Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 [Review]

Although this isn't a full review of all the games of the collection, it is for most of them (MGS, MGS2 and MGS3). I, ahn, had a lot to talk about them so this post is a bit big, still, it is divided by title and by the end there's an overview of the collection as whole.

Metal Gear Solid: Integral

Unbelievably modern to play, MGS1 was super impressive for me. My history with the franchise is basically only the 'modern' games (Ground Zeroes, V), and I barely understood them while playing. This master collection appeared as a good opportunity for me to finally play all of them.

Honestly, I've chosen the “Integral” version of the game exclusively because the name is nicer, no thought behind it. Well, about the game: what the fuck? The stages are super well done, and the enemies are surprisingly resourceful and full of interactions, even if there are not many on the screen at the same time.

The game starts with one of the classiest tutorial screens that I've ever seen, with a banger soundtrack and not much player guidance. I needed to actually pay attention to the story, which is unexpectedly simple, to understand what to do next; and the codec calls, while basic and very visual novel-like, did a great job of making me understand what happened before this game and introduce me to some characters.

It is basically structured as a boss rush with stealth rooms in between them, with light point-and click puzzle solving with the need to use specific items in specific situations to progress. Of course that everything looks blocky, it is a PS1 game, but the art direction is super well done and it feels like a low poly animation sometimes. The compressed audio can be weird and badly mixed, but even considering all the limitations (including the, ahn, frame rate issues?) MGS1 is well done and well built with strong gameplay and great player control.

While not all the characters were endearing and some twists were super, super easy to see, there are some very cool characters here to talk to, and the rogues gallery that I fought throughout the game is also surprisingly fleshed out; it felt like a movie sometimes, in the best way possible. It is super corny, and there's too much of the “explaining all my motives before my death” trope, but it works because almost everyone I've interacted with is really different and unique (and animal themed!).

The script is blatantly anti-war and anti-imperialism and predicts a future that, without the nanomachines and remote-controlled virus, pretty much exists today, with the real world riddled with weapons to implement “peace” and all the hypocrisy with that. What MGS1 did that took it a bit further is its compromise with the answer, even if too individualistic: love each other and don't live alone, always seek help, and be truthful with yourself. Great themes, super well delivered. It doesn't try to change the world but to change the player, and while, again, corny, it is fun and cute—unexpected with such a bleak premise in a surprisingly violent video game.

There is some very annoying backtracking, even if easy, and not all puzzle solving is clear at first glance, as well as too many moments that the game wanted me to “spend” more time than I should. I'm sure that there are people willing to defend these instances, but I'm not one of them. The boss fights are somewhat easy and very bulletspongy, but every fight is different from each other, with bigger and bigger stakes as the story progresses.

Overall, I really enjoyed this one! Another proof that visuals aren't that necessary when stylish enough and light hearted to be around. A fun game, with funny moments and serious tone that holds up incredibly well on its gameplay even today. I'm excited to play the next ones!

8.5/10

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty - HD Edition

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is a game where almost everything is “extra large” when compared to the previous entry. The cinematic feel of the first? Crank it up to 11. The stealth? Several options of silent weaponry and reliable aiming, then. Even for the more action-packed moments, add numerous variants of guns and a melee weapon for all that matters.

Everything is still wrapped in the “formula” of Metal Gear Solid: stage-like areas with clever situational and environmental puzzle solving, a top-down camera and occasional first-person view to assess the area, and, now, putting some people to sleep. It does such a good job of improving on what the first game did that it gives a forward-thinking feel when playing it; sometimes, it doesn't feel like such an old game at all.

And while it is delicious to have some extra-large meal when the food is good and I'm hungry, sometimes, size does matter: the story here starts to be so over the top, and it dragged the game down a bit. There are several groups and organizations, some of them with 2 people, others with twelve, and some groups change names while the story is still going on. Also, some rules of the world started to break, and many plot points are overexplained at the same time that key story moments happen off-screen and are told to the player through codec calls.

The narrative is more “grandiose” than what it should be. In the end, this is a simple story, almost as simple as the first one, but artificially complex with terms, groups, names and code names, transformations, and secret, off-screen twists. The story is, again, interesting; more than anything, MGS2 made me super excited not only to play the next one but also the 4th, as it is the ending of this crazy narrative, but still, the serious tone most of the time is unbalanced, and the complexities it brings only blur the whole picture.

The two missions here, one shorter and the other significantly larger, are different enough from each other, and while the map of the second mission is not as diverse as all the stages we go through in MGS1, it has layers, it is very vertical, and in the end, I felt safe and always sure of where to go, and that was a feeling of accomplishment. The annoying backtracking that happened in the first game, here, is absent, fortunately.

Still, it is difficult to get to definitive feelings about this game considering how good the gameplay is but how overly serious and edgy the story was. It took me half of my playtime to actually like the protagonist, and most of the new cast are just forgettable characters with one-liners. The new characters aren't as memorable as the ones that died in the first, and the returning characters don't have an interesting arc most of the time as well, so narrative-wise, while as extra large as the other additions, it wasn't to my taste because it felt artificial.

The amazing gameplay and iconic characters are here, but so are the lame ones and the unnecessarily complex narrative that blurs a simple and good story. With better gameplay and a worse main scenario (in my opinion), I think it is fair to say that it is as good as the first one, in its own way. But, really, I liked the latter more. Nonetheless, a great game.

8/10

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - HD Edition

By now, being the third game in my marathon of Metal Gear, playing them for the first time, I've gotten used to seeing forward-thinking games that mostly shaped their generations with their mechanics, gameplay, and presentation. MGS 3: Snake Eater is different: breaking a bit from the formula and striving more towards realism and immersion, the dense and bumpy jungle creates perfect excuses to reinvent Metal Gear and, in the process, standardize the over-the-shoulder stealth action adventure gameplay that became ubiquitous in the generation that followed it.

What impressed me the most is the fact that when games are too “avant-garde” and try so many new gameplay elements, they're often the first to do it, but it ends up not being that good at it. It is not the case for MGS 3. All the previous games were full of mechanics that became “common” in AAA productions, but they were their own style of “arcade-ish,” almost point-and-click-like, puzzle-solving stealth games. MGS 3 has way more action, set pieces, and cutscenes; tones down on the visual novel-style codec calls and has practically no puzzles whatsoever. The map indicates where to go next, and it features a presentation that is not only similar to what we have today in AAA games, it mostly is the same. And it does it all without being badly implemented, with good controls that, while not the same as today's productions, are very similar to them.

The weapons now have silencers that need to be changed, accompanied by the necessity of eating and resting to replenish Snake's health. Slopes are harder to walk through, and using the correct color to match the ambient is key to mastering stealth. Every kind of damage that Snake takes needs to be treated differently, so a cut is different from a gunshot wound. There's a focus on realism that rejects a bit the tradition of the series, and that's a deliberate choice that shapes the world: it is not change for change's sake.

Playing Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, then, is great. One of the best, really. The only notes I have with it are on the exploration: while the maps are arguably bigger, they're fairly linear, and all the activities to do on them besides going to the next part of the story are centered around collectibles, and that's not much for me. Also, this had way less enemy variety when compared to MGS 2, but they're more intelligent and fun to deal with, as they also operate by some of these new rules of immersion.

The James Bond-inspired story is a double-edged sword. While it accompanies well some realism of the gameplay, this game (being a prequel) basically “canonizes” the fact that, yes, badly explained super powers exists in this world, deal with it. I had a bit of a hard time with the vampire or the lucky lady from the second game. Here, everything is even more magical, impressively, and that clashes with the realism of the gameplay, but I got used to it, maybe because of the shock of the second game that prepared me for what happened here.

There are some of the Bond's tropes here, too, like the femme fatale (Eva) and triple crossing, and by the end of the game I liked Eva, but she unfortunately is way less interesting than the other women the series had introduced so far, and while she indeed has chemistry with Snake, she's a bland character that only exists for him until almost the very end of the game, while the narrative pretends that she's more than that. Also, because of the clear James Bond inspiration, this game is way less politically charged, and it doesn't talk much about ethics and what it means to live under war capitalism like the previous ones; it is naive about the world, even a bit optimistic, knowing what I know having played the last 2 games right before now. It is a sad ending because we see the reasons why the world will break and how the optimism is so rapidly destroyed (in the absolutely mandatory post-credit scenes).

I like Jack and Solid more than I like Naked Snake, though. Naked doesn't question much and is a bit of an antisocial guy that sometimes can't really see beyond what is being told to him until, maybe, it is too late. While Solid on the first game had a very nice rebellion arc and Raiden needed to learn how to be a real person to love himself, Naked's path is already chosen for him, as this is a prequel after all, so I don't particularly relate to him, nor Ocelot, for all that matters. Naked Snake is a cool guy, sure, but, in the end, I was expecting more from him. I shouldn't, though: he's not Solid Snake, and it is impressive how this series can have characters that, on a distance, are similar but on closer inspection are so different from one another. MGS 3 is, by all means, the third game in the 'Solid' series, and I honestly find it absurdly necessary to play the previous two to understand it and not cringe with it. Starting here is NOT a good option, be it on the version I played or the new Delta that's is going to be released in the next months, and this is a strength of this game, a commitment to what wants to tell and be. The good thing is that 1 and 2 are really accessible.

There were some mysteries from the previous game that were in the air to be answered here, and, honestly, they were solved, so now I feel like I have all the pieces needed to finish the story in the next game. Everything is leading me to Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. It is super nice and rewarding to play a series of games that try so much to tell a story. The whole narrative is rewarding after all, and it is cool to see them answering some questions that the previous games raised. I still find many moments too camp, though.

Metal Gear Solid 3 is fantastic, and while there were many elements that I preferred from the previous two games, what I've had here was something delicious to play and impressive to see with a shocking 2005 release date. Add to that the incredible soundtrack and improved voice acting: amazing.

9/10

My final verdict towards the Master Collection Vol. 1 is then 8.5/10, with stellar games within it. It was my first time playing them, and I wasn't really expecting to like them that much. It is so much worth it!