Metal Gear Solid
A WORLD DRIPPING WITH TENSION
Playstation, PC, 1998
There’s so much that can be said about Solid Snake’s return to the gaming world after almost a decade on the sidelines. For a start, there’s the quality of the game – every aspect of it is polished to perfection. The level of graphical detail is extraordinary, with the developers even remembering to show Snake’s breath in the cold Alaskan air, while just about every gamer can identify the distinctive alert sound that tells you that you’ve been spotted. The game’s dialogue is eminently quotable, too, thanks to the memorable performances by David Hayter and the rest of the talented voice cast.
Of course, then there’s the actual experience of playing the game. The stealth action makes sense – guards are attracted by sounds and lured by footprints, and you can take advantage of that. But what sets the game apart is a hallmark of
Hideo Kojima’s productions at Konami, which is the number of clever ideas from out of left field. The use of ketchup to escape a jail cell is one thing, but the way the game integrates its own physical packaging and the physical console itself into the game experience is quite another, as anybody who was spooked by Psycho Mantis’ knowledge of their gaming history will tell you. The team set out to
make the greatest Playstation game ever, and there’s definitely a case to be made that it succeeded.
Finally, there’s the way that Metal Gear Solid influenced other games. It was one of the best examples of cinematic storytelling in a videogame to date, without any need for the prerendered FMV scenes that were still in vogue at the time, and plenty of developers picked up a trick or two after seeing it. Plus it was the leading light of 1998’s stealth game revival, overshadowing not only contemporaries like Tenchu and Thief, but becoming the benchmark by which later games, such as
Headhunter and Splinter Cell, were measured.