A game that lays so much of the groundwork for the rest of the Metal Gear series that if you're approaching it after playing Metal Gear Solid it practically feels like a 'demake' of that title. Takes all of the impressive stuff from the original game and adds loads of new ideas - all things that are eventually used again throughout the Metal Gear Solid games - and begins to really find that sweet spot for Metal Gear storytelling. You know, the one that lands directly between the utterly absurd and the deadly serious commentary on war. I remember during the pre-MGS release hype a few magazines running statements from Kojima saying that 'MGS was the technology finally allowing him to deliver the Metal Gear game he always wanted to' and I remember finding how close to MGS Metal Gear 2 actually is when I first played through it but on this recent replay, I think this is a game that holds up remarkably well 33 years on.

I can't quite get my head around the fact that this game was doing all this in a world before Sonic The fuckin' Hedgehog existed.