Update 15/03/2024: Two days after releasing patch 1.5.0, the Steam Input settings for MGS 1 have now been updated to enable the fix to actually work.
The Metal Gear Solid Master Collection released in a bit of a state. Sure, Konami never promised anything other than straight ports of a bunch of Metal Gear games, but the versions of those games that hit PC and modern consoles last October were tangibly worse than their original versions. They were rife with muddy textures, audio glitches, and—in the case of MGS 1—bad analogue controls.
More accurately, they weren't really analogue at all. Instead, the MGS 1 Master Collection version simply mapped eight-way D-pad controls onto the left stick, instead of allowing full 360-degree movement like other, non-official emulations of the original allow you to (you can see a comparison here). It's been a major source of player complaints about the game ever since it came out.
But today Konami released patch 1.5.0 for the MGS Master Collection, fixing a small smattering of bugs across all six games and, crucially, announcing it had "Fixed an issue in which analog input did not work as intended" in the first MGS. Well, people were positively giddy: "Certainly a massive W," said a fan on Reddit. "This is great news! Keep up the good work!" said a Steam Forums user.
But having just spent far too long testing the patch myself, here's the thing: It doesn't work.
For reasons that I'm fairly certain are tied to Konami's use of Steam's built-in Steam Input tech for MGS 1's controls, the game's analogue movement is still restricted to eight directions. The lack of a fix becomes even more obvious in first-person view mode: You should be able to look slightly downwards by tilting the stick, but the Master Collection version simply jams Snake's head down as far as it will go as soon as it registers the stick's input.
Right now, I can't find any way to make Konami's analogue fixes work. I attempted to rotate through a bunch of unofficial Steam Input configs, but they pretty much all replicated Konami's official one by just tying eight directions to the left stick and calling it a day (the rest were designed for various mods that attempt to tidy up Konami's controls themselves).
A quick aside: Konami also hasn't made its own official Steam Input config freely selectable from the game's settings page. Once you switch it out for another, you can't get it back. You have to go and delete your entire Steam Input folder to force Steam to jolt you back to Konami's config. It's pretty bizarre, and feels like a metaphor for the company's approach to these ports in general.
Anyway, Konami is going to have to realise its fix hasn't taken hold and tidy up its Steam Input config itself, I think. Hopefully, that'll be sooner rather than later, but it's hard to say. A quick look at the game's Steam Forums suggests that more and more players are becoming aware the patch hasn't actually worked, and with any luck the increasing clamour from upset users will make the studio realise the blunder.
That aside, here's where you can find the full patch notes for the Master Collection versions of MGS 1, MGS 2, MGS 3, and the MSX Metal Gear games. The other fixes, at least, seem to have taken effect.
