Question: When your first beat MGS

[Roger]

Did you want a sequel? Was the game good as it is? When I first beat the game, I was very content with what I played. Albeit, I didn't really understand the story much. Even after multiple play-throughs due to lack of many games. I did enjoy the game as a stand alone product. At the time you beat the game, did you want more? Were you upset there was a continuation? Has any of the newer games hit you the same that Metal Gear Solid did?

[starschwar]

I was late to the party. I didn't have a Playstation. I'd heard things - about the Mantis fight. And later, about MGS2's crazy story, the details of both gameplay and world design. Then I saw trailers for Substance - and knew it was time to "do my homework". I played the PC version of MGS1. I struggled through it, even on the easiest difficulty - but I was engrossed. I fell in love with the story, the characters. When the end credits rolled, I was left feeling somber, introspective. I had months 'till Substance came to PC so I went through a few more times. Getting ready for what came next.

Then it came out that Substance's PC version wasn't so good, and my Win 98 machine had no hope of playing it. And then trailers for Snake Eater and Twin Snakes emerged. Finally getting a PS2, I went all in. Basically, 2003-2004 was me getting absolutely, positively immersed and addicted to the series. At one point, I had so little free time between studies that I actually spent more time watching trailers for Snake Eater than I did playing games I actually did own.

I was never more hyped for a game than MGS3 - and it's still my favorite single player experience of all time. And while I've enjoyed just about everything that followed (Portable Ops was a chore, I will never touch Survive), that's still the high point.

Though, my absolute favorite game ever - which I got into only a year or so after Snake Eater - was The Matrix Online. The most ambitious piece of interactive storytelling ever. Which more or less coincided with the post-Snake Eater boom that ran from Subsistence through Guns of the Patriots. I think there may even have been just a little bit of Peace Walker / Revengeance hype in that overlap? Was that weird website with the mask in 2009?


As for where I'm at now... I'm open to sequels. Maybe something to cap off Phantom Pain's unfinished threads? Re-imaginings of the MSX games? Rising deserves a sequel by now. Unsure if we should see much more of the world after Guns of the Patriots, though. If Konami just wants to do more Delta remakes, I'm cool with it.

[Bread]

Interestingly, I was MUCH more interested in the MGS1 remake on Gamecube in 2004 than I was about a sequel. I didn't get a PS2 until halfway through the generation so picking up MGS2 wasn't really on my mind but when I found out I could play MGS1 again and the graphics would be BETTER, I was all over that.

[Dirty Duck]

I played MGS2 first (not technically true, I played MPO+ first, but you know) and when I finished it I was desperate for more. I found a copy of MGS3 in my local HMV and then after that a copy of the more elusive (in terms of shops in my hometown at least) MGS1. A friend and I played them concurrently and it meant despite playing them so long after the zeitgeist we had a two man hype train. I also lent my copies out at school in the hopes of getting friends into it.

Much like @starschwar's story of MGS3 hype, I would sit in my computer watching trailers and gameplay footage of MGS4 nigh on endlessly. It was already out but I didn't own a PS3 at that time. I was bought a 360 for Christmas and I played all the Halo games on it and had a brief but enjoyable run of playing shooters online on a console where everyone had microphones before I accepted I wanted the PS3 exclusive games too much. I sold my 360 and bought a PS3 and MGS4.

[MGWSpike]

I played Ghost Babel and MGS2 before MGS1, so I knew there was a sequel. MGS1 also ends with a sequel hook of sorts with Ocelot mentioning Solidus (even if it didn't mean a sequel was planned: MG1 ends with Big Boss vowing revenge on Solid Snake, but it took a Snake's Revenge dev to incite Kojma to create MG2). But the game stands on its own.

[BigBrother]

I actually played MGS2 first; I'd never played one. So I was very, very confused going through MGS2. Still one of the fucking coolest experiences I've ever had, and it's a cherished gaming/narrative memory. I had so little idea what was going on when you meet Pliskin I was like "huh, seems cool and extremely knowledgeable." That game broke my little brain!

[Departed]

I first played MGS1 in 1998. I was 13 years old and I never really factored in sequels to any game I played. MGS1 pretty much absorbed my life for a while the way Zelda did when I first played it. It was all any of us talked about at the middle school I was going to at the time. We thought Fox and Mantis were the coolest characters ever and couldn't believe how cool the game was. The concepts of stealth action and storytelling were all completely foreign to me. I just saw a cool spy fighting cool terrorists and shooting missiles at a giant robot. I didn't need much else at that point, and by 1998, no gaming experience quite felt as cinematic as that.