I may be biased as this was one of the very first games I ever played but I really do believe this is one of the greatest adventure games ever crafted - a unique piece that blends the first person exploration of the Myst series with the more traditional inventory based puzzles of Sierra and LucasArts titles. Let's just get the obvious out of the way first... yes, this game is very dated. The viewing space is tiny, taking up maybe 1/3 of the already limited 640x480 resolution. The CGI looks like it came from an episode of Babylon 5. The score sounds like it was composed entirely with a Korg Wavestation and Roland midi modules. Almost every male character has shoulder length hair like Tommy from Power Rangers. But underneath all of that there's a real gem to be had. The story draws you in with a great twist on the basic "Someone's changed history, you must stop it!" scenario of the first game - this time someone's changed history, but they've framed you - now you have to figure out why. Meanwhile the rest of the game world draws you in making you feel like you're in a series of real places. The plot is developed through journal entries, answering machine messages, even watching the news and commercials. Historical puzzles are all built from their environment with scraps of letters, murals on temple walls and ancient blueprints and notebooks to give you clues. There's almost no moon logic and only a tiny handful of puzzles for the sake of having a puzzle. If you can get past all its technical limitations, this is actually one of the most immersive games I've ever played. I haven't even begun to talk about Arthur, possibly the best companion character of any game ever made, offering historical background and hilarious pop culture references in equal measure. If you enjoy the genre even a little, you definitely need to check this game out - it's criminally underrated and deserves a lot more love.
I really don't think this game needs any introduction - by now the Metal Gear Solid series and Hideo Kojima are legendary. But honestly this is not the best way to experience this game, although compared to a lot of other console ports from the late 90s and early 2000s it's not terrible. There are lot of little nitpicky things though that eventually add up. A lot of Metal Gear's charm for example is the way it playfully breaks the 4th wall with the player - but very few of those moments transfer to the PC as the PC didn't have memory cards with other Konami save files to be read, didn't have second player ports for controls and you couldn't even be sure the player was using a controller, let alone a controller with force feedback. There were also a lot of rendering tricks that Konami did with the PlayStation hardware that the team working on this port just couldn't figure out how to replicate in DirectX. Most of them are minor but one in particular, the optical camouflage suits, just didn't make the transition the way they should have and that does affect the atmosphere of some of the cutscenes. Again these are all nitpicks and they probably won't ruin the game or the story but I would still say if you can play the original, that's your best option. Of course the original copy is getting harder and harder to play... At this point you either need to get the original discs and emulate them (and who has an optical drive anymore?) or own a PSP or PS3 - PS Vita in some regions but not all. It's not available on the PS4 and Sony hasn't said anything about releasing PS1 classics on the upcoming PS5. So it's probably good that this version is here... even a slightly inferior MGS is better than no MGS if you've never played this game but want to. Also fun fact - the team working on this port could not get the game's music engine to work, so they went to a fan website and downloaded an unofficial MP3 copy of the soundtrack and just chucked that into this port.
