10 Times Metal Gear Solid Was A Total Dick To Fans

7. Those Tank Hangar Lasers

If there's one thing gamers love, it's not being able to hit the restart button as soon as we've messed up, something that in the first Metal Gear personified in a delightful section where touching any number of invisible lasers leads to slow death by way of gas creeping into the room itself. What gave all of us an idea of just how little regard Kojima would have for traditional game design was in the locking away of the very item you needed to actually see these lasers in the first place. If you happened to miss the initial drop for where the Thermal Goggles would show up, it was over to a string of Codec calls to figure out that it was the cigarettes in your inventory that would allow you to progress instead. Still, the overhead camera angle wasn't exactly built for detecting lasers that move in vertical plains, so this section became the bane of a great many fans - until they finally emerged on the other side, realising they had to backtrack through the same area to nab a particular type of grenade. Genius game design, or an exercise in frustration?
Gaming Editor
Gaming Editor

WhatCulture's Head of Gaming.