“Who’s foot prints are these?”

Metal Gear Solid – PS1

Oh, man. So many good memories with this game. I’ve played through it more times than I can count. I know the game is very dated by today’s standards but back in 1998, this is game looked pristine, it had the best voice acting of any game I’d ever seen, it pushed the Playstation to its limits spanning two discs with multiple endings, a wonderful cast of characters, some of the best gameplay and to top it off, a wicked story.

I loved that it had all these clever gameplay tricks that, in all honesty, the first time playing through I couldn’t figure out for the life of me. Though in all fairness, I had rented the game so I didn’t possess the codex frequency for Meryl, also, looking things up on the internet wasn’t as fun as it is now. Mostly because I wasn’t allowed to use it as 10 year old unless daddy was monitoring it. Also, asking my parents to look up stuff would require telling them I was playing an M-rated game. Not a fun conversation.

Anyway, swapping the controller to port 2 to fight a boss that knows where you’re going because he’s psychic and can read your memory card AND make it vibrate. Awesome. The keycard that changed shape depending on the temperature of the room you’re in, such a cool little gameplay feature.

Not only was this game amazing though, everything to follow it has been amazing. MGS2′s sacked story, MGS3′s amazing gameplay and story, MGS4′s ridiculously cinematic adventure and even the PSP’s outings in the series. This series has been so huge and the spy game that every game wishes they could compete with.

In my honest opinion, this is the best series of games every created to span across all platforms and carry on the same greatness from game to game. With Metal Gear Rising: Revengance on the horizon with a whole new story and style of gameplay, and even reports of a Metal Gear Solid 5 in the works, I think it’s just proof that this game can continually evolve into something greater with every generation.

- Ryan