Metal Gear Solid

aka: Hejin Zhuangbei, MGS, Metal Gear 3
Moby ID: 2511
PlayStation Specs
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Description official descriptions

Metal Gear Solid is a sequel to Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. After the tragic confrontation with Big Boss, the hero, special agent Solid Snake, decided to retire and has since then lived in a secluded region in Alaska. But the US government recruits him once again for a dangerous mission. The members of Foxhound, a renegade special forces unit, threaten to use a devastating nuclear weapon if the government doesn't hand them the mortal remains of Big Boss, their former commander. Foxhound is now led by a talented, ambitious young man with the codename Liquid Snake. Knowing that the visual resemblance between this new terrorist mastermind and himself can not be coincidental, Solid Snake agrees to infiltrate the new Foxhound base, destroy the unknown nuclear weapon, and find the truth about his own identity.

The gameplay in Metal Gear Solid follows the prototype established in the two earlier Metal Gear games. Solid Snake has a limited arsenal of weapons and cannot allow himself to pave his way to the goal by killing all the enemies. He has to stay unnoticed, hide, crawl, wait for the right moment, sneak, and use various gadgets that will prevent him from alerting the enemy. Boss battles and some other sequences are played out as action-oriented set pieces, with the player having to figure out the weakness of the enemy in order to succeed.

The game utilizes a traditional top-down view, but the graphics in this installment are real 3D. Conversations with Snake's allies and cutscenes are used extensively to advance the plot and gain more insight into it.

Spellings

  • メタルギアソリッド - Japanese spelling
  • 合金装备 - Chinese spelling (simplified)
  • 特攻神諜 - Chinese spelling (traditional)

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (PlayStation version)

173 People (148 developers, 25 thanks) · View all

Solid Snake
Liquid Snake
Meryl Silverburgh
Naomi Hunter
Hal Emmerich
Roy Campbell
Mei Ling
Gray Fox (Ninja)
Nastasha Romanenko
Revolver Ocelot
Vulcan Raven
Psycho Mantis
Sniper Wolf
Donald Anderson
Kenneth Baker
Jim Houseman
Genome Soldier A
Genome Soldier B
Johnny Sasaki
Enemy Soldier
Computer Voice
European package design
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 94% (based on 33 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 234 ratings with 11 reviews)

A rare classic.

The Good
Metal Gear Solid was undoubtedly, in my opinion, the best game made for the PlayStation. Every aspect of the game, the story, the action, the character development, was achieved with utter perfection.

The action in this game is incredible. While most of the time you will be attempting to practice "tactical espionage", you will more than likely get caught at some point, and if you're anything like me, half the time it will be on purpose, just because it's so entertaining. Each time it happens, a heart-pounding battle ensues, where you will frantically search for a place to lay low, encountering seemingly endless enemies along the way. And if that's not enough, don't fret, because you will also constantly be confronting the various bosses in the game, each one with their own unique personalities and abilities, and each one completely different than the last. While you are not fighting, though, you will perform tasks such as misdirection, hiding under a box, and many more in order to throw the enemy off your tracks.

Unfortunately, you would expect a game with this caliber of action to be at least slightly lacking in story, a common flaw in action games. But MGS surpasses this stereotype by incorporating a captivating, deep, and suspenseful story that easily matches the quality of the action, if not exceeding it. It starts out as a seemingly unoriginal story but turns into something that is anything but unoriginal. You will feel for every major supporting character in the game just as much as you feel for Snake, and each one is as significantly important to the progress of the game as the next. Plot twists are around every corner, to the point where nothing is as it seems, and nothing is ever predictable. Add outstanding voice actors to each and every one of the characters, and the result is an unforgettable experience.

Along with these two imperative factors, you have varying gameplay that never gets old. You wil never find yourself doing the same thing twice, and I can't stress that enough. Each area is abound with new tasks you must perform, but you never feel as if you're being forced to complete tasks, because they're so flawlessly integrated into the game, and to put it plain and simple, they're actually fun. To help you complete these tasks you will be supplied with countless items that you will find in the course of the game, along with numerous weapons that each serve their own purpose. Never will you find a weapon that isn't useful at some point in the game. And when you do beat the game, don't think you've completed it, because there are two endings. And each ending rewards you with a valuable item that you can use in your next attempt, and they are both very fun to use.

The Bad
There wasn't a time in this game where I wasn't in complete ecstasy. No complaints at all.

The Bottom Line
Metal Gear Solid is, in a sense, perfect. It doesn't lack in any area, but rather excels triumphantly in everything it attempts to achieve.

PlayStation · by DarkDove (63) · 2003

The Running Gun Blues

The Good
There were only two Metal Gear games that I played prior to my most recent playthrough of the series, and the Gamecube remake of Metal Gear Solid was one of them. Back then, I really didn’t enjoy the game, and my most vivid memory of it was being thankful it was over. Now that I’ve played the original Metal Gear titles on the MSX2, I’ve gained a new appreciation for the series and felt that I was well prepared to give the first in the Solid series another chance, this time on the original Playstation. I went into it expecting to enjoy it with a newly gained perspective of the series. Unfortunately, I just feel that same way I did after completing it the first time.

Metal Gear Solid starts out the same way as the previous two games: Snake arrives at a compound filled with enemy combatants and must infiltrate it with nothing but his wits and a pack of cigarettes. Where Solid diverges from the original series is in both its new 3D polygons and a much greater focus on storytelling. Before you even start, you’re given the option to view a rather lengthy set of briefing videos that outline the mission Snake’s about to embark on in great detail. It’s optional, since much of the information provided is also given in dialogue, but it underlines the great effort taken to create a deep story experience.

This time around, Snake is tasked with rescuing two hostages and preventing terrorists from launching a nuclear device. The terrorists are composed of soldiers from Snake’s old unit, FOXHOUND, and they make up the game’s diverse rogues gallery. While Metal Gear 2 had some interesting bosses, Solid takes it a step further by giving them unique personalities and building them up before finally placing you at odds with them. This leads to some extremely memorable encounters, and is perhaps Metal Gear Solid’s most outstanding feature. However, the attempt to make them well-rounded characters unfortunately leads to them launching into absolutely ludicrous monologues both before and after their battles.

While Metal Gear Solid does have a case of the early 3D uglies, the presentation holds up remarkable well due to a great artstyle and sound design. It’s hard to believe that the voice acting came from the late 90’s, since most of the performances are extremely well done; passable even by today’s standards. Characters and environments are blocky and pixelated, but excellent texture work, the use of atmospheric lighting, and adherence to the series’ typical blue-grey colour palette make them visually appealing, despite their obvious age.

Despite the many changes that Solid brings to the series, there are still portions reminiscent to earlier games. The item collecting is still present and still satisfying, though it’s somewhat diluted by the game’s more linear progression and some superfluous items. Certain portions feel directly ripped from Metal Gear 2, such as a puzzle that requires you to heat and cool a key card to get it to fit in different locks and a certain encounter where Snake must confirm the identity of a character by following her into the women’s bathroom. Unfortunately, many of these additions feel useless within the game’s new structure. The aforementioned key puzzle in particular already required a great deal of backtracking, and Solid’s linearity and insistence on constantly popping up new storytelling sequences makes the sequence even less tolerable.

The Bad
I’d be hesitant to call Metal Gear Solid’s narrative bad, since it does feature a decent amount of depth, memorable and well-rounded characters, and an interesting progression. However, it’s hard to actually appreciate it when it’s mired in so many problems that it would likely take a lengthy essay to properly cover. The root of the problem isn’t in the story, which is largely a repeat of the previous games, but rather in the storytelling. Gameplay is frequently interrupted by cutscenes or codec communication sequence, and these interruptions tend to be long and drawn out.

This is the price of those diverse and memorable characters; long and overdramatic dialogue. Every character in the game is so quick to spill their life story that it quickly gets ridiculous. You’d think you were in a chat room full of teenagers, rather than on a covert infiltration mission. Almost every boss gives a long monologue as they die the clichéd slow death, telling you all about how tragic their life was and how great you are for finally giving them peace. Any character who talks to you over codec feels the need for venting their every insecurity. This does have the benefit of creating sympathetic villains and conveying motivation, but there are better ways of handling character development. This is the storytelling equivalent of publishing someone’s diary.

If you’re not listening to a character prattle on about how they were born on the battlefield, then they’re probably over-explaining the game’s technology and political climate. I can’t say I’ve ever wondered how a key card works in the game, yet Metal Gear Solid takes the steps of carefully explaining how that door slides open when you get near it. This is the sort of thing that goes better in flavour text. If I cared, I’d ask. I imagine the goal of all this superfluous information is to make the game world feel more real, but over-developed trivialities sit beside ridiculous ideas like the ability to manufacture the perfect soldier by splicing specific genes. The mere fact that so much effort went into making certain elements of the narrative airtight and realistic just makes the many preposterous elements harder to swallow.

I hate to spend so much time harping on the game’s writing, but when the game is so ridden with cutscenes and dialogue it’s hard to ignore. By my estimate, somewhere around one-third of the entire game’s running time is taken up by cutscenes, and this is taking my numerous deaths into consideration. It seems that for every two rooms traversed, a cutscene is there to interrupt, and the constant starting and stopping becomes extraordinarily aggravating until it all culminates in the most excruciatingly eye-roll inducing ending I think I’ve ever sat through. If the narrative just played nice with the gameplay instead of constantly getting in the way, I would have been much kinder to it.

It doesn’t even feel like the designers knew what to do with the gameplay. As mentioned, many of the gameplay elements from the early Metal Gear games have been replicated in the new 3D engine, but the structure had to be completely gutted in order to accommodate the cutscenes. Exploration has been scaled back considerably to the point where the game feels restrictively linear. Yet, despite dropping exploration entirely, the designers make a half-hearted attempt to cram it back in there. Rooms are still locked until you get a key, so backtracking is still necessary, but few of the rooms contain something that makes the trip worthwhile. Worse yet, some of the forced backtracking is unreasonably forced. The worst case of this is a boss battle that has to be interrupted while you travel back to one of the game’s first rooms in order to retrieve a weapon. You then walk back to the boss, defeat them (potentially), and get sent all the way back there in a cutscene, only to have to walk back again. It’s ridiculous!

What makes this even more intolerable is the horrendous camera angles which seems to be stuck between poorly emulating the perspective in Metal Gear 2 and trying to present something more cinematic. The result is a view that is zoomed in way too close and angled way too high, making the whole game feel frustratingly claustrophobic. This forces reliance on the radar, which works okay, for the most part, allowing you to accurately see an enemy’s field of view, but the problem is that it gets frequently jammed. So if you’re unfamiliar with the position of enemies and auto-turrets, you could easily wind up walking into the line of sight of one that is carelessly positioned right outside the camera’s perspective.

The Bottom Line
You’ll have to forgive me if, after the excellent Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, I’m extremely disappointed with Metal Gear Solid. Even if Solid’s storytelling and dialogue were spot on, the gameplay from the previous games had to be so scaled back that very little remains of what makes the first games so satisfying. What was held onto feels more like ornamental additions held onto for tradition’s sake, such as pointless backtracking sessions and items that are basically unnecessary. It’s not all bad, though. While I found it to be frustrating to play, its outstanding presentation ensures that there are a lot of memorable moments and characters to meet. I just wish it wasn’t all bogged down in a completely MEDIOCRE experience.

PlayStation · by Adzuken (836) · 2015

This game lived up to the hype!!

The Good
In all honesty, what is there not to like about this game? MGS incorporated some of the best espionage action ever put forth on any gaming console, period. The play control was incredible, the cinema sequences were amazing, and the storyline was compelling with plenty of plot twists and turns. Also lets not forget about the huge arsenal that was available for use, and the mini-game that ended up as its own disc in the VR training sessions.

The Bad
I was always told never to tell a lie, so I won't start now. There is absolutely nothing bad that I could honestly say about this game.

The Bottom Line
Without a doubt, the best spy game ever created, produced, and packaged. Hideo Kojima is a genius.

PlayStation · by Tarzan Dan (25) · 2004

[ View all 11 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Zovni's (really old) review for this is great! Simoneer (29) Oct 5, 2010

Trivia

Action figures

For the US release of Metal Gear Solid, McFarlane Toys was entrusted with the sculpting of an action figure line based on the game by Konami. Consisting of one series, the lineup includes: Solid Snake, Meryl Silverburgh, Ninja, Revolver Ocelot, Psycho Mantis, Sniper Wolf, Vulcan Raven, Liquid Snake and a limited edition Psycho Mantis repaint. This series has been re-released several times (later in double-packs).

Copy protection

It is rather important to keep the box for the PlayStation version of the game, since it features a frequency for the CODEC communicator thay you will need to progress through the game in one of the screenshots.

Emulation

One of three games to be emulated on the short-lived bleemcast! PlayStation emulator for Dreamcast.

References

Members of the development team hid images of themselves throughout the game. These images or 'ghosts' as they are referred to are only visible by taking photographs of certain areas in the game with the camera item.

References to the game

This game is referenced in the Eiffel 65 song, My Console.

Rumors

There were untrue rumors about Greg Eagles, the actor who voiced Grey Fox, being dead. In fact, he was mistaken for Kaneto Shiozawa, the actor who voiced the same character in the Japanese version of the game, dead in 2000.

Voice acting

Due to union regulations, the voice cast (with the exceptions of David Hayter and Doug Stone) used pseudonyms during the recording sessions, and were credited that way. Here's a list with the voice actors names and their respective pseudonyms: Cam Clarke (James Flinders), Debi Mae West (Mae Zadler), Jennifer Hale (Carren Learning), Christopher Randolph (Christopher Fritz), Paul Eiding (Paul Otis), Kim Mai Guest (Kim Nguyen), Greg Eagles (Greg Byrd), Renée Raudman (Renee Collette), Patric Zimmerman (Patric Laine), Peter Lurie (Chuck Farley), Tasia Valenza (Julie Monroe), Allan Lurie (Bert Stewart) and William Bassett (Frederick Bloggs).

Awards

  • Electronic Gaming Monthly
    • February 2006 (Issue #200) - #12 out of 200 of the "Greatest Games of Their Time" list
  • Game Informer
    • August 2001 (Issue #100) - #17 in the "Top 100 Games of All Time" poll
    • October 2004 (Issue #200) - #12 on the "Greatest Games of Their Time" list
  • GameSpy
    • 2001 – #32 Top Game of All Time
  • Retro Gamer
    • September 2004 (Issue #8) – #70 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)

Information also contributed by Ace of Sevens, Big John WV, chirinea, Evil-Jim, Grant McLellan, Indra was here, J. Michael Botorff, PCGamer77 and Zovni

Analytics

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Related Games

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
Released 2001 on PlayStation 2
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
Released 2004 on PlayStation 2
Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence
Released 2005 on PlayStation 2, 2011 on PlayStation 3, 2012 on PS Vita
Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions
Released 1999 on PlayStation, 2013 on PS Vita, PlayStation 3
LittleBigPlanet: Metal Gear Solid Solid Snake Costume
Released 2008 on PlayStation 3, 2014 on PlayStation 4
LittleBigPlanet: Metal Gear Solid Meryl Costume
Released 2008 on PlayStation 3, 2014 on PlayStation 4
LittleBigPlanet: Metal Gear Solid Level Kit
Released 2008 on PlayStation 3, 2014 on PlayStation 4
LittleBigPlanet: Metal Gear Solid Raiden Costume
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Related Sites +

  • Hints for Metal Gear Solid
    The solutions are revealed one tip at a time to give you just the help you need. If you're stuck, these hints will help you.
  • JUNKER HQ
    This fansite is dedicated to the games produced and/or designed by Hideo Kojima and contains all kinds of trivia, artwork, plot summaries, discussion forums and more.
  • Metal Gear Solid PC
    Official Site
  • Metal Gear Solid: The Unofficial Site
    A fansite that contains information about the whole Metal Gear franchise, including galleries, interviews, downloadable content and discussion boards.
  • Wikipedia: Metal Gear Solid
    Information about Metal Gear Solid at Wikipedia

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 2511
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Kartanym.

PS Vita added by GTramp. PlayStation 3, PSP added by Foxhack. PlayStation added by Grant McLellan.

Additional contributors: woods01, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, tlm, tarmo888, DreinIX, —-, Paulus18950, Caelestis, Patrick Bregger, yenruoj_tsegnol_eht (!!ihsoy).

Game added October 19, 2000. Last modified March 8, 2024.