O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
Geez, when was the last time I played Metal Gear Solid?.. It’s been at least 20 years. This is a bit strange, because out of the entire franchise, I always had the warmest feelings towards the first two MGS entries. Apart from MGR: Revengeance, of course. Last time I’ve played MGS1 was with the interesting but flawed PC port of the game that is still available on GOG… but I’ll speak on the different versions of the game later. The main reason I’ve decided that it was finally time to replay a classic was the release of Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Volume 1. Yes, it has been released back in 2023, but the original release was highly flawed, so I’ve waited for some time for it to get patched and it seems like the game included in it are at their potential best by this point. So it was time. And Metal Gear Solid, originally released in 1998, is still really cool but also far more flawed then I have remembered.
Metal Gear as a franchise has always been stealth action focused, even with the very first releases on MSX that did not get an official international release until 2005. Granted, a lot of people might’ve played the NES port of the original game, infamous for its Engrish, but it wasn’t the same game and its direct sequel (Snake’s Revenge) is a completely unique title that has never been part of the series canon. Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake are also included in the Master Collection Vol. 1, but I’ll be honest – I could never get into them. They’re too maze-like, too convoluted, despite having a very metroidvania-ish approach to the world design which I tend to like. Then again – you don’t really need to play them. Not just because the events of the games are described in the bonus features of MGS or because the franchise tends to retcon its games all of the time anyway. But because for all intents and purposes the first three games in the series feel almost like remakes of one another. MG2 doesn’t just evolve ideas from MG1, but reuses some. And MGS itself reuses a shocking amount of scenarios, story twists, puzzles and general ideas from MG2. And later on, MGS2 will not only do it again, but make this infinite remaking part of its plot.
But I digress, there’s a chance you have never played MGS and might need more context. This is a stealth action game with a top down/isometric view with relatively simple stealth mechanics. Enemies have a cone of vision (that is visualized in the radar screen of the game) and usually cannot see beyond it, at least until you get to higher difficulties. Running on most surfaces produces no noise, even if you’re running directly behind the enemy. Enemies can react to sounds, but it’s a very simple system and as a reaction to those and some other factors, enemies have different states. During normal patrolling routes they just follow the same pattern. If they are investigating something, they will then return the the normal patrols unless they find something. If an alarm is raised, enemies are actively searching for you in the room you’re in and the alert status goes away after some time if they can’t find you. Oh and yes – the game is room based, where a “room” may contain an entire floor of a military base or just one big exterior section, or an actual one room, but as soon as you cross a doorway a new “room” is loaded in.
MGS, despite being a 3D game, still followed a lot of limitations and rules from its 2D counterparts. You can enter a first person view, for example, but you can’t attack like that, unless it’s a specific weapon that can only be used in first person. The way enemies or enemy cameras see different across difference in height is simplified and you can’t jump down or over even the small barriers. Due to this, the “action” part of the game, while being emphasized regularly via forced encounters with bosses or groups of enemies, is quite limiting and awkward. Usually, the game works around these limitations in the same way it did with the first two MG games – by making boss fights into puzzles to solve, with optimal and suboptimal solutions. But if there is one thing that really aged poorly, it is the combat.
You might’ve also heard about extremely convoluted storylines in Metal Gear games, but MGS was there at the relative beginning, so it’s rather easy to parse. It still pulls a lot of twists and silly revelations, but it can be enjoyed as a separate story without thinking about the sequels. In some ways, it’s even better that way, as you end up with a naive but hopeful anti-war story, where most characters involved love war and suffer for it. It’s almost sad, how every single follow up undermines the peaceful ending of the game, actually. Not that the story isn’t stupid at times and it’s also easy to forget, if you have played all the rest of the games, that Snake used to be portrayed as a suave James Bond-like womanizer, not an awkward nerd he and Big Boss become in later entries.
Some of the borrowed ideas from MG2 do make the experience worse and very outdated. For example, the original MGS continued the idea from earlier games where you start with very limited health and equipment and “level up” after boss fights which does force you to learn how to play stealthily at the beginning, but also makes early action sequences harder and more frustrating than they could be otherwise. The metroidvania aspect is still here, but is underutilized and almost completely discarded after a certain point, making the game feel more complicated than it needs to be. A lot of extremely convoluted puzzles and “gotcha!” moments are also here, but mostly backloaded, making most of the second half of the game genuinely unenjoyable. Though, even without reusing older ideas, MGS has a few frustrating ones of its own. Most infamously the start of the trend to include the horrid button mashing torture sequences in the series. At least in this one you can skip it if you’re okay with the worse ending. But this playthrough was the first time I’ve managed to get through this without cheats and I never want to do it again.
If only there was a better version… And here I have to speak on the versions and ports of the game and the fact that there is, in fact a technically better version. Inside the Master Collection itself you can play the original release versions of MGS, presented as they were on PS1 via emulation. The VR missions discs that were released later with some really cool additional mini-challenge missions. And also the MGS: Integral version of the game that is, for all intents and purposes, the best version of the original release, but it was only released in Japan. And since the collection simply contains the PS1 original titles, it’s still the case here – you can play it as voice acting and some of the menu text can be English. But for the first time experience, unless you speak Japanese, this is not a great choice. This same version was the basis of the PC port of the game I’ve mentioned before and it is fully in English, but it also has some issues and doesn’t quite look and feel the same as the PS1 original. Plus, it’s not part of this collection.
And then in 2004 there was a remake (Twin Snakes), made using the MGS2 as a basis. And gameplay-wise, it’s basically all you ever wanted, because MGS2 addressed most of the frustrations of the original game, while still following the same general rules and concepts started in MG1. However, it also had ridiculous over the top cutscenes, a few of the added features made the mostly unchanged layout and logic of the original MGS moot or less interesting and, most importantly, it’s not part of this Collection. It would be great to see it included in Volume 2, if Konami can scrub all Nintendo references from the game and have the rights to do so. But ultimately, it would be even more interesting to see a remake of the game, using Twin Snakes as a basis, but sticking to the original cutscene direction and maybe tweaking some enemy behavior to work better with MGS2 features.
As is, however, Metal Gear Solid in this Master Collection Version is still worth revisiting. It’s more of a game preservation case, then a wonderful NightDive-style remastering, but that’s a good thing too. I do wish, the overall experience with the version was a bit more customizable and had less oddities and it is a shame some of the little things might be gone completely (like the famous Psycho Mantis ability to comment on save files from other Konami titles). But this is a good release of a good game. That didn’t age as gracefully as I would’ve hoped. But still looks great, sounds great and feels great (at least for the first half). Unless there is a proper remake effort, this is the best way to experience the game.