You have 3 days to obtain Big Boss rating in Metal Gear Solid 1's free-to-play period on Steam

I fulfilled a childhood ambition over the past week: I finally got the notoriously elusive Big Boss rating at the end of Metal Gear Solid 1, a feat I've simultaneously been drawn toward and terrified by ever since I first played the game on my PS1 in 1998. How did I do it? Stick-to-itiveness, gumption, and raw skill.

Also, cheating. I played the much easier Japanese version of the game and exploited a couple of speedrunning skips in order to hasten my progress. Hey, it counts.

Anyway, my challenge to you, reader, is to accomplish the same thing in the ongoing free-to-play period for Metal Gear Solid 1 on Steam, which expires Monday, July 27 at 10 am EDT / 1 pm PDT / 6 pm BST. You should probably do it the non-cheating way. It was cool when I did it, but for you? A bad look. I don't make the rules.

If you'd like to know why a three-year-old re-release of a 28-year-old game is currently running a free-to-play trial thing, I have two answers for you. The first: the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol 2—which finally frees Metal Gear Solid 4 from its PS3 prison—is due out on August 27, and this is a way to gin up some MGS hype. The second: Konami is a baffling company that operates according to no law but its own.

If you shied away from Vol 1 of the MGS Master Collection for the state it was in at release, I have good news: it is much better now. All three MGS games in the collection have received significant patches since its lackluster opening day, and MGS1 in particular now looks and feels a lot better, thanks to the ability to switch on higher-resolution rendering and actually functional analogue controls.

And if you still want to sand down the remaining rough edges, I recommend the MGSM2Fix mod, (which can be easily installed via Luxtorpeda if you're playing on Steam Deck or desktop Linux).

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