Metal Gear Solid (1998) for the PlayStation
- Sam Cawley
- Aug 25, 2021
- 11 min read
Whenever I think about Sony's dive into the gaming market with the PlayStation 1, one of the first games I think about is Metal Gear Solid. I've never been a fan of "stealth" games but I've always had a fascination with spies and espionage especially after all the James Bond movies I watched as a kid.
It was that same fascination that drew me to the Metal Gear series, one of the most famous entries being Metal Gear Solid, the third game in the series, but the first to take advantage of 3D graphics.
So after getting my hands on an original PlayStation, I knew which game I had to play first, so allow me to give you my take on the game, and the story of its protagonist, Solid Snake.
History
As I previously mentioned, Metal Gear Solid is the third game in the series. The first two entries being titled Metal Gear (1987) and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1990). There are actually two versions of the second game, with the prior mentioned being the official sequel and an unofficial sequel titled Metal Gear: Snake's Revenge (1990) The games were developed for MSX2 computer system.
The series was created and published by Konami, with the project lead being Hideo Kojima, a man who would go on to become a legend in the gaming industry for his work. Kojima was asked to take on the project of creating a military combat game. Due to hardware limitations on the MSX2, simulating military combat proved rather difficult, to which Kojima suggested creating a stealth game instead, about avoiding conflict rather than partaking in it. And so the Metal Gear series was born. The games were a hit, mainly in Japan but also had a large positive reception from Western audiences.
This popularity would only increase when the series made the inevitable jump to 3D on the PlayStation with Metal Gear Solid. Kojima stated that the reason he called it this instead of Metal Gear 3 is because it reflected the character Solid Snake being the protagonist as well as reflecting the graphics shifting from 2D to 3D. He also thought this was a good idea due to the series not being as well known outside of Japan.
The team behind it wanted the world to feel as realistic as possible, allowing the player to switch to a first person view when required to look around as well as making the weapons, explosions, and vehicles felt as believable as possible. At the same time, the team also wanted players to enjoy the gameplay and story.
Music was crucial during development, with an orchestral soundtrack used for cutscenes as well as music being used a lot during certain gameplay segments for tension.
Metal Gear Solid was rated incredibly high by critics and fans, and sold millions of copies, much to Kojima's surprise, who wasn't expecting such a positive reception, believing it wouldn't sell well.
Years later, a remake was created for the Nintendo Gamecube called Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, featuring improved graphics, additional gameplay elements such as first person gun aiming, and more dynamic cutscenes.
Story
Metal Gear's story is quite long a convoluted at times so I'm going to try to keep this section as short and spoiler free as possible. You play as Solid Snake, an expert in tactical espionage tasked with sneaking into a terrorist occupied nuclear weapon disposal facility called Shadow Moses Island. The terrorists there are threatening the world with nuclear war, and unless Snake can infiltrate and put a stop to their plans, the world could be destroyed. To make matters worse, the terrorists are threatening to launch a nuclear weapon using a giant mechanical walker, called Metal Gear Rex, a near indestructible machine capable of targeting anywhere in the world for attack.
While sneaking around the island to find a way of deactivating the Metal Gear, Snake learns of Fox-Hound, the group behind the terrorists, made up of a cast of characters with their own special abilities that act as the bosses of the game, these are Revolver Ocelot, Sniper Wolf, Vulcan Raven, Psycho Mantis, Decoy Octopus and the leader of the group, simply known as Liquid.
With the help of his operation team, led by Colonel Roy Campbell, Snake must defeat Fox-Hound, deactivate Rex, and discover the identity of the mysterious Liquid, a character closely tied to Snake's past.
There's so much more to say about the story, but it's best to not spoil too much as it's definitely one that you should experience rather than hear about. I was genuinely surprised how enthralled by the story I was from start to finish. The cast of characters are all unique and admirable, there's plenty of twists and turns to keep things interesting, and the game is easily understandable if you haven't played the original games as it fills you in on any missed context as you progress. Overall I'd say the story is one of its strongest aspects purely due to how well it's paced from action packed segments to more sombre, emotional scenes. It's basically a playable movie and I couldn't rate it any higher.
Gameplay
Being a game about sneaking around and saving the world, the gameplay obviously reflects this. The entire game revolves around not being seen, which is done by looking at your radar, featured in the top right of the screen, and observing the cones of vision that enemy soldiers and security cameras have. If you step into the cone of vision, all enemies will be alerted and you'll have to escape a chase if you want to survive which isn't easy. You can fight back, and in some scripted segments that's your only option, but combat is difficult due to the third person nature of the gameplay, making stealth your best option to make through.
Along the way you'll find plenty of items to help you out. These range from new weapons, such as an assault rifle, missile launcher, grenades and many more. More tactical items are also available. These tend to have specific use for upcoming parts of the game and it does a good job of leading you towards them so you're usually well equipped for the task ahead. A few examples are a mine detector, a gas mask, chaff grenades that deactivate electronics (useful for cameras and turrets) and a fan-favourite, the cardboard box, used for hiding in plain site and one of the most recognisable aspects of the Metal Gear series.
In terms of progressing, Snake navigates the island in a linear fashion, with the path to progress usually being locked by door that needs a certain level of clearance to pass through, opened by a key card with the same number displayed on the door you're trying to get through. Higher number key cards feel like they represent different levels of the game, as usually each boss fight grants you the next level of card, letting you access the next area. There are also areas towards the beginning of the game with high clearance numbers that you can revisit later for some extra goodies. I felt this was a wise choice of progression and I think it was paced really well. There were never any instances where a new area was beginning to feel stale or overstaying its welcome as you feel like you're constantly moving forward and the game makes sure that you know where you're going and what you're doing, and it does so in a really cool way.
Because Snake is in the middle of a military operation, he always has his team communicating with him through the Codec radio system. This is how Snake receives guidance and his objectives and can be accessed at anytime during gameplay. The Codec works off inputting radio frequencies to talk to different recipients. You call Colonel Roy Campbell if you're unsure where you should be going or what you should be doing, or if you're in the middle of a boss fight you can call him for some helpful tips. You can also input a different frequency number to contact Mei Ling, who's in charge of mission data and saves your game for you whenever you contact her. I found the whole method of communicating with different characters really interesting and it really gave the game a sense of immersion, which is weird to say considering it's a PlayStation 1 game, but I really did enjoy using it and it really came in handy during a few sections I was unsure of, such as boss fights.
Speaking of boss fights, they're probably my favourite part of the game. Each member of Fox-Hound you fight are completely unique to each other, and have their own special skills and fighting premise that you need to learn and adapt to if you want to defeat them. There are quite a few during the course of the game so I've decided to talk about two that I found particularly cool to play through that I feel best show of the creativity of the game.
First up, the fight with a character named "The Ninja" a cyborg who's real identity is revealed later in the game. The Ninja is exactly that, a ninja boss who attacks you with a sword, demanding that you give him a good fight worthy of Snake's reputation in combat.
Your first instinct is to pull out your gun and start shooting, to which Ninja blocks your bullets and states you can't beat him with a weapon like that. After trying every weapon you've acquired upto that point to no avail you start to question what you're supposed to do, with no other options you try straight up punching him with a melee attack. This works. The Ninja is very pleased, puts away his sword suddenly you're in the middle of a hand to hand battle between two warriors. After landing enough blows, Ninja starts to turn invisible and hides somewhere in the room. Now you're playing hide and seek, looking for a slight glimmer of light to show where he's hiding so you can attack before he does. After repeating this a few times, the physical strain on the Ninja starts to become clear, his movements become slow, still powerful, but not as fast, as he slowly walks towards you asking you to keep fighting him, before defeating him and watching him disappear. Ignoring the story implications this fight has later, fist fighting a cyborg ninja in close quarters isn't the obvious solution straight away, something I'd imagine was completely intentional. This just makes things even more intense as you figure out how to fight back, dodging kicks to land a few blows before going back to dodging, all while the Ninja encourages you to fight more, clearly feeling alive while you do. It was really memorable and while it wasn't an easy fight, it felt balanced on both sides, a fair fight between two close quarter combat experts.
What wasn't balanced is the second boss I'd like to talk about, Psycho Mantis, probably one of the most famous characters to come out of Metal Gear Solid. Psycho Mantis is basically a psychic killer, capable of reading minds, controlling people and using telekinesis to manipulate objects and the environment.
This section contains spoilers for the Mantis fight so if you're fine with the surprise being spoilt go ahead but if you'd rather experience it yourself skip to the next section.
While his physical appearance is memorable, it doesn't hold a candle to interaction with Snake and the player. Because he's a psychic, he tells Snake that he'll prove the extent of his power by reading his mind. After this, he moves onto reading the memory card inserted into the PlayStation and if you have one of a few Konami games saved on your memory card, such as Castlevania, he'll read it out. He also asks you to put your controller on the ground and watch him move it with his mind, to which he makes the controller vibrate a few times. His psychic powers don't stop at cutscenes however, they also change up his boss fight. When you begin the battle, he'll float around the room, occasionally disappearing and reappearing, throwing furniture and energy blasts at you from afar. Any attempt to attack him will result in him automatically dodging every time, no matter what you use to attack. Asking Colonel Campbell for assistance informs you that Mantis is reading your mind, and that you won't be able to hit when he knows everything you'll do. After dying, reattempting and dying again, you get an urgent call from Campbell, who's figured out a strategy. If Mantis is reading your mind, you should unplug your controller and plug it into the player 2 controller port. Doing so leaves him completely open and you can literally just shoot him till he's dead which confuses and enrages him. I absolutely love this boss fight and I was so amazed at the creativity that went into him as a character as well as an enemy. Having no clue what I was doing only to be told the solution (something I never would have guessed) was incredible to me and something I'm never going to forget. It makes me wish more bosses in other games were as creatively designed as this.
The bosses in Metal Gear Solid are brilliant, feeling like a weird blend of your typical action fight and a puzzle mixed into one. Brute force is never the option and you can keep pushing as much as you like but you're probably not going to win that way. Tactically thinking about who you're fighting and what their weakness might be adds so much to the experience and is where I think the gameplay peaks in terms of its design.
Overall I think the gameplay on the whole has aged really well and I think the difficulty and the tactics at your disposal strike that key balance Kojima and the team were going for by creating a realistic, but enjoyable experience.
Audio
First thing to talk about for the audio is the voice acting performances. The best way to describe the voice acting is like cheesy action movie dialogue, which may have been intentional but regardless some of the line delivery and the dialogue itself is questionable at times. However I don't think this is a bad thing, as there are moments where the emotional weight and tone of the scene really shines through the with the performance of the voice actors. Solid Snake's VA David Hayter does a great job as Snake, and reprises the role in later games and you can tell he has a lot of love for the character and is trying really hard to give the best performance he can. I find the main antagonist Liquid to have some really good lines too, and the voice actor Cam Clarke does a wonderful job sounding like an 80s action movie villain.
Music is really well utilised as well. Opting for a more selective use, mainly during cutscenes, the tracks played are orchestral and make any deep conversation or death scenes feel impactful and serious. This is especially true for the death scenes of the bosses, who explain their motives for joining the Fox-Hound group while harmonious, thought provoking symphonies play as they reminisce on what led them to their deaths. It puts you in the place of the characters and for a PlayStation game, it's really impressive how the team behind the game used music in such an touching way.
Finally the audio during gameplay reserved for intense moments. By this I mean an instance when you've been detected. During normal traversal, the only sounding is any slow background music, your own footsteps (which enemies can hear if you're too close) and the hum of machinery nearby. This all changes when you've been spotted, with a loud, exclamatory noise to show something has seen you, followed by what sounds like intense chase and combat music, lasting until you either escape any pursuers, or die trying. It really gives you a shock when the silence is broken by the alerting noise and the music brings a sense of urgency as you attempt to flee or fight off your attackers.
Conclusion
To conclude, I'd argue that Metal Gear Solid is a near perfect game. I'm ashamed that I hadn't played it up until recently but I'm so glad I did. Everything from the story, how it's played, the characters, the soundtrack, everything kept me engaged ready to play more from start to finish. I'd recommend this to just about anyone, whether you're a fan of stealth games or have never tried one. It's not easily found on consoles nowadays due to a lack of re-releases but PlayStation 1 console's are pretty easily obtainable as well as a copy of the game. Otherwise I believe it's available via PC so I'd highly recommend giving it a go, or watching someone else play through it if you're just interested in the story. Overall I had a blast playing it and I'll absolutely be playing through the next few in the series and the first two games if I can find them.
I hope you enjoyed and thanks for reading!
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