The original PlayStation was dominated by games where developers made big splashes that sent wavelike ripples coursing throughout generations. Final Fantasy VII may have been the crowning achievement for changing the industry, but Metal Gear Solid straight up ascended the medium itself. I’ve already gone through several future entries that undeniably were a glow-up in every sense of the word imaginable, yet, even revisiting this so soon, nothing about its inherent quality feels diminished in retrospect.

Metal Gear Solid 2 may have the most ambitiously unpredictable narrative in video game history, but it couldn’t have worked as effectively without the original to subvert. Metal Gear Solid 3 has the greatest lineup of bosses in the entire franchise, but it doesn’t have Psycho Mantis. Metal Gear Solid 4 is this emotional crescendo that blurred the lines dividing Kojima and the player, but our connection only mattered because of the game that started it. Metal Gear Solid V is a rowing technical achievement in both graphics and gameplay, but the confident aura of what Metal Gear Solid accomplished in 1998 remains unmatched.

Metal Gear Solid is the ‘gene’ that forever courses through Kojima’s tactical action espionage series. It inherited the concepts from the first two Metal Gear games, even from other Kojima games like Policenauts through Meryl, and reimagined them into something familiar yet new. Solid Snake, like every other counterpart of him going forward, represents everything that the original Metal Gear Solid does right, mechanically and thematically. He’s fairly straightforward in what he sets out to do, maybe rough around the edges, but is more introspective and human the longer you invest in his sneaky card-boarding around Shadow Moses. Although this may be a game with a dramatic plot about preventing nuclear weapons from unleashing war that’s naturally shrouded in conspiracy and global politics, the heart of it all is an inspiring game about the struggle for our identity rooted in our genetic history. Reflected in the colorfully well-defined codec cast and what’s still hands down the best characterized antagonist group in Metal Gear history, FOXHOUND. But coming back around to replaying this, on the meta level, I like to think this was Kojima projecting how he still needed to find his identity as a gaming visionary and outgrow his ‘genes’, those being his earlier games that represented a premature version of himself. A message that I don’t think is fully complete until his unconventional sequel. There’s definitely some stuff here that can be tedious gameplay-wise, but the whole package itself is still unbelievable, man.

Had to lower my score after my 3rd Playthrough for new game ++ (All Mind route) simply because of how disappointing the secret campaign was. Many missions for example like "Protect The Strider" had me really excited to start, only to be let down to not do anything cool nor new and just do a large gank fight with a ton of tedious enemies. Furthermore the Final secret boss is by far one of the lamest final fights I've ever done, filled with way too many enemies that are just there to pad out the fight and waste your ammo. And with all that the fight is rendered completely pointless with our main character basically siding with the dudes who just tried to kill him. I just wanted to write that experience down, the rest of the game is incredibly well made.