Life On The Grid

My introduction to the Metal Gear series, like many, was Metal Gear Solid on the Sony Playstation. Specifically, for me it was the demo disk version that came with the Official Playstation Magazine. First though, a little history. As a die-hard Nintendo fan (formerly Sega fan), I met my brother’s intention to go outside the Big 2 for his next console with scepticism. I mean, this was Nintendo’s castoff; the product of an ill-fated partnership with Sony to release a CD add-on for the SNES. By this time, I already owned a Nintendo 64. I had already seen the future, and it had no loading screens. My mind was changed the day he brought it home and we booted up Final Fantasy VII for the first time. Sure, it took more time to get to the title screen than it did to turn on Super Mario 64, load a save file, and start running around the castle grounds. However, once you started the game, and the swaying stars faded into the green Lifestream, and Aerith’s face comes into view, before zooming out to show the steampunk city of Midgar, it was clear there was merit to the CD-based technology so woefully squandered by Sega earlier in the decade. Demos, too, were something impossible on cartridge-based systems, and the demo for Metal Gear Solid in particular has stuck with me over the years as a perfect example of why they can be so effective. The intro, with its stellar voice acting and credits on top of the live gameplay, really felt at the time like an interactive movie. The most unforgettable point, though, was that first room: the sense of freedom, the possibilities it provided, the very real fear that one wrong move and those guards would be firing those guns, and the fact that you were unarmed and practically defenceless…

Learning from the past: The original Metal Gears

Those points are also applicable to the original game in the series, Metal Gear. In fact our introduction to the protagonist, Solid Snake, unfolds in exactly the same way (at least in the MSX version. The NES port was somewhat butchered, but that’s a story for another article). He is unarmed, save for a radio and a packet of his favourite cigarettes, and enters the enemy base by water. After a brief talk with his superiors, his mission begins. What happens from there is up to you. Most of the gameplay mechanics that have been a staple of the franchise got their start here. Soldiers have a small field of view, so staying out of sight is the most important part of your mission. Security cameras and laser tripwires also litter the rooms, further complicating stealth. Getting spotted triggers an alert mode, which sends floods of enemies your way until you manage to hide for long enough to get them off your trail. Combat is possible, but is clearly a last resort, with limited ammo and a seemingly endless supply of troops. It’s remarkable that a game with such complexity was possible given the limitations of the systems of the time. However, there are some glaring flaws. The AI of the enemies is at times comically poor, allowing Snake to practically run right up beside them and not be detected. Adding to this, the lack of a map and the slow pacing made this an uneven game. Despite having a follow-up a few years later with Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, which attempted to resolve some of these issues, the potential in these gameplay mechanics would only remain hinted at.