i first played ffvii when i was idk, 22 or so, which is probably the "wrong" time to play it, but I think I appreciate it more this way. the only real mysticism I have surrounding it was some friends talking about it back in high school or whatever, so I don't really have any love or nostalgia for it. On the other hand though, I think I played from a near purely critical stand, and it's just really great front to back. I generally like final fantasy less when it's so heavily focused on the main protagonist's journey, but cloud is truly attracting and everything really presents itself around cloud so well. I didn't vote for it (primarily because i was focusing on things that were less likely to show up, some because I just don't have a strong personal relationship), but it unquestionably deserves to be here
-
Welcome to Talking Time's third iteration! If you would like to register for an account, or have already registered but have not yet been confirmed, please read the following:
- The CAPTCHA key's answer is "Percy"
- Once you've completed the registration process please email us from the email you used for registration at percyreghelper@gmail.com and include the username you used for registration
Once you have completed these steps, Moderation Staff will be able to get your account approved.
No One Can Stop Mr. Talking Time's Top 50 32 & 64-Bit Video Games!
- Thread starter Issun
- Start date
Folks I'm starting to think Age of Empires 2 isn't going to make it
That, and the rest of my list...
.... I played it when I was like 21 because that's how old I was when it came out.
Final Fantasy VII is a great game. Like others have pointed out already, I think I have the tendency to downplay it in my mind on account of how... well, foundational and common it is. My opinions on it have flip-flopped and vacillated over the years, but I've come down and settled on the idea that it's both a very good game and underappreciated as strange as that sounds. I had it #15 on my list, but that was mostly so I could boost other games over it when I knew FF7 would have a high ranking regardless of my vote. I would have been comfortable placing it in my top 5.
Haha, it was meant to be. But when you sit and do a formal analysis, it's actually pretty close to being true. There's a lot of crossover ideas that both games mine for thematic purposes. The setting and crisis facing the planet is very similar. The battle system mechanics are also very similar. The games focus on cinematic story telling are similar. Even a lot of the key characters are the same. (Cloud - former experimental soldier of Shinra; Terra - former experimental soldier of the Empire.) Even the final bosses are like yo, check out this insane person who cloaks themselves with seraphim symbolism. FF7 in a lot of ways, feels like the kind of game the FF6 team would have made had they had access to better tech when they made it. It's a very natural and smooth evolution between the two, versus FF7 being a game that rocked the boat too hard like 8 arguably did.
Not my fav (I'll take girl-Cloud over Cloud, imo) but still pretty good. Playing devil's advocate for a moment, I don't mind how things ended up in Advent Children. There's a lot of business that goes down in the events of FF7, and it stands to reckon that in the two relatively peaceful years after that, Cloud would have had a lot of time to just sit and think about things and let things fester until he was a detached grumpy gump with regards to survivor's guilt, etc.
Yeah, I'm just about to give up on my #3 personally, Front Mission 3
FF7 is an important game, but at this point, I'll say I don't think it's an especially good one. Still, as a high school freshman, I went directly to the mall Babbage's after school (because we weren't doing midnights yet, you see) and waited in what was, at the time, by far the longest line I'd ever stood in for a videogame. It snaked from the registers at the front of the store, all the way to the back, around the middle shelves, back to the front and out into the mall! I played it, I loved it, I have a tattoo of Cloud.
But more recent attempts to revisit it have been... rough. Still, I get its inclusion, for all the reasons listed above.
But more recent attempts to revisit it have been... rough. Still, I get its inclusion, for all the reasons listed above.
haha yea sorry if i made anyone feel old. I guess it's less relevant that i played it at 20whatever and more that i played it years and several numbered entries and other relevant rpgs after the fact.... I played it when I was like 21 because that's how old I was when it came out.
I had FF7 at #12 on my list. I ranked it lower than any of the other PS1 Final Fantasy games. I guess the reason why I did that was because even though it is good it is also a foundational game - the games that came after it reached so far because they were standing on its shoulders.
Final Fantasy VII mostly passed me by, but even though I didn't play it (past Midgar, at least) until after 2010, I still ended up with a lot of nostalgic affection for it. I think it was impossible to be into jrpgs, or just Japanese games, in that era without picking up a lot of details from the game through osmosis. Even if your relationship to the game, like mine, was to jealously denigrate it because it was taking attention and praise from better games, like Final Fantasy 6. Playing it years later, I get it. The graphics might not have held up especially well, but there is something elemental and perfect about that cast and setting, which was evident in the reception the remake got. It deserved most of the praise. (FF6 is still much better).
Going back a couple of days, Final Fantasy Tactics was the game that made me buy a PS1. I mean, there were a lot of games I wanted to play on the PS1, but stumbling on FFT somewhere was a revelation. I had never seen any kind of strategy game, and the tone and setting were unlike anything else; I had to play it. I was instantly hooked. I bought a copy of the game before I actually had a PS1, and then the PS1 I bought from a friend ended up not working and I had a copy of the game for the better part of a year with nothing to play it on. It still does a lot to inform my taste and I still think it is the best game of its type I've played.
Going back a couple of days, Final Fantasy Tactics was the game that made me buy a PS1. I mean, there were a lot of games I wanted to play on the PS1, but stumbling on FFT somewhere was a revelation. I had never seen any kind of strategy game, and the tone and setting were unlike anything else; I had to play it. I was instantly hooked. I bought a copy of the game before I actually had a PS1, and then the PS1 I bought from a friend ended up not working and I had a copy of the game for the better part of a year with nothing to play it on. It still does a lot to inform my taste and I still think it is the best game of its type I've played.
i had this game at #7, but ended up bumping almost all of my list back by one when i realized i had forgotten to vote for vampire savior. (I can just say that now, right? It's not in the top 4?) i agree that it's fairly similar to 6, and certainly the two are more similar than any other pair of consecutive FFs (unless you're the sort to count xiii-2 as a main game or something). i also think it's my favorite in the series in a lot of ways after my replay last year, with some of my favorite mechanics and party members paired with a great soundtrack overall and really ambitious visuals that evoke a lot through the minimal textures and especially blocky models. and of course along with that one of my favorite rpgs and square games on the system. of course it's silly, a lot of the minigame type stuff in particular feels like someone in charge basically just okayed everything that anyone made for the game whatsoever, but it's great and beautiful
a game for this moment, and any other since its release tbh
a game for this moment, and any other since its release tbh
#4
It's like one of my Japanese animes...
Developer: Konami Computer Entertainment Japan
Publisher: Konami
Platforms: Sony Playstation, PC
Release Dates: September 3, 1998 (JP), October 21, 1998 (NA), February 22, 1999 (EU)
396 Points, 14 Votes, Highest Vote: #1 (Tomm Guycot, WisteriaHysteria)
It's like one of my Japanese animes...
Developer: Konami Computer Entertainment Japan
Publisher: Konami
Platforms: Sony Playstation, PC
Release Dates: September 3, 1998 (JP), October 21, 1998 (NA), February 22, 1999 (EU)
396 Points, 14 Votes, Highest Vote: #1 (Tomm Guycot, WisteriaHysteria)
I called FF7 a lynchpin of Talking Time's existence, and that's true, but so is Metal Gear Solid. Perhaps even more so. Very few games have had as much impact on how stories are told in the medium, and even though we complain about Kojima's excesses, a lot of us also have a fondness for them. Of course there's also Parish's Thumbnail Theater, which initially began with MGS, I believe, to say nothing of how much the series pervaded early Toastyfrog.
The Playstation was where games became more cinematic, and Metal Gear Solid was at the forefront of that. It had been seven years since the previous installment in the series, so it made sense that Hideo Kojima would want to give the fans a show, and give them one he did. While the character models have not aged particularly well, the setpieces are just as grand and exciting as they were 23 years ago. After this and FF7, every dev was racing to make the next big cinematic gaming experience.
The gameplay, too, was hugely influential. Thanks to MGS's success, stealth became an ever larger part of gaming (and was implemented better in some games than in others), and the controls, while clunky, set the template for how movement would work in certain types of 3D games. You can still see their DNA in games today like Mass Effect and Uncharted.
Selected Track:
I had played violent stuff like Mortal Kombat before but this was the first game that I remember feeling like it was made for grown ups. The silly opinion of a preteen probably but nonetheless.
I have repeatedly tried to play Metal Gear Solid, and it just does not seem to be for me. But it is a game that I will happily watch someone play.
I only had an n64, but my brother had a playstation. It was mostly sports games, but there was also twisted metal black and mgs1. Twisted metal was fun, but I don't think i really got it. MGS1 was probably not for nor did I get it, but I also found it one of the first games that felt like something only adults could appreciate. I don't think I voted for it, but if it was specifically a list of games I've been affected by, this is way up there. Also one that maybe despite popular opinion, I still have fun with in a revisit
I'm also in the camp of people for whom the actual mechanics and play-control of MGS never really clicked, but I appreciated absorbing almost everything else about it from the general gaming zeitgeist. For all Kojima's excesses, I have to appreciate a series so absolutely committed to its ultimately completely goofy contents.
They absolutely have. People will probably try to frame them, as the game and series at large, as examples in a bid for "realism", but I don't think that was the intent even at the time--Metal Gear is hyperstylized hyper-reality and that extends to the art style; intricately detailed while leaving off specifics if it serves the exaggerations reached for. The decision to portray eyes with just suggestive polygonal texture shading is particularly inspired, and it alone ensures nothing else in the series even attempts the same kind of aesthetic MGS did.
I don't know whether my lifelong love of 3D environments started with the game, but it's one of the most formative and compelling in that field no matter how many years pass. The enormity of the narrative contextualized with the density and compactness of the physical play space is startling to think about: how many "rooms" does the game consist of? By my count, not many more than twenty in all. For all that, Shadow Moses feels like a massive and complex ecosystem unto itself simply because each location was given so much attention and care to bring out its best qualities, no matter the angle of observation, which culminates in the most ridiculous thing about the game in each and every corner of geometry able to be leaned against resulting in a totally unique and novel, handcrafted camera angle--ostensibly to assist in surveying the environment in a time before free analog cameras, and that functionality is there in the act... but so much of it is about delighting in cinematography new to the medium, about showing off, to a preposterously thorough degree. The sense of playfulness about the sheer construction of the world comes through so strongly that you don't even need to know that Kojima conceptualized much of it via building the locations out of Lego blocks and worked off from there. It's about as monumental a work in that sense as Vagrant Story, in figuring out and conveying the possibilities of a burgeoning expression in the medium and remaining special exactly because of the limitations that shaped it and the ones it broke through.
Tomm Guycot
(he/him)
FOURTH!?
*ahem*
I wasn't planning on buying MGS. For some reason the NES version always rubbed me the wrong way from ads or NP or something. It was the one Konami franchise I had no fondness for. I even skipped the Worlds of Power book that quarter. But at Anime Expo (keeping the theme) my business partner brought a copy of Gamers Republic that interviewed Kojima, and how he used a lot of first-time devs working on MGS, because they wouldn't accept limitations, such as seeing Snake's breath in cold air.
A few months later EGM ran a story about how great the Dual Shock was, evidenced by "a heart attack you can feel" in the upcoming game, MGS.
Intriguing. I preordered MGS and the Dual Shock together. MGS joined Xenogears as a game I'd be picking up on Oct 26th (24th?). I figured I'd hold off playing MGS for a while, but at least I'd have it. And the CD soundtrack. And the preorder TShirt.
Well we all know from this very list how that turned out. When Xenogears let me down, I'd dip into MGS "just to try it out" but Xeno didn't reenter the PlayStation until Ocelot called the President. My loyalty to Square RPG's began to waiver, and Kojima became my favorite game designer.
(...FOURTH!!!!????????????)
EDIT: the credits theme, The Best is Yet to Come, is mega GOAT status
*ahem*
I wasn't planning on buying MGS. For some reason the NES version always rubbed me the wrong way from ads or NP or something. It was the one Konami franchise I had no fondness for. I even skipped the Worlds of Power book that quarter. But at Anime Expo (keeping the theme) my business partner brought a copy of Gamers Republic that interviewed Kojima, and how he used a lot of first-time devs working on MGS, because they wouldn't accept limitations, such as seeing Snake's breath in cold air.
A few months later EGM ran a story about how great the Dual Shock was, evidenced by "a heart attack you can feel" in the upcoming game, MGS.
Intriguing. I preordered MGS and the Dual Shock together. MGS joined Xenogears as a game I'd be picking up on Oct 26th (24th?). I figured I'd hold off playing MGS for a while, but at least I'd have it. And the CD soundtrack. And the preorder TShirt.
Well we all know from this very list how that turned out. When Xenogears let me down, I'd dip into MGS "just to try it out" but Xeno didn't reenter the PlayStation until Ocelot called the President. My loyalty to Square RPG's began to waiver, and Kojima became my favorite game designer.
(...FOURTH!!!!????????????)
EDIT: the credits theme, The Best is Yet to Come, is mega GOAT status
The meta of this list is becoming way more interesting to me than the actual games to me. MGS was my speculative dark horse in the top 4, I could've seen it anywhere between 2 and 4 knowing TT. Now that's sorted, tomorrow will let us know which order the two Nintendo games are coming and we'll be good lol
Oh hi, Snake, there you are.
I didn't know a damn thing about Metal Gear when I bought MGS. I think I was motivated entirely by magazine features; I was a loyal subscriber to the Official Playstation Magazine and boy-oh-boy did they promote the heck out of MGS. So this game came out when I was in middle school, and it was such a shattering of my expectations for what a video game could even be. I had never played anything like it before, and then the story itself was all kinds of bananas (my 10-year-old-American self certainly didn't have a lot of experience watching political thrillers, or anime, or John Carpenter movies). I'm grateful my parents didn't care much about video game ratings and let me play this one, because while the story is certainly entertaining for a young adolescent, the actual themes of what Kojima was going for were incredibly over my head, but all that really did was make me return to the game over and over throughout the years, and each time getting more and more out of it. It's still my favorite Metal Gear Solid entry.
Sarge
hardcore retro gamin'
Funnily enough, this was the first M-rated game I ever bought. I was the proverbial "good kid", and the prospect of buying something M-rated was a bit of a concern... even if I was in my early 20s at the time. Go figure. Regardless, the game was fantastic. It ended up as #9 on my list. It's also telling that the general gameplay style translated really well to Ghost Babel on GBC, and in the end that simplicity of play is why the game works so well even today. If only the inventory was a little easier to manage...
It'll be interesting to see what order the three obvious games coming up go in. I voted for two of the three, anyway.
It'll be interesting to see what order the three obvious games coming up go in. I voted for two of the three, anyway.
4-So
Spicy
MGS ranked high on my list by virtue of the experience alone. I don't have any stories surrounding it. I think there was a demo, which I played, seemed like it was pretty good, so I bought it. May have been the first game where I thought someone got their movie in my video game.
I was familiar with Metal Gear because I rented it once as a kid. I didn't like it because, like most rentals, there was no instruction manual explaining the game, so I didn't know that you need to be stealthy, find weapons and gear, and why don't I have a gun the guy on the cover has a gun what the hell. But MGS was so well done none of those memories mattered; might as well have been a different series altogether.
This post also reminds me that I bought but never played MGS 5. I guess I should get around to that.
I was familiar with Metal Gear because I rented it once as a kid. I didn't like it because, like most rentals, there was no instruction manual explaining the game, so I didn't know that you need to be stealthy, find weapons and gear, and why don't I have a gun the guy on the cover has a gun what the hell. But MGS was so well done none of those memories mattered; might as well have been a different series altogether.
This post also reminds me that I bought but never played MGS 5. I guess I should get around to that.
Sarge
hardcore retro gamin'
Or as I like to call it, Super Peace Walker. I do think it could have been a bit shorter, but it plays really well.
So, I really don't want to be that guy, but I will be when it comes to games of this particular vintage: they look SO MUCH BETTER ON A CRT THAN A MODERN TV. This game is dithered all to hell and back, and it's REALLY OBVIOUS on emulator or with a Framemeister, but PS1 graphics have aged shockingly well when viewed on the TVs they were made for.
I mean, I had it at 8, and it's pretty clear that better-aged games like WWF NO MERCY are not going to get their proper due on this list at all!
The story is a fucking disaster and the boss fights are mostly bad, which keeps it just behind Snake Eater for me, but it's probably the best game in the series from a pure gameplay perspective. It also has an extremely good dog. And a horse that poops on command.
Sarge
hardcore retro gamin'
This is absolutely true, and sometimes it's even better to drop back to worse quality connections as well. King's Field II/III is a mess of dithering and looks awful in super crisp form, but run it through composite and it looks much better. (Ironically, it's also a game that really benefits from increased emulator resolutions as well. There's really no in-between, haha.)
That explains why I remember it looking okay when I first played it in 2006 on a CRT and muddy as hell when I played it again 10 years later on an HD TV.
Also, @Peklo I loved your take on MGS's visuals. I do have to say, while this has ended up being one of the more predictable lists down the stretch, I don't think any video game top 50 has revealed so much of what makes a game work for each individual person. That's been really cool to see, and it's made me think about games in whole new ways.
MGS1 was my #1. It wasn't even a hard decision honestly. There are days where I would put Suikoden II above it, but MGS1 is the greatest game of its generation hands down. I'd even be amenable to arguments that it's the best Metal Gear game (I personally prefer MGS3 and PW, but there's some solid arguments to be made about MGS1). MSG1 was a paradigm shift. Other games in this list we've discussed have been labeled that, because it was revolutionary in one or two aspects of game design. MGS1 blows all other games from this generation out of the water with regards to its ingenuity and how many risks and new things it attempted to do. Other game companies/creators were simultaneously exploring the kinds of things Mario 64 was doing contemporaneously. Nobody was doing what Kojima was doing in MGS1. MGS1 plays like a game created by someone from the future who traveled back in time with the benefit of decades of game development history under their belt. It was way ahead of its time and it took years for other devs to even begin to comprehend and try to catch up.
MGS1 as a stand alone experience does so many wonderful things:
When MGS1 came out, I HATED it. It was an irrational hate born mostly of irrational fandom. I was a Nintendo kid. Sony was a shitty upstart that had no business in the gaming space. I hated their business model (CDs have such slow loading times! Only TWO controller ports!? Memory cards are a scam!!!) and I hated what they stood for. As an irrational and stupid child, I swore up and down I'd never patronize Sony.
Then an uncle randomly bought me a PS1 because his own son seemed to enjoy it a bunch. I very reluctantly played it but hated its guts through the entire generation. PS1 was home to quirky indie games and RPGs the likes of which the N64 had very few of. But MGS1 came out roughly the same time as Ocarina of Time, and that game was my holy grail. I knew very little about MGS1 because I was just not plugged into the PlayStation ecosystem in the same way others at the time (including my little brother) were. I thought the screencaps of the game looked ugly (they can't even give the main character a FACE!? Pfffft!) so I wrote it off. So imagine my dismay when I open up the GotY edition of that year's EGM and found my most trusted and illustrious gaming magazine awarded MGS1 top honors above Zelda. Were these guys stupid!? The fools! Now I had an axe to grind against this game.
I literally didn't give it an honest try (I played a demo once; hit the learning curve like willy coyote hitting a painted tunnel, and immediately noped out.) until *years* later as an adult, deep into the PS2's life span, not just after MGS2, but after MGS3 had come out. I thought well of MGS2 graphically, but that game never clicked with me. And MGS3 was a victim of the 04 Holiday Onslaught. I caught a roommate playing through MGS2 one day in the living room and just watched him just spank that game in ways I hadn't even imagined you could play it. Huh. So I struck up a conversation, and he began explaining what he was doing, some of the themes of the game, how to get over the initial steep learning curves of MGS games, and just the LIBERTY you had as a player in playing these games. Where each problem there's a billion different ways you could approach and solve them. Ok, my interest is more than piqued.
So I went back to my room, booted up the Metal Gear games I owned one-by-one, and just started beating them all. I mean ALL of them. 2, 3, Ghost Babel, Twin Snakes, and the OG. Metal Gear was a franchise I'd tried to love for a long time and just couldn't. I've done this with a lot of franchises over the years (Grand Theft Auto, Elder Scrolls, Metroid, Resident Evil, to name a few) but I kept being burned by them. But for some reason, at this point in my life, MGS finally clicked. It was like a revelation. Suddenly gameplay that seemed obtuse, alien, and confusing, all started to make sense. And it was honestly all over after that point. MGS2 and 3 were bigger, flashier, more beautiful games, and I ended up liking them more. But even looking back years after the fact with no nostalgia whatsoever, I was shocked by how well MGS1 had stood up as a game. And it didn't just "age well" it just straight up didn't really age. It was still providing experiences as interesting and enjoyable as anything 'modern' at that point. I was in love. This was my game. I recanted and lamented my previous ignorance, and never been so happy to be just flat out wrong. There's only really ever been a handful of times I've been surprised in this kind of way, where I thought I knew something but there was just so much there I was missing and wrong about. It was a very special and humbling experience for me as a gamer and as a person. And unlike most videogames which are designed to be disposable entertainment experiences, I genuinely felt like a better person for having played these games and having them broadened my horizons.
Then an uncle randomly bought me a PS1 because his own son seemed to enjoy it a bunch. I very reluctantly played it but hated its guts through the entire generation. PS1 was home to quirky indie games and RPGs the likes of which the N64 had very few of. But MGS1 came out roughly the same time as Ocarina of Time, and that game was my holy grail. I knew very little about MGS1 because I was just not plugged into the PlayStation ecosystem in the same way others at the time (including my little brother) were. I thought the screencaps of the game looked ugly (they can't even give the main character a FACE!? Pfffft!) so I wrote it off. So imagine my dismay when I open up the GotY edition of that year's EGM and found my most trusted and illustrious gaming magazine awarded MGS1 top honors above Zelda. Were these guys stupid!? The fools! Now I had an axe to grind against this game.
I literally didn't give it an honest try (I played a demo once; hit the learning curve like willy coyote hitting a painted tunnel, and immediately noped out.) until *years* later as an adult, deep into the PS2's life span, not just after MGS2, but after MGS3 had come out. I thought well of MGS2 graphically, but that game never clicked with me. And MGS3 was a victim of the 04 Holiday Onslaught. I caught a roommate playing through MGS2 one day in the living room and just watched him just spank that game in ways I hadn't even imagined you could play it. Huh. So I struck up a conversation, and he began explaining what he was doing, some of the themes of the game, how to get over the initial steep learning curves of MGS games, and just the LIBERTY you had as a player in playing these games. Where each problem there's a billion different ways you could approach and solve them. Ok, my interest is more than piqued.
So I went back to my room, booted up the Metal Gear games I owned one-by-one, and just started beating them all. I mean ALL of them. 2, 3, Ghost Babel, Twin Snakes, and the OG. Metal Gear was a franchise I'd tried to love for a long time and just couldn't. I've done this with a lot of franchises over the years (Grand Theft Auto, Elder Scrolls, Metroid, Resident Evil, to name a few) but I kept being burned by them. But for some reason, at this point in my life, MGS finally clicked. It was like a revelation. Suddenly gameplay that seemed obtuse, alien, and confusing, all started to make sense. And it was honestly all over after that point. MGS2 and 3 were bigger, flashier, more beautiful games, and I ended up liking them more. But even looking back years after the fact with no nostalgia whatsoever, I was shocked by how well MGS1 had stood up as a game. And it didn't just "age well" it just straight up didn't really age. It was still providing experiences as interesting and enjoyable as anything 'modern' at that point. I was in love. This was my game. I recanted and lamented my previous ignorance, and never been so happy to be just flat out wrong. There's only really ever been a handful of times I've been surprised in this kind of way, where I thought I knew something but there was just so much there I was missing and wrong about. It was a very special and humbling experience for me as a gamer and as a person. And unlike most videogames which are designed to be disposable entertainment experiences, I genuinely felt like a better person for having played these games and having them broadened my horizons.
MGS1 as a stand alone experience does so many wonderful things:
- In a time and place where you're lucky if your game has any voice work, and if they did they're more likely to sound like Star Ocean 2, MGS1 set a new high bar and series of expectations for voice acting in games. There's just SO much of it, and it's all actually still pretty good for what amounts to videogame/anime dubbing. I don't have any hard numbers but I'm pretty sure the voice acting is the majority of the space of the two disks.
- It starred an ethnically diverse cast of very likable characters at a time where gaming companies were doing their hardest to white wash any foreign culture from games to appease an American (e.g. white) audience.
- Some of you have mentioned the M-rating and the "adult" in scare quotes nature of the story, but in 1998 no fucking video game was talking about nuclear, the increasing disastrous fallout of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the ethics of genetic engineering, the intense corruption of the Military Industrial Complex, etc.
- Most video games, still to this day, are oriented around participating in violent conflict. MGS1 and especially its successors, are explicitly designed around avoiding and deescalating conflict, which was both profound and also profoundly depressing that it still remains relatively unique in that very concerted ethos. (And part of why MGSV is such a shitty MGS game.)
- The level designs of MGS1 are masterful as Peklo has already described. But beyond that, it's just crazy the amount of thought that went into every aspect of each map. There's dozens of ways you can handle each and every encounter, and that freedom solve problems however you like and there being no right answer is probably MGS's most indelible and secret best contribution to the evolution of gaming.
- There's just so many great and inventive gimmicks built into the game. When a videogame is reading the save files on your memory card in order to tease you, or you have to swap controller ports to beat the AI's aim-bots, it just really feels like the sky is the limit and anything can happen. Most games, you'll be lucky to have that feeling just once. Most games these days feel like already solved puzzles because of how little they try to do genuinely new things. But MGS1 feels like it's doing that constantly all game.
- BIG FIGHTING ROBOTS JUST LIKE IN MY JAPANESE ANIMES
- In-game cinematics was something I scoffed at as a kid (Why aren't they pretty CGI??) but it's honestly revolutionary here. It changed what other devs thought was possible in games, and we'd have had a very different world without it.
Nah, I get it. I was hoping it would hit #1, but MGS1 hit mainstream enough that it'll get docked points by the same kinds of people who docked points of FF7 because there were just more interesting/obscure games they wanted to boost. And I get that because I did that to FF7 too. It also was always, even back in the day, a ymmv experience where lots of people bounced off the very steep learning curve at the beginning of the game. And unlike say SotN that is functionally the apex of its franchise, MGS only went up from here, so there's always the bias of comparing it to its superior sequels. And MGS1 has some icky gender politics that understandably isn't going to sit well in The Year of our Lord, [current year].
Super implies better, but MGSV is worse than Peace Walker in virtually all aspects. PW will always be MGS5 in my heart, and MGSV is at best just an interesting curiosity on Kojima's track record that's only noteworthy for marking his liberation from Konami.