Metal Gear Solid - Thoughts
Continuing my playthrough of the Metal Gear Solid series, we have finally arrived at the game that arguably made Metal Gear Solid a household name…in video game households, that is. I’m talking about, well, Metal Gear Solid.
Please note that I have skipped the two canon Metal Gear games. I will be playing those, but not until after playing through Metal Gear Solid. The main reason being I didn’t feel like it and while there is a story, these are NES era games and so the plot even for a Metal Gear game isn’t too in depth. Just know that Metal Gear 1 and 2 introduce Solid Snake, our main protagonist in this game and that he was a member of FOXHOUND which was a special forces unit created by Big Boss, the guy we’ve been following up until now. It’s also worth noting that Gray Fox, aka Frank Jaeger, was Solid Snake’s frenemy in those games and was presumed dead.
Metal Gear Solid was released in 1998 on the PlayStation 1 and was the first in the “Solid” series of games. The game was met with universal acclaim. PlayStation Official Magazine from the UK called it “the best game ever. Unputdownable and unforgettable”. Not sure “unputdownable” is a word, but there you have it. It got perfect scores at several outlets including AllGame and EGM. Commercially, the game became the most rented video game in the United States and made over 51 million dollars in the US in 1998 alone. I know I was one of those renters. I beat the game over a weekend with my brother.
What I Liked 😃
Crazy Pants Story
The Metal Gear games have always been known for their wild narratives. The franchise had already established this a bit with Metal Gear and its sequel back in the NES/MSX days. But when Hideo Kojima was finally free to make a more cinematic game using the power of the PlayStation 1, he went all out.
On the surface, the story isn’t anything crazy. Solid Snake is dispatched to stop renegade special forces unit FOXHOUND from using a nuclear weapon called Metal Gear REX. It’s the age-old tale of a terrorist organization asking for ransom and the remains of their dead leader(huh?) otherwise things go boom. But as the game continues to play out, things start to get weirder and weirder. First, Snake meets Revolver Ocelot who seems really good at dodging bullets. Like, really good. After the encounter, Ocelot’s hand is sliced off by a cyborg ninja. Huh? Quite a bit later, Snake fights Psycho Mantis, a guy who can control other people’s actions. Whaa? This is but a sampling of oddities that occur in this game. That same cyborg ninja makes more appearances, Solid’s brother Liquid appears (get it? Solid vs Liquid?), and you find out they are clones, there are massive mecha battles, deadly synthetic viruses and much more.
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Metal Gear Solid is not as laugh out loud funny as a parody film like The Naked Gun starring Leslie Nielson, but as the players of the game, there are a lot of moments that deserve a chuckle or a quizzical look at the screen. I guess it reminds me more of a 1980s Roger Moore driven Bond film (Snake Eater leans in on the Bond theme even further). Just like in Bond films, what makes the story crazy but great is that the characters who are in the thick of it are playing things completely seriously. This is a nuclear threat after all, so the stakes are high. It’s just that sometimes you come across a scientist who’s a big “otaku” (nerd basically) for computers and anime or you might hear Snake try to hit on a girl or two. And you may have long conversations about unrelated things with your radio-mates on the mission.
Revolutionary Gameplay
Besides the wacky story, the other element of Metal Gear Solid that really sets it apart is the gameplay. The main gameplay element is stealth, and Konami did a great job implementing decent stealth gameplay. Snake can crouch, distract guards by knocking on walls or other objects, can silently take down enemies by choking them out or using a tranquilizer gun and has a handy radar that shows him the movements and viewing angles of his foes. Enemies will snooze away as Snake slinks past them. If Snake is spotted, the now iconic exclamation point will appear above the enemy’s heads and that sound bite will play. Y’know the sound bite that has been stolen by every single YouTuber that my kids watch? Anyway, the result of all of this is less traditional combat. If the player tries to go in guns a blazing, the result is often death. This game wants you to be stealthy and think about each area and how to best navigate it unseen. That is a really cool idea and one at the time that was completely unique on the PlayStation 1.
But the specific gameplay I want to talk about are the elements in between the stealth: communicating with fellow soldiers over communications channels and having to swap frequencies, blowing a helicopter out of the sky with targeted missiles, having a gripping sniper fight with an expert sniper in a snow-covered field, having to survive torture by electricity by rapidly pressing a button to keep your stamina filled, battling a psychopath who can read your PlayStation 1 memory card.
All of these things could have ended up feeling gimmick-y or out of place within the overall game. But every single departure from the core stealth gameplay always felt fresh, innovative and at home within the world of Metal Gear Solid. My favorite one of these was the moment where Snake has to climb a whole bunch of stairs while enemies are pouring in from behind and in front of him. Snake has an automatic weapon and - hopefully - plenty of ammo for his FAMAS machine gun. The stairwell seems endless and there was almost a moment where I was thinking this was an in-game maze of sorts. Had I missed a door? Do I need to go back down? But just when you think these stairs will never end, you reach the top. It was exhilarating and tension filled. And of course, it had nothing to do with stealth. It takes forethought and good game design to recognize that there need to be breaks in the stealth gameplay in order to give the audience a thrill here and there.
What I Didn’t Like ☹️
Liquid, In a Jeep?
“Wait just a minute, here. You just praised the game for moments just like this one?”
Yeah, I did. And I appreciated each one but that doesn’t mean I loved each one whilst playing them. One of those is the last fight with Liquid while Meryl and Snake are in one jeep and Liquid is in another. The objective is to shoot Liquid to pieces before he shoots you to pieces. The problem is that Snake’s jeep is moving and so is Liquid’s and it becomes very difficult to aim well enough to get a hit. I should also mention that I played the game on the original PlayStation with the original PlayStation controller. The original PlayStation controller doesn’t have an analog stick, there’s only the D-pad and so it makes movements like these very difficult. I bit the dust several times and cursed Liquid over and over. Why, brother, whyyyy?
Wolf Stealth
The sniper fight against Sniper Wolf was also a tad frustrating. Snake and Sniper Wolf are in a snow-covered open field. Snake is on one end of the field and Sniper Wolf is on the other. Any drastic movements by Snake will provide an opening for Sniper Wolf and she usually takes advantage. So, the strategy is to slowwwwly move while crawling, find a spot where you can barely see across the field and shoot her until she falls. It’s a battle of millimeters. If you move even a little bit into Sniper Wolf’s line of sight, she will fire. In a way, I did enjoy this because it seems like exactly the kind of meticulousness that would be required if you were a real sniper. However, this is a video game and the entire exercise of getting in position was frustrating. Again, the old PlayStation 1 controller did this part no favors.
Overall Thoughts 🤔
Metal Gear Solid is a hall of fame game. It is a great game that is fun, tension filled and just plain wacky at times. It broke ground and innovated back in 1998, inspiring future Metal Gear Solid games but also games in general. It pushed the boundaries of stealth gameplay and cinematic storytelling in games as well. It’s still a fun playthrough to this day. There are some frustrating moments especially if you are trying to use the original hardware. But that doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of inhabiting Solid Snake and taking down a big nuclear Metal Gear.
Where Can I Play This? 🕹️
Metal Gear Solid can be best played via the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Volume 1.
I played Metal Gear Solid physically on the PlayStation 1.
Ah, Metal Gear Solid... A game I enjoyed so much, I finished it 18 times in a row. And at some point could quote most of the dialogues :D