Ah, welcome to the world of Metal Gear Solid. I've been wanting to talk about this game for awhile... So why not make a review of it? Out of all the Playstation games this is probably my favorite aside from Final Fantasy VII. Chances are if you had a Playstation back in the day, you've played this game. It's definitely one of the Most Popular, and for a good reason. It's damn good! Well, let's move on the review!

LEVEL 1: STORY
You are Snake, a government agent on a mission to regain control of a secret nuclear weapons base from terrorist hands... That's the basic summary. Look, I know what you might be thinking... "Too generic" or "Sounds horrible" and "Too cliched". I get what you mean.... but there's a reason why this story get's a 10/10. Your first goal in the game is to rescue the Darpa Chief, but through twist and turns the story becomes very much more than that. You can definitely see it's Influence from action movies though. That's not a bad thing though. On the way you'll meet a brilliant cast of characters, both friends and foes. Two major characters Snake meets within his journey are the Love interest for Snake "Meryl", and the Otaku (Nerd), "Otacon". These are both very well devoloped characters and really grow through out the series. A random thing to note is that Meryl is your colonels niece. She's hell-bent on being a Soldier to live up to herself, when she's really not, a bit cliched, but works well. Otacon is a scientist who really helps Snake within the game. There's also the Fox-hound Unit, which contains the main villains including Liquid Snake, Revolver Ocelot, Vulcan Raven, Sniper Wolf, Psycho Mantis, and Decoy Octopus. Ahh man there's just too much to cover. With that being said, the MAIN Antagonist IS Liquid Snake, hell-bent on getting Naked Snakes Ashes/Body, and is always complaining about that Solid Snake was the Favorite out of the two, and that he was superior. (Naked Snake, or rather Big-Boss is both of there father.) A bit jealous aren't you Liquid? Welp, I think that's about all I should talk about for this. Honestly, I hope the next subject isn't as splattered as this.

LEVEL 2: Gameplay
If you know anything about this, you know it's a Stealth Game. Anyone who has played this game, can agree that this is the KING OF STEALTH. It really showed how it's done in the Stealth industry. In fact, it has yet to be topped. Unfortunately for this particular MGS game, the controls can feel a bit "wacky". I'm mainly talking about how Snake walks in this. It can occasionally just go over-board. Another very out-dated aspect of this game for New-comers is the Gun system. You can't aim. While you can look in the first person to see what's ahead of you in this game, you can't use the gun while that's happening, and if you're new to the series then this will feel really awkward with it's shooting mechanics. You also have other basic stealth elements like crawling on the ground, and Crouching. Unfortunately you can't move while crouching, but isn't that big of a problem. So... How do the bosses play-out... Well... There too damn good. This game has some of the COOLEST bosses in Video Game history. One very notable boss within the game is "Psycho Mantis". Now if you haven't played this game, I'm not sure if this is considered a spoiler so if so.... Well. Not sure what to do. In the cut-scene right before you fight psycho mantis he claims he can read your mind and etc. He tells you to put the controller on the ground. As you do, it will start shaking. And then he preceeds to probably the most interesting part of the cut-scene. If you have a save file of some certain games he'll wind up reading one of them to you. It's pretty damn cool.
When the actual boss-fight starts, it mind-blows you again! So you're mindlessly trying to hit him, but you can't seem to. You have no Idea what to do. You wind up getting a codec call from colonel cambell and he tells you to plug your controller in the second slot! There for, he can't read your mind. It's pretty sweet!
Through out the game you'll get a nice array of Weapons, and tools. You have your average pistol, and machine gun, but as you progress you wind up getting things like romote controlled rockets! This is best shown in the scene where you use it to blow up the control panel, which leads you to the Gray Fox Battle. (This battle has some pretty hilarious scenes such as Otacon pissing him self and Otacon saying "It's just like one of my japanese animes!")
You have a Radar on the top right of your screen which not only shows you enemy placement, but there field of vision as well! This comes in handy. If you play on hard or Expert though, this totally eliminates the radar. So as I said, if they have a field of sight. If you are caught within that, they will come after you. If you hide for along enough, or fight them off (if you fight them off it'll most likely get you killed), the Alert will ware off. There also some places in the game where enemies can hear you if you walk on a puddle of water, or just on a thin Metal Floor. If you walk in the snow enemies can find your tracks and will start looking for you. This game get's so many things right!

LEVEL 3: Presenation
This is THE GAME that defined Cinimatic story telling within gaming. It definetely raised the bar. With that being said, they game still holds up well today. The character model's are fine, with the face being mainly just a blur, but everything else? This game had phenonmal graphics! And as I said, it still holds up well today. Within my playthroughs I've ran into little, to NO Glitches.

LEVEL 4: MUSIC and SFX
The music is just plain awesome. Need I say more? Not convinced? Listen to the main Metal Gear Solid theme. The Sound Effects are pretty damn awesome as well, home to one of the most Iconic sound effects ever the "!" alert.

FINAL LEVEL: OVERALL THOUGHTS
This game is a must-play. It's a classic. It set the bar high in terms of standards. It's one of the games the defined it's era. If you haven't played it... Play it.


WELL GUYS, I'm sorry. This review probably wasn't the great. That's probably for two reasons... First, I haven't slept in multiple days so I can't focus right, so apologize for crappy grammar, second I haven't done many reviews, and I didn't have as much time as I would of liked to do this review.

RANKINGS LIST: Upon completing your mission, you will be awarded a codename. There are 48 in total, and here they all are, along with the requirements. Imagine if you had to then take the name you'd earnt and be called by it next time you played - could be quite embarrassing!



Easy

Normal

Hard

Extreme

Rank 1

Hound

Doberman

Fox

Big Boss

Rank 2

Pigeon

Falcon

Hawk

Eagle

Rank 3

Piranha

Shark

Jaws

Orca

Rank 4

Pig

Elephant

Mammoth

Whale

Rank 5

Cat

Deer

Zebra

Hippopotamus

Rank 6

Koala

Capibara

Sloth

Giant Panda

Rank 7

Chicken

Mouse

Rabbit

Ostrich

Rank 8

Puma

Leopard

Panther

Jaguar

Rank 9

Komodo Dragon

Iguana

Alligator

Crocodile

Rank 10

Mongoose

Hyena

Jackal

Tasmanian Devil

Rank 11

Spider

Tarantula

Centipede

Scorpion

Rank 12

Flying Squirrel

Bat

Flying Fox

Night Owl

In ranks 1-7, you have to achieve a certain task in order to be awarded a codename. Here are the requirements:

Rank 1: Be spotted no more than five times and kill no more than 25 enemies.
Rank 2: Finish the game in under two and a half hours.
Rank 3: Kill at least 250 enemies.
Rank 4: Use more than 130 rations.
Rank 5: Save more than 80 times.
Rank 6: Finish the game in over 18 hours.
Rank 7: Achieve two requirements from ranks 4, 5 and 6.

MinkNyu : looks like I saw another great game review from you!

You summed up the whole game. I honestly this time don't know what to say but all I can say is: Keep making good reviews!  

MinkNyu :

Great review!  It struck me as very thorough and I like how you emphasized the most important bits, such as the story and stealth gameplay.  You didn't comment too much on the graphical presentation but it was sort of implied, such as when you said you could switch between overhead and first person point of view, and when you said it was one of the greatest games on the playstation, it's pretty safe for the readers to assume that the graphics are not going to be too shabby.  

You may be interested in checking out the gameboy color remake, since its sort of an alternate timeline with totally different characters and new bosses, and also the msx2 game is pretty amazing also.  

bsnowotter : Oh believe me, I have checked them out. I'm a HUGE Metal Gear fan, so there isn't a game in the franchise I haven't played. I don't own all as I'm not the richest guy in the world, and that money usually winds up going to my family. I played Ghost Babel of the GBC a long time ago, but never owned it. Only recently I got around to playing it with an Emulator. I plan on getting them soon though. As for the MSX games, there really damn expensive, so I wound up getting them on the MGS3 subsistence package. MG was good, but MG2 is what really set the bar for the MGS franchise. Unfortunately I cant say the same on it's NES counterparts....