As early as 2001, I was no stranger to video games. In fact, in my growing years obsessed with Pokémon, beating my cousin in an iron fist and bullying sheep like Spyro, I thought I had seen everything the game had to offer. Then Metal Gear appeared. It was on the shelves in the UK the same year as "The Matrix" (1999). At the age of nine, Hideo Kojima's masterpiece initially discouraged me. Wandering around my elementary school during the break time, the Matrix is ​​the topic of the tarmac, causing the children who were lucky enough to see it to scream in excitement in the playground. Until one day, the whispers of a strange Japanese PlayStation game reached my ears.

Suddenly, the rest time is occupied by children imitating robot ninjas, who shout ridiculous sentences about "Foxdie" and jump to the ground dramatically in an imaginary gunfight. I don't know what happened, but one thing is clear-I have to play this game. I quickly convinced my parents to ignore the disgusting age class over 16 years old, and I soon went home with a copy of second-hand metal gear.

When I put that worn disc into the thick gray PlayStation, my view of video games changed forever. In the opening ten minutes of Metal Gear Solid, I sneaked past heavily armed guards and avoided military helicopters, attracted by the hoarse tone of the solid "I eat cigarette for breakfast" snake. When the voice actor David Hayter made a strong complaint about something called a nanomachine and solemnly talked about the "battlefield", I got closer to the granular CRT screen more and more nervously. Deeply attracted. For the ten-year-old Tom, this is not just another video game-this is the coolest thing I have ever seen.

Metal Gear Solid. Credit: Konami

I am obviously not the only one who is fascinated by Metal Gear; Kojima's PS1 debut was well received. It is not difficult to see why. Just two years after the release of the completely silent Final Fantasy VII, the full-sound dialogue of Metal Gear Solid felt like it came from another planet. Most games in the 90s have a small amount of sound effects and intermittent character noise, and Metal Gear’s seamless switching between 3D cutscenes and speech codec dialogue feels like pure magic. Of course, some performances feel a bit boring now (we are watching you, Liquid Snake), but even in 2021, full dubbing is not a feat that every AAA game can do.

However, it is not just the hoarse tone of Snake and his friends that fascinates me—the soundtrack of the game is unprecedented. Throughout its more than ten hours of running time, Metal Gear’s orchestral scores are masters in terms of tension and spectacle, somehow giving people a sense of grand, subtle and consistent threat at the same time. Snake performs a single-player mission to shoot down a terrorist organization before launching a nuclear warhead. The creepy music really makes people realize how dangerous Snake's mission is.

Metal Gear Solid. Credit: Konami

When the commander, Colonel Campbell, relayed intelligence to Snake through a hidden codec communication device, the footsteps of patrol guards echoed around the flooded base-it was impossible not to be sucked into Snake's world. Although I spent a lot of time on JRPG, this is another matter entirely. From crude real-world military videos to contemplative philosophical codec conversations, the collage-like presentation feels like sensory overload. Although I have a controller in my hand, playing Metal Gear doesn't seem like a video game, but more like starring in my own interactive movie.

This is not accidental. With Solid Snake based on Snake Pliskin of Escape From New York, Kojima's love for movies permeates every pixel of Metal Gear Solid. For example: the opening ceremony. Most games put the ending credits at the end, and the names of the animators and programmers flashed on the screen dramatically from the beginning, adding dramatic talent to the already iconic prologue. This is a statement of intent, allowing Kojima to clearly express his lofty ambitions for Hollywood from the very beginning.

Metal Gear Solid. Credit: Konami

It's easy to think-thanks to its fascinating firearms story, cyborg ninja and giant robot-Metal Gear will not be so respected by me as an adult. However, 20 years later, when I played Hideo Kojima's masterpiece, I still found myself lost in its wonderful madness. Due to its futuristic but completely fictitious technology and surreal character, Metal Gear makes people feel surprisingly timeless. Of course, for modern players, the controls are cumbersome, but this 22-year-old game is still a master in atmosphere and a masterpiece of interactive storytelling. It still performs well (regardless of cunning control). Thanks to its convincing invisibility and the fusion of all-out fantasy, the game strikes a perfect balance between surreptitiously outsmarting the enemy and letting you work hard with a machine gun.

It also has some very external thoughts. From the infamous controller switching gimmick in the Psycho Mantis Boss battle to the important codec frequencies hidden in the screenshots on the back of the physical game box, Metal Gear has pushed the limits of video games. The collision of wonderful gameplay, narrative ambition, creativity and sheer swagger makes it so absurd but fascinating. A ride that can stand the test of time.

Although many of its stories are absurd-giant robots, invisible ninjas, evil twins-but there is enough real world truth to combine them into a reasonable package. With Snake being sent to Alaska to single-handedly prevent a terrorist organization from launching nuclear weapons, this story about a gray-haired veteran undertaking "another mission" initially felt rather simple. However, as the story unfolds, military conspiracies, corporate corruption, and interfering with politicians’ networks add unexpected complexity to the proceedings. From nuclear materials sold on the black market to shady transactions at the Pentagon, these were topics that were not explored by video games at the time. It may not have the chilling presence of the 2002 sequel "Son of Liberty", but this PlayStation classic also tells a more compact and simpler story.

Now you might reject its blocky aesthetics. Metal Gear Solid is Sony’s jaw-dropping technology display for the first time in the game console market: this is a game, running in the snow will leave footsteps to remind the guard of your existence. . In many ways, it was one of the first attempts at a convincing 3D sandbox, and the meshing of its layered system is still impressive to this day. This is what Kojima later perfected in his MGS swan song MGS V: Phantom Pain. However, decades ago, the foundation has been skillfully laid here.

In essence, Metal Gear Solid works because the yarn it spun is entirely its own. From the (worrying) plausible military conspiracy network to its iconic villain, this perfectly-paced adventure is still as important as it was in 1999.

In one fell swoop, Kojima proved that video games can tell stories as grand and weird as Hollywood’s best games, encouraging a whole generation of developers to push the boundaries of player expectations. With Kojima's Hollywood romance now in full swing in the film adaptation starring Oscar Isaac - and the long-rumored MGS game remake - the unshakable legacy of Metal Gear continues to exist. If you have a PC and you have not experienced the breakthrough classic of Solid Snake, then you should find it on GOG, or look for other more cunning means of penetration.

Tom Regan is a freelance journalist and occasionally writes for NME. You can read the rest of the Remastered column here.

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