Metal Gear solid is the most cinematic game I've ever played. It truely feels like a movie which is also a game. The story and cut scenes are done so well and the character development (whilst cheesy at times) is superb. It's like reading a good book that you can't put down. You can't wait to see what happens to certain characters. Some other thoughts:
- The game had fantastic bosses, they all had interesting back stories and had a unique attribute to them
- I particularly enjoyed the Sniper Wolf boss battles
- The Psycho Mantis boss was so weird, I don't think I've ever had a gaming experience like it before where switching controllers is the strategy
- Many of the puzzles are Zelda like, there's a bunch of blowing holes/crawling under walls to progress
- The music is unique and done fantastically well, it's very orchestral and changes tone based on the action
- I have no idea how some of these bosses keep surviving, Liquid Snake died like 5 times throughout the whole story, he just kept coming back
- The FOXDIE plot line was really cool, using Solid Snake to infect others without him even knowing
- The graphics are very limited but they have a certain charm to them, similar to Ocarina of Time even primitive 3D graphics don't matter if the game is good
- The sneaking and stealth based mechanics are well done, it's genuinely quite tricky to progress through certain stealth sections without being caught because you need to also collect all the items in the area
- There's a nice variety of weapons, for bosses there's lots of usage of the Stinger (missile launcher) which I enjoyed, shooting the soldiers with the FAMAS is kind of annoying, not having first person COD style aiming kind of sucks
- Let's just say there are some very 90s aspects of this game in the dialog
