Metal Gear Solid

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.