This review contains spoilers
listen. i love MGS as a series, but this one has aged like dog shit. the gameplay is so frustrating. from needing to always have the keycard equipped to open doors, to there being mines placed in random locations, to turrets that shoot you before you can see them... there's so much shit in this game that is needlessly annoying. when you get spotted by the last guy in the room and it makes another game spawn slightly out of frame to run in and shoot you, despite the fact that the place he spawned was a dead end? all of the annoying bullshit in this game is fixed in the sequel at least. i can appreciate that being seen in MGS2 means that the Attack Squad come in from one of the doors around the room, meaning you realistically hide knowing where extra support is coming from. the lack of being able to shoot down turrets too makes snake feel powerless despite the fiction telling me he's otherwise this incredible super soldier who can take down tanks, harriers, and a metal gear all on his jack. the nuclear stoage room and laser room before it activating a slowly killing gas while locking you in - why? why not just instantly kill me or do the usual with guards who teleport in? why gararuntee my death there in that moment? its so frustrating! that on top of the northward momentum of shadow moses means that backtracking this island is excruciatingly painful. you don't really get much stronger so going back to the beginning isn't necessarily a cakewalk the way it would be in other games. that's not a bad thing by itself but the fact is you have to do the laborious walk back and forth from all of these areas so many times and its boring and not fun!!! maybe one of the worst paced moments in a videogame is after meryl gets shot by sniper wolf and i have to walk alllll the way back to the tank hangar to get the PSG-1 to then walk alllll the way back to fight sniper wolf. i mean where's the urgency? she's bleeding to death on the floor and i have to take an elevator twice and crawl over some landmines and all kinds of shit!! SOME of the bossfights are okay. i like fighting ocelot, mantis is quite fun, and it goes without saying that the memory card and controller stuff is great (although admittedly much better played on an actual PS1, but i appreciate the new collection allowing you to select what data is on your "memory card". i picked castlevania, obviously, because i'm basic). but then you get to fighting REX which is a bit annoying by itself, with an unskillable cutscene in the middle of Gray Fox yammering about some bullshit!! the gameplay isnt the worst in the world but its genuinely just not fun to play anymore, and every iteration of MGS after this improves upon the formula.
but its not really the gameplay people play MGS for. we're talking solid snake baby in his most famous adventure! and here it is in its campy, james bond-esq style. it's okay? it's incredibly cheesey. maybe it's because we've seen so much stuff after MGS1 but for me, most of the emotional beats particularly work. these characters are all expanded upon and made much more interesting in later games (MGS2 specifically!) but here the characters are pretty uninteresting. snake is pretty void of personality actually. he's kind of james bond-like in that he's a legend and a bit of a womaniser, but doesnt have much reaction of feeling to stuff. you'd almost think he's kind of stupid because so much of his dialogue is responding to peoples statements with questions. you know, "metal gear, huh?" but he's not really. he's a musher, and the way he talks about animals shows he knows what he's talking about. i wish there was a bit more of the gentle man that snake was in it. meryl is just bad, literally has the scene where she goes "I'm not like other girls!" admittedly that is broken down a bit by the end of the game but it's still cringe and he "romance" with snake doesnt feel earned at all - again, its very james bond. gray fox feels like he was shoehorned into this game. doesn't really have anything interesting to add to the game beyond just kind of being there. it's kind of not really a beginner friendly game because of the references to MG1 and MG2 what with outer heaven, zanzibar land, grey fox and big boss for that reason. all of FOXHOUND basically suck. mantis is fun but is badly written outside of that, having gone crazy because he looked at a serial killers mind too much? cmon. sniper wolf and vulcan raven are like "You Are A Good Opponent In Battle So We Must Fight," snore!!! i'll give credit to ocelot who is most consistent here to how he is in later entries, as a conniving trickster who double crosses everyone all the time for everything. liquid is charming and cool, possibly just because of how good cam clarke's performance is, but a lot of what he says is nonsense and doesn't really have much dramatic weight behind it. i also do like naomi hunter, although her motive for disliking snake is boring. i think the subtly of her betrayal is done well, and especially as it's master miller (or liquid) who tells you it makes the reveal that miller was liquid all along all the stronger. it makes snake alone to know that colonel, master, and naomi have all betrayed him. it's practically only otacon who's a good guy and on his side. and otacon in this game is fine. he's a weeb loser who says some great shit. "can love bloom on the battlefield" is fine i guess. but again, where he puts his bigboy pants on in MGS2 he becomes so much more endearing, especially as he and snake realise that they're in love with each other. which is also why the canon ending of snake and meryl leaving together feels like such horseshit!
anyway, i played this as part of the re-releases that happened recently, so now i can not play MGS1 for many many years if i ever choose to again. sorry, it's bad!
but its not really the gameplay people play MGS for. we're talking solid snake baby in his most famous adventure! and here it is in its campy, james bond-esq style. it's okay? it's incredibly cheesey. maybe it's because we've seen so much stuff after MGS1 but for me, most of the emotional beats particularly work. these characters are all expanded upon and made much more interesting in later games (MGS2 specifically!) but here the characters are pretty uninteresting. snake is pretty void of personality actually. he's kind of james bond-like in that he's a legend and a bit of a womaniser, but doesnt have much reaction of feeling to stuff. you'd almost think he's kind of stupid because so much of his dialogue is responding to peoples statements with questions. you know, "metal gear, huh?" but he's not really. he's a musher, and the way he talks about animals shows he knows what he's talking about. i wish there was a bit more of the gentle man that snake was in it. meryl is just bad, literally has the scene where she goes "I'm not like other girls!" admittedly that is broken down a bit by the end of the game but it's still cringe and he "romance" with snake doesnt feel earned at all - again, its very james bond. gray fox feels like he was shoehorned into this game. doesn't really have anything interesting to add to the game beyond just kind of being there. it's kind of not really a beginner friendly game because of the references to MG1 and MG2 what with outer heaven, zanzibar land, grey fox and big boss for that reason. all of FOXHOUND basically suck. mantis is fun but is badly written outside of that, having gone crazy because he looked at a serial killers mind too much? cmon. sniper wolf and vulcan raven are like "You Are A Good Opponent In Battle So We Must Fight," snore!!! i'll give credit to ocelot who is most consistent here to how he is in later entries, as a conniving trickster who double crosses everyone all the time for everything. liquid is charming and cool, possibly just because of how good cam clarke's performance is, but a lot of what he says is nonsense and doesn't really have much dramatic weight behind it. i also do like naomi hunter, although her motive for disliking snake is boring. i think the subtly of her betrayal is done well, and especially as it's master miller (or liquid) who tells you it makes the reveal that miller was liquid all along all the stronger. it makes snake alone to know that colonel, master, and naomi have all betrayed him. it's practically only otacon who's a good guy and on his side. and otacon in this game is fine. he's a weeb loser who says some great shit. "can love bloom on the battlefield" is fine i guess. but again, where he puts his bigboy pants on in MGS2 he becomes so much more endearing, especially as he and snake realise that they're in love with each other. which is also why the canon ending of snake and meryl leaving together feels like such horseshit!
anyway, i played this as part of the re-releases that happened recently, so now i can not play MGS1 for many many years if i ever choose to again. sorry, it's bad!