So i have bought all of the MG games available on GOG and have beaten them. But i hear a lot of people say these versions are buggy and overall worse than the console versions. I dunno, i enjoyed these games and didn't notice a lot of annoying bugs, save one in MGS with a broken elevator which made me reload a save.

So i am wondering whether you guys think these ports are bad

MGS1 GOG version has working FMV (movies) but no widescreen support. The fan version has widescreen 1080p working, but broken FMV.

The first game's port is missing a lot of special effects and filters during cutscenes, making them look way more sterile and less cinematic than the original PS1 version. It's also missing a few of Psycho Mantis' PS1 related gimmicks, him reading your memory card for saves of other Konami PS1 titles and commenting on them, commenting on your saving habits in-game, how often you died etc., playing around with your controller's rumble feature. As a result the entire cutscene before the boss fight is cut very short and just kinda randomly and abruptly ends somewhere in the middle.
The in-game music is also lower quality and straight up missing songs, like, almost all boss fights play the regular alert theme instead of the proper boss theme. This goes for the final battle against MG REX which used a unique track as well. also, the Evasion theme is missing.

MGS2 has horrible controller support without the use of fan fixes. The fan fix also fixes some other stuff, so with that installed 2 is a pretty decent port at least.

With a decent Vulkan graphics card and Retroarch/Beetle HW plugin, the PS1 version can be emulated close to perfect without missing features.

The plugin makes the graphic very clean even on PS1.

You need to own the PS1 discs, obviously.

The PC version is at least decent and is better than nothing.

Actually there is a widescreen fix by Nemesis2000 that doesn't break anything like FMV's etc which can be found here: [url=https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Metal_Gear_Solid:_Integral#Widescreen_resolution]https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Metal_Gear_Solid:_Integral#Widescreen_resolution[/url]

There is one thing that really bothers me. In MGS 2 (playing on the V-fix) i sometimes noticed a bug where character's face would become blurred, as if the game had trouble rendering their noses or something when the camera is looking at them from the side.


As for the broken elevator, i have already spoken about it, but i will say it again. Before the second battle with Sniper Wolf, you need to take an elevator (the one Otacon tries to repair). I couldn't beat Wolf as i was low of RCM, so i took the elevator again to get ammo. I did get the ammo, but the elevator wouldn't let me take it again. So i needed to reload a save

This sounds like the same issue I had with V's fix. If you turn off Depth of Field, that will fix the double faces.

FMV's never worked nativly with this patch. Does it work now with the GOG release you mean?

Yup you see that's the problem. The game was released more than 2 decades ago. Most people don't have the original discs :)

IMO, both MGS1 and MGS2 on here have their respective issues, but the convenience factor over emulation trumps out. In its current state, as someone who played the OG PS1 version, the MGS1 port is pretty fine as is when sticking to SW mode. Though I'm probably gonna ape on the music fixes once those gets finalized by one of the fans on here.

As for MGS2? I didn't even touch the game before using V's fix. When compared to my experiences with the HD collection on PS3 and PCSX2, I think it's pretty great. I recently did a graphics comparison test comparing the GOG version+ V's fix, PCSX2, and RPCS3. I'm gonna post it later.

Visually, the biggest difference between the PC port and the PS2 version running at a higher internal resolution in PCSX2 is in the cutscenes. It's missing a good deal of the post-processing, similar to the PS3 version, though some of the shaders that V added causes this double/triple face distortion in certain camera angles.

In gameplay mode, the game looks nearly identical to the PCSX2 version, though there seems to be some sort of green halo around the edges of certain textures like on Snake's hair, Bandana, and his wound he gets from Vamp.


All in all, the convenience of these ports kinda trumps their issues. At least, that's the case for me.

The best versions of Metal Gear and Metal Gear Solid are the PC ports on GoG. For Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 it's the HD collection ports on nVidia Shield.

Is there anything in particular about the Nivida shield port that makes it superior to the console versions? Normally, I'd assume it would perform worse like most of the PS3/XBOX360 game ports the Shield recieves.

Simple convenience. You can emulate MGS1 on the Shield using ePSXe and the HD versions of MGS2 and 3 are available on the Play Store for fairly cheap.

I've played MGS1 on just about everything you can think of, whether it be consumer CRTs, PVMs (OEV-203, 143 and 1943MD), high-end PC CRTs (Diamondtron/Trinitron, slot and shadow mask) and LCD screens... I've played it natively and I've emulated it (via Retroarch in 2560x240 on a PC CRT). The mood, atmosphere and aesthetics just feel right on a CRT using composite. When you up the resolution or use a better video signal (S-Video, RGB or Component) it's just kind of too sharp and it accentuates the graphical flaws the game has.

The PC version is also a sloppy port with missing graphical effects, same as MGS2. MGS2 does look sort of fine when you up the resolution, but that's because I don't really like 480i (I've yet to try PS2 and Xbox versions in 480p). MGS2 is also widely regarded as one of the worst ports out there and it's also missing the skateboard game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XDyQnY5GHI

This video kind of explains it. The developers used features specific to the PS1 to create a distinct look.