Ah, Metal Gear. Quite the well loved series these days, it had a rocky start in the West, not really gaining popularity until the PlayStation and Metal Gear: Solid, in 1998. Metal Gear has quite the interesting history, having started in the MSX computer platform in Japan. The NES “port” of the original game (if you can call it that) is notorious for being poor compared to the MSX version it was based on.
The episode opens with the Nerd discussing the history of the game series up to that point in reasonable detail before finally diving into the game itself, while also contrasting it with other games of the era where usually the idea was to simply kill everything on screen. Not Metal Gear — the focus here was stealth.
As The Nerd goes through the game he points out all the odd things about it that wind up making it a somewhat poor experience. It should go without saying its inferior to the MSX games, but that’s not enough — no, Metal Gear has some major annoyances. It feels like a rush job, really; ignoring the bad translation, you get re-spawning enemies, poor level layout, confusing controls, and even an annoyingly long password screen.
Yep, it has a little bit of everything.
It’s an interesting thing for James to tear into this game to the degree he does, as multiple times in the review he mentions it being a “classic.” Was it well regarded in its day? I don’t recall anyone having it, and only know of it being brought up after Metal Gear: Solid was released on the PlayStation, so I can’t say for sure.
Final Rating: 3.0/5
The episode isn’t bad. It seems a little all over the place though — enough to actually make writing this review a bit difficult. The complaints are valid and expressed in typical Nerd style, but there isn’t much else to the episode. It’s a mix of history with criticism that just kind of happens — not bad, but not good either.
Of additional interest, I’m fairly certain this is the first episode of the series I caught “when it was new.” I’m kind of amazed it took me this long to get into the series but it wasn’t until about early 2009 I really “regularly” began to watch content like this online.