This review contains spoilers
Metal Gear has aged really well in a number of aspects- there was clearly a lot of thought put into it in pretty much every aspect and it feels limited by its hardware rather than its creativity.
For starters, the plot is actually pretty alright- considering it came out in 1987 there being a solid narrative with a genuinely good plot twist is a shocker. This is only two years after Super Mario Bros and we have a game not only trying to tell a story but having the story influence the gameplay.
The twist of Big Boss being the head of Outer Heaven all along ties into the gameplay a lot more than I would expect- throughout Metal Gear I was frustrated that he often gives shit advice (He tells you to put a gas mask on halfway through the gas room and later in the game when Snake is progressing more than he expected he outright leads you into traps multiple times) and chalked it up to either a translation error that had been left in for authenticity or just not great design- to have the twist suddenly recontextualise parts of the game in a lightbulb moment was great. I did not expect a game that came out this early in the medium's history to pull something like that, even with the franchise's reputation of getting clever.
In general, Metal Gear is definitely ahead of its time. Manually punching in a few different radio codes to speak to different characters is charming and the huge amount of items with only a use or two is really cute- it feels much more immersive than having a small set of tools you routinely cycle through. It's a primitive stealth game, no doubt, but it does its best to feel immersive.
Unfortunately time has shone light on a few flaws, most of them fairly big and the only reasons the game isn't rated significantly higher. The combat is pretty bad, there are only a scant few tracks on the OST, most of which you'll hear on loop, and the stealth feels very dated. It's worth emphasising that none of these are due to any sort of fault in Metal Gear's design, which I think is actually fairly bulletproof as a foundation- it's just that it's 36 years old and the hardware is puny by today's standards. The MSX is just not sophisticated enough for a good combat system or good stealth.
Definitely worth a play, very excited to get into the rest of this legendary franchise.
For starters, the plot is actually pretty alright- considering it came out in 1987 there being a solid narrative with a genuinely good plot twist is a shocker. This is only two years after Super Mario Bros and we have a game not only trying to tell a story but having the story influence the gameplay.
The twist of Big Boss being the head of Outer Heaven all along ties into the gameplay a lot more than I would expect- throughout Metal Gear I was frustrated that he often gives shit advice (He tells you to put a gas mask on halfway through the gas room and later in the game when Snake is progressing more than he expected he outright leads you into traps multiple times) and chalked it up to either a translation error that had been left in for authenticity or just not great design- to have the twist suddenly recontextualise parts of the game in a lightbulb moment was great. I did not expect a game that came out this early in the medium's history to pull something like that, even with the franchise's reputation of getting clever.
In general, Metal Gear is definitely ahead of its time. Manually punching in a few different radio codes to speak to different characters is charming and the huge amount of items with only a use or two is really cute- it feels much more immersive than having a small set of tools you routinely cycle through. It's a primitive stealth game, no doubt, but it does its best to feel immersive.
Unfortunately time has shone light on a few flaws, most of them fairly big and the only reasons the game isn't rated significantly higher. The combat is pretty bad, there are only a scant few tracks on the OST, most of which you'll hear on loop, and the stealth feels very dated. It's worth emphasising that none of these are due to any sort of fault in Metal Gear's design, which I think is actually fairly bulletproof as a foundation- it's just that it's 36 years old and the hardware is puny by today's standards. The MSX is just not sophisticated enough for a good combat system or good stealth.
Definitely worth a play, very excited to get into the rest of this legendary franchise.