I played the original Metal Gear from 1987 a couple months ago and thought I'd post the review I wrote for it.
I want to start off by acknowledging that Metal Gear is nearly 40 years old now, and was probably revolutionary for its time. It laid the groundwork for a beloved and fantastic series and established many of its staples. That being said, I played it after I played Metal Gear Solid last year, and in many ways my experience with this game was a downgrade compared to that. It may not be fair to judge the game based on what came after it, but it's the way I played them and it coloured my experience.
Metal Gear's story is somewhat bare-bones, and that can be seen especially with the characters in the game. Most of the dialogue is purely exposition with zero characterisation, unless the purpose of the exposition is to reveal a hidden motivation. A lot of the tasks that Snake has to complete boil down to tedious backtracking, or finding a room only to find out the person he's trying to reach has been moved. These would, however, be fine if the gameplay wasn't just as tedious
I don't want to fault the game too much for this since it's just it being the product of its time but I found myself bored by a lot of the sections in this game. Enemies literally can't see you if you walk right next to them, and the only way I found that they'll hear you is if you shoot your gun. In other words, the stealth in this game was just not that fun, as I didn't find it very challenging. Stealth isn't the only trick the game has up its sleeve, though. There's also bosses, kinda.
The bosses in this game pretty much boil down to "guy with a stronger gun" or "vehicle". There's no real character to them, which is a shame since I loved MGS for its characters and story, both of which are just barely there in this game.
It's not all negative, though. Metal Gear's graphics have a charm to them, and I think some of the sprites look really sick! I was also impressed by how it's really easy to tell which direction the enemies are facing at any time, something I know I'd struggle with if I was working with these limitations. It's a very important aspect of a stealth action game, and they genuinely nailed it. There's also a twist in this game that I found was foreshadowed in a pretty competent manner, so I gotta give credit there.
I found the way saving progress works in this game a bit confusing when I started, maybe that's just me not being used to games of the era, but as I got used to it, I found no issue with it, just something to keep in mind. Just because you defeated a boss and pressed save doesn't mean the boss will stay dead when you boot up the game the next day.
By far the biggest strength of Metal Gear for me is how it retroactively makes me love Metal Gear Solid more. There are many sections that feel very similar, and it makes me appreciate how much more fun those sections were in Solid. I can appreciate how massive of a difference having voice acting and cutscenes is for a game like this. Overall Metal Gear makes me remember the parts of Metal Gear Solid that I may not have liked on my first playthrough much more fondly, and that is worth something.
Metal Gear is an extremely short and flawed experience going back to it today, but it may be worth it as an introduction to the franchise. It takes a bit to get used to, but by the end it's an okay time.
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