Back in the days I had a demo disc (remember those?) from a PlayStation magazine, where I first experienced Metal Gear Solid. I thought the demo was cool, but I never got the full game, nor any of the subsequent games in the series. In late 2020 I decided to finally right this wrong.

If I can describe MGS in one word, it would be ‘cinematic’. The writers/Kojima really did an amazing job with the characters and dialogue in this game. It makes you want to keep playing to uncover the many mysteries throughout the game, and when you finally obtain one answer, two new questions will pop up.

The voice acting is REALLY damn good, it’s mindblowing that this was from 1998. I thought Liquid Snake was a bit cheesy at first, but I eventually grew to like how he was portrayed too.

I liked the variety of items and weapons in this game, even if some things were only useful for one particular section only. The shooting mechanic is pretty slow and cumbersome though. A lock-on feature would have really helped. Maybe this was the devs’ way of encouraging stealth?

Another highlight are the varied boss fights, which all require drastically different strategies to beat. Usually a boss will fight one way at first then switch up once they’ve lost a bit of health, keeping you on your toes. Some of my favourites include the helicopter fight vs. Liquid Snake, the encounters with Sniper Wolf (sorry Otacon), as well as the epic battle against REX. But the fist fight with Liquid was… ugh.

The communication tower climb was also ugh…

The graphics is typical PS1 affair, meaning that it hasn’t held up very well, but you get used to it, and it doesn’t matter too much anyway, because the overall atmosphere is still dark and tense.

The battle themes are very memorable:

Encounter

Duel

I was also amused by the 4th wall breakage throughout the game, like Meryl’s codec and the Psycho Mantis fight.

Not sure when I’ll get around to the other MGS games, but they’re definitely now on my bucket list!