Metal Gear Solid is indeed revolutionary, but it lacks a good balance between game play and story.
Metal Gear Solid is often cited as the game that made the stealth genre popular, and I wouldn't disagree with that statement in the slightest. What could possibly be appealing about a game that includes guns but makes you not want to use them? In hindsight nothing really, but that's where Metal Gear Solid excels because it made you think twice about your actions – should I kill this man and face an uncertain fight against out-numbering foes, or should I play it cool, play it safe? The original two Metal Gear games, Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake were both ground breaking titles for their time and were probably the first two stealth games ever developed, but Metal Gear Solid took the series to a level that those two games could only hope to reach.
Metal Gear Solid set the standards in its day for video game story telling. The games story is complex and really well told throughout the course of your mission. The entire game is set on an island called Shadow Moses. You, Solid Snake, are sent to the island undercover to infiltrate the plans of a terrorist corporation called FOX-HOUND. FOX-HOUND has found a way to activate nuclear weaponry using the Metal Gear robot Rex, and is in ransom with the American government. FOX-HOUND's leader, Liquid, is demanding that the American government hand over the body of Big Boss, the greatest soldier of the 20th century, for unknown reasons. If they don't meet their demands FOX-HOUND will launch a nuclear weapon from Metal Gear Rex. Snake's job is to try and put a stop to FOX-HOUND and to stop the launch of any nuclear weapons.
One of the contributing factors to why Metal Gear Solid's story is so well told goes to the fact that the game includes a lot of talking. Snake has an item called the Codec, and with the Codec Snakes' commanding officer, as well as some other important characters, can get in touch with him. While the games main story itself is just another one of those 'stop the bad guys and save everyone' scenarios, you get to really delve in to the personalities of the people you talk to, which in turn adds depth to the story.
Snakes commanding officer is Colonel Roy Campbell. Campbell is a close friend of Snakes' and his role is to relay Snake with certain new mission objectives. But as the story goes on he starts to develop in to a really fleshed out character, which is surprising seen as though you'll never physically meet him. Also another main character that you'll talk to through Codec is Naomi Hunter, a member of FOX-HOUND who helps you out. She's part of FOX-HOUND's medical staff, and at first she is really secretive about herself, but as the game draws closer to its end you'll learn a lot about her. Two other people you'll talk to through Codec are Mei Ling, a data analyst, and Nastasha Romanenko, a weapon analyst. Mei Ling's role through Codec is to act as the means to record your save data, and Nastasha's job is to help you out with any information you require for weapons and other such things. Mei Ling and Nastasha's roles in the story aren't as important as Campbell's or Naomi's, but Mei Ling will still give Snake information because she was the one who designed his Codec system as well as his Soliton Radar (an item which I will talk more about later).
There're two others that Snake will talk to through Codec, but these characters play much more vital roles through the game as Snake will actually come in contact with them. These two characters are Hal Emmerich and Meryl Silveburgh. Emmerich is the chief engineer of Metal Gear Rex and is also the man who built it. He is a big fan of Japanese anime, and for that reason he asks Snake to call him Otacon (after an American function for Japanese anime). But after he finds out from Snake that FOX-HOUND plan to use Rex to launch a nuclear weapon he joins forces with Snake as his intentions for building Metal Gear Rex was for it to help stop the launch of a nuclear weapon.
Meryl acts more of a love interest for Snake, which means that you find out a lot about Snake's feelings from the way he talks to her. Meryl herself is actually the niece of Colonel Campbell, and she always dreamt from being little that she wanted to become a soldier. Because she knows Shadow Moses better then Snake, with her been stationed there, she will contact Snake through Codec to give him information regarding where to go when she's not actually with him.
Now I'm a really big fan of video games having grand stories that really try to push boundaries (ie. Final Fantasy VII) but I think Metal Gear Solid might have gone a little too far with the whole idea. Yes, the constant Codec conversations with comrades do add depth to the story, but they also hinder the game play. Metal Gear Solid should only take an average player roughly 12 hours to complete (depending on which if the varying difficulties you choose), but about 6 hours of the game is either just talking through Codec or move-esque film sequences (which are rendered in real-time). So in all you're only getting about 6 hours of actual game play. Now I could let this slide by, because the story is so good that you could almost forgive this short coming, but the way the Codec conversations are handled may really bug you. During the first few hours of the game you'll be constantly interrupted from game play with Codec conversations between either you and Campbell or you and Naomi. Now this in itself may annoy you as you'll just want to get down to sneaking about, but a lot of the time at the beginning of the game the interruptions are needless which makes it even more annoying. In some circumstances Campbell will interrupt game play to say something as trivial as ''If you want to use the Codec, press the Select button''. Sure you could argue that this is the games way of telling you controls, but it is really annoying. I don't mind him giving you hints on how to play the game, but I think he should have given you all the info you were required to know in one go instead of giving you some info, then interrupting game play later down the line to give you some more. While I totally respect Hideo Kojima's job in developing Metal Gear Solid it seems to me that he was more focused on making a phenomenal story then he was of trying to make a phenomenal game.
But when you're not getting interrupted from Codec conversations, or when you're not watching real-time movies, you find that Metal Gear Solid has a really 'solid' game play system.
Of course the whole idea of the game is stealth, so the game play reflects this. Snake will run default, but if you press the 'X' button he'll crouch. If you move Snake while crouching he'll lay down and shift along the floor. Crawling along the floor will help you dramatically. Whilst crawling you don't make a sound, so it's a great way to keep quite. Also you can squeeze in to air vents to reach new places. You can also press Snake up against walls by pressing and holding the analogue stick in the walls direction. When you're pressed up against walls you can get a view of what's behind them and you can also shimmy across narrow walkways.
The games combat system is great. Snake can punch by pressing the 'O' button and he can use weapons by pressing the square button. You'll acquire a vast assortment of weapons throughout Shadow Moses (which you'll flick through using the R2 shoulder button) and they all feel great to use. Snake can't move while firing weapons, similar to the Resident Evil games, as the analogue stick is required to aim the weapons across the screen. Firing weapons can sometimes be awkward when surrounded by a lot of enemies, but I don't think this has anything to do with any sort of design flaw. It feels deliberate, which wouldn't surprise me seen as though Kojima's vision was to be stealthy and avoid fights.
For help avoiding enemies you'll require the help of your Soliton Radar. The Soliton Radar is essentially a radar system that acts as a map in the top right corner of the screen. The radar will show you Snake's current position (represented by the white dot in the middle of the radar screen) enemy positions (represented by red dots) and ally positions (represented by green dots). Showing you the positions of people will help you a lot in finding ways to reach people and objectives while also finding efficient ways to avoid enemies. But the radar won't work all the time, as severe harmonic resonance in the game will make the radar lose signal, rendering it useless. When this happens you'll have to fend for yourself.
FOX-HOUND are using special Genome Soldiers as the guards of Shadow Moses, and the Genome Soldiers are meant to be more adept soldiers then regular people. When you seen a Genome Soldier in the radar you'll notice that each of them have a little blue cone coming from their represented dots – well this blue cone represents their field of vision. If you step in to the field of vision they'll see you and trigger an alarm to call for back up, so to avoid them you'll have to stay out of their eye sight. But I had a few problems with the way the field of vision was handled. The soldiers don't have that great of a field of vision, meaning that you could walk right in front of them, in a place where it'd be realistically impossible for them not to see you, but if you're out of their field of vision they'll not notice you and just carry on patrolling. Also, in some situations, I was able to shoot the Soldiers in the head from a distance using a Sniper Rifle and they just stood there motionless after the shot hit them. It seems like the enemies were only designed to be aware to things when you were near them.
But underneath the problems Hideo Kojima had a lot of really neat ideas for the enemies too. The enemies, despite feeling stupid in certain circumstances, can also be really cleaver too. For instance if you're near an enemy, but he can't see you, and you step on something metallic on the floor the soldier will hear your footsteps, be alerted to your presence, and he'll come and check out what the noise exactly was. Also Snake can acquire a cardboard box to hide in, and if the enemies see the box they'll come up to it and remove it to find you hidden inside. But as great as these sort of ideas are they are over shadowed by the problems.
Visually Metal Gear Solid was absolutely stunning at release. The game looked miles better then any other PlayStation game before it – you could really tell that Konami pushed the PlayStation as far as they thought possible at the time. Unlike a lot of earlier PlayStation games, which had 3D character models rendered against 2D back grounds, Metal Gear Solid was in full 3D. This gave players a real sense that you were watching a movie, especially in the real time sequences. The games music is great as well, and also goes a long way to giving the game its movie-like feel.
It's difficult to look at Metal Gear Solid and say it is a bad game, because it isn't, but I can't help but feel it could have been a lot more then it turned out to be. The game had many revolutionary features and was very clever on occasions, but it also suffered from stupid problems; such as sometimes idiotic enemies and constant game play interruptions. The game has a really well told story, but the story made the game feel unbalanced because of how much it dominated proceedings. If there was more of a balance between game play and story I'd be sat here writing a review of how Metal Gear Solid is the greatest PlayStation game ever made - but unfortunately I can't because I don't think it is.
Review by: James Widdowson
Score: 8.7/10