My very first Metal Gear Solid experience was a scratched disc of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty that my little brother had bought from some guy along with a Playstation 2. The console struggled to read it, but we eventually started to play through the game and discover its utter weirdness; I still remember having a date interrupted by a frantic text promising that I wouldn’t believe what had just happened. It was only later on that I discovered the first game—the Playstation 1 original, not the awful Star Wars-style Director’s Cut that is The Twin Snakes for the Gamecube—which became one of my all-time favorites. I also bought Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (both the original and the version with the upgraded camera) and played through it many times. Neither the second nor third game ever lived up to the pacing, atmosphere, and relative groundedness of the original, but fun was had regardless. Then Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots came out. My brother and I played through it together, though more often than that we sat back for hours at a time to watch the most self-indulgent cutscenes of the series spit all over beloved characters.

As a fan of the original, MGS4 did Meryl wrong. As a fan of second game, MGS4 did Raiden wrong. As a fan of the third game, MGS4 did EVA wrong. Any loyalty I had for the series disintegrated and was replaced by a wariness of Kojima. He produces games that push technical limits, but his writing is trash-tier and reads like a mix between M. Night Shyamalan and Ancient Aliens. I passed on Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. I passed on Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes. And ultimately, I ignored Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain when it came out.

There were numerous opportunities to pick up Metal Gear Solid 5 for cheap that I simply refused to capitalize on. I recently saw it on Xbox’s Game Pass, however, and since I’ve been using my cheap month of the service to catch up on games that I missed out on, I figured it couldn’t hurt to install.

Metal Gear Solid 5‘s story is the exact kind of garbage that I expected, giving established characters additional stories and motivations that surely have their wiki pages looking as disjointed and random as a comic book superhero’s by now, but I can’t help but be impressed by how good it looks and how well it runs on a base Xbox One. It’s no exaggeration to say that it’s the best combination of visual fidelity and performance that I’ve seen on the console. And while it took a decent amount of time to get comfortable with the controls (the input for running on foot is different than speeding up your horse for reasons that defy explanation, and that’s just one of many oddities), I’ve found myself enjoying the gameplay overall. I do miss sight cones, and having to manually tag every enemy gets tedious, but it’s weirdly rewarding taking up a position on a rock with a sniper rifle and taking out 80% of a base at range.

The scripted sequences with enemies who have superpowers suck. I kept dying at one point because you start the fight standing around and it seemed obvious that everyone could see me, so I didn’t bother hiding. Apparently, they can’t see you during the sandstorm they ostensibly create. Or maybe they just don’t engage as quickly when you get into cover? Either way, these have thus far been very scripted and awkward, and I hate them. Irritations aside, though, I could totally see myself finishing the game. Doing so isn’t practical now since there are other titles I’d like to play through before my month of Game Pass is up, but it says a lot that I’m considering buying a (very used) copy of Metal Gear Solid 5 to finish.

But in case that sounds like forgiveness, I’m still passing on Death Stranding. An even more Kojima-ish experience is gonna be a no from me, dawg.

It’s weird suddenly playing Metal Gear Solid 5 for the first time first appeared on Killa Penguin