Finished Metal Gear Solid 1 with my friend yesterday, finally. Was really good. Looking forward to starting 2. We played the Japanese release called MGS Integral which has the English voice acting and mostly-English menus. At the end because I use a Pocket Station memory card it triggered the special FOXDIE event where you're supposed to spread your memory card save with 5 other people with Pocket Stations within a week to save a character after the ending and then it also unlocks something in the special VR missions I believe. Was kinda' losing my mind when it happened because I've never heard anyone talk about this feature.

But yeah, MGS1 was really good. Presentation was insanely good for a PS1 game. Good voice acting and stuff, even. Really loved all the codec calls, both in terms of presentation but also how interesting and numerous they were. The game wasn't as technical or stealthy as I was thinking it'd be, so many of the rooms are basically open rectangles with like maybe 4 soldiers that walk very small, repeating patrol patterns. I didn't have to distract or sneak that much. Once you get the stun grenades chucking one of those nullifies almost every room. I guess on harder difficulties and with the NG+ modes and stuff there's more stealth required, probably -- also probably what the VR missions are for too. I only played a couple and they played out more like puzzles though. My only annoyance would be how frequently the game pads out little sections here and there like how long each boss takes to kill and sending you to backtrack 2-3 times, which in afterwards don't feel like a lot of effort but in the moment had me groaning. I think mostly because world traversal just wasn't that interesting. It's a short game so I shouldn't complain about that too much though. The end screen said we beat it in 12 hours.