Metal Gear Solid
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Metal Gear Solid (1999 on PlayStation, 2000 on Windows, 2013 on PSP...)
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Metal Gear Solid (2000 on Game Boy Color)
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 +
- Boss Fight Books games
- Console Generation Exclusives: PlayStation
- Gameplay feature: Drowning
- Games made into books
- Games made into comics
- Games that include a playable demo of another game
- Metal Gear series
- PlayStation Greatest Hits releases
- PlayStation Platinum Range releases
- Protagonist: Mullet haircut
- Setting: Future now past
- Theme: Psychic powers / Psionics
- Video games turned into board / card games
Screenshots
Promos
Credits (PlayStation version)
161 People (136 developers, 25 thanks) · View all
Solid Snake | |
Liquid Snake |
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Meryl Silverburgh |
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Naomi Hunter |
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Hal Emmerich |
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Roy Campbell |
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Mei Ling |
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Gray Fox (Ninja) |
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Nastasha Romanenko |
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Revolver Ocelot |
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Vulcan Raven |
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Psycho Mantis | |
Sniper Wolf |
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Donald Anderson |
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Kenneth Baker |
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Jim Houseman |
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Genome Soldier A | |
Genome Soldier B | |
Johnny Sasaki | |
Enemy Soldier | |
Computer Voice |
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European package design |
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[ full credits ] |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 94% (based on 31 ratings)
Players
Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 222 ratings with 11 reviews)
A game, a hero and the save the world plot get a hellava lot better.
The Good
The yawn save the world story. Its old. Giant tomatoes, computer and biological viruses, a 100-story tall lizard, and the Russians and/or Nazi's. But this it's a new thang. Save the world from... terrorists ? In Alaska ? With real live (or almost there) techologies and weapons? You mean it could happen? Yup. You'll find it all in MGS.
Your character Solid Snake, is a well developed, ass-kickin' , sneaky sonofabitch, who's been retired and was rehired by the US government to kick terroist ass.
All and all the gameplay is excellent. The weapons ( SOCOM , the Famas, C4, Claymores and the PSG-1, just to name a few) Are easy to handle and are totally apporpiarte for many boss fights. The story , complete with in-game FMV is solid and riviting, qualites you find in books, not games.
The Bad
You're unable to hold an item in one hand and wear another item , it's either one or the other.
Inablity to kill the dogs.
Hal Emmerich is a wussy.
The Bottom Line
A playable novel.
PlayStation · by Jason Lee (10) · 2001
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
The Good
The graphics, cut scenes, voice acting, music are amazingly good.
The Bad
The control are a little bit slick, and the radio dialogue are unnecessarily long.
The Bottom Line
"Stealth"
PlayStation · by Raihan Lazuardi (3) · 2016
Discussion
Subject | By | Date |
---|---|---|
Zovni's (really old) review for this is great! | Simoneer (29) | Oct 5th, 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
Related Sites +
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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 <moby developer="Hideo Kojima">Hideo Kojima</moby> 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
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Kartanym.
PS Vita added by GTramp. PSP, PlayStation 3 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 19th, 2000. Last modified September 18th, 2023.