I can still remember the first time I met Snake.
I was at university, and the person in the next room from mine had a PS1.
Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol.
MGS felt like it was leaving me behind for sure.
This is so much more serious than the Mushroom Kingdom!
Games have grown up too much!
A few minutes later I had one of those slight reorienting moments.
You have to find the moment to slip by them both while staying in darkness.
Oh, I remember thinking - there is a game here that I could maybe understand.
It’s not just grown-up architecture and special forces.
This is almost Pac-Man.
Then, a few days later I had another of those reorienting moments.
I realised: oh, this game is not the straight-up Andy McNab-fest I imagined.
It’s real but hyper-real, and also camp and funny and surprising.
A lone hero, friends on the radio, no idea what secrets lie ahead.
I’ve been so excited for this.
I am not Digital Foundry, and my thoughts on technical matters are not worth listening to.
DF is working on its own piece which will be suitably deep and authoritative.
There are reports of missing features and patches to follow, but I’ll leave that to experts.
And they should look after them better.
They’re so good they survive a lack of care.
And that, paradoxically, makes me wish all the more that the publisher did properly care for them.
Honestly, they are special, and that means all of them.
It’s an action game!
Soldiers and secret bases!
But you’re also not supposed to shoot everybody.
You’re supposed to sneak around them and success comes from avoiding a kill.
It’s hide and seek and it feels as fresh now as it did in the 1980s.
The Metal Gear Solid games are extra special, of course.
So much about this game dazzles me even now.
But there’s more.
That’s the thing, I guess.
MGS games are games in which the details have clearly been sweated over.
They’re games made by people who care desperately about everything within them.
