4.5/5 ★ – davidcoaker's review of Metal Gear Solid.

Wow. I came into this game with the notion from the internet that Kojima made games that weren’t really games but instead C-tier movies, they were filled to the brim with long, corny, expository cutscenes that were soaked with unearned pretentiousness. As Snake enters Shadow Moses these fears were almost immediately brushed away, how the hell does this 3D action-stealth PlayStation One game from 1998 hold up so well in both gameplay and story? The gameplay holds the basis for any stealth game today with fun and simple mechanics that click instantly, along with boss fights that are both tough, creative and rewarding. The soundtrack is eerie and foreboding but also sad and beautiful, it lends to the snowy somber atmosphere of Shadow Moses that is filled with so much emotion for something that was stuffed on a 32-bit console from 1994. The story starts out as a simple espionage narrative but as time goes on our main character, David ‘Solid’ Snake becomes more developed along with both friends, lovers and enemies. The games themes are still resonant today, dealing with the fears of nuclear war, the military industrial complex profiteering off conflict, how soldiers are manipulated and lied to and most of all the tragedy of war and the death involved in it. Every time you finish a boss fight it isn’t some triumphant thing, Snake walks up to them, extends his hand and gets a glimpse into their lives, their pains, their struggles. In the end he almost always walks away seeing the shared humanity in them. And yet, in a very meta textual way he is told over and over again how they see he enjoys war. We the player keep coming back to this game and games like it, we can choose the good options, we can be the hero but at the end of the day we are pretending to shoot these people for our amusement, what does that say about us, and what does it say about Snake? Maybe I’m looking too deep into it, I don’t know, but the fact I can draw this from a game that’s well over 20 years old is incredible in its own right. I have deducted half a star bc I think the game is backloaded with too many continuous boss fights and backtracking, like spread it out more or maybe erase one? Like we really didn’t need two phases of the Rex fight. But anyway, please play this.