVD to get you up to speed on the storyline. Oh yeah, you get a Beta code for Metal Gear Online… if you care about that sort of thing.

First, the bad news. This DVD is a letterboxed 4:3 type of shenanigans. It’s sort of understandable, since the earlier games didn’t support 16:9 resolutions. But MGS2 and MGS3 supported widescreen on the PS2, so I’m not sure why they didn’t go with widescreen versions of those videos. Even the MGS4 videos are letterboxed. Boo on that.

The DVD is broken into seven parts, each of which is roughly 5 minutes or less. The first is the Prologue, which gives you general idea of Snake, the Patriots, and what has been going on. You then move into a Metal Gear 20th Anniversary video, which is just a montage of all the Metal Gear games. But who doesn’t love a good montage, am I right? After the montage fades out, you get to learn about Big Boss - The Origin of Snake. If you don’t know, Solid Snake (and a few others) are clones of Big Boss, one of the world’s best soldiers. Chapter 4 has you learning about Liquid - The Second Snake. Liquid Snake is also a clone of Big Boss, but he’s a little bit evil. You fight and kill Liquid in the first Metal Gear Solid (or do you?). In Chapter 5, you learn all about Solidus Snake, the enemy from MGS2. Solidus, yet another clone of Big Boss, was killed by Raiden’s sword a the end of MGS2. Finally, in Chapter 6, you get to see all about Solid - The First Snake. Solid Snake is the man, people. Learn it, live it.

Now, you’re probably thinking to yourself, “Hey, you said there were seven parts and you only talked about six.” Well, you’re right. The seventh part of the Metal Gear Solid Vol. 2 DVD is all of the trailer from Metal Gear Solid 4. Pretty cool to have them all in one location, but I’d rather watch them in HD on my PS3. You can download them all from the PlayStation Store if you feel like it.

Overall, it’s a pretty good way to get caught up on all the backstory of the Metal Gear series and it definitely does even more to get you excited for MGS4 in June. If you haven’t pre-ordered Metal Gear Solid 4 yet, you better get going. It’ll be your only chance to get this DVD and get into the Metal Gear Online Beta. Run out to your local Gamestop now and drop some money on this thing. Go ahead, I’ll wait here for you.