Another entry of the series down. I was originally going to play the Gamecube remake, but after hearing some complaints about it (and wanting to wait until I could actually score a copy), I decided to play the PS1 original on my steam deck. While the game certainly shows its age, MGS still holds up as an excellent stealth game, especially for the time.

The story is fantastic, and reflects on the crazy storytelling that Kojima will show off more in future entries of the series. The voice acting is honestly some of the best I've heard of the era; maybe even just in general? Every character is excellently voice acted and, and the writing is superb.

The general gameplay of sneaking around works surprisingly well. It was so much fun seeing how this series started and worked, and how it was built upon in future entries. That being said, the gunplay was easily the worst part of the game. It was extremely difficult to aim. While I could see this this partially being intentional to reduce the amount of combat the player would want to engage in, it also makes the forced combat sections all the more clunky and janky.

Even with the jank though, the game has some fantastic boss battles. There are a lot of highlights, like Psycho Mantis, Metal Gear Rex, Hind D, and Grey Fox to name a few. The soundtrack is also fantastic. While it does repeat tracks a lot, they're all so catchy and awesome that you don't even mind.

I was pleasantly surprised to see how well the original MGS was. If I had a PS1 back in the day, I probably would've fallen in love with this game. As it stands now, I still really enjoy it, even if there is a bit too much jank by today's standards.