CDJ75: That's how I played it for the first time many years ago, keyboard only that is, and while I wouldn't want to go back to that nowadays, it is playable. The game came out on PS1 after all, where the default controllers didn't have analogue sticks yet, so unless you bought a Dualshock later, you could only control your character with the d-pad. And the shoulder buttons in this game were only used to access the weapon and item inventories. Such a control scheme can still work on a keyboard.

Now MGS2 you definitly want to play with a controller.

Time4Tea: Oh, that's right! I had forgotten the original PS1 controllers only had d-pads and analogue sticks were introduced later. I have a USB SNES-style controller with d-pad, so I guess it might work pretty well with that?

I'll definitely get it then. It's very high up on my list of older classics that I never played :-)

CDJ75: Not sure about the Snes-like controller, MGS1 *did* make use of all shoulder buttons and triggers, with L2 and R2 being used to open your item/weapon inventory and L1 and R1 being used to quickly unequip/re-equip your weapons and items. I guess the latter feature is not *that* important other than convenience and quickly unequipping and re-equipping your weapon is how you manually reload your gun.