B3yond the Special: A Look at Metal Gear Solid

Posted by Mark Salmela on 05.21.2008

In part two of the special counting down to the release of Metal Gear Solid 4 on June 12, 411’s Mark Salmela takes a special look back at the original Metal Gear Solid. Is Metal Gear Solid the masterpiece people make it out to be? Find out in the full article.




Welcome back to B3yond the Special: A look at the Metal Gear Franchise. With MGS4's June 12th release date creeping ever so close, I will be taking a look back at all of the original Metal Gear titles, or at least the main Metal Gear titles. For those who missed it, I've already written part 1 about Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2 which can be found here . In this edition, I will be talking about the 3rd title in the franchise, Metal Gear Solid. Metal Gear Solid was the debut of Hideo Kojima on the PS1, and would be his only title on the platform. So sit back and enjoy, here's a special look back at MGS.



Metal Gear Solid (1998)



Story



After defeating Big Boss and saving the world once again, it was finally time for Solid Snake to hang up his boots. Solid Snake retired after the crisis held on Zanzibar Land. Everything was quiet for a little while as people went on with their daily lives. But it wouldn't be much of a story if it ended there, so naturally, there was trouble brewing. You see, the new FOXHOUND, led by Liquid Snake, along with the genetically-enhanced Next-Generation Special Forces unit led a hostile takeover of Shadow Moses Island, and high jacked Metal Gear Rex, the newest incarnation of the walking nuclear tank. With Metal Gear Rex at their side, FOXHOUND threatened to strike the US if they did not return the remains of the legendary Big Boss. You see, Liquid Snake and Solid Snake are both clones of Big Boss, making them brothers. I'll get more in depth with the relationship between Solid Snake and Liquid Snake in a little bit.

With no other choice, Colonel Roy Campbell forces Solid Snake out of retirement and sends Solid Snake to Shadow Moses to stop Metal Gear Rex and Liquid. So much for Solid Snake's retirement, as the Zanzibar Land incident happened only 6 years prior to the 2005 Shadow Moses incident. After landing on Shadow Moses, Snake's first task was to free Donald Anderson, a hostage of Shadow Moses who informed Snake of Metal Gear Rex's location and methods of defeating Rex. But Donald Anderson's story ends here, as he is killed by a "mysterious" heart attack after being rescued by Snake.



Snake then meets up with Meryl Silverburgh, who is Roy Campbell's niece *although secretly his daughter, I never said the MGS storyline wasn't complicated*. Using Meryl's help, Snake and Meryl escape from the prison base on Shadow Moses. After escaping, Snake continues his journey alone to find the other hostage, ArmsTech president Kenneth Baker. But Kenny is merely bait, as this was all a set up by Revolver Ocelot to corner Snake and lead to Snake's first major battle on Shadow Moses. But the fight doesn't last long, as a mysterious ninja who claims to have no allegiance to either side shows up and severs Ocelot's right hand before making a quick escape. Baker then proceeds to fill Snake in on more information about Metal Gear Rex, although he too dies of a "mysterious" heart attack before revealing any key information to Snake.

After this, Snake contacts Meryl via codec and agrees to meet up with her again in the base's warhead disposal area on the condition that he contacts Metal Gear's designer, Hal "Otacon" Emmerich. On his journey to find Otacon, Snake is attacked by an M1 Abrams tank piloted by Vulcan Raven. After disabling the tank, the mysterious ninja reappears and attacks Snake. After some taunting and minor combat, the ninja once again disappears almost as quickly as he appeared. But before the cyborg ninja can escape, Snake manages to figure out that the ninja is Gray Fox. Gray Fox was Snake's former ally who turned on Snake back on Zanzibar Land, leading to a battle where Snake thought he killed Gray Fox.

Following a discussion about Metal Gear Rex, Otacon agrees to aid Snake on his mission using a camouflage suite that will make him invisible. Snake then meets up again with Meryl, who informs Snake as to why she is here. Meryl's father was killed in action, and Meryl believes it is her duty to follow in his footsteps, despite being unaware that her father is actually Roy Campbell. Ultimately, Snake and Meryl team up, and head for the underground base. But this alliance doesn't last long, as Meryl starts attacking Snake. After knocking Meryl out, Snake finds out that Meryl was under the telepathic control of Psycho Mantis, whom Snake proceeds to defeat in battle. After defeating Psycho Mantis, Snake is then ambushed by Sniper Wolf, who severely injures Meryl and captures Solid Snake.



While in prison, Liquid tortures Solid Snake. Depending on whether or not players give into the torture, the ending of the game is severely affected. After the torture, Snake manages to break free from jail and races to the top of the communications tower. At the top of the tower Snake encounters Liquid Snake in a Hind-D attack helicopter. After shooting down the helicopter, Snake descends down the tower before being ambushed by Sniper Wolf again. But Wolf isn't so lucky this time, as Snake manages to fight off Sniper Wolf and kills her in battle.

Snake then descends into the bowels of the Shadow Moses facility, first cutting through the base forge then into the warehouses below. It is here that Snake once again runs into Vulcan Raven, whom Snake has a second battle with and then kills in battle. But before Raven dies, he informs Snake that Donald Anderson was actually Decoy Octopus of FOXHOUND in disguise. Shortly after, Master Miller calls and reveals that Dr. Naomi Hunter, an agent in disguise, had given Solid Snake the genetically engineered virus "FoxDie". FoxDie is a virus that genetically alters humans and sends them into cardiac arrest, which explains the deaths of the first two hostages Snake encounters. Naomi, struck by guilt, contacts Snake and confesses that she joined the mission to sabotage it as she is the sister of Gray Fox. After a conversation between the two detailing Snake's past, Naomi sympathizes for Snake and reprograms the virus.

With only Liquid left standing in Snake's way, Snake infiltrates Metal Gear Rex's hanger and proceeds to have a showdown with Liquid. Liquid informs Snake that he plans to use Metal Gear Rex to nuke China so they would have a retaliatory strike against US, leading to a nuclear war. Using the PAL key, Snake unknowingly activates Metal Gear Rex, being betrayed by Master Miller. Miller reveals himself to be Liquid Snake, who then boards Metal Gear Rex. After a discussion where Liquid informs Snake that they were both genetic clones of Big Boss, Snake follows with a showdown with Metal Gear Rex.



Using Otacon's help, Snake first manages to disable Rex's sensors. Then, with Gray Fox's help *who informs Snake that he was "Deepthroat", a fan trying to help Snake on his mission*, goes on to fight Metal Gear Rex. Gray Fox is wounded and then crushed by Metal Gear Rex, although Snake manages to bring the monster down. After a final fist fight atop of Rex's destroyed body, Snake manages to defeat Liquid in battle. After being reunited with either Meryl or Otacon, depending on whether or not you gave into the torture *Meryl if you didn't, Otacon if you did*, Snake and either Meryl or Otacon have a final jeep chase against Liquid. But the two jeeps collide, and it appears as if Liquid is going to put an end to Snake. But before he can finish Solid Snake off it turns out Liquid Snake had been given the FoxDie virus, and Liquid succumbs to the heart attack.

Campbell, following Liquids death, calls off a nuclear strike to Shadow Moses and proclaims Solid Snake as dead, so the US government won't track Snake down at a later time. Solid Snake then finds out that he was actually inferior to Liquid, and has an indeterminate amount of time left before FoxDie kills him too. Ocelot himself is revealed to be a double agent for Solidus, the third of the Snake clones *along with Solid and Liquid Snake*, who is the acting President of the United States.

Depending on whether or not you gave into the torture, Snake either finds Meryl dead and escapes with Otacon or Snake and Meryl leave Otacon behind *Otacon does survive either way*. This is the ending to Metal Gear Solid.





Here's a good tribute to MGS that I found on Youtube.



Boss fights



Metal Gear Solid is famous for its boss battles. Psycho Mantis is one of my favorite boss fights in a video game. The way you fought Psycho Mantis was absolutely ingenious. The fight with Psycho was the first time ever in a video game where players had to psychically mess with their PlayStation's to defeat a boss in the game. Psycho was physically reading the controller so every button you pressed caused Psycho to dodge swiftly. Players had to switch their PlayStation controller to slot 2 to defeat Psycho. Psycho also read your memory card and messed with your head by reading some of your save files. While Psycho wasn't the hardest or most epic boss battle ever, the concept of physically messing with your hardware was an astonishing feat for a video game.



Gray Fox is also an important character in the Metal Gear franchise. Despite providing for the first time players ever fought a Metal Gear in Metal Gear 2, Gray Fox comes back in Metal Gear Solid in a cyborg ninja suite. The suite not only looked awesome, but also provided a couple of sweet boss fights. Gray Fox was the first to dawn the cyborg ninja suite as well, and died a very honorable death to the hands of Liquid in Metal Gear Rex. What an ironic way for Gray Fox to die. By the way I know that picture if from Super Smash Bros Brawl, that doesn't stop it from being awesome.

The fight against Vulcan Raven was also a memorable one. Most recognized for his giant Vulcan Canon and flock of ravens, Vulcan Raven seemed to be more of a good guy then we thought. Vulcan never really worked for any of the bad guys; he just wanted to get food for his ravens. Either way the fight with Vulcan was an interesting game of cat and mouse, where players took the role of the mouse. At least Vulcan put up a good fight, as I really enjoyed fighting Vulcan Raven.

Metal Gear Rex improved on its earlier designs by making its legs and arms invulnerable to weapons damage. It's too bad the radar dome was still vulnerable, as if it weren't for some pesky ninja Metal Gear Rex would have been near invincible. An anti-missile defense system, a rail gun capable of firing nuclear missiles anywhere in the world, and giant Vulcan cannons made Metal Gear Rex a force to be reckoned with. But as I said thanks to the loss of the radar dome Liquid was forced to upon up the hatch and expose all of its innards to Snake, which he quickly disposed of. A great fight in MGS.

Finally there is Liquid Snake, the ultimate antagonist of Metal Gear Solid. Liquid Snake is Solid Snake's brother. Both of them are clones of the legendary Big Boss. Liquid Snake feels as if he got the short end of the DNA stick, and because of it he wants the remains of Big Boss back. But Solid Snake put a stop to this, and defeated Liquid in 3 solid battles *pun*. Then, just as Liquid finally had Solid Snake where he wanted him, Liquid succumbed to the FoxDie virus, putting an end to one of the 3 Big Boss clones. Or at least that's what we thought.



Gameplay and Development

Development for Metal Gear Solid originally began on the 3DO back in 1994. Titled Metal Gear 3, Kojima was planning to design Metal Gear 3 after finishing up work on his current title, Policenauts. Policenauts was an action adventure game similar to Kojima's critically acclaimed Snatcher title which he worked on before Policenauts. Policenauts featured Meryl Silverburgh from MGS, and included other ties to Metal Gear Solid such as a bar called "Solid Snake" and a scene featuring EMPS take off that would later be included in MGS1 when Otacon talks to Snake about his love for anime. Despite several ports to other consoles in Japan, as far as I know Policenauts has never been ported to America or Europe despite several attempts to including one on the Sega Saturn.

But as we all know the 3DO was not meant to be and the console failed. So rather than making Metal Gear 3 on the 3DO, Kojima and his team switched development over to the newly born PlayStation console. But Kojima didn't feel comfortable calling this game Metal Gear 3, since most players outside of Japan have never heard of or played Metal Gear 2, so Kojima renamed the title Metal Gear Solid. Solid meant that it was the 3rd title in the franchise and that it used 3D graphics. Due to the popularity of Metal Gear Solid, all future titles would follow in numerical order from MGS, despite MGS being the third title in the franchise.

Metal Gear Solid took a lot of the same stealth elements found in the first two Metal Gear titles and brought them into 3D. Players can hide behind walls, duck under objects, create noise distractions, or infamously sneak around in a box to avoid detection. If Snake were seen by an enemy an alarm would go off, alerting other enemies of your location. To turn off the alarm Snake would have to hide for a certain amount of time, and could then proceed forward. The camera is set above Snake in 3rd person to give players the best look of the surrounding areas, and enemies could often be seen on Snake's radar. Metal Gear Solid also featured extremely well done cut scenes as well as radio conversations.

In a weird mix-up, David Hayter, the American voice actor for Solid Snake, was written as Sean Barker in the game's manual. Sean Barker was the name of a character played by Hayter in Guyver: Dark Hero. How this mistake was made is beyond me.

Metal Gear Solid was ported to the Nintendo Gamecube by Silicon Knights with enhanced graphics and original cut scenes in March 2004 and was titled Twin Snakes. While most of the gameplay was kept intact, several gameplay techniques from MGS2: Sons of Liberty were added such as well as first person mode *while shooting* and hanging from objects like pipes. Some of the characters accents were also dropped, I don't know why. While Twin Snakes isn't bad by any means, I would rather play the original MGS on my PS1 then Twin Snakes on the Gamecube.

Metal Gear Solid was also ported to the PC and the PS2 as part of the Essentials Collection. A second game titled Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions was released on the PS1 which featured 300 more of the training missions from the first game. VR Missions was released for fans who craved more of the stealth gameplay found in MGS1. While some critics hit the game for being shallow I found VR Missions to be a solid pick-up for MGS fans. A series of comics were released for Metal Gear Solid that were eventually released as a digital novel titled Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel. I have yet to actually see any of these although I hear they're awesome.

Metal Gear Solid has gone on to sell over 6 million copies worldwide and has been rated one of the best PlayStation games of all time. With reviews like 10/10 from EGM, 9.8/10 from IGN, and 5/5 from Gamepro Metal Gear Solid is one of the best rated video games of all time and is ranked one of the best PlayStation 1 titles. While I personally would question what my favorite PS1 title is, there's no doubt that MGS1 is one of my top 3 favorite PS1 titles. Long live Metal Gear Solid.





Well I hope you've all enjoyed this week's feature on Metal Gear Solid. This is only part 2 of a 5 part series, and I'll be back next Wednesday with part 3: A look back at Metal Gear Solid 2. Be sure to leave feedback in the comments section, or feel free to drop me an email. I hope you guys have enjoyed the feature, see you next week!