Metal Gear Solid

"Metal Gear Solid (PS) + Metal Gear (NES) = Awesome game"

Someone mated Metal Gear Solid for Playstation and Metal Gear for the Nintendo Entertainment System (Famicom), and this popped out. Although it's original name, Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, was better as to prevent PSX-GBC confusion, but oh well. On to the review!

Gameplay: An excellent revamping of the great PSX version, with some NES goodness thrown in. Like the PSX version, you sneak around, avoiding/killing guards, and kicking the crap out of bosses. A few things are sadly missing in this one, though... You can't play with the guards (No snapping necks, no strapping C4 to backs, no ''It's just a box'', no choking, no holds, no human shields,and it's not as humorous to lay down a mine and tap a wall, luring a guard.). But that's no big loss (Although it really hurt replay for me...). Anyhoo, you can find numerous weapons, such as the 5-7 pistol, the R5 rifle, the nikita, grenades, and items like rations, key cards, Night vision/infared goggles, body armor, and 3 different boxes, just to name a few. If you've played the PS version, you'll know how to play this. There's a VR mission mode to warm you up, and there are many cool weapon testing missions to train you in the use of the weapons. There's also a stage select option, which lets you tackle previously played levels to improve your stage rating. There's a problem with level design, too, as some areas are designed unrealistically (Supercomputers are normally spread apart more than a few inches, trap doors aren't usually found in power plants, etc.).

Story: 7 years after the Outer Heaven incident with Big Boss (MG for NES), Solid Snake, the 'legend', retires in the Alaskan mountains. All of a sudden, Colonel Roy Campell stops by to say hello, have some tea, think about past missions... oh yeah, and to ask Snake to single handedly save the world from nuclear warfare again. He agrees when he hears the mission location (Outer Heaven). Snake dawns his stealth suit, packs his fogger (Stupid censors... it acts like his cigarettes), and parachutes outside of Outer Heaven. The adventure begins...

Sound: Music's okay, nothing too catchy, but nothing bad either. Sounds are ok. No voice work (of course). Nothing spectacular, but this is GBC we're talking about. Hopefully there will be better music for MGS2 for GBA (if Konami makes it).

Graphics: Great. The Night vision effect sucks, though... (Rather than turning everything green like normal, it makes it seem as if it's not even dark.) The characters look good, and there are different guard variants (only in one level, though...), and the bosses look good. Lots of animation in character movements, too. Metal Gear looks sweet (legs are corny looking...), and the cutscenes are well done, even if they're just stills with text and the occasional movement.

*NEW SECTION!!!* The Pits: For those wanting to see all the bad things about the game without reading through all the text, well, this section's for you! Let's start. Ok, why the hell are some of the levels messed like that? Yeah, super computers are ALWAYS arranged so the only path involves a lot of squeezing. And Power plants ALWAYS have trap doors in the middle of nowhere. And why can I only punch? At least give me the option to toss a guy, but NOOOO, that'd be impossible on a Gameboy! I wanted to chuck one of the guards on the path in the beginning into the mud, too... And why are mines worthless? They should kick ass! And guards don't even stop to look at that suspicious blue box next to their patrol paths even though it wasn't there a second ago! Yet they discover you when they blindly walk into you. And I know Konami didn't wanna bring back nightmares about the grass green screen on the shoe box sized Game Boy, but why didn't they add the green effect to the NV goggles? C'mon, realism! Speaking of which, I'm sure guards stationed 50 floors underground still wear green jungle fatigues, because they're too cheap to afford grey SWAT outfits... Why does Marionette Owl have Selphie's (from FF8) hairdo? Isn't he a man? Black Art Viper looks like a comic book character, too. And why'd they censor the cigarettes? Yeah, kids! From now on, when saving the world, don't be wacko and smoke tobacco, use a fogger! I'm sure Truth would want that... Weasle also looks kinda like Zell from FF8... Konami should take a look at their designs! It's like they're ripping off the Holy Squaresoft Empire! And I'm sure an 18-year-old fat ****er like Jimmy would lead a dev team making the ultimate weapon... at least Otacon gave us the Cloaking Device! Bah... That ends the Metal Gear Solid edition of The Pits. This is meant to get all the gripes in one area, and to have fun doing so. It'll show up from now on in all reviews. The Pits do not effect the grade, though.

Buy or Rent?: Buy. It's a fantastic spy game with a gripping story and the most badass man to walk the earth, Solid Snake! It'll kill your thumbs, though... (That was a hardware gripe, so it didn't appear in The Pits) You might want to rent it first anyway to get a feel for it, though.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/10/01, Updated 06/10/01