To start this, I'm gonna have to go back to the days of a PS1 Pizza Hut demo disc in a kid's barbershop. For a few years, I would go inside, sit down in the seat, and then play the Metal Gear Solid intro level to keep me distracted while the stylist did her magic. I would replay this level every time I got a haircut with Solid Snake poppin into Shadow Moses and sneaking around for clues. Just over and over again I would replay the first fifteen minutes of this game, but because it was rated M my parents wouldn't let me get it.
Fast forward and I'm unemployed. My roommate, Joey, has a PS1 set up and a copy of Metal Gear Solid in the home console. Since I don't really have anything to do tomorrow, starting around eight in the evening I boot up the first level again. The hours fly by and soon it's four in the morning. I wake up the next day and the first thing I do is finish the game. It took me twenty years, but I had finally gotten to play through Metal Gear Solid, and I loved it.
The refined gameplay offering a tense, stealth action experience that knows when to stress your situation. Snake is funny and the playful banter isn't at odds with the serious situation. The story itself is a twist and turn of a thriller having to explore the rising threat of nuclear war that cemented Kojima as one of the greatest video game designers in history. It's a game that's been lauded over the years for a myriad of reasons, but there were two specific points that made this game special.
The first is the cryptic message of look "on the back of the CD case." You check every item you have for some clue only to scratch your head in confusion before looking at the box the game came in and realizing Ole' Kojima was pulling a fast one on you. The actual frequency needed to contact the next character, Meryl, is written on the back of the game case. It's a puzzle that has stuck with players for years because it required you to literally think outside the box.
The second point is the boss fight against Psycho Mantis. This deranged, telekinetic, fart inhaling, gasmask wearing, kink boy is probably one of the most memorable boss fights in history. You enter the room where Meryl gets mind-controlled by Mantis to kill Snake. After knocking her out, Psycho here starts rattling off some realistic statements. If you have a memory card plugged in, he starts making comments about what games you've played recently before forcing your controller to vibrate as a display of power. He then gives the stereotypical "bad boys always win, there's no point in trying" speech, and if you continue the boss fight plugged into the same port, he'd be right. In order to keep Psycho Mantis from being able to read your moves you have to physically unplug the controller from Port 1 and plug it into Port 2 causing your enemy to have his own psychotic breakdown.
What Kojima has done with these two actions is draw the player to the fact that they are indeed playing a video game by establishing the perspective of the player. The Metal Gear Solid series has primarily existed as a movie/game hybrid involving convoluted intricacies of an unraveling plot. By introducing fourth wall breaking puzzle pieces, Kojima is effectively telling the player to pay attention. Long elaborate cutscenes with a detailed plot need to be listened too in order to establish the full weight of the game. You're supposed to be Solid Snake. You're supposed to pay attention because this is your experience.
The game is trying to establish an emotional attachment to the polygons on screen by challenging the player's preconceived notions of what a video game is. These inventive ideas are the offspring setting your curiosity ablaze as you get more engrossed in the story with every double cross "fuck you liquid you coward" encountered. Torture me all you want baby because I ain't telling you shit.
The Fourth Wall is a tricky thing. Bringing direct fact to the outside experience is a gamble. You're immediately taking the user out of the experience, but it works best if you're directly challenging the user. The same thing happens at the end of Sons of Liberty when Raiden is asked to turn the game off. It's screaming at the player "you are a part of this. Pay attention to your actions." Every kid felt this tense moment when they'd turn off a game, that through some horrific twist of fate, everything they had worked so hard for would be lost. That's why if you didn't save four times in a row you were considered a monster, and in Sons of Liberty Kojima uses exactly the same techniques he developed in Metal Gear Solid to stress that feeling to heighten the intensity of the moment.
Compare this with Kojima's later work, Death Stranding when Amelie utters the line "Princess Beach'" to kill the emotional weight of the entire scene. Every dark and sinister component in this dreary tone as I travel across a wasteland of broken and separated people is shot to shit when you say that. Self-awareness is a gag version of breaking The Fourth Wall. It lightens the mood, but that hard of a tonal shift from a serious acting performance doesn't work in this context, but with Metal Gear Solid establishing the direct challenge to the player, you're all in.
The game never overstays it's welcome. It moves through each set piece just like an action movie. It's brisk, never taking too much time to focus on the next thing because it's fun. Some of the cheesy dialogue and comic relief undercuts the looming threat of failure without ever deflating the seriousness of the situation because they've given enough time to let the player breath. It's a master craft in the way story telling in video games could ever be told.
Metal Gear Solid is a solid piece of snake oil offering high-quality, lotsalovin down here at the bowling alley as laser sounds trigger Psycho Mantis.