As you may recall, I recently decided that I was going to play through all the main Metal Gear games this year, along with the GameCube remake of MGS1 (Twin Snakes), VR Missions on PS1, and REVENGEANCE, all in chronological (ish) order of release.
So, I started where it all began, on the MSX. Or, at least as close as I can get to the MSX without paying what I'm sure is way too much money for an actual MSX, or going through some sort of illicit downloading of games. By which I mean the versions of Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake that are included with MGS3: Subsistence. Or, in this case, MGS3 HD Edition. If you don't recall, my only experience with these two games was playing about half an hour of the original Metal Gear back around 2007 when I played Subsistence, and I hadn't touched MG2 before.
I've now completed both, but I should say that neither was really experienced in the way they would have if I had played them back in the day. These versions feature new translations, and I have no idea how much was changed, but they definitely read like they were written by people who natively speak English, so I'm going to assume that there were some substantial changes made. Even if I was looking forward to trucks having started to move and soldiers feeling asleep. Also, in both cases, I set the games to "Easy" (as opposed to the other option, "Original"), and in both cases, I used a guide. Now, to be clear, I was told by others to do that, because as one might expect, these games get a little... Well, I suppose I might as well just get into them.
I should also say that, I'm not going to go out of my way to avoid spoilers. I mean, these games are from the 80s and 90s, I think it's okay for me to discuss some of that stuff. Not every last detail, because I do think that if you are a fan of the series as a whole, you should play these games, but there's some stuff that I think is neat that I want to mention. You've been warned!
Metal Gear.
Metal Gear is a really interesting game to go back to and play after all these years. The essence of what makes Metal Gear, "Metal Gear" is there, just in its infant stages. It's got stuff like a cardboard box, and even some absurd fourth wall breaking late in the game where Big Boss tells you to turn off the console. Though, at least in the version I played, he says to turn off the "PlayStation® 3," and I can only assume that the other versions of MGS3 had the corresponding consoles, and the original said MSX. It's still a stealth game that encourages sneaking around enemies over direct confrontation, and it's still a game with great boss names like Dirty Duck. (Side note: One of the things I want most in MGSV is Dirty Duck to make an appearance.)
But...Metal Gear is also kind of a bad game in a lot of ways. Not so much in a, "This hasn't aged well" way, like I assume I will experience with MGS1 when I get to that. It's more of a, "This game was made in the 80s with a limited budget and thus has a bunch of arbitrary nonsense to artificially extend the game" way. Some of it is the sort of thing that sounds reasonable on paper, but is still frustrating. Like, there's a lot of backtracking to find items, or talk to specific characters, do specific things, etc. And, in the context of the story, that stuff at least makes some sort of sense.
The problem is that this isn't the easiest game to navigate your way through. And I kind of mean that in a literal way, because in both MG and MG2, I found myself kinda disgruntled at not being able to move diagonally. Not having that isn't the worst thing, and I'm not going to condemn a game because of a design choice like that, but it still made things like avoiding enemies, and fighting some of the bosses harder than they otherwise would have been. Not that I had a ton of trouble with that stuff, given that I was playing on Easy, and using a guide that pointed me straight to the weapons (plus ammo and rations respawn the second you leave a room, so it's really easy to get to the max on both quickly).
But the biggest problem is that this game is absolutely horrible at telling you where to go. Which is to say, it really doesn't tell you where to go. I mean, there are times where a character calls you on the radio and says that you need to pass through the scorpion desert to reach the other building where a thing is, but they don't tell you where in the building it is. And then once you finally get to wherever it is you need to be, you have to do things like navigate a maze that features walls you need to blow up with plastic explosives, while being attacked by guard dogs. Also, the walls you can blow up aren't visibly any different, instead you have to punch them to find the spots you can blow up. Which means that, if you weren't using a guide like I was, you'd just be running along all the walls punching them, whilst trying to deal with those attack dogs.
And then there's the traps. Things like trapdoors that open up beneath you, and kill you instantly if you aren't fast enough to get out of their way. Or the giant rolling pins in some rooms that make absolutely no sense whatsoever, and also kill you instantly if you walk into them. There's one spot in the game where there's a rolling pin right after a boss (it might have also been a long series of rooms with enemies, I really should have taken notes during this game to remember it better), and an elevator right after that rolling pin. You can probably already see where this is going, so I'll just say I had to replay some of that stuff and those rolling pins are the worst.
The checkpointing after these instant deaths (well, all deaths) isn't great, but it's better than it is in a lot of older games. There's no lives to worry about (thank god), but you respawn at the start of the last area you entered. In most cases, that means the last elevator you exited, but there's some spots in the outdoor areas that also count. And, luckily, it's something that you can exploit to your nefarious needs by running back to an elevator, and then just going back out again (at least I think that works, you might need to go to another floor and come back, I don't remember off hand). I do kinda wish this port of the game had some sort of save state stuff so I could just cheese my way through the game, but sadly it doesn't, and all you can do is save the same spots that the game checkpoints you at (technically you can bring up the save menu anywhere, but it only saves those spots).
Even beyond the instant death stuff, there's items that you need to progress, but would have no idea where they are if you were playing the game all on your own. Sure, there's an NPC that tells you to get a compass to get through the desert, but do they tell you where it is? Nope. Do they tell you where the antidote for the scorpion venom is? Nope! At least the antidote can be used infinitely, which was helpful for when I immediately gave up on trying to avoid all those stupid scorpions.
And yes, I know I'm the person who adores games like Bloodborne and Dark Souls specifically for them not telling you where items are. The difference is that those games don't require the absurd level of backtracking that Metal Gear does, and also it's fun to play those games. I like stealth games, but the stealth in Metal Gear is, understandably, pretty basic by modern standards. And that's fine, it is one of the first stealth games, and it's not broken or anything. But having to go through the same areas a bunch of times and deal with the same enemies in the same spots repeatedly is poor design by modern standards.
I can't imagine playing and beating this entire game without using a guide. Things like the key cards would make this game incredibly frustrating if you were just playing without one. Like MGS1 and MGS2, there are key cards collected throughout the game that grant access through locked doors. Unlike those games, MG doesn't even have the decency to tell you what level of card you need to get through the doors. That'd be fine if each card you got could open the lower numbered ones, but nope. Additionally, there isn't really any rhyme or reason as to what number opens them. Yes, later game ones require the higher number cards, to keep you out of those areas earlier in the game, but you might go through a level five door, and then have to use the level three card to open a room with a POW in it.
Oh yeah, here's another great thing about the game. Throughout the game, there are POWs locked in rooms, and if you rescue them, they give you some information. Rescue enough of them, and Snake's Rank (or Class) goes up, which increases his max health, and lets him carry more ammo and rations. And there's a certain point in the game where you have to be at least a certain rank in order to get an item you need to proceed (might have been a rocket launcher for a boss, but that could be a different spot I'm thinking of (or maybe a door to open, it blurs together)). That would be fine...If it wasn't possible to accidentally rank down. Now, to be fair, the only way to do that is if you kill a POW, and there's no way to do that unless you accidentally shoot one, or maybe punch one enough times. Which I never did.
BUT, there's a finite number of POWs in the game, and I'm pretty sure it only takes killing one to lower your rank. That means that you could wind up in a situation where it becomes impossible to finish the game, and you'd have to start over (unless you're playing this version, and have an earlier save to go back to (I have no idea what the saving situation was like in the MSX version)). Part of me does think that if you wound up in that situation, it's your own damn fault for killing POWs, which you shouldn't be doing in the first place. But...At no point does the game tell you that you will need to be a certain rank later in the game, and preventing you from ever being able to beat it because you did that is kind of awful.
Never mind the fact that forcing you to navigate your way through the game, checking every single room for the POWs (if you don't know where they are from a guide) is bad design to begin with. You don't need to be max rank for this, but I think you need to be rank four out of five, which means you need to find a lot of the POWs. And not kill them.
So, I've mentioned the backtracking, the cards, the traps, and the POWs, what else is there? I could go over the story, of which there isn't really much. Snake is an agent of FOXHOUND, and taking part in Operation Intrude N313, which is to infiltrate Outer Heaven, and stop them from using Metal Gear to launch nukes. Big Boss is Snake's commander, and there's a handful of other characters that Snake interacts with in the game, like Gray Fox and Dr. Madnar (the designer of Metal Gear), both of whom he has to rescue. And some resistance fighters that have names that I don't remember off hand (Schneider?).
But, there isn't a whole lot to it. You rescue Gray Fox, Dr. Madnar, his daughter, make your way through the base, help out the resistance, eventually defeat Metal Gear, and confront the true leader of Outer Heaven: Big Boss. It is neat that, toward the end of the game, Big Boss starts lying to you over the radio. At one point he tells you to go into a truck that is filled with enemies, another he tells you to go in a room where the floor is one big trapdoor (aside from a small spot near the door), and the aforementioned spot where he tells you to turn off the console. And that's all before you know that Big Boss is the end boss (well, the turning off the console might have been after an NPC told you about him, I don't remember).
Aside from that, though, there's not really much to it beyond what most games of the era were doing in terms of story. You can use the radio at any time, but the people you call up usually don't have much, if anything, to say. And that stuff is almost all just directly in service of the game, like talking about items, weapons, and objectives (even if they don't go into much detail on any of them).
So, what did I end up thinking about the game as a whole? It's interesting, but not something I think I ever want to play again. Definitely glad I did the one time, but I can't recommend playing this game without a guide, unless all you want to do is frustrate yourself. But, if you have either Subsistence (and a PS2 or a backwards compatible PS3), or MGS3 HD, I think it's worth checking out if you don't mind playing with a guide. It only took me a few hours to get through with the guide, and if you're a fan of the series, you should see how it all began.
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.
Metal Gear 2 is, in a lot of ways, an even more interesting game. It's also a much better game, and in some ways, a fairly big step forward from the first game, both mechanically and in terms of the story. This is a Metal Gear game that feels like it's telling a Metal Gear Solid story, if that makes any sense. Now, granted, this is a newer translation, so I don't know how much of that is because of that, but either way, there is a lot of story and dialog in the game, and given the relative lack of it in the first one, I'd assume the original release at least has as much story, even if it has some differences (of which I don't really know, but I do know that some boss names were different in the guide I used, which was written in reference to the MSX version of the game).
I do know that some of the sprite stuff for the characters is different, from looking up the ending on YouTube (which I did after writing most of this because I got kinda distracted and missed some of it when I was playing the game). Which, in some cases is probably because some of them are pretty clearly based on actual people, like Big Boss, who looks like Sean Connery. But in others, like Snake and Campbell, it's so they look more like what they look like in the later games.
For one thing, Snake is actually a character in this game, rather than just a generic operative sneaking into an enemy stronghold. And he's the Snake we all know and love, complete with responding to someone by saying the last thing they said as a question. Which, only happens once in the game, and maybe that's new, but I still enjoyed that a lot. But it's not just that, the whole story feels more like MGS than the first one did. Colonel Campbell is your CO, and you can even call up Miller for stuff (which I didn't realize until the very end of the game, because the game never tells you that in game, and the guide I used didn't have a list of radio frequencies (other than ones you need to progress) until after the end of the main guide). There's plot twists, characters return from the first game, often in surprising roles, and some characters will have their heel turns where they double cross you. There's even quiet moments where you're just walking through an area with an NPC or two, and there's no enemies. It's just a quiet moment between you and them.
And there's a lot of dialog. Not quite as much as you'd see in something like the later games, but compared to most games from 1990, there's a whole lot of it. And there's a lot of back story to the game too, involving Zanzibar Land becoming the world's only nuclear super power, the world running out of oil, and a scientist discovering a type of bacteria that can create a material that can be used to replace oil (the scientist is then kidnapped and taken to Zanzibar Land, naturally).
But the actual game itself? It's a lot like the first, but with some substantial changes, almost all of which is for the better, though often not quite enough. There's no more POWs to rescue, and there's no more ranking up. Well, Snake's max health and ammo capacity does increase, but it does so after beating bosses, which makes more sense, I think. There's still cards to collect, and there's still often little sense as to which ones open which doors, but at least now there are certain cards that will open multiple different numbers. You'll get cards 1-3, and then can find a red card which will replace those in your inventory, and open all three. The problem being that without a guide, you probably wouldn't ever find those.
And there's still way too much backtracking. There is less arbitrary nonsense in this one, though, which is nice. Though, there is one part where you have to navigate through a swamp without sinking in. It just involves walking along paths (which you can't see) until you start sinking, then you turn around and go a different way. At least until you get to a dead end, at which point I got frustrated, so I went and found a different guide that had an ASCII drawing of the path you take, which helped.
Conversely, there's no giant rolling pins, and now you can get past the trapdoors by continuing to walk without stopping, which makes those a lot easier to deal with. You still run into situations where you have to do things like equip a card to enter a room, then equip your gas mask, run through the room, and equip a card to get out of the room. But, unlike the first game, it doesn't directly damage you until your O2 meter depletes, which is balanced by the gas mask just extending the O2 meter, rather than letting you stay in the gas forever.
There's also some fundamental changes to the game that are pretty cool. Specifically the radar. It's pretty similar to the Soliton in MGS1 and 2, but rather than showing an area around Snake, it shows the screen Snake is on in the center, and the eight screens around it (a three by three grid). Importantly, it shows enemy positions on the screens beyond the one you're on, which lets you keep track of enemies outside the immediate vicinity. Even more importantly is that the enemies can, and will move between screens, but they don't respawn when you walk into another screen like they did in the first game. They will if you leave the area, or go to another floor of the building you're in, but I think that's pretty fair. If you enter a small room within an area, it then restricts the radar to just that room, which is not a huge concern, but definitely something to keep in mind whilst playing.
And this also marks the introduction of the classic multi-tiered alert system! In the first game, enemies were either alerted to you or not. In this one, being seen triggers an alert (and an alert sound that made me jump almost every time I heard it), which then causes the enemies to jam your radar. If you exit the screen you're on and break line of sight, then it goes to evasion mode, and a timer ticks down just like the later games. I did find that it was kind of hard to actually evade enemies, because the game will just spawn them in off screen without any regard to how they could have gotten there, at which point they will run on screen, see you, play the alert sound, and then I jump again even though I should be expecting it (it's very loud and I played with headphones on, shut up). And you can't really just keep killing them until they stop, because I don't think they ever do stop (though there's way more than enough ammo on Easy mode to shoot your way through most of the game).
That's probably about all there is to say about the game without going into actual analysis of the story, which I don't think I should do. This one, despite the backtracking, seems like it could be reasonably finished without a guide, but I still recommend using one. And yes, I think you should play this game if you're a fan of the series. Like I said before, it has kind of a lot of story in it for a game from 1990 (at least for a non-RPG, I don't know what the state of RPGs and their stories was at the time). It's a big improvement over the first one in every single way. Well, aside from the amount of Dirty Duck, which is zero. The original is still supreme in that regard.
Oh, one thing I neglected to mention about both games is that they have good music. Not really much else to say about it, other than that there's one MG2 track in particular that sounds a whole lot like music from the First Blood movies.
What's next?
Well, now that I've finished the MSX games, my next step of my Metal Gear Quest is the PlayStation 1, with the original MGS, and the VR Missions. I might also lump Twin Snakes into that one, since it is a remake of the original. Do a side by side, or something. Or not, because it'll just result in people jumping down my throat for continuing to like Twin Snakes more.
Either way, thanks for reading! With The Witcher III out very soon, I'll be spending my time playing that, but I do also have most of a PS+ Catch Up written, and waiting to be posted. I thought I'd keep it separate from the MG Quest stuff, and also I'm hoping Ether One will be patched to have an option for inverting the y-axis so I can actually play it.
I did buy Trials Fusion and Nidhogg the other day, as they were on sale during the PSN Flash Sale. I've yet to play Nidhogg, but I'm quite enjoying Trials Fusion. Not much else to say on that front.
Once I'm done with The Witcher III, I'll write something about that, but until then, I hope you enjoy life and something something!
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