Not to mention extremely good gameplay.
Metal Gear Solid (Ghost Babel was its subtitle in Japan) tells the story of Solid Snake as he infiltrates a jungle encampment that will soon feel strangely familiar to fans of the series. But the story doesn’t go where you think it will, and it will keep you engrossed throughout the entire title. The gameplay will as well -- it matches the PlayStation almost type-for-type, allowing you to use the Nikita to blow someone away, or some C4 to surprise someone with a bang; ducking into a cardboard box so a guard won’t notice you, then strangling them from behind; staying behind shrubs and hoping to God that the guard isn’t looking your way. Sirs, this is what
Metal Gear is all about, and
MGS for the GBC does it right-on.
If you’ve had enough of the single-player game (which isn’t overly long, but certainly enough to entertain you), you get to play the VR Missions. There are tons and tons of them, and they’re laid out in roughly the same manner as they were on the PSX. You can do stealth missions, or train with each weapon, and the game keeps track of how many you’ve done. It also has ‘advanced’ missions for when you’ve beaten enough of the others. Many of the levels are straight from the PSX Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions, but a lot of them are different, surprising me. And, even more so than the game proper, the VR Missions translated perfectly to the GBC. I found them to be the ultimate time-killer. If I was waiting for some game to finish loading (Colony Wars: Red Sun comes to mind), or installing something (any of a bevy of PC games), I could blast my way through a few VR missions and get stumped on one for a while, going back to whatever I was doing beforehand for a few minutes, and then pick it back up. I really enjoyed VR Missions for the PSX, and this is a wonderful add-on for the GBC. It makes me wonder just how much stuff you can cram on one of those tiny cartridges.
So what else can you say about the gameplay in MGS? It’s the PlayStation game encapsulated in cartridge format, as best as is humanly possible. And the PSX version was amazing. The GBC version is just as good.