Metal Gear Solid Review

The Tactical Espionage Action label on the box is there with a good reason - you will have to keep choosing your tactics, and adapting to the situation; i.e. avoiding stronger enemies, attacking only smaller groups, etc. This is very important, because our hero can easily get killed. There are always several solutions to each problem, and your only goal is to stay alive.

Let's take a look at the interface. The upper-right part of the screen is reserved for radar, displaying the position and sight range of your enemies. When they do spot you, an alarm (time-limited, fortunately) will go off, and a bunch of goons will do their best to kill you. To make things even worse, if you don't manage to shoot a couple of them down and then hide somewhere where they cannot see you, they will start spawning on the place you were spotted. You have to be very careful, because they react to footsteps, and they can even spot your traces in snow (They're genetically enhanced humans, ya know! - Ed). First and foremost, you have to evade their field of vision (the blue cones on the radar), and dispose of them (the red dots on the radar) as quietly as possible (drowning, breaking necks, guns with silencers)... This would make the game more challenging, if there wasn't for the stupid AI that gets utterly predictable after some playing. Each level ends in conflict with the level "Boss". This is typical for console games, but the bosses here are rather original. Another nice feature is that each victory you win against a boss, grants you a bigger inventory and stats improvements.

Apart from his tactics, Snake will also have to use some weapons. You start the game with nothing on you, but you soon acquire a SOCOM gun, chaff grenades, normal grenades, mines, sniper rifles and rocket launchers. Each weapon has its upsides and downsides and you will have to carefully choose which one to use in a certain situation.

The default game camera is set to third-person-view. You can change that to first person view, which is completely useless because it doesn't support strafing and free look mode. When you use the third-person-view, you can walk against the wall and that way try to spot the incoming guards.

Graphic design is the worst aspect of Metal Gear Solid. PC owners are used to much better visuals. The designers tried hard to make the game much prettier than the PSX original, but I guess they didn't try hard enough. Voice acting is pathetic and irritating, but it is as good as it gets in a Japanese game. The music if perfect and it really improves the overall atmosphere, and the same goes for the sound effects (If you consider voice acting to be a separate issue).

VR bonus missions are in fact training missions in which you have to perform a series of tasks. You'll have to run, jump and shoot on lawnmower man-like levels, some 200 of them. Some of them will even unlock extra levels, but I guess you'll just have to find some things out for yourself.