‘Love Can Bloom, Even On A Battlefield’ - Metal Gear Solid (1998), Flick Through Review

The Metal Gear Solid series is one of the big ones. People often point at it and say, ‘those games are good’, but it’s hard to tell why. Is it the music? The memes? The story that reads like a fever dream? So, as part of my never ending torment, I decided to get my hands on the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection and give all of the games a go.

I skipped over the MSX original, moving straight to the 3D titles. I can always come back to them when I’m more attached to the Metal Gear world. Metal Gear Solid starts out in a suitably epic manner; a special forces group has turned on the US government and captured a nuclear facility where they will use a secret weapon to start World War Three if they aren’t given the body of the mysterious Big Boss and a billion dollars.

Not exactly a slow push into the convoluted story. We, as Solid Snake, are brought out of retirement to infiltrate the base and take down the agents of FOXHOUND and save the world. No sweat. The game does a great job of throwing players right into the fray, where they will be expected to slink around corners and hide just outside of the enemy soldiers’ field of view. It isn’t overly handholdy and quickly gets tricky but as I got used to the controls (which had a tendency to snap Snake to whatever action they thought was best, even when I disagreed) I managed to make my way into the base and ended up really getting sucked into the rest of the game.

The plot quickly veers into incoherency with references to wars, old allies, foreign powers and secret research done by the government, but the game’s emotional core yanks it free before the weight of all that lore can crush it. Snake is a gruff soldier who denies that he is a hero, while he falls in love with the damsel in distress and saves the world. The dialogue, while occasionally a little pretentious and serious for a game that lets you reliably hide in a cardboard box, manages to touch on something real.

Along the way, Snake meets Meryl (that damsel in distress that I mentioned), Otacon, a lovable, bumbling scientist, and a large cast of weird and wonderful bosses. These boss fights make up the trickiest parts of the game that act as barriers to the next section of gameplay. At first, they annoyed me. Revolver Ocelot shot me with pinpoint accuracy without letting me get a single hit in. The Cyborg Ninja, who is revealed to be Gray Fox, Snake’s old ally, was like banging my head against a wall, and that was before I tried to get to grips with the lore behind him. But somewhere along the way, I got it. Like, really got it. I was playing better, loving the melodramatic story, gasping at the plot twist that I was helping the villains’ plot all along. Psycho Mantis’ fight was tense and surreal, and his memory card reading trick was dated and charming. The final fights - all three of them - are so over the top that I ended the game watching the credits roll, staring at my fairly average final score and quietly questioning whether I should start the whole nonsense stew over again.

I think that is why it is important, and why the series has stuck around so long. The story proved that video games could be serious and silly, and over the top. It plays out like an action B movie that could be a cult classic, but we’re in the driver’s seat the whole time. Even with clunky controls and wince-worthy voice acting it does manage to wrap up as a game I would recommend to anyone and everyone, provided that they have the patience to get the good stuff out of it.

Metal Gear Solid might be a beautiful mess, but it hides in a box and waits until you are defenceless before it jumps out and gets you.

Thanks for reading! If you liked this little dip into Metal Gear Solid let me know down below or over on my Instagram right here @conhogg for extra bits and pieces and perhaps soon some behind the scenes posts? I’ve got more reviews (and probably more Metal Gear) on the way, so keep an eye on the blog and until next time remember; “Never doubt yourself. Just let it make you stronger. Learn something from it.” (Solid Snake, MGS1)