Metal Gear Solid (PC)

Now before you start to scream in horror, and run out and tell everybody that you've seen games being ported over from console to the humble beige box before, and that every time this happens the game is always hurt in the process, let me tell you one thing. It's a port, but not as we know it Jim.

Although the missions and style of gameplay is the same from the PlayStation version--and why shouldn't it be, when it was so good--the graphics have been completely started from scratch.

For those not familiar with Metal Gear Solid on the PlayStation here' s a quick rundown. You play Solid Snake, a highly trained special ops commander brought out of retirement for one last mission. Your mission is to defeat other corrupt members of your once top-notch team and rescue your old boss. Things however, start to go wrong as soon as you get to their base and the storyline unfolds from there.

So what you get is a game that has the playability of the original version, but the improved graphics that the PC can give you. If this wasn't enough Microsoft, the developer, who has lovingly ported it, has included the VR Mission set as well to keep you entertained--something that for the original PlayStation players wasn't included in the original. --Stuart Miles

In 1998, Metal Gear Solid turned the console world upside down. Intense gameplay, great graphics (for the PlayStation) and a cinematic quality previously unseen in the console realm made it one of the most talked about and played games of that year. Chances are that if you didn't play the game then, you're probably not really interested in it now. We're foreseeing three types of people buying this game: everyone who could never make Bleem! work properly, puzzled PC gamers who want to see what all the fuss was about and gamers who have lost, tossed or broken their PlayStations.

Just in case you live under a rock and haven't heard of the game, the story follows Solid Snake, an unusually named government agent called in from the cold in order to infiltrate an Alaskan military base taken over by a terrorist group. The terrorists turn out to be genetically altered super-soldier types, just like our boy Snake -- in fact, several of them are actually from his old unit. Snake begins his quest by swimming inside an old subpen and must make his way through the base on his way towards an ultimate confrontation with the leader of the terrorist group. The VR Missions is a whole 'nother story. The cinematic nature of the game is tossed out in favor of small, arcade-like missions that are essentially stand-alone puzzles. It may sound dumb, but the missions are somewhat addictive due to their fast-paced nature; you'll find the refrain "Just one more try" escaping your lips more than a few times.

Although you'll have the opportunity to lob grenades, fire machineguns and launch shoulder-mounted Stinger missiles, Metal Gear Solid's gameplay is centered on stealth rather than straight-up, guns-blazin' action. The player's attention is usually drawn to the radar screen at the top right-hand corner of the screen, which will not only show enemy soldier and camera movements, but will also relay to the player the line of the enemy or camera's sight. The player needs to sneak around the perimeter of the enemy view, without triggering the horrible trumpet-blare of an alarm and swarms of suddenly alerted guards. Of course, if the guards do close in, Snake can always break out the hardware and snipe, blast or choke 'em into submission.

The PC version of MGS does have a few things to recommend it to hungry gamers. This version is actually both the full version of Metal Gear Solid and the VR Missions, which were released separately (look at it as getting two games for the price of one). Gamers can also sneak through the game in first-person mode. This may sound much more attractive to us PC types than the standard third-person view, but the truth is that the game is actually easier to play with the camera pulled back, rather than looking through the eyes of Solid Snake.

The biggest change to MGS comes in the game's actual presentation. Those of us blessed with rockin' rigs can crank up the game's resolution to 1024x768. This makes the game look much sharper and nicer, but it also reveals that the PC porting crew did nothing in the way of touching up the low-res PlayStation textures. Faces are indistinct and large textures are very blocky, simply rendered with a higher pixel count. It would have been nice if the game's textures had been cleaned up for this PC presentation, but this would probably be way too much to ask for from a Japanese developer. That being said, MGS does look nicer than many of the other console-to-PC games we've seen (anything from Infogrames or Capcom, for instance).

The minor additions to the game -- the inclusion of the VR Missions "expansion pack," the ability to play the whole game in first-person mode and the ability to crank up the resolution level to 1024x768 -- may not warrant gamers world-wide to beat down retailers' doors to pick this game up, but if you haven't tried MGS or have a hankerin' to relive 1998's best console game, definitely grab this one. --From DailyRadar.com