Presentation
VR Mission’s menus, controls, options, HUD and everything are pretty much exactly like MGS’. Clean, precise and easy to navigate. Of course there is no story to this game either, it’s just picking missions and playing them, very no frills and honestly I like that. No complaints at all on this side of things.
Score: 10 – Amazing
Gameplay
Now this is where things get interesting. In VR Missions there are over 300 Missions to play each with a different objective or set up, sometimes these missions go way out there with what they do, either doing something really silly or funny, or just something plain cool. The first sets of missions you get to play are really basic, there is Sneaking Mode and Weapon Mode. In Sneaking Mode, you basically just have to get from point A to point B without getting caught. It’s easy at first but eventually it gets pretty challenging. Weapon Mode is you basically eliminating targets or doing it under a time limit. I would have to say these are the most boring missions in the game because doing some of these challenges with certain weapons is just hard or tedious.
After you clear most of those you’ll start to unlock more interesting things to do. Like VS 12 Mode where you go up against 12 Guards and you are given certain weapons to take them out with, pretty cool. Then there’s VR Mission where you go through multiple stages starting with nothing, pretty much just trying to survive until you get to the last stage and win, it’s pretty challenging and fun because just like in the original game, there are so many different paths and methods you can employ. After doing more stuff like that you’ll unlock Variety Mode which is where things get really fun. You’ll do stuff like stop a UFO Invasion with Stinger Missiles, solve Mysteries, and fight humongous Godzilla size guards!
The icing on this cake however is eventually you’ll unlock the ability to play in three different kinds of missions as Grey Fox! It’s probably the best moment you’ll have in the game as it feels so cool to go into stealth and just kill guys with your katana and they won’t know what happened while you’re busy flipping around getting to the other side of the room to kill one of their buddies…
Score: 9 – Awesome
Graphics
The graphics are pretty much just like MGS except you’re usual on a vector board or something. Doesn’t feature as much detail as the original game which is unfortunate but you won’t really notice this as you’re too busy trying to ace the current mission you’re doing.
Score: 8 – Great
Sound
This game of course uses the same good effects from the original game, no problems on the sound effects end. The music is also really cool, if you’re a big MGS fan and you’ve played Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2 you’ll notice that all the music in VR Missions are remixes of tracks in those games. So the music is great if you know this, if you don’t it still sounds really cool.
Score: 8 – Great
Replay
This is game you’ll want to pop in every now and then to see if you can beat your old records you set when you first played a mission. Or maybe if you have friends over you’ll all want to take turns and see if you can beat each other’s times and records using all the different methods you employ, it’s very interesting to usually see someone else play MGS because more than likely they’ll play very differently from you. The game’s strange and fun Variety Missions also give this game some nice shelf life. Sometimes you’ll randomly get the urge to go back and prevent another alien invasion with your lone Stinger Launcher or slice some guards up with Grey Fox.
Score: 7 – Good
Overview
Back when this game came out, it was something different from just playing MGS aside from some of the boring Weapon missions this game had a lot of variety and flavor in it’s missions. Like I said earlier I think a lot of people may have missed the point of this game when it initially came out, it was just supposed to be a fun little MGS kind of game with a bunch of missions to do. You could buy this game and play it for a month or so just trying to complete it, that’s what I did when I got it in the Summer of 2001, I spent pretty much most of my free time in June trying to complete it, I had a lot of fun that month, and if you’re a fan of MGS you’ll probably have a lot of fun playing this too.
Overall Score: 8.1 - Great
Also here is a video of the first of three missions with Grey Fox.
