Metal Gear Solid, even after over two decades, remains one of Kojima’s most innovative, out there and forward thinking games, even if the game can’t help but show its age. While story, cinematography and themes held up incredibly well, the gameplay hasn’t survived the years in quite the same way.
7,5 / 10
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This is one of those games where I’m kind of struggling to come up with unique things to say about it, namely because a game series so ubiquitous and influential as Metal Gear Solid is bound to have been discussed to death for close to 25 years now. There are countless think pieces and articles and video essays about its role as a cultural juggernaut, about how innovative a game it was for its time, about the genius of Kojima, etc. So, instead I’ll try my hardest to simply talk about what I liked and didn’t like about the game, what I think held up well, didn’t hold up well, or was never all that good in the first place.
I think I should start with saying that I have no nostalgic connection to this game, or even this series as a whole. I played MGS1 in April 2023, after only having played 2 other Kojima games the year before, namely MGS5 and the often maligned Death Stranding. (I also played Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance but that one isn’t even a Kojima game) I did enjoy both of these games quite a bit, even though both of them are rather divisive, Death Stranding in particular. I mean, I did have more than my fair share of problems with both, and I even though I had a lot of fun with them, I could also see the points of the many detractors of Kojima’s extremely idiosyncratic style of making games. Personally, I’m somewhere in between the two camps of “Kojima is god” and “Kojima is a hack”, often wildly flipping between them on a whim. Often, I’ve heard old school Kojima fans say stuff like “he fell off with MGS4” and that “the first 3 MGS are flawless”. While I can’t speak about those games and related opinions, I can say that MGS1 fit surprisingly well with my impression of the games I actually did play. Which is to say, great in some parts, not so great in others. On the one hand, you have some fantastic stuff that survived the ages in a way that is only possible with Kojima, and on the other hand I have rarely been as frustrated by haphazard design decisions, extremely blatant padding, bad stealth mechanics and lots of other stuff that soured my experience with MGS1 - also only possible with Kojima. But ultimately, like MGS5 and Death Stranding, I did end up liking this game over all, despite its flaws.
I think easily the most impressive part about MGS1 today is its fantastic sense of cinematography. For those not familiar with the PS1-era, it needs to be stated that at that time video game cutscenes - if a game had any cutscenes - were often times not very good, quite short, lacked quite a bit in terms of cinematography and storytelling, and beyond that, were almost always simply FMVs. (“full motion video”, = pre-rendered video files) Even Silent Hill 1, which had absolutely fantastically animated cutscenes at the time, had to fully rely on those FMVs to give the game a feeling of “big budget Hollywood” stuff. Metal Gear Solid 1 is extremely cool and forward thinking in that, not only does the game not use any FMVs whatsoever, but the way the animators used the actual in game graphics and models to direct really compelling and interestingly staged cutscenes is unprecedented.
Not only do the movement of the characters and their delivery of dialogue feel very natural, the camera is almost always placed in interesting positions and even utilises movement during action sequences or otherwise tense moments. This gives the game a far more cinematic feel than just about anything else up to that point. Game designers back often didn’t know all that much about cinematography and story telling, and had to rely on their limited understanding of these things to make everything work. At some points in MGS1, I forgot I was watching highly abstracted, polygonal versions of real people talking and interacting with each other, and fully bought into the illusion that I was watching a film. It really feels like a movie/game hybrid in the best of ways.
Of course, another thing that adds to this is the surprisingly good voice acting. “Surprising” insofar that, once again, at the time video game voice acting tended to be pretty bad. Most of the time the “””actors””” were literally just staff members and programmers without any experience in acting or direction what so ever. While MGS1’s voice acting wouldn’t be anything of particular interest today, this was as close to Hollywood levels of acting you could get in video games at the time. David Hayter as Solid Snake is obviously legendary and immortalised through his “dummy thicc” copy pasta. Oh, and for playing the main character in one of the most acclaimed video game series of all time or whatever. But besides him, the other performances were also really good. I particularly liked Robert Aktin Downes as Master Miller / other characters.
So far so good, great cinematography and voice acting. These are things that Kojima is known for even today, perhaps to the point where this unique selling point itself even kind of became almost flanderised. “Kojima wants to make movies, not games.” And, you know there is a point to that. However, here’s the thing; I don’t really mind it all that much if the story I’m witnessing is actually interesting and told well. And I think, that’s the same for most people, because somehow I don’t hear anywhere near as many people make this complaint with MGS1 than they do with MGS5 and Death Stranding. MGS5 is infamously an unfinished game with an unfinished story, and you can tell. It doesn’t help that the story it tries to tell positions itself as a prequel to over almost every Metal Gear game, retroactively setting up a lot of plot points for the rest of the series, meaning the story makes even less sense if you haven’t played the others first. Death Stranding isn’t unfinished per se, but its story makes no fucking sense and feels like it should be way simpler and to the point than it ended up being. The fact that both of these games also suffer from the most severe case of “Kojima story telling” yet (meaning: and excess of incredibly drawn out and unnecessary information dumps that don’t evolve the plot or characters what so ever and only serve to give the world a fake sense of depth) doesn’t help matters at all.
Needless to say, I expected MGS1 to be just as much of a confusing, nonsensical mess with plot lines that ended nowhere and didn’t really have much of a point. Well, I can happily say that I know understand what old-school Kojima fans were on about when they say the newer games kinda sucked story wise, because unlike the aforementioned games MGS1’s story isn’t just really good, it’s by far the best part of the game.
While we can just jump straight into the actual main plot of the game by hitting new game, the devs provided multiple ways of catching up on the previous games’ plot lines as well as gain more context for the mission you’re currently on. Lingering in the main menu for a while will give you the typical main menu cutscene which will fill you in on some details we’ll get into shortly. The other option comes in the form of a “mission briefing”, in which you’ll be thoroughly informed of the player character’s mission, goal, potential threats, ways in and ways out. You’ll also get a bit of character set up for both Snake and the colonel.
We play as mercenary, freedom fighter and super soldier extraordinaire Solid Snake, aka Snake, aka David, aka Iroqois Pliskin etc. The game takes place some years after the events of both Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, in which Snake invades the private military station / micro nation called “Outer Heaven”, and kills its leader; the greatest soldier of all time, god of combat and patron saint of mercenaries, Big Boss, aka John, aka Jack, aka Naked Snake , aka Ishmael, and so on, who spearheaded all kinds of military organisations, secret government programs, etc. all for one singular goal: to create a nation for soldiers alone. Why? I don’t fucking know, I don’t think I’d be able to comprehend the entirety of Metal Gear Solid lore even IF I played all the games. The reason for our conflict with Big Boss is the titular military tech called “Metal Gear”, which are essentially big old anime mechs, but set in a world basically like ours, where they would undoubtedly be weapons of unbelievable mass destruction. There are a whole lot of details about the story of both MG and MG2 I don’t know about because I haven’t played them yet.
Anyway, back to the plot of MGS. A few years after the events of the aforementioned games, living in isolation somewhere in the Alaskan frozen wastes, Snake is, uh, “contacted” by his old commander, Colonel Roy Campbell. Our guy has achieved legend status for his previous missions and is known as the greatest living warrior, after having defeated and foiled the man who previously held that title. Like I mentioned before, you can choose to receive some extra context by selecting the mission briefing, in which the following happens:
We open up on Solid Snake, stripped naked to a chair inside of a military submarine, being greeted by a mysterious voice which turns out to be the Colonel. Snake, previously having been the top soldier for the US Military special forces, is now retired, living in Alaska, and finds himself detained by a couple of armed soldiers, for the purpose of coercing him to go on one final mission for the US military. We also get introduced to a bunch of other NPCs we’ll get to talk to a lot during this game, namely Dr. Naomi Hunter, Mei Ling, Master Miller, and so on. So, what is the problem, and why is Snake the one who has to solve it?
Our goal is to invade the fictional Alaskan island and former US military outpost “Shadow Moses”, which has been taken over by FOXHOUND after rebelling against their employers. The leaders of FOXHOUND have since threatened the US government with nuclear strikes from the new iteration of the game series’ eponymous fighting robots, the American-produced Metal Gear REX, over the remains of Big Boss and 1 billion dollars cash. Our job is to infiltrate the base, free the various hostages taken by FOXHOUND - including Colonel Campbell’s niece Meryl Silverburgh -, check whether or not Shadow Moses DOES possess the capabilities for said strike, and destroy Metal Gear should the need arise. While we’re there, we’re also tasked with saving both the DARPA chief Donald Anderson, and the ever infamous Dr. Hal “Otacon” (abbreviated from “Otaku-convention”, yes, seriously) Emmerich. Simple enough. Snake isn’t exactly super quick to trust the colonel, and asks for full disclosure regarding the mission details. After getting to know the other characters, and being injected with a healthy dose of nano-machines who will turn out to have a whole bunch of different uses, we set out for the frozen military base.
This is where we should briefly talk about this game’s signature game mechanic you’ve seen referenced a billion times in other games or other media without ever knowing where it originated from: The Soliton radar system. At its most basic it’s a radar system that lets you see enemies from farther away, as well as their effective line of sight / range in the environment. This is what basically makes the stealth system, other than the level design. But the Soliton is also a communication device which let’s you ring up various NPCs back at the home station, who all have different fields of expertise and will give you varying advice depending on the situation - and depending on whether or not they are even qualified to help you in the first place. The amount of different dialogue that these NPCs can present you with depending on the situation is seriously impressive, even for today’s standards. And it’s not all just strictly gameplay related either. Sometimes, especially when any given NPC can’t really help in a situation, they’ll often give you more story context or background on their own character, sometimes even giving away a little too much for their own good - at least, if you’re perceptive. The single biggest thing I’ll praise about the codec calls are that they are a great way to find out what to do in certain boss fights, that would probably have you Google the solution in any other game. Once again, incredibly forward thinking and a fantastic way to future proof your game.
That’s enough set up, we’ll get back to the story in a bit, but for now we ascend from the waves and make our way into the enemy base. So, let’s take the opportunity and talk about the incredibly iconic Shadow Moses:
The game takes place entirely within its confines, and is made up of several smaller sections. The outpost is constructed a bit like something you’d see in a Metroidvania game, with many unlockable shortcuts and doors that are locked from one side, and has some areas that aren’t necessary to complete the game, and instead have upgrades, supplies or other stuff that makes exploring the whole of Shadow Moses worthwhile. Level design is quite good for the most part and works well for a game based around stealth, and surprisingly does more for the experience than the actual mechanics the game provides you with. I will say that it’s nothing too crazy though, and that I’ve seen plenty of stealth-based games do more with similar set ups and mechanics. On the other hand, most of these games came well after this one. Mostly it comes down to stealth being practically necessitated by a lack of useful combat mechanics, more than the designated stealth mechanics in this game being particularly fleshed out.
In either case, the thing that really makes Shadow Moses work for me is the atmosphere. The rough and brutalist metal and concrete structure jutting out from the rocks of this Alaskan island, penetrating through the thick snow and fog. The sound of machines whirring and snow falling and Snake’s footsteps walking through it, the incredibly iconic musical themes in the background… great stuff. It really makes you feel like you’re breaking into a place you’re not supposed to be. The fact that you can switch to first person mode to take a look around, once again underlining the three dimensional nature of this place makes this even more immersive. The many levels inside Shadow Moses are all rather small and quick to traverse, at least at first, and give you plenty of stuff to find if you’re curious enough - and it turns out, you really SHOULD explore, because while a lot of the stuff you can find is optional, some other stuff isn’t, and the game WILL make you go all the way back to retrieve it.
This is kind of a perfect segue to move on to one of the things that exist on the other end of the Kojima extreme for me; the boss fights. I cannot say that I was a big fan of them.
I felt that they are all extremely gimmicky and some relied heavily on the player finding very specific items that would hard lock you out of completing the boss fights until you find them. Sometimes they might require you to find a specific weapon that, like I alluded to before, you could have found if you were observant enough, like one of the mid-game bosses, the first battle against Sniper Wolf. Story context; after having freed Meryl (who is also Snake’s love interest in this game), we lead her through parts of the level until she gets shot by the aforementioned boss while walking through a narrow hallway to a different part of Shadow Moses. Bleeding out on the floor, she’ll be at the mercy of Snake defeating Wolf as quickly as possible. However, should Snake not have brought a PSG-1 sniper rifle with him, the game unironically stops everything and makes you go back to the start of the game to retrieve it, all the while Meryl is bleeding out on the floor, in the cold of an Alaskan winter night, while a deadly enemy sniper is still aiming her sights on our girl. This is, frankly, absurdly out of place, tonally speaking. I get that this fight is hardly doable without a sniper rifle, but having to leave the encounter in the middle of a gunfight while your love interest is literally dying on the floor feels so incredibly off. I have to believe this was some last minute decision, as it makes no sense, dramaturgically speaking. What’s worse is that the game seemingly intends for you to go through whole ordeal, as I don’t think that most people would’ve found the sniper without first fully understanding how this game even works.
Another example, this one particularly egregious for me personally, was Vulcan Raven during the second half of the game. While you don’t technically need a specific weapon to beat him, in praxis you kinda do. Structurally, the boss fight works by putting you in a small rat maze with a guy wearing a heavy mech-suit with mini guns equipped on each arm. Needless to say, if he spots you, he’ll kill you in seconds flat. While you can technically fight him with just about any form of explosive in this game, including the rocket launcher, what you REALLY want to use are claymore mines. The problem being that, once again, you have to go out of your way to search every nook and cranny of this map if you want to find some of them. You can potentially pick them up during a certain boss battle, and some in certain, short sections in between areas. Now, I’ll admit that not picking them up every chance I get was on me. There were plenty of instances where I stepped on some claymores and died, and therefore should’ve known about their presence. The game does tell you about the x-ray vision that lets you see invisible enemies and hidden explosives. However, the game does not tell you that you’ll practically NEED to use them during certain boss battles, at least if you don’t plan on having an aneurysm. I tried this boss fight so many times without them, because I didn’t feel like starting from an earlier save, when that save was at least an hour back. Eventually, however, I caved and loaded an earlier save so I could go up and farm those mines like you’re clearly supposed to. Usually this wouldn’t piss me off so much, but the obtuse way in which this whole strategy is relayed to you, alongside the fact that you’re ostensibly given multiple angles for any boss fight here made this whole section almost unbearably frustrating for me, and made me drop the game for a couple of days. Having one option that is significantly easier and more practical than ANY of the other solutions you technically could use isn’t good design. The worst part is that, even with the intended solution, this fight is still a tedious chore.
And that is sadly true for every single boss in this game. I’m not going into detail on every single boss fight here, but I can confidently say I didn’t enjoy a single one of them except for MAYBE the final one(s). Not even the legendary Psycho Mantis did it for me, but that’s mostly due to the intended solution - switching the controller ports - obviously doesn’t work on emulator. I had to go for the less interesting solution of shooting the statue and then running around the room like crazy trying to get a hit in. I don’t think having access to the intended solution would’ve massively benefitted the fight though.
Something that remains true for every boss fight; if you walk in without enough heals (that is, typically a full stack of them) or god forbid, low health, you’re gonna have a bad time. I understand that this was usually not considered a design flaw since “you could just start from an earlier save”, which was genuinely considered a valid design decision in the late 90’s. For all the shit that the late 2000’s hand-holding design epidemic gets, making it so players don’t lose hours of progress for very simple mistakes was a pretty good thing. Maybe going so hard on the boss encounters isn’t really warranted, but they do present themselves as a rather important part of the story, there are quite a lot of them and most importantly, the regular enemies really don’t offer anything in the way of challenge. This is only a stealth game as long as you feel like playing a stealth game. You can absolutely just walk through and, with enough patience, simply shoot all the enemies without utilising any stealth what so ever. The boss fights are the only instances where the game actually gets a bit challenging, but sadly most of them go about it in the most obnoxious way possible.
Sadly, the boss fights aren’t even my biggest problem, which says a lot because they already pissed me off quite a bit. No, it’s actually the entire second half of the game I have some serious gripes with. The first disc of the game (which is also the first half) is generally paced very well, with good level design, nice stealth sections, and a continuous feeling of progressing forward while also making those little Metroidvania-esque connections in your head about how the map is structured. While backtracking is a thing, it’s kept to a minimum in favour of constantly presenting you with new stuff. The second half is the complete opposite of that.
Backtracking does not only become noticeable, but excessive. The game also isn’t going about implementing it in a way that I would describe as “elegant”, either. Honestly, it’s one of the most offensively obvious examples of padding out a game’s length for no reason other to increase its “runtime” I have ever seen. It is beyond belief to me that this keeps getting ignored in all of those nostalgia-drenched 5 star reviews that go on and on about how beautifully this game has aged, and how it’s one of the best games of all time. This is bad design, and it was bad design for its time as well.
Easily the most infamous example of this - although sadly not the only one - would be the whole ordeal about using the PAL key to deactivate the nuclear launch sequence. Now, the set up is actually quite clever. You spent around half of the game looking for three distinct PALs (permissive action link), knowing that you need them to shut down the launch, since there are three colour-coded modules on the launch console. Thus far you’ve only found one, and time is running out. But then Otacon informs you that you already had all three keys the entire time. Turns out, that one single keycard you found actually includes the other two codes you need. How? The key turns into a different key depending on the temperature. Conceptually, this is really cool and one of the smarter ways to go about it. Gameplay wise, it’s fucking horrible and by far my least favourite section of the game. What’s worse is that it’s right at the end, dragging out the moment you finally get to the final boss even more.
Basically, you’re supposed to go to an area with a certain temperature, stay there for a couple of minutes so the key changes colour, and then get back to the final room. Sounds simple enough. But there are some things that utterly destroy the pacing of this final stretch. First, none of the areas you go to are new. You are required to backtrack to places you’ve already been to hours ago, just to stay a few minutes there and go back. There are no clever shortcuts to make traversing the second half of the map more interesting. You have to fight the exact same enemies every time you go through EITHER way. There is no way to effectively circumnavigate them without being a speed runner or other gamer god. And, on top of that, each trip takes significantly longer than the one before it. Depending on how you play, this could take you anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours. This is legit some of the worst cases of padding I have ever seen. This is just straight up filler bullshit. I’m sorry, but I’m gonna call it like it is. It’s dogshit game design.
Now, I think I understand why they did it. Apart from the obvious point (just make the game a little longer), I think it’s structured like this go give the absolute load of codec calls you’ll be receiving a bit more room to breathe. This section is basically where the entire story of MGS1 pulls a complete 180° and makes you realise you didn’t have the full picture. I understand that there needed to be a big focus on that, and that cramming them into a very short gameplay section would’ve probably just overloaded players with info. However, artificially padding out the game just so a few cutscenes have a little extra room to breathe is akin to a cardinal sin of game design for me. Surely there had to have been a better way than this. I’m not gonna harp on for it more than I already have, because I think I’ve made my point.
Luckily the actual story of the game keeps up its quality up until the credits. The final boss is also really fucking cool, story wise. Gameplay, it’s more of what we already got, albeit slightly more thrilling. A good hand-to-hand brawl is just what this story needed, even if Kojima can’t stop shoving it into literally every game he makes. The final turret section is not my favourite but it works well enough and builds tension right until the climax of the story. I’m not gonna go into great detail concerning the overall story; a.) because it’d take way too long and this review is too long as is, and b.) in the slim off-chance that someone who hasn’t played the game fully read this review (If that’s you, hi. What’s up?) they won’t get spoiled too much, at least not about the good parts.
Before I sign off, here are some other notable parts about the game that didn’t fit into the text so far:
The music is generally fantastic. It strikes a nice balance between James Bond-y, funky bass guitar and synth driven tracks and some droney, almost industrial sounding stuff. The standard combat theme is literally iconic, alongside various pieces of sound design in this game, most notably of course the “!” sound. (You just heard it in your head, admit it.) I especially love the song “The Best Is Yet To Come” by Aoife Ní Fhearraigh, absolutely beautiful anti-war song.
While I wasn’t a huge fan of the actual boss battles, I loved the actual characters’ monologues. And that’s saying something, because usually I’m not the biggest fan of overly indulgent monologuing - and no, the irony of saying this while writing a Bachelor thesis’ worth of text is not lost on me. They tell so much about their respective characters and philosophies, and they’re fantastic stand-ins for various aspects of warfare and the ideologies behind it. Their designs are all extremely memorable and iconic.
Speaking of characters, I loved all the codec call characters, and the whole concept of it more than I would anticipate. Having to speak to Mei Ling whenever you want to save gives it so much more meaning. Discovering more and more about both Naomi and Dr. Miller, finding out who (or what) is the enigmatic “Deepthroat” (yes, that’s his actual name, don’t laugh) and being amused by all of Otacon’s weird weeabo antics. The only thing I wish was that maybe ignoring the codec, or at least being able to fully skip certain sections (esp. if you’ve already seen them) was an option sometimes, especially after you died and have to watch a whole 5 minute monologue again.
Snake himself is also a great protagonist. He’s witty, he’s badass and he has a surprisingly fleshed out personality with a lot of nuance. He loves to smoke and he hates being lied to. An appreciator of beautiful women, but not a womaniser. A battle compatriot as well as man with a heart with the size of a mountain. David Hayter is literally perfect as Solid Snake. You can also really tell that Snake really grows as character throughout his mission. Really makes me wish I played the previous entries to have a little more story context.
CONCLUSION:
Ultimately, Metal Gear Solid isn’t a game I would say I love, but it’s definitely a game I deeply respect. It brought so many great innovations to the gaming world. It was one of the most important steps in giving games as a whole a more prestigious connotation than simply being mindless entertainment. It kicked off what could be considered one of the most influential and greatest video game series of all time. But the actual, well, game-part left me exceedingly frustrated the more time I spent on it. While some things aged brilliantly, others aged horribly. It surprises me just how close this game comes to both Metal Gear Solid 5 and Death Stranding for me. All games with great individual moments, overall good systems but a lot of excess fat and unnecessary nonsense that really drags the game down more than it adds to it.
It’s definitely a game that’s a lot more fun to talk and write about than it is to actually play. It tries so many different things, and it’s surprisingly good at a lot of them, but sadly simply overdoes it. If I ever wanted to experience the story again, I would most likely just watch a YT video of it. However, it did make me even more curious to finally fully work my way through this legendary series, and I can’t wait to give Metal Gear Solid 2 a try.
7,5 / 10
7,5 / 10
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This is one of those games where I’m kind of struggling to come up with unique things to say about it, namely because a game series so ubiquitous and influential as Metal Gear Solid is bound to have been discussed to death for close to 25 years now. There are countless think pieces and articles and video essays about its role as a cultural juggernaut, about how innovative a game it was for its time, about the genius of Kojima, etc. So, instead I’ll try my hardest to simply talk about what I liked and didn’t like about the game, what I think held up well, didn’t hold up well, or was never all that good in the first place.
I think I should start with saying that I have no nostalgic connection to this game, or even this series as a whole. I played MGS1 in April 2023, after only having played 2 other Kojima games the year before, namely MGS5 and the often maligned Death Stranding. (I also played Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance but that one isn’t even a Kojima game) I did enjoy both of these games quite a bit, even though both of them are rather divisive, Death Stranding in particular. I mean, I did have more than my fair share of problems with both, and I even though I had a lot of fun with them, I could also see the points of the many detractors of Kojima’s extremely idiosyncratic style of making games. Personally, I’m somewhere in between the two camps of “Kojima is god” and “Kojima is a hack”, often wildly flipping between them on a whim. Often, I’ve heard old school Kojima fans say stuff like “he fell off with MGS4” and that “the first 3 MGS are flawless”. While I can’t speak about those games and related opinions, I can say that MGS1 fit surprisingly well with my impression of the games I actually did play. Which is to say, great in some parts, not so great in others. On the one hand, you have some fantastic stuff that survived the ages in a way that is only possible with Kojima, and on the other hand I have rarely been as frustrated by haphazard design decisions, extremely blatant padding, bad stealth mechanics and lots of other stuff that soured my experience with MGS1 - also only possible with Kojima. But ultimately, like MGS5 and Death Stranding, I did end up liking this game over all, despite its flaws.
I think easily the most impressive part about MGS1 today is its fantastic sense of cinematography. For those not familiar with the PS1-era, it needs to be stated that at that time video game cutscenes - if a game had any cutscenes - were often times not very good, quite short, lacked quite a bit in terms of cinematography and storytelling, and beyond that, were almost always simply FMVs. (“full motion video”, = pre-rendered video files) Even Silent Hill 1, which had absolutely fantastically animated cutscenes at the time, had to fully rely on those FMVs to give the game a feeling of “big budget Hollywood” stuff. Metal Gear Solid 1 is extremely cool and forward thinking in that, not only does the game not use any FMVs whatsoever, but the way the animators used the actual in game graphics and models to direct really compelling and interestingly staged cutscenes is unprecedented.
Not only do the movement of the characters and their delivery of dialogue feel very natural, the camera is almost always placed in interesting positions and even utilises movement during action sequences or otherwise tense moments. This gives the game a far more cinematic feel than just about anything else up to that point. Game designers back often didn’t know all that much about cinematography and story telling, and had to rely on their limited understanding of these things to make everything work. At some points in MGS1, I forgot I was watching highly abstracted, polygonal versions of real people talking and interacting with each other, and fully bought into the illusion that I was watching a film. It really feels like a movie/game hybrid in the best of ways.
Of course, another thing that adds to this is the surprisingly good voice acting. “Surprising” insofar that, once again, at the time video game voice acting tended to be pretty bad. Most of the time the “””actors””” were literally just staff members and programmers without any experience in acting or direction what so ever. While MGS1’s voice acting wouldn’t be anything of particular interest today, this was as close to Hollywood levels of acting you could get in video games at the time. David Hayter as Solid Snake is obviously legendary and immortalised through his “dummy thicc” copy pasta. Oh, and for playing the main character in one of the most acclaimed video game series of all time or whatever. But besides him, the other performances were also really good. I particularly liked Robert Aktin Downes as Master Miller / other characters.
So far so good, great cinematography and voice acting. These are things that Kojima is known for even today, perhaps to the point where this unique selling point itself even kind of became almost flanderised. “Kojima wants to make movies, not games.” And, you know there is a point to that. However, here’s the thing; I don’t really mind it all that much if the story I’m witnessing is actually interesting and told well. And I think, that’s the same for most people, because somehow I don’t hear anywhere near as many people make this complaint with MGS1 than they do with MGS5 and Death Stranding. MGS5 is infamously an unfinished game with an unfinished story, and you can tell. It doesn’t help that the story it tries to tell positions itself as a prequel to over almost every Metal Gear game, retroactively setting up a lot of plot points for the rest of the series, meaning the story makes even less sense if you haven’t played the others first. Death Stranding isn’t unfinished per se, but its story makes no fucking sense and feels like it should be way simpler and to the point than it ended up being. The fact that both of these games also suffer from the most severe case of “Kojima story telling” yet (meaning: and excess of incredibly drawn out and unnecessary information dumps that don’t evolve the plot or characters what so ever and only serve to give the world a fake sense of depth) doesn’t help matters at all.
Needless to say, I expected MGS1 to be just as much of a confusing, nonsensical mess with plot lines that ended nowhere and didn’t really have much of a point. Well, I can happily say that I know understand what old-school Kojima fans were on about when they say the newer games kinda sucked story wise, because unlike the aforementioned games MGS1’s story isn’t just really good, it’s by far the best part of the game.
While we can just jump straight into the actual main plot of the game by hitting new game, the devs provided multiple ways of catching up on the previous games’ plot lines as well as gain more context for the mission you’re currently on. Lingering in the main menu for a while will give you the typical main menu cutscene which will fill you in on some details we’ll get into shortly. The other option comes in the form of a “mission briefing”, in which you’ll be thoroughly informed of the player character’s mission, goal, potential threats, ways in and ways out. You’ll also get a bit of character set up for both Snake and the colonel.
We play as mercenary, freedom fighter and super soldier extraordinaire Solid Snake, aka Snake, aka David, aka Iroqois Pliskin etc. The game takes place some years after the events of both Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, in which Snake invades the private military station / micro nation called “Outer Heaven”, and kills its leader; the greatest soldier of all time, god of combat and patron saint of mercenaries, Big Boss, aka John, aka Jack, aka Naked Snake , aka Ishmael, and so on, who spearheaded all kinds of military organisations, secret government programs, etc. all for one singular goal: to create a nation for soldiers alone. Why? I don’t fucking know, I don’t think I’d be able to comprehend the entirety of Metal Gear Solid lore even IF I played all the games. The reason for our conflict with Big Boss is the titular military tech called “Metal Gear”, which are essentially big old anime mechs, but set in a world basically like ours, where they would undoubtedly be weapons of unbelievable mass destruction. There are a whole lot of details about the story of both MG and MG2 I don’t know about because I haven’t played them yet.
Anyway, back to the plot of MGS. A few years after the events of the aforementioned games, living in isolation somewhere in the Alaskan frozen wastes, Snake is, uh, “contacted” by his old commander, Colonel Roy Campbell. Our guy has achieved legend status for his previous missions and is known as the greatest living warrior, after having defeated and foiled the man who previously held that title. Like I mentioned before, you can choose to receive some extra context by selecting the mission briefing, in which the following happens:
We open up on Solid Snake, stripped naked to a chair inside of a military submarine, being greeted by a mysterious voice which turns out to be the Colonel. Snake, previously having been the top soldier for the US Military special forces, is now retired, living in Alaska, and finds himself detained by a couple of armed soldiers, for the purpose of coercing him to go on one final mission for the US military. We also get introduced to a bunch of other NPCs we’ll get to talk to a lot during this game, namely Dr. Naomi Hunter, Mei Ling, Master Miller, and so on. So, what is the problem, and why is Snake the one who has to solve it?
Our goal is to invade the fictional Alaskan island and former US military outpost “Shadow Moses”, which has been taken over by FOXHOUND after rebelling against their employers. The leaders of FOXHOUND have since threatened the US government with nuclear strikes from the new iteration of the game series’ eponymous fighting robots, the American-produced Metal Gear REX, over the remains of Big Boss and 1 billion dollars cash. Our job is to infiltrate the base, free the various hostages taken by FOXHOUND - including Colonel Campbell’s niece Meryl Silverburgh -, check whether or not Shadow Moses DOES possess the capabilities for said strike, and destroy Metal Gear should the need arise. While we’re there, we’re also tasked with saving both the DARPA chief Donald Anderson, and the ever infamous Dr. Hal “Otacon” (abbreviated from “Otaku-convention”, yes, seriously) Emmerich. Simple enough. Snake isn’t exactly super quick to trust the colonel, and asks for full disclosure regarding the mission details. After getting to know the other characters, and being injected with a healthy dose of nano-machines who will turn out to have a whole bunch of different uses, we set out for the frozen military base.
This is where we should briefly talk about this game’s signature game mechanic you’ve seen referenced a billion times in other games or other media without ever knowing where it originated from: The Soliton radar system. At its most basic it’s a radar system that lets you see enemies from farther away, as well as their effective line of sight / range in the environment. This is what basically makes the stealth system, other than the level design. But the Soliton is also a communication device which let’s you ring up various NPCs back at the home station, who all have different fields of expertise and will give you varying advice depending on the situation - and depending on whether or not they are even qualified to help you in the first place. The amount of different dialogue that these NPCs can present you with depending on the situation is seriously impressive, even for today’s standards. And it’s not all just strictly gameplay related either. Sometimes, especially when any given NPC can’t really help in a situation, they’ll often give you more story context or background on their own character, sometimes even giving away a little too much for their own good - at least, if you’re perceptive. The single biggest thing I’ll praise about the codec calls are that they are a great way to find out what to do in certain boss fights, that would probably have you Google the solution in any other game. Once again, incredibly forward thinking and a fantastic way to future proof your game.
That’s enough set up, we’ll get back to the story in a bit, but for now we ascend from the waves and make our way into the enemy base. So, let’s take the opportunity and talk about the incredibly iconic Shadow Moses:
The game takes place entirely within its confines, and is made up of several smaller sections. The outpost is constructed a bit like something you’d see in a Metroidvania game, with many unlockable shortcuts and doors that are locked from one side, and has some areas that aren’t necessary to complete the game, and instead have upgrades, supplies or other stuff that makes exploring the whole of Shadow Moses worthwhile. Level design is quite good for the most part and works well for a game based around stealth, and surprisingly does more for the experience than the actual mechanics the game provides you with. I will say that it’s nothing too crazy though, and that I’ve seen plenty of stealth-based games do more with similar set ups and mechanics. On the other hand, most of these games came well after this one. Mostly it comes down to stealth being practically necessitated by a lack of useful combat mechanics, more than the designated stealth mechanics in this game being particularly fleshed out.
In either case, the thing that really makes Shadow Moses work for me is the atmosphere. The rough and brutalist metal and concrete structure jutting out from the rocks of this Alaskan island, penetrating through the thick snow and fog. The sound of machines whirring and snow falling and Snake’s footsteps walking through it, the incredibly iconic musical themes in the background… great stuff. It really makes you feel like you’re breaking into a place you’re not supposed to be. The fact that you can switch to first person mode to take a look around, once again underlining the three dimensional nature of this place makes this even more immersive. The many levels inside Shadow Moses are all rather small and quick to traverse, at least at first, and give you plenty of stuff to find if you’re curious enough - and it turns out, you really SHOULD explore, because while a lot of the stuff you can find is optional, some other stuff isn’t, and the game WILL make you go all the way back to retrieve it.
This is kind of a perfect segue to move on to one of the things that exist on the other end of the Kojima extreme for me; the boss fights. I cannot say that I was a big fan of them.
I felt that they are all extremely gimmicky and some relied heavily on the player finding very specific items that would hard lock you out of completing the boss fights until you find them. Sometimes they might require you to find a specific weapon that, like I alluded to before, you could have found if you were observant enough, like one of the mid-game bosses, the first battle against Sniper Wolf. Story context; after having freed Meryl (who is also Snake’s love interest in this game), we lead her through parts of the level until she gets shot by the aforementioned boss while walking through a narrow hallway to a different part of Shadow Moses. Bleeding out on the floor, she’ll be at the mercy of Snake defeating Wolf as quickly as possible. However, should Snake not have brought a PSG-1 sniper rifle with him, the game unironically stops everything and makes you go back to the start of the game to retrieve it, all the while Meryl is bleeding out on the floor, in the cold of an Alaskan winter night, while a deadly enemy sniper is still aiming her sights on our girl. This is, frankly, absurdly out of place, tonally speaking. I get that this fight is hardly doable without a sniper rifle, but having to leave the encounter in the middle of a gunfight while your love interest is literally dying on the floor feels so incredibly off. I have to believe this was some last minute decision, as it makes no sense, dramaturgically speaking. What’s worse is that the game seemingly intends for you to go through whole ordeal, as I don’t think that most people would’ve found the sniper without first fully understanding how this game even works.
Another example, this one particularly egregious for me personally, was Vulcan Raven during the second half of the game. While you don’t technically need a specific weapon to beat him, in praxis you kinda do. Structurally, the boss fight works by putting you in a small rat maze with a guy wearing a heavy mech-suit with mini guns equipped on each arm. Needless to say, if he spots you, he’ll kill you in seconds flat. While you can technically fight him with just about any form of explosive in this game, including the rocket launcher, what you REALLY want to use are claymore mines. The problem being that, once again, you have to go out of your way to search every nook and cranny of this map if you want to find some of them. You can potentially pick them up during a certain boss battle, and some in certain, short sections in between areas. Now, I’ll admit that not picking them up every chance I get was on me. There were plenty of instances where I stepped on some claymores and died, and therefore should’ve known about their presence. The game does tell you about the x-ray vision that lets you see invisible enemies and hidden explosives. However, the game does not tell you that you’ll practically NEED to use them during certain boss battles, at least if you don’t plan on having an aneurysm. I tried this boss fight so many times without them, because I didn’t feel like starting from an earlier save, when that save was at least an hour back. Eventually, however, I caved and loaded an earlier save so I could go up and farm those mines like you’re clearly supposed to. Usually this wouldn’t piss me off so much, but the obtuse way in which this whole strategy is relayed to you, alongside the fact that you’re ostensibly given multiple angles for any boss fight here made this whole section almost unbearably frustrating for me, and made me drop the game for a couple of days. Having one option that is significantly easier and more practical than ANY of the other solutions you technically could use isn’t good design. The worst part is that, even with the intended solution, this fight is still a tedious chore.
And that is sadly true for every single boss in this game. I’m not going into detail on every single boss fight here, but I can confidently say I didn’t enjoy a single one of them except for MAYBE the final one(s). Not even the legendary Psycho Mantis did it for me, but that’s mostly due to the intended solution - switching the controller ports - obviously doesn’t work on emulator. I had to go for the less interesting solution of shooting the statue and then running around the room like crazy trying to get a hit in. I don’t think having access to the intended solution would’ve massively benefitted the fight though.
Something that remains true for every boss fight; if you walk in without enough heals (that is, typically a full stack of them) or god forbid, low health, you’re gonna have a bad time. I understand that this was usually not considered a design flaw since “you could just start from an earlier save”, which was genuinely considered a valid design decision in the late 90’s. For all the shit that the late 2000’s hand-holding design epidemic gets, making it so players don’t lose hours of progress for very simple mistakes was a pretty good thing. Maybe going so hard on the boss encounters isn’t really warranted, but they do present themselves as a rather important part of the story, there are quite a lot of them and most importantly, the regular enemies really don’t offer anything in the way of challenge. This is only a stealth game as long as you feel like playing a stealth game. You can absolutely just walk through and, with enough patience, simply shoot all the enemies without utilising any stealth what so ever. The boss fights are the only instances where the game actually gets a bit challenging, but sadly most of them go about it in the most obnoxious way possible.
Sadly, the boss fights aren’t even my biggest problem, which says a lot because they already pissed me off quite a bit. No, it’s actually the entire second half of the game I have some serious gripes with. The first disc of the game (which is also the first half) is generally paced very well, with good level design, nice stealth sections, and a continuous feeling of progressing forward while also making those little Metroidvania-esque connections in your head about how the map is structured. While backtracking is a thing, it’s kept to a minimum in favour of constantly presenting you with new stuff. The second half is the complete opposite of that.
Backtracking does not only become noticeable, but excessive. The game also isn’t going about implementing it in a way that I would describe as “elegant”, either. Honestly, it’s one of the most offensively obvious examples of padding out a game’s length for no reason other to increase its “runtime” I have ever seen. It is beyond belief to me that this keeps getting ignored in all of those nostalgia-drenched 5 star reviews that go on and on about how beautifully this game has aged, and how it’s one of the best games of all time. This is bad design, and it was bad design for its time as well.
Easily the most infamous example of this - although sadly not the only one - would be the whole ordeal about using the PAL key to deactivate the nuclear launch sequence. Now, the set up is actually quite clever. You spent around half of the game looking for three distinct PALs (permissive action link), knowing that you need them to shut down the launch, since there are three colour-coded modules on the launch console. Thus far you’ve only found one, and time is running out. But then Otacon informs you that you already had all three keys the entire time. Turns out, that one single keycard you found actually includes the other two codes you need. How? The key turns into a different key depending on the temperature. Conceptually, this is really cool and one of the smarter ways to go about it. Gameplay wise, it’s fucking horrible and by far my least favourite section of the game. What’s worse is that it’s right at the end, dragging out the moment you finally get to the final boss even more.
Basically, you’re supposed to go to an area with a certain temperature, stay there for a couple of minutes so the key changes colour, and then get back to the final room. Sounds simple enough. But there are some things that utterly destroy the pacing of this final stretch. First, none of the areas you go to are new. You are required to backtrack to places you’ve already been to hours ago, just to stay a few minutes there and go back. There are no clever shortcuts to make traversing the second half of the map more interesting. You have to fight the exact same enemies every time you go through EITHER way. There is no way to effectively circumnavigate them without being a speed runner or other gamer god. And, on top of that, each trip takes significantly longer than the one before it. Depending on how you play, this could take you anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours. This is legit some of the worst cases of padding I have ever seen. This is just straight up filler bullshit. I’m sorry, but I’m gonna call it like it is. It’s dogshit game design.
Now, I think I understand why they did it. Apart from the obvious point (just make the game a little longer), I think it’s structured like this go give the absolute load of codec calls you’ll be receiving a bit more room to breathe. This section is basically where the entire story of MGS1 pulls a complete 180° and makes you realise you didn’t have the full picture. I understand that there needed to be a big focus on that, and that cramming them into a very short gameplay section would’ve probably just overloaded players with info. However, artificially padding out the game just so a few cutscenes have a little extra room to breathe is akin to a cardinal sin of game design for me. Surely there had to have been a better way than this. I’m not gonna harp on for it more than I already have, because I think I’ve made my point.
Luckily the actual story of the game keeps up its quality up until the credits. The final boss is also really fucking cool, story wise. Gameplay, it’s more of what we already got, albeit slightly more thrilling. A good hand-to-hand brawl is just what this story needed, even if Kojima can’t stop shoving it into literally every game he makes. The final turret section is not my favourite but it works well enough and builds tension right until the climax of the story. I’m not gonna go into great detail concerning the overall story; a.) because it’d take way too long and this review is too long as is, and b.) in the slim off-chance that someone who hasn’t played the game fully read this review (If that’s you, hi. What’s up?) they won’t get spoiled too much, at least not about the good parts.
Before I sign off, here are some other notable parts about the game that didn’t fit into the text so far:
The music is generally fantastic. It strikes a nice balance between James Bond-y, funky bass guitar and synth driven tracks and some droney, almost industrial sounding stuff. The standard combat theme is literally iconic, alongside various pieces of sound design in this game, most notably of course the “!” sound. (You just heard it in your head, admit it.) I especially love the song “The Best Is Yet To Come” by Aoife Ní Fhearraigh, absolutely beautiful anti-war song.
While I wasn’t a huge fan of the actual boss battles, I loved the actual characters’ monologues. And that’s saying something, because usually I’m not the biggest fan of overly indulgent monologuing - and no, the irony of saying this while writing a Bachelor thesis’ worth of text is not lost on me. They tell so much about their respective characters and philosophies, and they’re fantastic stand-ins for various aspects of warfare and the ideologies behind it. Their designs are all extremely memorable and iconic.
Speaking of characters, I loved all the codec call characters, and the whole concept of it more than I would anticipate. Having to speak to Mei Ling whenever you want to save gives it so much more meaning. Discovering more and more about both Naomi and Dr. Miller, finding out who (or what) is the enigmatic “Deepthroat” (yes, that’s his actual name, don’t laugh) and being amused by all of Otacon’s weird weeabo antics. The only thing I wish was that maybe ignoring the codec, or at least being able to fully skip certain sections (esp. if you’ve already seen them) was an option sometimes, especially after you died and have to watch a whole 5 minute monologue again.
Snake himself is also a great protagonist. He’s witty, he’s badass and he has a surprisingly fleshed out personality with a lot of nuance. He loves to smoke and he hates being lied to. An appreciator of beautiful women, but not a womaniser. A battle compatriot as well as man with a heart with the size of a mountain. David Hayter is literally perfect as Solid Snake. You can also really tell that Snake really grows as character throughout his mission. Really makes me wish I played the previous entries to have a little more story context.
CONCLUSION:
Ultimately, Metal Gear Solid isn’t a game I would say I love, but it’s definitely a game I deeply respect. It brought so many great innovations to the gaming world. It was one of the most important steps in giving games as a whole a more prestigious connotation than simply being mindless entertainment. It kicked off what could be considered one of the most influential and greatest video game series of all time. But the actual, well, game-part left me exceedingly frustrated the more time I spent on it. While some things aged brilliantly, others aged horribly. It surprises me just how close this game comes to both Metal Gear Solid 5 and Death Stranding for me. All games with great individual moments, overall good systems but a lot of excess fat and unnecessary nonsense that really drags the game down more than it adds to it.
It’s definitely a game that’s a lot more fun to talk and write about than it is to actually play. It tries so many different things, and it’s surprisingly good at a lot of them, but sadly simply overdoes it. If I ever wanted to experience the story again, I would most likely just watch a YT video of it. However, it did make me even more curious to finally fully work my way through this legendary series, and I can’t wait to give Metal Gear Solid 2 a try.
7,5 / 10
Detectivefail
8 months ago