Product description
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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 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.
.com
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You are Solid Snake, a super 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 her of the
modern game genre, this game is an instant classic.
Your allies and superiors speak to you via a cool, imed
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, 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
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Review
------
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 blazing, leaving
nothing alive but an occasional rat. Here, living by the
readily equates into dying by the . Why bother fighting the
guards when you can just sneak around behind their backs, crawl
along walls just out of the 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 a 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 . If you enter the line of of a guard or a camera,
you've got a fight on your hands. Luckily, their lines of
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 , 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 lessly. 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 s to kill), and he'll just look
around, not see anyone, and go back to standing there like an
idiot. -- Jeff Gerstmann
--Copyright ©1999 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction
in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written
permission of GameSpot is prohibited. GameSpot and the GameSpot
logo are trademarks of GameSpot Inc. -- GameSpot Review
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- 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 and sound - so stay quiet and stay in the shadows..
- State-of-the-art graphics, textures, transparencies, models & explosions..
- Taut, gripping story with multiple endings - a truly cinematic experience..