Summary
- MGS2 had elaborate and unique mechanics in the beginning level, showcasing Kojima's attention to detail.
- MGS3 features mini-game Guy Savage accessible via saving/loading while snake's imprisoned.
- The End was meant to be the toughest boss in MGS3, but can be cheesed in various ways.
Players can either love his work or find it incredibly confusing, but there's no denying that Hideo Kojima puts a lot of thought into creating new gameplay mechanics and challenging story beats. He has so many ideas, in fact, that he places many of these in places many players can overlook despite many playthroughs.
Kojima also has many ideas that never end up in the games — or not in their original format. These are always interesting to look at to gain some perspective of how different the series could have turned out. Let's look at the coolest and weirdest aspects of the Metal Gear Solid series that many don't know of.
10 Hardest Bosses In The Metal Gear Solid Games, Ranked
The Metal Gear Solid franchise has featured its fair share of formidable bosses. These are the toughest of the bunch.
7 Metal Gear Solid 2's Tanker Bar
The Most Impressive Technical Display Of Its Time, Yet So Easy To Miss
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
- Released
- November 13, 2001
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ Due To Animated Blood, Animated Violence
- Developer(s)
- Konami
- Genre(s)
- Stealth
When it came out in 2001, Metal Gear Solid 2 blew most games out of the water due not only to its Hollywood-worthy storytelling, but also because of its spectacularly detailed and wildly original mechanics. No place in the game, however, features as many unbelievable mechanics as the tiny bar from the tanker in the first portion of the game.
In here, players can shoot the bottles to have them break in a realistic way, and even shoot the ice tray, which will spill ice that falls on the table and melts in a realistic manner. None of these mechanics are ever used again in the game, meaning that Kojima had his devs working out the tech to make it work and then put it in the game just to show players what MGS2 was capable of pulling off.
6 Metal Gear Solid 3 Hides A Devil May Cry-Type Game
One Of The Greatest Mini Games Ever
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (2004)
- Released
- November 17, 2004
WHERE TO PLAY
When Snake gets arrested in Metal Gear Solid 3, saving and loading the file while he's imprisoned will result in the player landing not in the world of MGS3, but in Guy Savage's world. That's the name of one of the most elaborate minigames of all time.
Players embody a character who is assumed to be the titular Guy Savage, a man who uses his dual blades to kill a bunch of ghouls. Though it's not as deep as DMC or God Of War gameplay wise, Guy Savage is its own thing. It even caused many to wonder if this wasn't a teaser for an upcoming Konami game, but it ended up never becoming more than a great minigame. Yet, many gans never even got to play it, because they didn't know it existed. Here's wondering if Metal Gear Solid Delta will feature a remade version of Guy Savage, or something else entirely.
5 The End In MGS3 Was Going To Be The Toughest Battle Of All
Kojima's Original Vision Was Too Big For The Game
One of the places where Kojima loves to let his imagination run the wildest in terms of gameplay is with the series' boss battles. The boss battle that players have with The End in the original Metal Gear Solid 3 is already one of the most original and challenging in the entire series, but it was going to be so much more different.
Kojima intended for the battle to last at least two weeks in real-world time, making it a real test of endurance that players would have no way of skipping. They must either learn the ways of the sniper and becom one, or else they would never the game. Interestingly, the battle ended up the opposite of that, considering how many cheap options there are to beat this boss.
4 You Can Kill MGS3's Main Boss In A Myriad Of Ways
The Many Ends Of The End
Though challenging, should players engage him in the way they're supposed to, there are plenty of cheesy alternatives to take on this battle. Someone at Konami must have had an insightful conversation with Mr. Kojima when developing Metal Gear Solid 3, as the release version of the game makes The End's battle go from the hardest to possibly the easiest.
7 Most Bizarre Metal Gear Solid Games
The Metal Gear series isn't known for its conventional narratives, but these Metal Gear games deliver the most bizarre experiences in the franchise.
It's possible to one-shot this boss when he's being taken by soldiers in his wheelchair. And, if getting one good shot in is too much work, players can cause The End to die of old age by just advancing the console's clock by ten days. Alternatively, The End also owns a pet parrot that he loves, and killing it will angr The End and make his fight much harder.
3 The Original Game Is Haunted
And Not Just By Snake's Victims
Metal Gear Solid
- Released
- October 20, 1998
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood and Gore, Suggestive Themes, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Konami Computer Entertainment Japan
- Genre(s)
- Stealth
The coolest secret in the original Metal Gear Solid is also its scariest. Those who get into a second playthrough will find a camera, a cool gimmick they can use to take pictures of their favorite areas in the game. Almost every game has a photo mode nowadays, so this shouldn't require an explanation, but this was a unique gimmick back then. Another thing making this camera special was the ability to catch ghosts, which the player was absolutely not warned about. Anyone who didn't read gaming guides at the time risked getting seriously scared when one of these popped up while they were trying to crystallize some cool memories of their time in Shadow Moses.
In Metal Gear Solid 3, there's a boss battle that confronts players with the ghosts of the guards they've killed — if they'd killed any, that is. It's an interesting way of making players think about their choices, so it's fun and scary that the earlier version of Kojima put a bunch of ghosts in a game just so they could scare the player, regardless of how well they'd behaved.
2 Big Boss Originally Had A Very Different Mentor
Sins Of The Fathers
One of the biggest twists in the series — and arguably its most heart-wrenching moment — is learning that The Boss, Big "Naked Snake" Boss's mentor in Metal Gear Solid 3, was never really a traitor. Rather, he was given a suicide mission for the greater good.
6 Things That Make Hideo Kojima Games Unique
When jumping into a new game, there are always some dead giveaways that it was designed by Hideo Kojima
Snake does end up needing to kill the boss, a burden he'll have to carry throughout the rest of his life. Originally, however, Kojima had intended for Big Boss to have a nazi as his first mentor, a change that certainly would have prevented the trilogy from culminating in such an emotionally resonant way.
1 Metal Gear Solid 2 Changed Drastically Because of 9/11
Some Of The Game's Events Accidentally Predicted Too Much
Hideo Kojima and his Metal Gear Solid series, specifically, are known for predicting real-world events just as well as The Simpsons. Though MGS2 never featured any sort of terrorist attack similar to the September 11 attacks, some of the imagery present in the final segment of the game was deemed too close to the tragic events of that day.
This sent Konami into a pandemonium, as the company was left with very little time to make the game more fitting for the American sensitivities of the time. Canceling the release of the game altogether was actually in the cards, but the team ended up just cutting a lot of content, including cutscenes where the Arsenal Gear would crash-land through New York City, ravaging many buildings in its path.
Every Metal Gear Solid Game In Chronological Order (And The Year They Take Place In)
The Metal Gear Solid games span across decades, though not in chronological order. This should clear the timeline up.