Metal Gear Solid

Recently I did not manage to write anything here due to many things happening. First-time fasting is one thing, but another is trying to do things perfectly. Today, I stumbled upon a random LinkedIn post (was it YouTube?) saying, “Done is better than perfect.” So, here I am, trying to start writing again, not thinking too much about what to write.

I like video games. I think I spent most of my free time during my school days playing games. I played many kinds of games, mostly JRPGs (Japanese Role-Playing Games), but also adventure, racing, rhythm, and more. However, I have never played one legendary series, Metal Gear Solid.

I heard about this PlayStation (PS1) game quite a lot when I was in elementary school. It was great, ahead of its time, I heard. Recently, I also learned about the creator, Hideo Kojima, who is like a legend now. But I never played the game.

One day, after dinner outside, my wife and I went to Book Off, a secondhand store in Japan. We just wanted to see what was available there, but then my wife pointed to a PlayStation 5 game, Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 1. For your information, she is also an avid video gamer. I thought, “Why not?” So we bought the game on a whim.

The game is old, it’s a PS1 game released in 1998. The controls are clunky, the camera was abysmal, but the voice acting is surprisingly good, much better than most other PS1 games. The dialogue in the Codec, the radio transmitter in the game, was really interesting. The 3D scenes, which I think were rare at that time, were pretty cinematic too. But the main appeal of the game was its innovative direction.

Metal Gear Solid breaks the fourth wall a lot. I had watched some cutscenes of the Psycho Mantis boss fight on YouTube, so I kind of expected some fourth-wall breaks, but I was amazed there were many more subtle jokes. In the Codec, you can call this person called Master. He usually gives advice on how to keep your body fit during war, which is the setting of the game, but then he also gives you advice about video gaming. This is one of them:

“Plan your strategy based on the enemies’ positions. Try to think like the enemy commander will think. If you can put yourself in the map designer’s mind, a lot of doors will open for you.”

Then, right before the Psycho Mantis boss fight, the background music stopped. Surprisingly, the protagonist, Solid Snake, said, “What happened to the music?” So, he was hearing the background music too?

Lastly, of course, the Psycho Mantis boss fight itself. He can read your past (memory card) and your mind (controller inputs)! To win against him, you must disconnect your controller from port 1 and plug it into port 2 so that he can not read your mind (controller inputs). I imagine if I had been an elementary school student playing this game, I would have been completely mind-blown.

Now I agree, Hideo Kojima was ahead of his time. Metal Gear Solid was a good game, truly a masterpiece of its time.