Metal Gear Solid 1, Metal Gear Solid 2 - yes or no

MGS1 can be played within 2.5 hours. It has crappy movie-style music, in stead of the melodic but very appropriate sounds of MG1 and MG2.
Still, I enjoyed playing it very much, the 3D gameplay does offer some new and exciting things, although most stuff could've been done on 2D just as well.
But indeed, the storyline was overly moralistic, too 'real' and too much forced upon the player. I hear MGS2 is even far worse in that aspect... :/

As a joke I once said I would port MGS to MSX. But seriously, it could've been a 'MG3' on MSX without a problem.

Working on that by emulating GBC in GEMZ.

It's all a matter of taste of course...for me MGS1 and MGS2 are listed in the ranks of unforgettable games. I think I broke my ankle from jumping around in joy when Kojima announced a new Metal Gear title, and pre-reserved my Premium Pack months ahead. Yes, imported from Japan, played it in Japanese Didn't understand jack shit about the story but like on the MSX you got the general idea anyway. (I did play the English version later too)

The PC version by the way was quite crappy so I've heard, Konami should stay away from PC's that much is certain.

Anyway, I can understand some of the comments you guys have made so far, I just disagree with all of them. The 3D look was something I was really afraid of before I played the game but the gameplay was perfect, the essence the same as previous parts. A lot of recognizable stuff in there like Snout said, but is that bad? I think it's great for nostalgia! And how many gamers you think actually ever played MG2 before MGS was released?

Guyver commented on the music but hey, I like movie style music, and I was thrilled when I heard one of my fave composers would do MGS2 and 3 (Harry Gregson-Williams). Since Kojima makes these games like interactive movies it's the perfect fit, it adds to the tension, it adds to emotion (goosebumps at the MGS2 scene where "Comrades" is played, would have been a lot less without the music). Sure MG1 and MG2 had great melodic music, but videogames in general have evolved away from that type of music. Like the general sound of the 80s, it sounds great, but no-one makes it anymore. In the case of MGS1 and 2, it would have been completely misplaced anyway.

Storywise MGS1 especially is very deep, the Les Enfants Terrible project is explained for the first time which was quite interesting. Some things are a bit far-fetched yes, but any MG game had some unrealistic stuff...MGS2 is even worse and really my only criticism on the sequels...I mean, a vampire? a ghost in an arm? Get real! Gladly they skipped the bullshit for MGS3 The main story behind MGS2 by the way, the Patriots is extremely well designed, it could have been written by conspiracy master Robert Ludlum.

Hmm I've written a LOOOONG post I guess but in short: MGS1 and MGS2 have been gaming experiences that were nostalgic, refreshening, immersive and touching on an emotional level. Those games are rare. And people nagging about 'it's more like a movie', it has always been that way...the first picture of Snake (on the cover of Metal Gear) was drawn over the image of actor Michael Biehn, and who didn't recognize Sean Connery in MG2

Konami did the port of MGS2: Substance themselves, and it was just as lousy

The reason why I don't like MGS and MGS2 as much as I do like MG1 and MG2 is because it lacks a lot of the originality of the first two games. Of course not many people who played MGS and MGS2 have solved or even seen the puzzles in MG1 and MG2 but that still means Konami just recycled some old ideas, in stead of inventing new ones. For that reason alone MGS and MGS2 are not nearly as inventive as the first MG, which was more or less the invention of an entirely new game genre.

Doh! That's the case for almost every game...C&C Generals will never give me the thrill that Dune 2 gave me...since Dune 2 was the birth of RTS as we know it. I think MGS and MGS2 re-invented stealth gaming and did a good job at it. Crawling in MG2:SS was something we watched with awe, in MGS it's as natural as can be. The camera repositioning when sneaking up to a corner is brilliant, and the attention to detail was just as good as any Konami (like hitting the crows of the rack of the elevator and getting called by Campbell saying "we don't pay you to be a scarecrow you know".

Same goes for the music. For years I have been bored by tasteless 'muzak' in most games. Although the music in SD-Snatcher is clearly more computer-music than the music in the MGS series, it fits better in the game and expresses a lot more emotion to me. Just saying 'hey nobody is doing that anymore' is no reason at all. If we have learned one thing from Konami in the past, it is that doing things differently often is very succesful.

A matter of taste then, like I said before. Orchestral music moves me a lot more emotionally than computer-style music. It's funny that you describe SD-Snatcher as more computer-music since a lot of the music in snatcher is J-Funk, Ikariko has a Funk band so that is not so surprising. Of course it's more computer music than the movie music in MGS(2) but songs like Jamie's Theme are not specifically computer music. It's hard to define anyway...but if I try imagining playing MGS2 with the Red Alert song from Metal Gear 1 when I have been seen, I really, really, really doubt if that would give me a higher sense of tension than the current music.

Face it. At this moment 3D cards and consoles are very powerful, but they can not make in-game graphics look like reality at all. A blink of the eye and you see how fake it all is. So why even bother trying.

I don't want reality, I want realistic fantasy. A world that is clearly not like our own, but is realistic in it's own made-up way. Both MGS2 and Final Fantasy X do an excellent job at that. Fyi: a movie isn't real either And I think everybody loved the addition of sneezing when walking in the sewers for too long because it added a bit of realism, or the different sounds you made when walking on a metal grid. So saying that adding realism to something isn't worth while is nonsense. They just shouldn't add realism if it affects the gameplay negatively, which they didn't (like the guards don't see you across the hall).

The same goes for playing a game as if it was a movie. In a movie you never get stuck at the same point for 15 minutes, in a game you do. Movie soundtracks are only cool when they are well-timed to the things happening on-screen and that's just impossible in a game.

Excuse me? Try playing MGS2 and then say that again. The music and sound in MGS2 is extremely well timed to things happening on screen and the transactions are so smooth it's scary. Going from normal sneaking mode to evasion mode changes the music but it never sounds abrupt or unnatural.

Of course, when using 'computer-music' you have returning songs all the time as well, but somehow that's entirely different. My opinion: at this time, the closer a game is trying to look like a movie, the less exciting it gets.

"trying to look like" indicates it is purely a graphical issue? You can't say a game plays like a movie since you can't 'play' movies. Both MGS games are made in a cinematic way, meaning that they used lifelike animation/movement, decent camerawork, cinematic music etc. You can actually see Snake's hair grow on his chin. If they had 10 different pictures in MG2 for Snake growing a beard, and a clean one again if you found a razor, we would have loved it for the attention to detail, so why not love it now?

Kojima is a lot like Sakaguchi, they are both storytellers, and they like to tell and show it to us as detailed as possible, to let us immerse ourselves in it and feel like it's us sneaking on that boat, or in that jungle. That level of 'being drawn into the story' is a lot bigger with MGS(2) then Metal Gear(2). Just like Final Fantasy X compared to, say Ancient Ys Vanished Omen.