Metal Gear Solid

Kept you waiting, huh?

I think I've mentioned this at every possible opportunity on every possible platform but I love Metal Gear. I love giant robots and complicated plots that make me feel clever for following them, and even though I didn't when I started playing the series, I even love sneaking games thanks to MGS.

My first encounter with Metal Gear was through the demo for MGS2 packaged with Zone of the Enders. Back then, my dad's then-partner's brother and I were pretty close. I was an impressionable young kid into foreign martial arts movies and sci-fi rated for ages considerably above my own and he was a sage of those two things and patient enough to put up with hanging out with me. I'm pretty sure it was through him that I ended up with a copy of ZoE1.

First playthrough of the MGS2 demo terrified me. It set me on my merry way on the tanker in the Hudson river, rain pouring down, tasked with obtaining intel on something I had no knowledge of. My pre-teen hands were too lacking in dexterity to sneak past any of the guards with reliable precision and I couldn't calm my nerves quickly enough to tranquilise them before they spotted me. The tension hit me hard, and for maybe another year, I never touched the full game. I was scared of Metal Gear Solid, and thought of it as far above my skill level at the age I was then.

My cool almost-step-uncle Phil would later lend me his full copy of MGS2, and for a good month or so, it didn't enter my PS2 out of the anxiety I felt from the tanker chapter demo. I can't remember what finally gave me the courage to have a go at it but once I did, I was hooked. I still sucked at the game, but the story drew me in (even though I didn't understand any of the plot points from earlier games) and Hideo Kojima's philosophical commentary blew my by then teenaged mind. I beat the game in a summers afternoon just as I was about to leave for the city centre with some friends, and a sense of achievement struck me for the entire day.