having finally gotten around to MGS it's so immediately clear why it's so revered by almost everyone who touches it.
in many aspects it's still groundbreaking even today--the story, presentation, dialogue, voice acting... it's all still beating the fuck out of most "cinematic" games even now, over 25 years later. there's certainly plenty of "snake objectifies women" moments, but they stop appearing not that far in and even manage to get retroactive justification with the further development of Snake as a character, like talk about being on lock. and in 1998! fuckin, like 50% of AAA games still dont get good voice acting and this game had incredible voice acting when that number was looking more like 95%. how the hell...
unfortunately, it really pains me to say that time has not been kind to the gameplay here in the slightest. at its best moments it never gets any better than what you could get out of a Escape The Classroom When The Teacher Isnt Looking flash game--the backtracking isnt really all that bad (except on those god damn stairs), but my biggest gripe is that like 80% of the game is actually played by looking at the tiny map in the top right corner. you got all this screen real estate but it mostly goes to mechanical waste since the actual mechanics of it--the stuff you're actually doing--is communicated with much more clarity and spatial awareness with that tiny minimap. i've never really considered myself much of a stealth fan but even then i've probably been spoiled by modern stealth games, which are much more complicated and can get away with just showing you the world as-is since the interactions and visibilities are assumable with a good degree of confidence. that isn't the case here though, since it's all simple cones of vision that you mostly just have to walk around.
the combat generally kinda sucks too, now this is something im a little more willing to forgive given the themes tackled here and how you're generally supposed to avoid combat anyways, but also, you gotta do those boss fights and most of them are reeeeally bad. pretty much all of them have some stupid gimmick you're supposed to butt your head against until you figure it out, which is a mode of play that's gone from extremely popular to extremely niche in the past few decades. this whole ethos is what defined a lot of old school western adventure games and its probably also why i think most of them suck shit tbh... visual novels win... but that's beside the point, i think no one could have predicted the internet becoming what it has, and making the question of "how to beat sniper wolf mgs1" a simple google search away. which turns that point in the game from an excuse to backtrack and go exploring and extend your playtime with your brand newly purchased video game into what at its worst feels like a guided tour. this is no fault of MGS, its the fault of the world for changing around it...
but all that said, if you can get past the gameplay (its not really that bad its just okay most of the time and bearable with sparing guide use and savestate spam in a few particularly annoying boss fights) there really is a hell of a lot to chew on here. very very excited to dive into the later games within this series as they will probably have better gameplay (i do recall vaguely having fun with MGS5 for a brief while early on in high school before I got stuck on some mission and couldn't progress), as well as kojima's older ADV work like snatcher and policenauts... i've never played a kojima to credits and while i am kind of kicking myself for not doing it earlier, this does feel like probably the best place to finally start on that journey and i'm not sure a less Video Game Experienced version of myself coulda truly appreciated just how groundbreaking this was in context of the time.
in many aspects it's still groundbreaking even today--the story, presentation, dialogue, voice acting... it's all still beating the fuck out of most "cinematic" games even now, over 25 years later. there's certainly plenty of "snake objectifies women" moments, but they stop appearing not that far in and even manage to get retroactive justification with the further development of Snake as a character, like talk about being on lock. and in 1998! fuckin, like 50% of AAA games still dont get good voice acting and this game had incredible voice acting when that number was looking more like 95%. how the hell...
unfortunately, it really pains me to say that time has not been kind to the gameplay here in the slightest. at its best moments it never gets any better than what you could get out of a Escape The Classroom When The Teacher Isnt Looking flash game--the backtracking isnt really all that bad (except on those god damn stairs), but my biggest gripe is that like 80% of the game is actually played by looking at the tiny map in the top right corner. you got all this screen real estate but it mostly goes to mechanical waste since the actual mechanics of it--the stuff you're actually doing--is communicated with much more clarity and spatial awareness with that tiny minimap. i've never really considered myself much of a stealth fan but even then i've probably been spoiled by modern stealth games, which are much more complicated and can get away with just showing you the world as-is since the interactions and visibilities are assumable with a good degree of confidence. that isn't the case here though, since it's all simple cones of vision that you mostly just have to walk around.
the combat generally kinda sucks too, now this is something im a little more willing to forgive given the themes tackled here and how you're generally supposed to avoid combat anyways, but also, you gotta do those boss fights and most of them are reeeeally bad. pretty much all of them have some stupid gimmick you're supposed to butt your head against until you figure it out, which is a mode of play that's gone from extremely popular to extremely niche in the past few decades. this whole ethos is what defined a lot of old school western adventure games and its probably also why i think most of them suck shit tbh... visual novels win... but that's beside the point, i think no one could have predicted the internet becoming what it has, and making the question of "how to beat sniper wolf mgs1" a simple google search away. which turns that point in the game from an excuse to backtrack and go exploring and extend your playtime with your brand newly purchased video game into what at its worst feels like a guided tour. this is no fault of MGS, its the fault of the world for changing around it...
but all that said, if you can get past the gameplay (its not really that bad its just okay most of the time and bearable with sparing guide use and savestate spam in a few particularly annoying boss fights) there really is a hell of a lot to chew on here. very very excited to dive into the later games within this series as they will probably have better gameplay (i do recall vaguely having fun with MGS5 for a brief while early on in high school before I got stuck on some mission and couldn't progress), as well as kojima's older ADV work like snatcher and policenauts... i've never played a kojima to credits and while i am kind of kicking myself for not doing it earlier, this does feel like probably the best place to finally start on that journey and i'm not sure a less Video Game Experienced version of myself coulda truly appreciated just how groundbreaking this was in context of the time.