Put off playing this for so, so long! Nice to see how much of the little minutiae of MGS1's gameplay they exploit in creative ways for some genuinely devious and endearing missions. I'm sure much of this is just a compilation of heavily stylised playtesting rooms the developers used to stress test enemy and weapon behaviour, but the abstraction allows for a litany of challenging vignettes that would otherwise be impossible in the main game. It even managed to wrangle a series of murder mystery missions out of this engine. Stupid, bully-able AI and primitive physics are simply the best, and this game knows it. Most of the best challenges force you to think of the enemy guards like bowling pins to knock around.

The task list is doubled up with time trial variants of almost every mission, making this nowhere near as lean as it should be. I'm sorry... I just don't find time trials interesting in any context. Didn't exactly love this, but came out of the experience with a boosted appreciation for the wonderfully textured player freedom in MGS1, and newfound knowledge of ways I can traumatise the Genome Soldiers.