Metal Gear Solid

To answer my rhetorical title: NO! Absolutely not! It is an uninspired use of the medium. It also really is a problem here, because if I had to guess conservatively how much of the game is cutscenes, I would say 50%. I suspect it may even be closer to 60%. I suspect this wouldn’t be so bad if the gameplay itself was better, but it often feels like an afterthought.

I can pretty briefly mention all the things that are good about this from a game play point of view. First, the fight against Psycho Mantis is pretty clever. I’ve never seen a game break the 4th wall by requiring that you plug your controller into a different control port in order to beat him, and also have the character read your save data. I was highly impressed by that idea, and that really made up for how uninteresting the actual fight is after you do the trick (seriously, you just punch him, and then lie down when he throws stuff at you until he dies). That was certainly the peak of the game, and I wish it did things that interesting throughout rather than in just one instance.

The other good boss fight is against Vulcan Raven, which has some of the best dialogue (and this game does have consistently great dialogue), followed by the funniest mechanics. I just placed claymores everywhere and watched him run into them. It didn’t get old, and made me giggle every time.
"You must be a real threat in the muktuk eating contest"
"Yes, you are right."
Hilarious.

And yes, the cutscenes in this game are often comedy gold. The plot is so ridiculous and contrived, and the characters just say and do the funniest things. One of the first lines of dialogue in the game is Snake talking about how he smuggled his cigarettes in his stomach because of a pill he took that reduced his stomach acid levels. I legitimately have no idea why this game doesn’t have comedy as a genre on this website. It’s just not possible to take it seriously, and there is no way you are supposed to for most of it. Otacon literally decided to build nuclear bombs because he likes anime. One guy's codename is ‘deepthroat’. A guard is stripped naked and his butt is sticking up in the air. Psycho Mantis’ tragic backstory was that he was tired of reading people’s minds and finding out they are thinking about sex. And these things all happen at the beginning of the game. It is that silly throughout.

The only downside to all the delightful goofiness is that when the game tries to be serious (and it does at a few points) it completely falls flat. All the scenes about how awful warfare is, and how terrible it was to grow up in Kurdistan are not particularly insightful, or unique takes, while being extremely overbearing and heavy-handed (funny how those traits are often found together). The bombast really would not be a problem if the game stuck to being silly.

Getting back to the gameplay, the other boss fights range from uninteresting to pretty awful. Each boss has one gimmick that you repeat over and over until you have killed them. The worst of these is against Sniper Wolf, because trying to aim in this game feels fucking awful. The controls are generally really bad (and if you say otherwise, you are just coping), but aiming is where it is really aggravating. And you have to do the fight twice. It doesn’t change between the two times other than the location. Unforgivable.

The clunkiness of the controls is made even worse as an issue because of how it removes me, the player, from the game. Snake is supposed to be a super sleek and stealthy spy, and it doesn’t feel like that. There are numerous awful feeling mechanics, such as automatically pressing up against walls when you get close to them as you run by, or trying to maneuver your body when you are prone and avoiding tripwires.

The general non-boss fight stealth is pretty unimpressive, partially because of how terrible the controls are, and partially because you just wait for the AI to turn around, and then run past them. At its worst it barely feels removed from a walking simulator to the next cutscene. And this gets exacerbated by how much of the game is backtracking. They really didn’t do anything to make that backtracking interesting or different from what you did before. It’s not like a metroidvania where you are constantly unlocking new areas of the map. You are just returning to the old ones. This is the worst when heating up and cooling down the card, because then you just stand in the room once you get there.

Another truly uninspired section of the game was the torture sequence, as you just button mash. That is actually the level of mechanical ingenuity in this game, no hyperbole. And because I can button mash, I got the Meryl ending. Also the level where you just run up the stairs is very dull.

I really need to stress once again how absolutely awful the controls are when trying to aim, and of course the game culminates with that function. The last chase is maybe the least fun I have had playing a video game. You just try to spray and pray, and hope that the game actually responds to your inputs and aims where you want it to. It is such a painfully clunky feature. I actually just stopped trying after several attempts, because of how miserable it is, and just watched the final cutscene on youtube. Terrible, terrible, terrible way to end the game. It actually ruined it for me. It was the nail in the coffin, and the reason why I will never play this game again. I am not convinced that anyone play-tested that section at all before they released it to the public.

And so to summarize this review, I really need to ask: what’s the point of actually playing this vs watching a playthrough? Nearly everything good I took from this was the cutscenes themselves. When describing a video game that seems like one of the biggest failings the medium could fall into. Hopefully the subsequent games improved on this one.

When looking at a game with such a powerful legacy as this one, a couple of things need to be kept in mind. One is that, due to how influential it was, the tropes and design elements used have likely been borrowed and improved on by later works in the medium, e.g. “Seinfeld is Unfunny.” The other point to note is, and this is especially true for video games, the work in general will feel dated, mostly because some parts of its design or playability that were more acceptable on release are now criticized and antiquated.

Specific to Metal Gear Solid, it manages to dodge quite a few of these complaints, and in some ways it still outshines many present-day games both in storytelling and presentation. Based on the script writing, lengthy cutscenes, and general presentation, it’s clear MGS was going for that “movie-like” feel, a term commonly used to lambast modern games for not meeting the full potential of games as a storytelling medium. And yet MGS manages to skirt around that criticism by both taking advantage of video game storytelling in many parts of the game (like using the codec and active breaking of the fourth wall), and by just killing it on the presentation front. Seriously, these cutscenes don’t just emulate the feel of movies; Kojima clearly has an understanding for the cinematography, acting and sound design that makes movies as effective at telling stories as they are. Even with faceless dolls, flat polygons, and obvious video file limitations splitting up cutscenes, the story he tells is fantastic, bombastic, and kinda moving at points.

And just to go a bit further on that, Solid Snake is such a compelling character here. I always knew Kojima liked his postmodern, strange stories, but all the talk I’ve heard about Snake over the years–always hovering near the top of any “Top 10 BADASSES in Video Games” listicle–is a far cry from the cold, depressed loner without a purpose he’s actually written as. By presenting the game entirely from his POV, the player themselves can share that “what am I really doing here?” feeling as all the machinations play out, revealing Snake for the pawn he is. When he’s questioned on that purpose, all Snake can say is “I have a job to do,” with the same energy as Cpt. Willard from Apocalypse Now saying “I am an assassin.”

But now for the part where Metal Gear Solid’s gray hairs are most obvious: the gameplay. On one hand, Kojima and co. clearly put a lot of effort into the design and programming to make this the best stealth and action gameplay on PS1, and to some extent they succeeded. On the other hand, this game feels like a 3D remake of the original Metal Gear, with some design elements not translating over as well as others, and the PS1’s limitations significantly holds it back. It’s crazy how some elements now seen as basic in stealth games like picking up and moving bodies, moving while in cover, or even just walking slowly are not here. You can’t even knock out enemies in a way that leaves them incapacitated longer than a minute, all you can really do stealth-wise is avoid. It doesn’t help that trying to see anything without the radar is a struggle because of the zoomed-in overhead perspective and lack of camera control, besides being able to see in first-person by pressing triangle. I wouldn’t care about that so much if they didn’t turn off the radar for hard mode; I switched to normal after struggling with it for a while, it’s obvious hard mode is intended for a replay with some memorization of guard placement, because the game is otherwise too reliant on the radar to go without it on a first playthrough. Like it’s built to use the full top-down view of the original Metal Gear, but it doesn’t have that so the gameplay just doesn’t work as well. At least the AI being kinda dumb helps with that (though at the time, it was revolutionary enough for a guard to say “who’s footprints are these?” in the snowy areas). I’m also aware of the “Twin Snakes” GameCube remake, which makes it play closer to MGS2, but that brings in the opposite problem of things designed around the original’s gameplay now being much easier, like the Sniper Wolf fight. Also Snake jumps on a missile on that one…it ups the ridiculousness to almost Bollywood levels.

I’ve already played through MGSV, and gotten a taste of 2, 4, and the original Metal Gear. I wanted to do a playthrough of each MGS game starting with this one, and so far it’s off to a great start. While it definitely has its dated bits, Metal Gear Solid overall stands the test of time and makes for an enthralling playthrough, with a movie-like presentation that remains unmatched. While later games of the series do expand on this game’s ideas with more resources and better hardware, I’ve yet to see if they use that to present their stories better. Here’s hoping.

Didn't aged that much tbh I must be a zoomer of some sort

Revolução em forma de jogo. Como Kojima e cia. conseguiram entregar isso no Playstation 1 é de cair o queixo.

What more can you say? So much has been said about this game that it seems like all there is to do now is defend it against detractors, of which Kojima has accrued a lot in his career--especially as it intersects with his work on Metal Gear.

Is this a movie game? Does it feel bad to play? Did it "age well"? I find it impossible to get outside of my own head on these questions, since this is a game I've been playing here and there since it was new. The one thing I can be sure of: no one had ever done this before, and outside of the MGS series I think it's hard to find any real peer. MGS is such an event that it not only inspired a lot of games to ape it, but also caused a long wave of games that were basically reactionary to it.

At the end of the day this game has stuck with me for so long that at this point I find every room, every area, every encounter, every item or weapon iconic. Nothing looks like this game, nothing plays like it, nothing sounds like it. It is one of the most intuitive early 3D games in the entire era, and for all of the complaining done about how it controls I find it remarkably well thought-out, it just happens to be the first entry in what would become the "house style" of the series. This game will tell you everything about itself and it wants to, so let it. And make sure you make plenty of your own CODEC calls, there is so much to miss.

When the PlayStation is ancient history, this will be the one game people will remember it by.

An unprecedented cinematic epic with great visuals and a brilliant soundtrack. In this sense the game stunned back then and still stuns today thanks to superb presentation and cutscene direction.

Juxtaposed with Metal Gear Solid's ageing gameplay, though, the overall package takes a hit and is held back from greatness. Aiming is awkward, often requiring that you spray-and-pray entire clips at enemies just off-screen, and movement has a general clunkiness to it, making the couple of hand-to-hand boss fights in the game more frustrating than perhaps was intended. Worse, a handful of significant pacing issues take a sledgehammer to the storytelling's flow and sense of tension: namely, having to backtrack multiple times in critical moments.

Despite its flaws, Metal Gear Solid is an enjoyable look at the series' modern history and remains an impressive example of ambitious elevation in video game storytelling, nearly a quarter-century on.