Metal Gear Solid is a 1998 action-adventure stealth game developed and published by Konami for the PlayStation. Solid Snake must liberate hostages and prevent FOXHOUND from using Metal Gear REX, a mecha capable of delivering a nuclear warhead anywhere in the world, while confronting his own origins.

The Story Behind Metal Gear Solid - VR Missions

Because the developers wanted the game's action to be stylized and movie-like rather than realistic, they opted not to use motion capture, instead having an artist with experience in anime design the animations by hand. Weapons expert Motosada Mori was also tapped as a technical adviser in the research, which included visits to Fort Irwin and firing sessions at Stembridge Gun Rentals. Further additional content to the main game include an alternate "sneaking suit" outfit for Meryl (which she wears when Snake is dressed in the tuxedo), a "Very Easy" difficulty setting where the player starts the mission armed with a suppressor-equipped MP5 submachine gun with infinite ammo (substituting the FAMAS rifle in Snake's inventory), an eighth Codec frequency featuring commentary from the development team (unvoiced and in Japanese text only) on every area and boss encounter, hidden music tracks, an alternate game mode where the player controls Snake from a first-person perspective (on Normal difficulty only), an option for alternative patrol routes for enemies, and a downloadable PocketStation minigame.

It replaces the Japanese voices from the original version with the English dub, offering players a choice between Japanese and English subtitles during cutscenes and CODEC conversations (item descriptions, mission logs, and other text are still in Japanese). A Spanish dubbed version was later released on May 1. The characters were completed by polygonal artists using brush drawings and clay models by Shinkawa.

How Metal Gear Solid - VR Missions Plays

Despite the switch to 3D, the game is still played primarily from an overhead perspective similar to the original 2D Metal Gear games. The player can also use the first-person view while remaining idle to look around Snake's surroundings and see what is ahead of him. In addition to the main story, there is also a VR training mode in which the player can test out their sneaking skills in a series of artificially constructed environments.

When Snake moves into an enemy's field of vision, he sets off an "alert mode" that draws enemies. Play controls and strategies can also be accessed via the Codec, a radio communication device where advice is delivered from Snake's support team; for example, the support team may chastise Snake for not saving his progress often enough, or explain his combat moves in terms of which buttons to press on the gamepad. The player must then hide until "evasion mode" begins; when the counter reaches zero, the game returns to "infiltration mode", where enemies are no longer suspicious.

Why Players Still Load It Up

The idea of the player being unarmed and having to avoid being seen by enemies rather than fight them has been used in many games since. During August 2015, Eurogamer reanalyzed the game's technical and overall impact and claimed that Metal Gear Solid had been nothing less than "the first modern video game." In September 2015, Metal Gear Solid was voted the best original PlayStation game of all time by PlayStation.Blog's users. Metal Gear Solid, along with its sequel, Metal Gear Solid 2, was featured in the Smithsonian American Art Museum's exhibition The Art of Video Games in 2012.

Metal Gear Solid is credited with popularizing the stealth game genre. IGN called it "the founder of the stealth genre." The game is often considered one of the best games for the PlayStation and was featured in best video games lists by Computer and Video Games in 2000, by Electronic Gaming Monthly and Game Informer in 2001, by Retro Gamer in 2004, by GameFAQs and GamePro in 2005, and by Famitsu. In 2010, PC Magazine ranked it as seventh in the list of most influential video games of all time, citing its influence on "such stealthy titles as Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell." In 2012, Time named it one of the 100 greatest video games of all time and G4tv ranked it as the 45th top video game of all time.

Metal Gear Solid - VR Missions — Frequently Asked Questions