3.5/5 ★ – alcoholicgoat's review of Metal Gear Solid.

Probably my favourite PS1 title, mostly because it's the only one I've played to completion (twice now) Coming back to it I'm definitely more aware of how campy and dumb it is but I still do find it very charming and aesthetically really cool. I actually like how it looks. It's a testament to the art direction in that it manages to still be visually appealing. The game is fucking clunky though. It feels like it came out in 1998. Definitely took a lot of getting used to. Aiming is a bit weird and I prefer how MGS 2 handles it. Gameplay is what it is. The fact that I was still able to finish it is a sign that it hasn't aged horribly. The story itself is pretty simple, if not a little too expository. Everything is stuffed with exposition and overwrought prose meant to sound cool or deep. It rarely worked. Most of the time I laughed. Tonally it's basically a playable John Woo movie. Which that mileage varies from person to person, but I'm a fan of Face/Off and Broken Arrow. Those are very good guilty pleasures. It's a very singular game. Love it or hate it, you can tell it's a Kojima title. I'm not gonna heap endless praise on it, though. I did have to experience it, and while I do still like it after my first go-around 9 years ago, I was reminded of a lot of very frustrating elements. The backtracking is pretty bad. I'm not gonna lie. It's padded out the ass to the point where you get a recap of a plot point after getting a key item. Like I haven't forgotten what happened. Chill. The keycard was annoying, same with the sniper rifle, and the game is allergic to sequence breaking. I get it, you wanna tell a story, but I should be rewarded for thinking ahead, not yelled at or disregarded. Also some of the boss fights are annoying as shit. The Rex fight I got VERY VIVID flashbacks of that Grey Fox cutscene. At first I was like "huh, this seems really familiar" and then I realized oh yeah I've seen this 30 times because I kept DYING and couldn't SKIP IT. It's weird cause the boss fights are pretty easy once you figure out how to exploit them, but the game design is so obtuse that cheesing them isn't very satisfying. The fact that the last 40% of the game is a boss rush is not fun. Narratively it makes sense, but for the love of god give me some fucking breathing room bro. The amount of rage quits during the Liquid fight atop Rex, the Rex fight, the final jeep escape, Hind D, and Sniper Wolf fights are staggering. The only good boss fight here is Psycho Mantis solely due to the novelty. The other fights aren't complicated, they are just needlessly stiff. The game does a very shitty job at tutorialising mechanics and strategies. It doesn't even tell you how to stealth kill enemies. What the fuck. Music is good if not repetitive. Overall I did like it but I'm really curious about The Twin Snakes now since people claim that one is "too easy". I didn't find it hard, just occassionally frustrating. Is it a classic? Sure. Is it for everyone? Fuck no. I think the game is very ahead of its time but it's also very antequated.