PC version proves its mettle

Metal Gear Solid is easily one of the best action adventures we have seen on the PlayStation, and now that the game has come to the PC it has even managed to improve a little bit.

It is time to rejoice and indulge in a truly adrenalin inducing game where stealth is your main weapon and you must outmanoeuvre a gang of special forces operatives turned terrorists. As Solid Snake you are the one who has the power to save the world, and this time your enemies are your old special operations unit - dubiously known as Fox-Hound.

Apparently Fox-Hound have seized a nuclear weapons dumping facility and are threatening to launch a few missiles if their demands aren't met. so you have to infiltrate fox-Hound's stronghold and stop them.

Metal Gear Solid is a impressive and suspenseful offering. Instead of running about the place blasting away at all of the enemy guards you see, you have to sneak by them, avoiding detection whenever possible and quickly and quietly take them out only when necessary. This is because you are terribly outnumbered and a very soft approach is the only strategy that is going to get you through the game. In this sense Metal Gear solid is a lot like another very successful PC stealth game, Thief. You also have to be careful because your footsteps can be heard and even your footprints will raise the alarm. Luckily, you have a host of great gadgets to help you infiltrate the terrorists' stronghold and complete your mission.

There are infra red scopes, sniper goggles, microwave communications devices, and security-camera jamming chaff grenades. Your all important stealth suit makes you much harder to see and hear.

This game oozes atmosphere and the full motion video sequences which help drive the plot, are works of animated art. The visuals are also a lot more detailed on the PC version compared with its PlayStation based parent. The plot also has more twists than a belly dancer on amphetamines. On the downside, the control for this game are fiddly, and it very difficult to play. Expect many restarts as you are discovered and overpowered by the guards.

The PC version also includes the VR Missions pack, which was sold separately to PlayStation pundits. The VR Missions pack features more than two hundred stealth set-piece missions that can be quite tricky to get through. The game can also be played completely in first-person mode on the PC, but you will find that a lot of the time this more atmospheric approach isn't as useful as the third-person viewpoint which you can also use. So at the end of the day, you end up using both modes a fair bit.

Metal Gear Solid is a fine action game, right up there with recent efforts like Deus Ex and Thief 2. However, Metal Gear does give away its console origins, as it is perhaps simpler to play than the other two titles. You will still find Snake's challenges utterly absorbing as long as you haven't already been through them before on the PlayStation.