I've had my eye on the Metal Gear Solid series for a while now and eventually I got the incentive to try the first game in the series after @wheatie assigned it to me. Had a decent time with it!

Metal Gear Solid is a classic stealth game - you sneak your way past enemies, and usually don't face them head on. (Else you have to deal with really frustrating aiming controls!) Your tools consist of several weapons like a silenced pistol, a sniper or even a rocket launcher, but also handy gadgets like EMP grenades and... a cardboard box?

The overarching narrative was engaging and consisted of many, fully voice-acted cutscenes. Some of them longer than others, ranging from quick Codec calls to villains monologuing for minutes on the brink of death. I have to admit that there were times where the exposition and monologues went on for a bit too long for my taste and apparently the cutscenes are only getting longer in the later games. A shame, since I believe those moments drag down the pacing quite a bit.

As I mentioned before, my other main complaint are the controls. Sure, this game is 25 year old at the time of writing this, but other games released in that period had more understandable controls too (an example being Ocarina of Time). The worst offender was definitely the aiming, but then again I didn't find out until after the beating the game that there was auto-aiming. Oh well, too late now.

That aside, Metal Gear Solid was enjoyable enough to make me want to check out the rest of the series as well, considering MGS2 and MGS3 are praised highly. It's a fairly short game and was just the right experience to play after Red Dead Redemption 2, which took me about a month to beat. But let me tell you, going from the graphics of RDR2 to PS1 models was certainly something! Have a good day.

HOW A STEALTH GAME SHOULD BE FOR A CONSOLE WITH LIMITED HW

A true masterpiece that marked a generation of gamers.
Beautiful storyline with its characters and their many facets.
Excellent level design and beautiful (for the times) graphics.

Despite the years I still replay it with pleasure from time to time

This is the first time I have completed a Metal Gear game and my first proper Kojima experience. And wow expectations are blown.
You always hear how Kojima is one of the greats, how his games blend film and gameplay into an unbeatable cohesive experience. So, after finally completing one of his masterpieces, I now understand the experience is not just online chatter but in fact very true.
For a game that released in 1998 its unbelievable how polished the experience is. My gripes with the game are limited to a handful of annoying checkpoints that can be circumvented by using the save system and exiting to the menu, or a couple of combat encounters with a few to many respawning guards or a tedious boss. Otherwise, this game is great especially for its age.
Metal Gear Solid is absolutely not for everyone but those who are willing to give it a go are in for a wild ride.

Yup, it's a masterpiece.

I kinda have a hard time writing about games that are critically acclaimed since by the time I get around to finally playing them everyones either already said everything that needed to be said about it, it's especially hard when said game is almost 26 years old and is from one of the most influential series in the whole genre.

Whatelse can I really say other then it's a triumph for the PS1, Kojima's love for movies and the medium shines through the 5th gen pixel style with some really inspiring storytelling and standout voice acting; and I don't just mean stand out for the era I mean stand out just in general. You can even see a glimpse of Kojima's surprisingly inspired cinematography for some of the cutscenes, yeah sure it's still PS1 so Kojima and his team couldn't go as raw as they probably wanted to but for what they were still able to put on the screen it's pretty damn impressive.
That's the word that kept popping into my brain the further I went into this game, impressive. The 5th gen was a blossoming era for video games, with the creation of the third dimension and significantly more space on a compact disk developers could go to much further lengths. They could add in voice acting, cutscenes to add in more context and story, the possibilities were...well not endless but still pretty close for the time. This new era had the ability to push gaming further than we've ever seen it before, and it kinda did that. See while devs had these new tools they didn't really know how to fully utilize them, that's how you'd end up with cheesy voice acting, poorly aged FMV or CG cutscenes, and stories that are about as shallow as a puddle; not all of them were like this but that's just the result of growing pains when it comes to a whole new way of making video games.

And in comes Kojima with his team and his encyclopedic knowledge of film and storytelling gave us Metal Gear Solid. Not only does it have a very keen eye for claustrophobic and imposing cinematography for both it's cutscenes and gameplay, but also it has a damn great narrative about the horrors of war, manipulation of soldiers and loss of individuality under army or governmental power, and the restrictive nature of letting your origin or genetics dictate your life and actions. And on top of that it does something I haven't seen a lot of other games of this era do well, which is tying its narrative and story into the gameplay in a way that also mirrors how so many studios do nowadays. Kojima's team walked in and almost effortlessly made a game that not only holds up today as a great story in gaming but holds the test of time as a stand out game......with a few exceptions.

See I've been going on about the presentation, the voice acting, the cinematography. I haven't really been talking all that much about the game part of this game, and that is mostly due to the fact that I think the gameplay is just ok. The stealth systems are pretty good and overall the game nails the claustrophobic nature of Shadow Moses through great level design, it's just going through Shadow Moses is kinda really easy. The guards have a very shallow field of view making it very easy to be able to bypass them without any trouble and the game feels like it flushes you with ammo so if you do get caught killing most guards isn't really that much of a problem, also it dosn't help that the enemy AI is kinda all over the place sometimes. I know this is PS1 and even with the impressive systems they made for this game there will still always be hardware limitations. Even then though it's not a deal breaker for me since I still think it's just ok, just not as grand and fantastic as its story or even its bosses.

Bottom line........I mean it's Metal Gear Solid it's fucking fantastic. Even with little problems I do have with the gameplay and some characters don't detract from how impressive and inspiring this was not just as a game but as a piece of media. This is a triumph of programming and now I have to play through the rest, just to see where Kojima takes his story and characters next.

The original PlayStation was dominated by games where developers made big splashes that sent wavelike ripples coursing throughout generations. Final Fantasy VII may have been the crowning achievement for changing the industry, but Metal Gear Solid straight up ascended the medium itself. I’ve already gone through several future entries that undeniably were a glow-up in every sense of the word imaginable, yet, even revisiting this so soon, nothing about its inherent quality feels diminished in retrospect.

Metal Gear Solid 2 may have the most ambitiously unpredictable narrative in video game history, but it couldn’t have worked as effectively without the original to subvert. Metal Gear Solid 3 has the greatest lineup of bosses in the entire franchise, but it doesn’t have Psycho Mantis. Metal Gear Solid 4 is this emotional crescendo that blurred the lines dividing Kojima and the player, but our connection only mattered because of the game that started it. Metal Gear Solid V is a rowing technical achievement in both graphics and gameplay, but the confident aura of what Metal Gear Solid accomplished in 1998 remains unmatched.

Metal Gear Solid is the ‘gene’ that forever courses through Kojima’s tactical action espionage series. It inherited the concepts from the first two Metal Gear games, even from other Kojima games like Policenauts through Meryl, and reimagined them into something familiar yet new. Solid Snake, like every other counterpart of him going forward, represents everything that the original Metal Gear Solid does right, mechanically and thematically. He’s fairly straightforward in what he sets out to do, maybe rough around the edges, but is more introspective and human the longer you invest in his sneaky card-boarding around Shadow Moses. Although this may be a game with a dramatic plot about preventing nuclear weapons from unleashing war that’s naturally shrouded in conspiracy and global politics, the heart of it all is an inspiring game about the struggle for our identity rooted in our genetic history. Reflected in the colorfully well-defined codec cast and what’s still hands down the best characterized antagonist group in Metal Gear history, FOXHOUND. But coming back around to replaying this, on the meta level, I like to think this was Kojima projecting how he still needed to find his identity as a gaming visionary and outgrow his ‘genes’, those being his earlier games that represented a premature version of himself. A message that I don’t think is fully complete until his unconventional sequel. There’s definitely some stuff here that can be tedious gameplay-wise, but the whole package itself is still unbelievable, man.

Metal Gear solid is something truly special. Its undoubtedly one of the greatest games ever to have been created, innovated on so many levels, and created one of the most beloved stories in gaming. Yet, i am conflicted on what to think of it. i feel like to accurately describe my feeling for it, i need to get the bad out of the way first, so here goes:

As you might expect from a shooter game made this long ago, the aiming and gun controls feel very jarring to use today, and aiming can often feel like mashing the button and hoping it works. This is made worse by the fact that aiming outside of first person mode means you can only aim in the directions you can walk, witch is very limited.

The game is very cryptic and often barely tells you where to go or what to do or doesn't at all, meaning there will be situations where you will have no idea what to do. this is made worse by the fact that many objectives in the game require you to backtrack to much earlier areas that you would think you would be done with. the game would be extremely frustrating to play without a guide, and still can be with one.

More on this later, but the stealth game-play is actually very good, and so are most boss fights, aside from the fact that at the start of most of them theres a gimmick to defeat the boss that the game doesn't tell you so your left scrambling through a few game overs to figure out what to do. The major problem with the game-play is more prominently shown on disc 2; any time not on a stealth or boss fight, the in game combat is extremely clunky, and scripted evens barely work, the worst examples of this being the rage inducing fight with liquid snake and the machine gun battle that follows after, every button just doesn't quite do what you want it to do and you'll get several deaths that don't feel like they were your fault.

That was just the beginning of flaws that this game has, but if your able to overlook and struggle through those sections, believe it or not, you are indeed in for one of the most special gaming experiences of all time. Everything in this game feels so ahead of its time in everyday. to this day i get chills or would even tear up while watching some of the cut scenes. the dialogue has its flaws, but overall the games story is extremely dedicated to the direction it takes, and the anti nuclear weapons awareness and messages hold true to this day.
Now to touch on the technical aspects of the game itself,(aside from scripted segments) this game is a masterpiece. the mood on shadow Moses island is set the moment you reach the docks at the beginning of the game. the use of fog, lighting, animation, and incredible textures make this one of the best looking play station games ever, and it still looks great to this day. The game-play (aside from the shooting controls) is also incredible. the stealth sections work incredibly well and are intuitive to control, and super engaging. the score of this game is also incredible.

Overall, MGS1 is an imperfect and aged masterpiece. despite its flaws, no other game of its time came even close to what this game achieved, and i believe this game was one of the biggest steps to games being more than just games, but also seen as a form of art in every way. it may be gruelling and frustrating and make you want to through your controller from time to time, but if your able to push through, your effort is 100% rewarded. even if only once, i would recommend every person who likes video games to try this game at least once. its really something special, and i would go farther than to say its one of the greatest video games ever made, but one of the greatest pieces of art ever made. This game has definitely left a permanent impression on me and i will never forget it.

Metal Gear Solid é um marco para os vídeo games quando se trata da forma de contar histórias cinematográficas. Simplesmente tudo nesse jogo superou minhas expectativas.

Sua história e personagens são bastante densos e cativantes para um jogo de ação do PS1. Tudo parece ter sido feito com carinho para mandar a exata mensagem que os desenvolvedores queriam. A narrativa é tão bem feita que faz realmente parecer que o jogador está controlando o protagonista em um filme de ação dos anos 90, sendo que, até as partes cômicas encaixam perfeitamente com o mundo cinematográfico. Talvez esse seja quase o balanço perfeito entre fazer uma aventura cinematográfica dentro de um vídeo game sem perder a essência de jogar.

Para os padrões de hoje em dia sua gameplay pode estar datada, mas a criatividade de alguns segmentos desse game e seus chefes muito criativos colocam muito jogo atual no chão. Todas as partes que mesclam as cenas cinematográficas com a quebra da quarta parede são sensacionais. Um abraço muito forte para quem pensou no conceito do Psycho Mantis.

Em síntese, Metal Gear Solid é revolucionário e estava muito a frente de seu tempo. Fazia muito tempo que não ficava ansioso para jogar a continuação de uma franquia e espero que a sequência quebre todas minhas expectativas novamente.

Meu primeiro jogo do Kojima, e tudo que falaram é verdade, o homem é bom. O jogo tem uma história muito boa que realmente me cativou, cheia de reviravoltas e parece até um pouco a estrutura de um filme.

É um jogo extremamente interativo, quebra a quarta parede toda hora, o que é muito legal e extremamente avançado para a época. Lembro de escutar gente falando sobre o Psycho Mantis lendo seu save desde os meus 7 anos de idade.

A IA me impressionou. Eles são muito espertos para a época e até para hoje. Se você se encurrala em algum lugar que não tem saída, eles não vão atrás de você; eles jogam uma granada e esperam você sair. Isso é mais inteligente que muito jogo stealth que já joguei (Hitman e AC).

O level design é muito funcional, com fases lindas e cada parte muito diferente uma da outra. A câmera em primeira pessoa foi uma sacada muito boa afim de evitar problemas com a câmera e funciona perfeitamente bem.

O Kojima, em entrevista, disse: "I've got backstories for these characters that cover their whole lives, from the moment they were born to their current situation, but probably only 1/3 of that will make it into the game." É notável o quão gênio esse cara é. Embora tenha alguns furos bem óbvios de roteiro, a história é muito bem amarrada. Todos os personagens têm uma história que não é apenas jogada na sua cara; ela é contada de maneira natural ao decorrer da campanha.

Em geral, é um jogão, envelheceu como vinho. Tem alguns problemas de jogabilidade, mas é um jogo de 1998, então temos que dar um desconto.

"Humans can choose the type of life they want to live."

I don't like this review anymore, read at your own discretion

The MGS games were ones I had tried multiple times. The controls always seemed "clunky" to me, and I never really got past the first 30 minutes of the game I tried. Like before, I really did not care for this game when I first started it, but something was different this time...

I began to really like it. I thought the controls sucked, but it turns out maybe I just sucked. At one point, the only reason I was playing the game for was the story. Which, even then, sometimes has its issues, mainly with the women characters. Please learn how to write women. It hurts watching some of the scenes.

I don't think it's perfect, I'm playing MGS2 as of writing this, (it's taken me so long to post this I've beaten it now), and it feels way more comfortable to control. But it's up there... this game is really good. Some of the bosses aren't super fun, such as the final boss. Maybe the only unfun part of the game that I can remember. The only other moments I didn't enjoy were, as I mentioned before, the beginning since I didn't fully get the controls.

Aaaand that's it... I didn't say much, but there's probably nothing else that I can say since everything has been said before. I mean, everything I said in this review has definitely been said before. I found myself having more fun than expected, and now I finally understand why tons of people love this game.

This must have felt like a blockbuster movie back in 1998, huh?

Well, Metal Gear Solid is a classic for a reason. An engrossing story, overwritten to within an inch of it's life and excellently voice-acted. This is my first Hideo Kojima game and I'm starting to see why he has the divisive reputation he does. Personally, I really like the vibe, even if the crazy amount of fourth-wall breaking did overwhelm me at times. Psycho Mantis didn't tell me that I liked Castlevania but he did tell me I was shitty at combat which, well... he wasn't wrong.

It's funny, I found most of the bosses a breeze but really struggled with a lot of the standard sneaking sections. I know I suck at stealth in general but I feel that MGS's gameplay hasn't really held up as well as other games of it's ilk, such as Resident Evil 2. Man, 1998 was a good year for games, wasn't it?

This was my initiation into the Kojimaverse and I'm very curious to see where the Metal Gear Solid universe goes next. I'm sure it'll be full of surprises.

At this point, Konami can't make a move without causing a controversy, especially with Metal Gear fans. But my PS1 shelves are already full, so I have to thank them for allowing me to experience all the European dubs without having to buy a 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th copy of PS1 Metal Gear Solid.

When you're as deep in the hole as I am, the idea of playing the entire thing through in French actually sounds like a compelling proposition. I'm quite impressed by how seriously late-90s KCEJ approached an international release. It wasn't common to see much beyond French and German options in PAL releases, and very few games had as much writing in them as MGS1 did. Especially not spoken dialogue. Sequels stripped back on localisation efforts, with only Japanese and English audio tracks, but every single line in MGS1 had been recorded in Japanese, English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. It's interesting to hear the game with different voice direction. Some of the cutscenes play a little differently with the unique interpretations of each relationship. Without exception, I think all the female characters in French MGS1 sound really great, though many of the boys lose a lot of their nuance. Like the Japanese version, Liquid mainly just sounds like a big tough guy, lacking some of the pompousness and elegance of Cam Clarke's performance. I was really looking forward to French Revolver Ocelot, but he mainly just sounds like some old geezer. Jim Houseman didn't even sound particularly well recorded. French Snake has moments of brilliance, but his delivery is a little one-note, lacking some of Akio Ohtsuka and David Hayter's range. For my money, Mei Ling is the real stand-out among the French cast, sounding much bouncier and more excitable. I never would have expected a world-class designer of military technology to sound so... cute.

I think the biggest issue with this release is in its visual presentation. I'm completely on the side of whoever decided to stick with the PS1's 240p rendering, with reverence to the original team's approach to presentation, but I don't think it's scaling to HD resolutions correctly. The visuals are far below the standard of a PS1 with a clean RGB output, with the Master Collection release blurring over the dithered texturework that I love so dearly. It's perhaps closer to the composite signal that the majority of players will be used to, but I've grown to associate the game with a much cleaner image. Apparently this port is from M2, most widely known for their brilliant SEGA AGES releases, but I think this is their first time working with a PS1 game, and the lack of tweakable emulation settings may be the result of that. Scanlines are reportedly on their way via a patch, but I really hope display settings go much further than that. Throw in a Duckstation-style hi-res mode for the kiddiwinks if you must, but please give me a mode that presents those original 76,800 pixels as sharply as possible.

The extras in the pack aren't all that exciting. I've heard alternating reports of what the "Master Book" actually is, with some claiming it's a new English version of an old Konami MGS1 book. No. It's new. The fact that it's new might actually be the most interesting thing about it, as it presents the series' timeline with knowledge of all the retcons and inconsistencies that have been injected into the series up to the end of The Phantom Pain. There's even a page that bluntly explains everything that's said about Ocelot's backstory in MGS1 is a bare-faced lie. This is "the official version" of the series' story, although I'd never suggest that those who play Metal Gear 1 for the first time today ought to be thinking about Major Zero and Venom Snake. The book's fine, though its presentation is a little closer to a modern Konami website than a Japan-only 1998 MGS1 book, which would typically be filled with bespoke artwork, debug-mode screenshots of each environment, and often, interviews with the game's key staff. There's a lot of notes on secrets and checklists to follow through the game, but it can't be accessed while you're playing, so it could be a little more useful.

The script book is a little cooler. There have been officially-released script books for MGS1, 2, 3, 4 and Peace Walker in Japan, though I think western fans are being presumptuous about the vintage of these. They're based on the games' English localisations, and I'd assume the direction notes are newly-written, as opposed to insight into how the games were originally written. I'm pretty sure the Metal Gear 1 & 2 script books are entirely the result of someone playing the games and transcribing all the text, instead of someone digging into Kojima's decades-old production notes. Nonetheless, they're still pretty neat. It's nice to have easy access to all the CODEC conversations without having to experiment with every single variable in the games to potentially trigger alternate dialogue. It would have been cooler if you could access each of the scenes - with their audio - from within the book, but that would have been much more of a logistical nightmare.

The Master Collection release of MGS1 is a pretty cool package for hardcore fans of the game, and it does the job of bringing MGS1 to new hardware for less demanding players, too. It's not the end-all, be-all definitive release that some seem convinced they're entitled to, but I'm satisfied enough with all the things it does to stop myself from buying those alternate PAL discs. That's an achievement. If you're not rabid enough to have bought it already, either wishlist it on the platform you find most appealing, until it's inevitably on sale for a good discount, or stick with an emulator you already like. There's not much real value in investing in the wider online discourse.

I'll be honest, it took me a long time to start playing this series. I knew that MGS3 and MGSV were well-known, but I didn't care much

gladly i got a computer so... i started emulating

The desire to play MGS2 and MGS3 was definitely what motivated me to play this, but MGS1 wasn't at all bad, in fact, it's one of my favorite games

The entire narrative is so skillfully built that it's difficult to believe that everything mentioned matters, the plot twists were something that really caught me off guard and considering this game does not have the best in the series makes my dopamine receptors fry

if yall ever say that "the plot is way to complicated" pls shut up, thast honestly what makes this whole game good and the rest of the series ( probably )

the whole anime-esque but not exagerrated part of this game makes it much better tbh it just adds a bit of comedic relief and stupid things that any other games couldnt pull without being corny

im definitely not great with reviews but at least i tried expressing my love for this title, hope mgs2 as good or better

LOVE YOU KOJIMA <3

Ill prefix before I start that i played this through the new master collection on PS5 however I want to talk about each game individually so ill review each one as I complete them and then ill talk about the master collection later.

Similarly to Max Payne I do not have any nostalgic attachment to this franchise as this is the first time that I have played a metal gear game so I was sceptical going in as I was aware of how highly this game is regarded and I was worried that I wouldn't enjoy this nearly as much. However I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed this game.

To again draw a comparison to Max Payne this was one of the first games to really prioritize narrative alongside gameplay and you can tell as this game has a gripping and interesting story paired with enjoyable and really unique boss battles. David Hayter gives an iconic performance as Solid Snake, not to discredit the rest of the cast who also give really good performances. I love how meta all the dialogue is and the parts where the characters comment on your playstyle is a really nice touch. Also have to mention the iconic score which has aged like wine.

The boss battles are where the gameplay shines the most, especially with the level of innovation put into them. The best example is Psycho Mantis in which you have to switch controller ports in order to hit him. The rest of the gameplay shows its age majorly but that is to be expected and I cant really knock a 26 year old game for having janky controls, mainly with the shooting combat.

Couple small issues, I think that the cutscenes can drag on a lot, especially the long codec segments, at least you can skip through them quickly if you need to retry from a save spot. I previously mentioned the janky controls which make this game a bit of a pain to play in the current day but considering its age I dont think its fair to use that as criticism. These next issues are more for the master collection than the game itself. These issues involve two things, Finding Meryl's frequency and switching controller ports during the psycho mantis fight. Since both of these things involved you doing something in the real world, they aren't properly translated to this port. I think that something should of been done to make both of these more organic in the way you access them.

Very surprised by how much i enjoyed this, looking forward to playing 2 & 3.

A rare combination of just the right elements from the direction, gameplay, voice-acting, and story to satisfy what I simply call “DeadCore”. This is easily one of the most tightly designed and coolest gaming experiences I’ve had the immense satisfaction of just digging through. What caught me completely off guard going into this very blind with no real expectations of Metal Gear as a series was how well this entry aged like fine wine. I’d even go bat to say this is aged way too well because of how even games made over a decade later that follow similar approaches flew too short by comparison while Metal Gear Solid still grabbed on high and tightly. It does an amazing job of putting you into the shoes of a stealthy action hero caught amid a global threat shrouded by colorful yet human characters, unbelievable twists and turns, and real world conspiracy while undergoing a deeply interpersonal journey about what it means to be alive and be in the moment. Now there’s definitely some goofy vibes here but never ironically presented to flatline the dramatic weight given by the vocal performances and direction. Solid Snake is a rough-and-tough badass who like the others you come across are taken fairly seriously but it never forgets the humanity these guys still have buried underneath themselves. He isn’t completely afraid to mellow out, to have some funny moments himself, and even grow beyond just a military grunt who would only live for himself and his primal instinct to survive in a world always at war with itself. There’s a cinematic grace to how this is all done that really makes Solid Snake into one of my all-time favorite protagonists easily, especially joining the Club of Badass Meme-Worthy Vidya Game Protagonists like Jack Garland, J.C Denton, Adam Jensen, and The Nameless One. The moment-to-moment pacing is pretty rock solid, always keeping me engaged through stealthing my way around the levels. The controls, barring how bad sniping is, are surprisingly really tight and snappy given the lack of analog movements. I have to give attention to the boss fights in this game though. Besides maybe Sniper Wolf, they’re all so creatively fun especially Psycho Mantis which took unique meta advantage of the PlayStation 1 to deliver a memorable all-timer of a boss fight in gaming.

This shit just cuts deep into me creatively and inspirationally in a way that only certain games have done. It’s such a deeply impactful game for all the right reasons, going beyond just the legwork it did to become arguably the best game on the PS1, or at least a challenging contender for the top spot of that generation. I’m only excited to see how Kojima and company elevates this in further with the following next entries.

I played this game a back in 2022 for the first time and was utterly baffled at its quality. It controlled and played better than almost every single game that I'd ever played in my life. The fact that a game that came out before I was born AND was good enough to leave me constantly in awe of its quality should speak volumes. Rarely do I go back and play a game THIS old and enjoy it THIS much. Even on replays the game just works.

Sure there are some segments I don't love like controlling the missiles through hallways or the insanely long tower climb full of enemies, but god damn if this isn't one of the best games I've ever played.

A year ago I got interested in playing through all of Metal Gear around the time MGR blew up. I started here. This video game franchise has ruined me for life.

Its easy to see why this is one of the most influential video games of all time because its still so fucking good. People may say its graphics are outdated, but I genuinely think this thing looks amazing more than 20 years later. Most of the boss fights are fun, despite the controls being clunky and holding them back. For example, the Metal Gear REX fight really suffers from the controls. It nearly made me lose my mind. The story is weird, campy, kind of stupid, yet made me genuinely emotional. I think this game is going to stick with me forever.

having finally gotten around to MGS it's so immediately clear why it's so revered by almost everyone who touches it.

in many aspects it's still groundbreaking even today--the story, presentation, dialogue, voice acting... it's all still beating the fuck out of most "cinematic" games even now, over 25 years later. there's certainly plenty of "snake objectifies women" moments, but they stop appearing not that far in and even manage to get retroactive justification with the further development of Snake as a character, like talk about being on lock. and in 1998! fuckin, like 50% of AAA games still dont get good voice acting and this game had incredible voice acting when that number was looking more like 95%. how the hell...

unfortunately, it really pains me to say that time has not been kind to the gameplay here in the slightest. at its best moments it never gets any better than what you could get out of a Escape The Classroom When The Teacher Isnt Looking flash game--the backtracking isnt really all that bad (except on those god damn stairs), but my biggest gripe is that like 80% of the game is actually played by looking at the tiny map in the top right corner. you got all this screen real estate but it mostly goes to mechanical waste since the actual mechanics of it--the stuff you're actually doing--is communicated with much more clarity and spatial awareness with that tiny minimap. i've never really considered myself much of a stealth fan but even then i've probably been spoiled by modern stealth games, which are much more complicated and can get away with just showing you the world as-is since the interactions and visibilities are assumable with a good degree of confidence. that isn't the case here though, since it's all simple cones of vision that you mostly just have to walk around.

the combat generally kinda sucks too, now this is something im a little more willing to forgive given the themes tackled here and how you're generally supposed to avoid combat anyways, but also, you gotta do those boss fights and most of them are reeeeally bad. pretty much all of them have some stupid gimmick you're supposed to butt your head against until you figure it out, which is a mode of play that's gone from extremely popular to extremely niche in the past few decades. this whole ethos is what defined a lot of old school western adventure games and its probably also why i think most of them suck shit tbh... visual novels win... but that's beside the point, i think no one could have predicted the internet becoming what it has, and making the question of "how to beat sniper wolf mgs1" a simple google search away. which turns that point in the game from an excuse to backtrack and go exploring and extend your playtime with your brand newly purchased video game into what at its worst feels like a guided tour. this is no fault of MGS, its the fault of the world for changing around it...

but all that said, if you can get past the gameplay (its not really that bad its just okay most of the time and bearable with sparing guide use and savestate spam in a few particularly annoying boss fights) there really is a hell of a lot to chew on here. very very excited to dive into the later games within this series as they will probably have better gameplay (i do recall vaguely having fun with MGS5 for a brief while early on in high school before I got stuck on some mission and couldn't progress), as well as kojima's older ADV work like snatcher and policenauts... i've never played a kojima to credits and while i am kind of kicking myself for not doing it earlier, this does feel like probably the best place to finally start on that journey and i'm not sure a less Video Game Experienced version of myself coulda truly appreciated just how groundbreaking this was in context of the time.