I've always found dated video games harder to enjoy than dated movies, and that's unfortunate for a game like this that has a lot of great ideas. I haven't played too many PS1-era games but I'm pretty sure most of them are not as creative in both gameplay and a metric ton of dialogue and cutscenes as this one is. But as creative as the gameplay is it feels like a first draft - because it kind of was one, of doing this in 3D. And that hampers it, especially during boss battles which feel especially...I don't use the J-word, the one that rhymes with spanky, in my game reviews, but, they feel weird, okay. The fact that you can't aim in first-person (or third, but you can't even look in third-person) is really annoying. A lot of this game felt more frustrating than it should have been, and that might be because I suck as a player, but I have to assume it isn't. I haven't seen other people play this so maybe once I do I'll know. But several of the bosses it felt like I won them more by chance than anything else. I didn't look forward to them, I liked doing the regular stealth gameplay much more even when I wasn't doing well with it. There's relatively so little of it, which is unfortunate. The cardboard boxes are so iconic but it seemed like I always did better without them then I did whenever I was trying to use them.

But still, I have to respect any game where I can play it and think "people when this came out must have thought that this was like playing a movie". I felt that way about Kirby's Adventure, though that's a very different game, and I feel it about this too despite its dated aspects. Its plot isn't particularly engaging to me; I appreciate them trying to humanize the bosses but it didn't really work on me (that's one thing that 2 has already improved on, and with a way sillier guy than the bosses in this game too), but you get so much of it and in such a way that it's hard not to care at all. You can just call up your buds at anytime and get additional information, including a very long spiel on the current state of nuclear weapons that's completely optional. Even if I found the boss fights annoying I can appreciate how they tried to make them different from each other - but then, my favorite, the second fight with Raven, was the most normal of the bunch. The final fights, which are kind of frustrating and suddenly require some Dark Souls-esque dodging, are at least pretty damn cool presentation-wise. And of course there's the iconic voice acting. But overall, I didn't care enough about Snake, Meryl, and a lot of the themes the story presented, and it wasn't strong enough to make me forget about the issues the gameplay has.

It's a good start, and I'm already playing 2 and greatly enjoying the improvements I'm seeing in both the gameplay and story.