I can’t think of anything better for an immersive VR experience than Solid metal gear, a video game series that’s so often about simulation, the distinction between truth and falsehood, and literal virtual reality. Thanks to an inspired modder who is a big fan of the games, you can now experience the first three main areas from 1998 Solid metal gear (and a few other fun surprises) in VR itself.
That “Metal Gear Solid mod”, created by modder Holydh, marries the style and aesthetic of the first MGS Adventure with the highly technical, highly realistic looking physics and advanced virtual body simulation of the popular VR game bone work. While Holydh’s mod only recreates the first three areas of the game at the moment, it’s a very strong proof of concept for how cool it would be to experience Solid metal gear in real VR.
It fits well too. Since then, the games have never been the same Solid metal gear came to the original PlayStation in 1998. Solid metal gear expanded the storytelling and themes of the series as well. What looked like your standard Hollywood-inspired spy thriller gave way to a twisting narrative of truth, deception, genetics, advanced technology and government conspiracies.
VR just so happens to be an integral part of both his world and gameplay Solid metal gear and its many sequels, allowing players to train in simulated “VR” environments that mirror what you experience in the main games. These cards offer a concentrated experience of Solid metal gear‘s stealthy gameplay loop that challenges you with time trials set in stylized visual representations of what it might be like “inside” a computer. VR is also often mentioned in the actual narratives, where it is the subject of debate about its impact on a person’s sense of reality.
metal gears‘s acclaimed director Hideo Kojimawas also widely known play with player expectations. When promoting Metal Gear Solid vhe went so far as to hire an actor to play a fake game developer who provided bizarre interviews representing a fictional game studio. MGSVby the way, then proceeded to make you questioning the concept of “identity” itself. If there’s one series that aims to make you question reality, this is it Solid metal gear.
Enter Holydh’s “Metal Gear Solid Mod”. bone worka VR game known for its pretty polished physics and a very portal-like narrative atmosphere that runs through the entire campaign and overall presentation. As Solid metal gear, bone work also plays with virtual reality themes and experiments carried out by manipulators beyond your immediate comprehension, while the VR title offers a rich physical palette of game mechanics to romp around in Solid metal gear‘s Shadow Moses Island, it’s thematically resonant in it bone workYour own narrative also gives way to suspicion about what is happening in the environment around you.
After playing with this mod late last night I will tell you that I still have chills from what I experienced. It felt surreal to move around the opening cards of Solid metal gear featuring my own body in first-person view, complete with the original artwork mostly intact. The surroundings of the first MGS I’ve burned it into my head because I played it countless times as a young person. But the apparent novelty of sneaking around vents and corners, engaging in firefights with Genome Soldiers, and gazing at the towering Metal Gear Rex (he’s in the “Museum” section of the mod) has always been conveyed in my mind by literal quotes from which underscored games themselves about reality and simulated environments and where society might go when that technology matures enough to fool us.
I’ll just leave a quote from the 2008 character Eva Metal Gear Solid 4: Weapons of the Patriots Underline everything here:
Nowadays anyone with a computer can do combat training. The FPS games that these kids love are distributed for free by these companies. Of course, this is all just virtual training. It’s so easy for them to get absorbed into these war games. And before they know it, they’re in the PMCs and have real guns in their hands. These children end up fighting proxy wars that have nothing to do with their own lives. They think it’s cool to fight like that. They think struggle is life. You don’t need a reason to fight. After all, it’s just a game for them.
Speak with my box, Holydh described the experience of making a VR mod based on a series that so often delves into how technology manipulates our sense of reality as “both awesome and scary”. Holydh’s first exposure to Kojima’s stealth series was in the 1998s Solid metal gear, which still remains his favorite entry. “I play games like I read books,” he said, “to just immerse myself in an atmosphere. And for that, VR is just amazing.”
The basics of this mod itself are made with original code, but Holydh describes the work as building on the efforts of passionate modders and digital archaeologists who combed through the original game to bring these environments to life like never before. That work dates back more than a decade, Holydh said. “I’m like the little guy on the giant’s shoulder. … I met[colleague[fellow[Kollege[fellowSolid metal gear dirt Vapor_Cephalopod]and got into the actual creation of my mod a little over a year ago. But I only started working on it seriously at the end of last year.” He added that the mod has become a “great hobby” that he works on almost every day.
The choice to recreate spaces Solid metal gear is a little creepy considering that the immediate sequel to the game, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Libertyreveals that the events of the first game were sampled and simulated to train the main character. MGS2 Protagonist Raiden states that he more or less “played through” the events of MGS as part of his VR combat training. MGS2 Referring to the actual game you may have played yourself as a possible simulation is just one of the many fourth-wall-breaking moments. So playing this VR recreation of Shadow Moses Island feels oddly like something that supposedly exists in the fiction of the series itself.
walking around Solid metal gear‘s Shadow Moses in VR feels deeply connected to the revelations of Metal Gear Solid 2, and that was not lost on Holydh. For him, the mod is mainly a passion project that allows him and others to immerse himself in one of the most famous gaming environments, but he often thinks about the “meta” of his work. In a way, his VR mod is like a glue that binds the first game to the second.
“I think about it every now and then,” he says. “I kind of come full circle.”
For all the cerebral trips this mod inspires, it’s still not a complete game. You need bone work itself, and you have to go through a small mod installation maze to get everything working. Because of this, Holydh hopes to repackage its mod as a standalone experience alongside adding more playable areas. However, as the project currently stands, it will require some patience to get everything up and running.
Once everything is cleared up, spawn into the very room where Solid Snake fought Psycho Mantis. Here you can choose to warp to the start of the classic campaign or enter a “museum” that features various recreated elements from the game, including Metal Gear Rex and many character models and items. There’s even a recreation of the game’s opening submarine area, which is usually only ever seen through a cutscene. To be able to get up close and personal with such classic characters and settings is a joy.
Once you’ve toured, selecting “Campaign” will open the room’s secret door, which led you to the showdown with Sniper Wolf in the main game. Here it takes you to the opening level of the game, where Snake first sat down on Shadow Moses.
For now, the only playable areas are the opening crate/elevator area, the outdoor helipad, and the two-story indoor tank hangar. You can use the elevators, find weapons and ammo on the maps, sneak past cameras and guards, and engage in firefights with a SOCOM pistol, suppressed for sneaking or unmuzzled for full volume and mayhem.
The shaky enemy AI, as well as the difficulty of navigating certain rooms (I’ll probably have nightmares now about falling to my death from ladders connected to Metal Gear Rex) keep that up bone work Metal Gear Solid Mod doesn’t feel like a full game. However, there are some fun discoveries in the surroundings. It’s been difficult to get every time, but can you smack enemies over the head to take them out, or possibly even strangle them? I’m not sure about the last one. Between the loving attention to detail and the narrative resonance this fun experience has with the real games, it feels like an authentic one metal gears Experience.
Here I am standing in spaces that aren’t real, although my brain feels like they have some kind of reality. How can I not think of Snake’s comment on Raiden about VR being able to play with your sense of reality? How can I not think that countless times metal gears Games have asked why I find simulated firefights, violence and death fun? is it because I enjoy all the killing? Is that why?
While this mod certainly doesn’t have the answer to those questions, it does lead me down the rabbit holes of puzzles and meta perspectives for the Solid metal gear is very popular. The last entry of the main series came seven years agoand its future is uncertain at best. I had given up hope of reliving those classic brain teasers that the series loves to pull off, but this VR mod got me there in a way I don’t think any more recent, official game actually has could. With all the talk of “metaverse” and ways we try give meaning to digital worlds and objectsthe bone work Metal Gear Solid mod shows that such a thing is possible, albeit a little frightening.
