Interesting Article

[Mirage]

Try hard difficulty then
Personally, I can't get past the 5000 rexes on anything higher than normal

[Wolf Kanno]

MGS1 is sadly a game that is really beginning to show its age, while it has graphically lost its edge long before the PS1 was retired, the gameplay itself has pretty much been relegated to archaic after MGS2 hit the scene. I honestly feel that Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (16-bit MSX) plays better than MGS1, but I still love MGS1 cause its story and characters have held up nicely.

I'm not really sure I agree with you on this. While I wouldn't necessarily want to see the stealth genre regress to MGS1 style gameplay, I don't think you can really do a top down stealth game much better than MGS1. The controls were very responsive and felt great (I might even argue that the controls felt better than some of the later entries which piled on more and more moves to the MGS1 base), and the gameplay itself was quite challenging and compelling. I really don't think the game becomes less playable because the later games added to and changed up the formula a bit. In fact, aside from the fact that MGS2 added so many different ways to interact with enemies and the environment, I'd say MGS1 was a much tighter and more balanced gameplay experience. MGS2 made the stealth element a bit of a joke with the tranquilizer gun which takes almost all of the challenge out of the game. It wasn't really until MGS3 where they managed to work it in without completely breaking the gameplay.

While I can agree that the original is far more challenging than MGS2 and for me MGS4, it partially because of how awful the controls hold up. Fighting in MGS3 is actually more of a chore because the auto-aim is dysfunctional and Snake is nowhere near as flexible about moving around more agile fighters. Back when MGS4 came out, I played through the whole MGS series again and frankly the gameplay in MGS1 does not hold up as well. Its more challenging but its because Snake is more limited but also because the controls are really unrefined. In MGS2, if I screw up, I can honestly say its because I screwed up, because the controls are so precise.

The AI also doesn't hold up as well, you can literally run through segments of MGS1 with little problem, but that won't work as well in MGS 2 and 3, 2 cause its stage design is very restrictive and 3, because the use of camo and open environments require the enemy to be that much more competent. Hell, the game even suffers a bit of Zelda syndrom with the boss fights, with most of the bosses having one sure way to win, whereas later installments allowed you to tackle most of the bosses with several different strategies. While MGS1 is certainly not the weakest link in the franchise *cough* MG1 *cough* playing through MGS1 up to MGS4 is like playing the FF series in the order of US releases of I to IV, to VI, to VII. The jump in quality is astounding, and its pretty hard to go from MGS3 back to MGS1.

The problem with the Twin Snakes though, it while the gameplay is MGS2, the game still uses MGS1's level design and AI scripts, so the game is a freaking cakewalk when you can tranq and headshot everything. Revolver Ocelot is a boss fight designed around MGS1's troutty controls and auto-aim, when you get FPS mode firing, you literally stand in one spot and and just shoot him while he runs back and forth. The challenge is sucked away, yet to be fair, the challenge itself was more of an issue of working with poor controls.

[Slothy]

Its more challenging but its because Snake is more limited but also because the controls are really unrefined.

See, this I can't agree with. As someone who has beaten MGS1 more times than I can count and even got to be one level shy of 100% in VR Missions, the controls were anything but unrefined. They were very precise if you ask me, and I never felt like I died because of anything that was the fault of the controls. In fact from MGS2 on, I was far more apt to die from trying to finaggle the controls into doing what I wanted than in MGS1, because they piled so many moves onto the control set. Now that's not to say that the controls in the later games weren't very good given how many moves they were piling on, and MGS3 in particular stands out as perhaps being the best (with the exception of not being able to move while aiming), but none of the later games managed to get the same simplicity and responsiveness that MGS1 did if you ask me.

[DMKA]

I'm playing FFVI right now and loving the hell out of every second. It's the most fun I've had playing a game in the last year.

So yeah, dude is way off. Opinions, etc.

And FFVII is still my favorite game.

[Wolf Kanno]

Its more challenging but its because Snake is more limited but also because the controls are really unrefined.

See, this I can't agree with. As someone who has beaten MGS1 more times than I can count and even got to be one level shy of 100% in VR Missions, the controls were anything but unrefined. They were very precise if you ask me, and I never felt like I died because of anything that was the fault of the controls. In fact from MGS2 on, I was far more apt to die from trying to finaggle the controls into doing what I wanted than in MGS1, because they piled so many moves onto the control set. Now that's not to say that the controls in the later games weren't very good given how many moves they were piling on, and MGS3 in particular stands out as perhaps being the best (with the exception of not being able to move while aiming), but none of the later games managed to get the same simplicity and responsiveness that MGS1 did if you ask me.

Then you must have Zen like skills with the auto aim cause I find it makes combat much more sluggish and tends to have hiccups when you shoot at multiple targets. I ain't saying MGS1 is a bad game, O myself played the hell out of that game and got my Big Boss rank back in the day, but I must say my last playthrough of the game was a bit of a sobering experience cause I found the game less fluid than later entries. Its one thing to throw it in for a good run, I feel its issued came after going through the games in reverse order. Going from MGS3 back to MGS1 is quite a bit of a leap in quality.