Metal Gear Solid was quite probably the best game you’ll ever play on the Sony Playstation & has at last been ported over the PC. Combining a wide variety of gameplay styles & elements it’s still a fairly essential game to have.

You can download the Demo of Metal Gear Solid from 3DFiles if you haven’t purchased it yet.

Troubleshooting/Updates

Begin by downloading & installing the latest drivers for your Video card, Soundcard & Game Controller. This may solve (most) display, audio or controller related problems you might encounter. There are links to various manufacturers on the Drivers page.

You also need DirectX 7.0A or higher installed & hardware which supports it. This is included with the Metal Gear Solid CD, so (re) install it if necessary.

If when you try start Metal Gear Solid you receive an error message stating - Mgsi executed an invalid instruction in module Mgsi.exe, your system is either lacking proper MMX support or does not meet the Minimum system requirements for Metal Gear Solid. Accordingly, you will need to update certain components of your system, be it CPU, RAM or whatever. The Minimum system requirements being a Pentium II 233, 32MB RAM & 4MB graphics card.

Should any Metal Gear Solid patches be released, be sure to install them, although currently none exist.

If you experience static noise or irregular audio playback, try the following (assuming that installing the latest soundcard drivers doesn’t fix the problem):

1.       Click on Start, Settings, then Control Panel.

2.       Open the Multimedia (Sounds and Multimedia in Windows 2000/Millennium Edition) icon.

3.       Select Audio tab, then for the Sound Playback setting hit the Advanced Properties/Advance button.

4.       Select the Performance tab.

5.       Move the Hardware acceleration slider to the 2nd or 3rd notch from the Left (Basic/Standard acceleration). Move the Sample rate conversion quality slider to the middle notch (improved sample rate converter).

Another potential problem is that of using game controllers, i.e. not the Keyboard or mouse,  & irregular performance/responsiveness with them. Ensure the following;

1.       Click on Start, Settings, then Control Panel.

2.       Open the Game Controllers (Gaming Options in Windows 2000/Millenium Edition) icon.

3.       Click the Advanced (Controller ID’s in Windows 2000/Millennium Edition) tab.

4.       Check whether or not the game controller is assigned to ID 1. If it is not then use the Change button to re-assign the game controller to ID 1.

Should this fail then you may need to resort to lowering the Hardware acceleration a notch or 2 for Sound Playback as shown earlier.

This guide is based on the current retail version of the game (Although it should be applicable to the Demo version also) & may be applied to both the VR Missions & the Regular/Single Player modes.

Installation

Metal Gear Solid offers few installation options (Minimum & Complete) when it comes to initial installation of the game. Although which option you choose can have a significant effect on your frame rate.

If at all possible you should certainly do a Complete install for optimal performance of the game (no reading contents from the CD) – The CD will only be needed for authentication purposes.

A Minimum install will tend to make your game stuttering during gameplay (As content is streamed from the CD).

Graphics

Load Metal Gear Solid, select Option then Graphics/Sound Options. Here you will find various options that control display settings.

Graphics brightness. Moving this slider to the Right will make the game brighter & vice versa. The brighter the visuals are the more washed out the textures will be. Adjust this setting to get the best trade-off between visibility & texture detail. Performance isn’t affected, although visual quality is.

Remember, certain areas of the game or a scene are meant to appear dark (Generally for atmospheric or gameplay purposes), do not brighten up the game so much that you remove such areas.

Now select the Advanced button & hit Enter.

Rendering device. This setting allows you to select the renderer for Metal Gear Solid. You should only select Software if you have a really old video card which cannot render Metal Gear Solid in Direct3D. Even at this however the game will look rather bad. Select your graphics card for optimal image quality & performance, e.g. Voodoo 5 5500 AGP in my case. You should purchase a new graphics card if you are forced to render with Software rendering.

Graphics resolution. Select a lower resolution (800x600 or 640x480) should you find that the frame rate is low when playing. Graphics will be less appealing at lower resolutions, but it will run smoother, which is more important. High resolutions will give best image quality – so select 1024x768 if at all possible.

Water and ninja effect. Set this to On to enable the water & ninja effects in the game. The water effect refers to the display rippling when underwater. The ninja effect refers to the translucency of his appearance at times. This setting is only effective when the ninja is visible (& using the stealth camouflage), or you are underwater. Setting this to Off will disable these effects, which will improve performance in these circumstances (The Ninja effect is particularly resource intensive). NOTE – You cannot toggle this setting On/Off without restarting the game, so Save the game before you make any change.

You can find out how to further optimize the performance/visual quality of your graphics card in the TNT\GeForce, Voodoo3 & Voodoo4/5 tweaking guide. These can help you improve image quality/performance more than the Advanced Display Options menu can.

Sound

Load Metal Gear Solid, select Option then Graphics/Sound Options. Here you will find various options that control Audio settings.

Sound volume. Use this slider bar to adjust the volume level for Voice/Weapon sounds, etc. in the game. The further the slider is to the right, the louder & vice versa.

Music volume. Use this slider bar to adjust the volume level for Music in the game. The further the slider is to the right, the louder & vice versa.

Controller

Load Metal Gear Solid, select Option then Controller Options. Here you will find the various key bindings for your controller/keyboard.

Setup your controller, be it Keyboard or a Controller device (E.g. Gamepad) of some sort, in this section. Edit the default key/controller bindings as you see fit. Select Apply once you have made any changes to your control setup. A Gamepad of some sort would be seen as the preferred method of control in Metal Gear Solid given its console background.

Conclusion

Your Metal Gear Solid gaming experience should now be greatly improved with better visuals/audio & minimal performance loss. This guide should be updated when/if important new patches become available.

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