I've been eyeing the Metal Gear Solid games for some time now, but have always been intimidated by the stealth action genre. I'm notoriously bad at any sort of stealth in games; when I'm given the option between stealth and combat I always go in guns blazing, and when I'm forced to use stealth I begrudgingly force my way through it to get it over with. After starting and stopping Metal Gear Solid a couple of times over the last year or two, I finally decided to sit down and play it all the way through.
The high point for me in MGS was its writing and voice performances. I had heard that Hideo Kojima was an amazing storyteller and an auteur in his field, and the story he's written here is very clear proof of that. I absolutely loved the cinematic feel here, and didn't mind the cutscene length as I'm someone who loves being immersed in a story while playing a game. For a game released in 1998, the cutscene and voice direction are incredible, and this has easily become one of my favorite narratives in recent memory.
One thing that I wish I had similar praise for was the gameplay. It's hard for me to say that the gameplay has aged poorly since this is my first time playing it, but I was pretty frustrated with it throughout most of my play-through, especially the gunfights. It felt impossible to aim, and whenever you were forced into gunfights or had to outrun groups of enemies shooting at you (looking at you Communications Tower) I felt my blood boil. I find the term "janky" reductive when it comes to gameplay and controls, but it's hard to think of another term to describe a lot of the gameplay of MGS. I'm sure it was also partly due to the fact that the game wanted you to prioritize stealth whenever possible, but I'm bad at stealth so I was forced into gunfights far more often than the game was probably expecting me to be.
I'm really glad that I finally decided to give MGS a shot. As a big fan of narrative-driven games with complex themes/plots, I had always heard great things about this series. Some less-than-stellar gameplay is very much made up for by strong writing, excellent cutscene/voice direction and a bonkers but fascinating story. I've heard even better things about MGS2 and MGS3, so I'm definitely looking forward to playing through those in the near future.
The high point for me in MGS was its writing and voice performances. I had heard that Hideo Kojima was an amazing storyteller and an auteur in his field, and the story he's written here is very clear proof of that. I absolutely loved the cinematic feel here, and didn't mind the cutscene length as I'm someone who loves being immersed in a story while playing a game. For a game released in 1998, the cutscene and voice direction are incredible, and this has easily become one of my favorite narratives in recent memory.
One thing that I wish I had similar praise for was the gameplay. It's hard for me to say that the gameplay has aged poorly since this is my first time playing it, but I was pretty frustrated with it throughout most of my play-through, especially the gunfights. It felt impossible to aim, and whenever you were forced into gunfights or had to outrun groups of enemies shooting at you (looking at you Communications Tower) I felt my blood boil. I find the term "janky" reductive when it comes to gameplay and controls, but it's hard to think of another term to describe a lot of the gameplay of MGS. I'm sure it was also partly due to the fact that the game wanted you to prioritize stealth whenever possible, but I'm bad at stealth so I was forced into gunfights far more often than the game was probably expecting me to be.
I'm really glad that I finally decided to give MGS a shot. As a big fan of narrative-driven games with complex themes/plots, I had always heard great things about this series. Some less-than-stellar gameplay is very much made up for by strong writing, excellent cutscene/voice direction and a bonkers but fascinating story. I've heard even better things about MGS2 and MGS3, so I'm definitely looking forward to playing through those in the near future.