You are Snake, a government agent on a mission to regain control of a secret nuclear weapons base from terrorist hands. Lightly armed and facing an army of foes, Snake must avoid firefights in order to survive. If Snake can locate them he can utilize advanced hardware, ranging from silenced pistols to ground-to-air missiles. Enemies react to sight and sound - so stay quiet and stay in the shadows. State-of-the-art graphics: textures, transparencies, models and explosions. Taut, gripping story with multiple endings - a truly cinematic experience.

You are Solid Snake, a superspy who's half James Bond, half Snake Plissken, and you are mean. Your mission isn't terribly new (infiltrate a terrorist base and blow everything up), but the gameplay is: your numerous enemies are watching for you, and you are encouraged to sneak rather than simply charge in. Every level brings new challenges. You fight snipers, invisible ninjas, psychic warriors, and even an M-1 tank! As the father of the modern spy game genre, this game is an instant classic.
Your allies and superiors speak to you via a cool, implanted radio, monitoring your progress, offering tips--but failing to give you the full story. The combination of a mysterious and engaging plot and high in-game tension makes this a thrilling ride. Campy humor also abounds as you rescue beautiful women, verbally spar with your allies, and blow up enemies in the bathroom. A user-friendly control interface allows for sniping, hiding, crawling, and running, and the graphics leave nothing to be desired. If you like espionage, spy movies, or just want to own and play a piece of gaming history, then this is a must have. Metal Gear Solid is one of the all-time greats. Game tip: Secretly attach plastic explosives behind an enemy, sneak out of the room, and see what happens. --Allen Stewart
Pros:
Story well-integrated into gameplay
Stealth favored over brute force
Challenging puzzles
Cons:Puzzles can be frustrating
Torture scene too intense for younger gamers

Metal Gear Solid is the game that has been sending chills down the back of this industry for over two years. Konami leaked bits of information about it here and there, but there was no hiding the notion that Metal Gear Solid would be an adventure of epic proportions. Now, all the waiting has ceased, and the game is finally upon us. But does Metal Gear Solid live up to the years of hype? That really depends on your perspective.
At its core, Metal Gear Solid is truly a lesson in stealth. Forget about running into rooms with your gun blazing, leaving nothing alive but an occasional rat. Here, living by the gun readily equates into dying by the gun. Why bother fighting the guards when you can just sneak around behind their backs, crawl along walls just out of the sight range of surveillance cameras, and hide behind boxes?
Unlike most other games, Metal Gear Solid really knows how to tell a story. You, as retired supersneaky agent Solid Snake, must infiltrate a base that has been overrun by terrorists. These terrorists, however, are members of your old unit, a top secret organization known as Fox Hound. The hounders are sitting on a supersecret new weapon and enough nuclear warheads to send the planet back to the Ice Age. Your mission (no choice here - you're forced to accept) is to infiltrate the base carrying nothing but a pair of binoculars and a pack of smokes, check up on a couple hostages, find out if Fox Hound even has the ability to carry out its apocalyptic threats, and if it does, stop it. The storyline unfolds in a seemingly never-ending collection of cutscenes, all extremely well rendered using the game engine. The game doesn't need FMV to clog up the process (given the amount of time spent watching cutscenes, FMV probably would have made MGS a three- or four-disc game), although it does use video in a few isolated cases and uses it reasonably well.
When you first start playing the game, you truly do feel like you're constantly in danger. There are so many ways that guards can be alerted to your presence. The most dangerous, of course, is sight. If you enter the line of sight of a guard or a camera, you've got a fight on your hands. Luckily, their lines of sight are represented by big cones on your radar. Simply stay away from the cones, and you'll never get spotted. If you stomp through a puddle of water or across a metal catwalk, fire off a weapon, or knock on a wall (great for luring the dummies to their doom), nearby guards will hear the noise and check it out. They'll even follow footprints in the snow. If you're spotted, a bunch of guards come out of nowhere and start playing target practice with you. This also starts a two-part timer. The first part of the timer is the danger timer. During this time, guards are extremely alert, and they scurry around, hoping to find you. If you can manage to stay out of sight, the second timer starts. During this time the guards don't look for you quite as actively. If you can stay hidden during that time, the guards stupidly assume that you must have run away, and simply return to their posts. No increased patrols, no manhunts. They just forget they ever saw you and continue to wander aimlessly. While it's understandable that this had to be done for gameplay purposes (getting spotted once and playing the rest of the game with tons of guards on your tail wouldn't exactly be fair), it comes across as more than a little silly. Plus, all of these guards are badly in need of some corrective eyewear, because they can only see about 20 or so feet in front of them. Heck, you can even shoot a guard in the back of the head (it takes multiple shots to kill), and he'll just look around, not see anyone, and go back to standing there like an idiot. -- Jeff Gerstmann
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