Due to various reasons I have,  up to this point, only played the Metal Gear Solid series briefly with much of my play confined to the first in the series. As such, I have decided to play through the Metal Gear Solid series in full and offer my thoughts in a critical vaccuum without any influence from reviews or previews.

Away we go...

Metal Gear Solid feels like a new experience despite the fact that I have finished it previously over 6 times. Only playing now could I appreciate the story and the subtleties of the narrative while still recognising the excellent game underneath.

Solid Snake is a retired agent who has been involved in two major secret operations. He is partly blackmailed into this new mission to prevent the launch of a nuclear missiles by a terrorist group who are demanding a billion dollars and the remains of their former leader known as the greatest soldier of the twentieth-century, Big Boss. The story is told through a number of lengthy cutscenes and codec conversations leading me to question the general criticism of Metal Gear becoming too focused on taking control from the player when this was the case from the very start.

In terms of the subtlety mentioned above there are comments made about the difficulty in the re-integration of soldiers into normal life and the fact that when wars end the soldiers are discarded and left to pick up the pieces of their lives until they are needed again. The protagonist, Solid Snake, is a figurehead for this idea and is an extremely flawed character. The story twists and turns with backstabbing, political interference and critical analysis of the role of gene therapy and nuclear weapons in todays society. This all completely passed me by on originally playing as a 10 year old in which I saw it as an overly-talkative action game.

While the overall story is entertaining and though provoking the dialogue can often be poor. One example in particular which stuck with me was a conversation between Snake and Meryl which went a little like this:

Meryl Silverburgh: So, there's something you like?
Solid Snake: Yeah, you've got a great butt!
Meryl Silverburgh: Oh, I see! First it's my eyes, now it's my butt! What's next?
Solid Snake: On the battlefield, you never think about what's next.

While the story and narrative are undoubtedly the focus of the game that would be to ignore the excellent stealth gameplay underpinning the entire game. This was another area where I had an entirely different experience as previously sneaking around was low on my priority list as an all guns blazing approach was the order of the day. Attempting to stealthily play the game I rarely ventured outside my silenced pistol and found this approach to be very rewarding as I could enter a room, quickly take down some soldiers, slip past security cameras and dodge past any incoming patrols to reach the next area.

The entire game takes a cinematic and bombastic approach to its presentation and story with each primary character having the their respective voice actors appearing on screen as the are introduced. This serves to give the game a more filom-like feel alrhough this has lead to accusations of Hideo Kojima being a frustrated director stuck in the body of a game producer. Personally I feel that Metal Gear Solid got this balance right and to see how this can go wrong one need only look at the remake, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, to see how to go too far with the many needless additions to some of the games cutscenes with overly prevalent slow-motion a standout problem.

Metal Gear Solid was and is an excellent game whether you have any interest in the themes put forward or simply want an entertaining game. It is an attempt at some form of maturity in a medium that struggles to distinguish between  real maturity and plain old guts and gore. In 1998 this game was a revelation and it is not hard to see why.