Metal Gear Solid
PlayStation
About three years ago I decided to start playing all the Metal Gear Solid games in order again. Not necessarily chronological order, but the order in which I am familiar with the games. Rather than play Metal Gear Solid for the original PlayStation, however, I decided to skip over it and play its remake - Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes for the GameCube instead. That version features updated graphics, new cutscenes, and gameplay tweaks that make it feel a lot more like Sons of Liberty than it does the original title.
After I finished Twin Snakes, I moved on to the aforementioned Sons of Liberty a little over a year later. Yeah, I play through game series very slowly. You don't have to tell me. That was late 2016. It is now mid 2018. For whatever reason, after finishing Sons of Liberty I never moved on to Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. When I realized how long it had been since I'd played a game in the series, I made up my mind that I needed to play a Metal Gear game ASAP. But rather than continue on and play part three, I really wanted to go back and play the old PS1 version of the original game. Twin Snakes just didn't cut it for me, and nostalgia was calling me back to play the game again, this time the version I knew and loved.
I got this game back in 1998 when it first hit store shelves. The hype for the game was through the roof, and I knew that I needed to get in on the action. I got the game, and almost instantly I fell in love with it. I loved the story, I loved the characters, I loved the music, I loved the graphics, I loved the game play. It was as close to a perfect game as you could have gotten for me. I played through it a countless number of times.
Life moves on, however. Soon Metal Gear Solid was collecting dust on my shelves as I moved on to bigger (but not necessarily better) things. I have played it randomly a small handful of times since we moved into the 2000s, but if you count Twin Snakes as its own separate entity (which I am doing for this review), it has probably been a good ten years since I'd played the original title. That changed in July of 2018: 20 years after the game's initial release. Did it withstand the test of time?
Before I move on, I feel I need to give a basic recap of the game's storyline. Metal Gear Solid is a VERY story driven title, so understanding its plot will most likely be an essential element to your enjoyment of the game.
The protagonist of Metal Gear Solid is a genetically engineered super soldier named Solid Snake. He previously appeared in a couple of old NES entries to the Metal Gear series. The game references these past adventures quite often, but it is completely not necessary to have played them in order to enjoy this game. Snake has been sent to infiltrate a nuclear weapons disposal facility known as Shadow Moses Island. Unbeknownst to the general public, Shadow Moses is more than just a disposal facility. It is the development site of a new version of Metal Gear - a highly sophisticated battle tank that can deliver a stealth nuclear strike to any location on the map.
Terrorists have overrun this facility and are threatening the outside world with nuclear strikes. If their demands are not met, they will use Metal Gear to throw the world into turmoil. Snake's job is to stop these terrorists at all costs. He is sent in with nothing more than his body and his wits to get the job done. Thus, the game begins. Mind you, this is my extremely bare-bones version of the game's set up. I have barely even scratched the surface of some of the crazy shit you are going to see here. Expect lots of twists, turns, cover-ups, double crosses, and general WTF moments as you play on.
If you don't care about the storyline and just want to play to run around and blow shit up, this isn't the game for you. Like I said, the storyline of Metal Gear Solid takes front and center stage. You are going to have to sit through some long cutscenes and CODEC conversations. The CODEC is kind of like a remote radio link to other characters in the game. You consult with home base through your CODEC frequently, and some of these conversations can be quite lengthy. See the screenshot I posted just above this paragraph? You are going to be looking at screens like that quite often.
So that is the story. Does the game hold up after nearly 20 years? Having played this game many, many times before, I was not put off by its outdated graphics. Heck, I personally think the game still looks great. Yeah, things can get a bit blocky and pixelated at times. The characters' faces lack detail and expression. The game's environments can also look a bit messy if you look too closely at things. But you know what? I don't care. This game came out in 1998. It looked AMAZING for its time. I am still able to look at it now like I did back then. I think it looks great. Not perfect, but great nonetheless.
One of the reasons I am able to so easily overlook Metal Gear Solid's graphical flaws is because of the environment that the game creates. This is a very immersive game. The island of Shadow Moses is one of those locations that, similar to the setting of Rapture in BioShock, almost seems like a character in and of itself. Everywhere you turn, you see something iconic. Perhaps this is a result of me playing this game WAY too many times in the past, but I just love the setting. Whether you are sneaking around through dark warehouses, rummaging through offices and science labs, or crunching around outside in the snow, the game really makes you feel like part of the action.
Not only are the environments of the game both diverse and visually appealing, the music and sound effects blend in with them perfectly as well. It is very easy to just completely get lost in the game. Shadow Moses feels like a place that could actually exist somewhere. It is dark and gritty when it needs to be, high tech and polished when it needs to be as well. Even though it is an outlandish game, there is a certain amount of realism here that speaks to me. Compare the looks of this game to its GameCube remake Twin Snakes, and you maybe can see what I mean. Everything looks so sharp and polished in that game, that it doesn't feel as genuine as it does here when things are dark and gritty. Even though the remake technically (I guess) looks better, it doesn't carry with it the same level of authenticity that this game does.
The gameplay has a few flaws, but for the most part everything handles fine. Point Snake where you need him to go, and hold the D-pad in that direction. You can crawl, you can crouch, you can shimmy against walls, you can enter first person mode to check out your surroundings. The L shoulder button brings up your support items, such as health rations or night vision goggles. The R shoulder button brings up your weapons. Combat is my biggest issue. You can't enter first person mode to shoot, nor does your gun lock on to your enemies. So to kill them you just have to point your body in their general direction and hit the fire button, hoping that you are lined up well enough to kill them. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. Combat is not really the main focus of the game, so I guess the overall questionable combat mechanics can be forgiven.
I say that combat is not the focus of the game because if you are spending too much time trying to fight your way through hordes of enemies, you are doing things wrong. You need to sneak through the game's areas without being seen in order to be successful. Normally I like a good fight in a video game; it is a nice way to blow off some steam. But I have to admit there is something exhilarating about sneaking past a series of foes undetected to make it to your goal. What happens if you get spotted? You have to either exit the area or hide until the enemies give up looking for you. Rarely does trying to fight your way out of a situation ever work out.
Unless, I should say, you are fighting one of the game's many bosses. This game is famous for its wild, diverse boss battles. Memorable bosses include Vulcan Raven, Revolver Ocelot, Sniper Wolf, Liquid Snake (the helicopter battle is my favorite Liquid fight), Grey Fox, and of course: Psycho Mantis. The Psycho Mantis battle has earned legendary status among hardcore gamers. He pulls out all kinds of fun tricks. If you have a vibrating controller, you put it down on a flat surface and he makes it vibrate - giving you the illusion that he is moving your controller across the surface. He also reads your memory card for Konami games. If you have played certain games, he will comment on them for you. Kind of cool. He can read your mind, which allows him to dodge all of your attacks. It took me a while to figure this out, but the only way to beat him is to unplug your controller and put it into controller port 2. Thus, you dodge his mind control and even the playing field during the battle.
You can probably tell from my comments so far that I really like the game. That is not to say it is without flaws. Mainly: the backtracking! This game makes you backtrack quite often. The first time you have to go back almost all the way to the beginning of the game to pick up a sniper rifle that you need for a boss battle. Okay, sure, whatever. But then not too later on the game picks you up and deposits you back toward the beginning of the game AGAIN after you get captured. You have to escape a pretty intense torture scene by jamming the circle button (you can't use auto fire... or they'll know!) over and over again. Then you have to escape your cell. Then you have to get your equipment back. Then you have to head out back to where you originally got captured, halfway across the freaking game map. You aren't done backtracking though. Towards the end of the game, you have a key that you need to both heat up and cool off to make it change shape. Which means, guess what, you have to backtrack from the key reader to the hot section of the map, heat up the key by standing around for a few minutes with the key out, wait for it to heat up, then head back to the key reader and use the key in its new condition. Then you have to do the same thing for its frozen form. Sheesh!
All the backtracking was not enough to ruin the game for me, however. I still had a really fun time with this title, MUCH more fun than I had with Twin Snakes. In fact, playing this only made me hungry for more Metal Gear. Don't be surprised to see me playing Snake Eater anytime soon.
All in all, this is a great game. Not just great, fantastic! It blew me away as a 16 year old kid back in 1998, and although it doesn't necessarily blow me away now, I still think it is super fun to play. People will criticize this game and say that it is more watching than playing. I see their point, but it is not quite true. In fact, I was surprised by how little watching there actually was compared to what I was preparing myself for in my head. If you want a game that is more watching than playing, look no further than Metal Gear Solid 4, which I am sure I will get to eventually. Yes there is a lot of watching in this game, but it is not anything I consider excessive.
While I normally reserve perfect scores for games that I consider pretty much flawless, I am going to bend the rules a bit here. No, Metal Gear Solid is not flawless. The graphics can be a bit messy by today's standards. The plot occasionally dips into the realm of the nonsensical. The backtracking is truly the low point of the game. BUT! The game is a blast to play. The story, while a little zany at parts, I consider to be gripping. The boss battles are great. The support characters are great. The atmosphere this game creates is truly immersive. I completely lost myself in this game both as a kid and as an adult. Plus it has the whole nostalgia factor thing going for it. This game helped me through one of the tougher times of my life as a teen and it holds a pretty big place in my heart, along with a couple of other games that came out in the same general time frame like FF7, Xenogears, and Ocarina of Time. Metal Gear Solid is a special game to me, and for that it earns a well-deserved A+.
Overall:
A+
If you liked my review of Metal Gear Solid, check out my reviews of the following games:
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