TITLE: Metal Gear ramblings. AUTHOR: KyoshoBallard DATE: 11/10/2005 05:56:00 ip. ----- BODY:

With all the recent fanfare over the Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots video, it made me want to play Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty again. Mainly to brush up on who the Patriots are. I ended up playing the first Metal Gear Solid as well. Both on the PC. Well, the first one with an emulator. So here's some ramblings from the experience. For future reference, there's going to be spoilers. I'm sorry. Nothing drastically major, but some. I have played Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (hereafter refered to as MGS2) twice in the past. When it first came out, my sister bought it for me for my birthday. I would never have bought it myself, because I didn't own a PS2 at that time. My sister figured I'd get one somehow because she knew how big of a fan I was of the first MGS and how very much I wanted to play MGS2. In the end, my mother's boyfriend's son had a PS2 that I borrowed for 24 hours. I think I might've slept maybe 3 hours durring that time. It was a glorious experience. And at the same time, really annoying. Maybe it was because I was extremely tired, maybe it was because of all the plot-twists within the last 2 hours of the game. I don't know, but I was confused as hell. I went online to the IGN Metal Gear forum to try and get things straightened out in my mind. It helped a bit, but all the theories there only left me with more questions. Anyways, after that, I wasn't able to play it again until last year (2004). My step brother had a PS2. Here is something I wrote in my blog then: "Now that I've played it a second time, I completely understand the story. Even though I'd forgotten most of it from the first time, I just remembered being very confused because of the plot twists. This time I got it. It made sense. And I loved it. Though I still think Raiden is a homosexual. Seriously. Heh. Nevermind about that. The whole long scene on top of Arsenal Gear was sooo awesome. I saved right before it, and when I continued on with the game, I saved in a different slot so I can go back, load, and watch it again. I finally understand why Hideo Kojima wanted to have you play as Raiden instead of Snake. His reasoning was that he wanted people to see Snake from a different perspective. And it worked. It made Snake an even more compelling character." Okay, so this time around I didn' have access to a PS2, so I need to get the PC version. I got Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance for the PC in a trade with a guy from Octopus Overlords. I was extremely worried about how the game would run on my system. I'd heard bad things, and my computer isn't exactly a powerhouse. I figured it was worth a try though. In most areas of the game, it ran extremely well with most of the settings turned down/off. But there are certain places, like the holds with all the marines in the Tanker or the water parts of the Big Shell that simply freeze my computer seconds after loading. For these areas, I have to turn every setting to it's lowest, including sound. And I have to go into dxdiag and turn off sound acceleration. It makes these parts sound a look like crap, but it works. Well, sort of. I'd say it works 10% of the time. I just have to keep trying over and over. Eventually, through some surge of luck, the game doesn't freeze and will continue to not freeze until I quit the game completely. It's very odd. It had been an enjoyable experience otherwise. Until a certain point later in the game. Up to this point I've been playing on Normal mode. In normal mode, at one point in the game, you have to fight 25 Metal Gear RAYs. For the uninformed, a Metal Gear is a HUGE bipedal tank (RAY is the name of this particular model). Basically a giant walking robot loaded to the teeth with weapons (think Mechwarrior, etc.). And you have to fight them while you yourself are on foot, using a handheld Stinger missile launcher. And the only place they can take damage is in their heads. It's insane. And yet, the last time I played it on a PS2, I played on Normal as well, and I beat them on like my third try. This time around, I've tried eleven times. Eleven! That might not sound like much, but you have to realize that it takes at least a minute and a half to kill ONE RAY. I'd spent quite a few hours trying to beat the dang things and I just couldn't seem to do it! So, I thought I'd go online and try and find some downloadable savegames people have made. I tried every one I could find, but none of them are at that point in the game. Okay, so I checked them all to see if any of them had collected enough dogtags to start a new game with Stealth. It's a device that makes you invisible to enemy soldiers and would've made starting a new game -- and getting to the point where I was -- less painless and faster. But none of them even had THAT! So now I had a choice. Do I spend a few more hours trying to beat those stupid RAYs, or do I start a new game with the Easy difficulty setting (instead of Normal)? On Easy, you only have to fight 5 RAYs. But that'd mean I'd have to go through everything again! Everything! Including the parts that my computer almost always refuses to run. I know I can skip all the dialog this time, skip all the cutscenes and that will cut down on the time it takes. But I'd have to fight Fatman and Vamp and the Harrier and do all the bomb crap again. That'd be so annoying. But will it be more annoying than fighting these RAYs over and over and OVER? I was so fed up with it that I decided to play through the first Metal Gear Solid instead. Which I have done. It's such a better game than MGS2 in my oppinion. Better story, better atmosphere and a much larger sense of urgency. This was my ninth play through, I believe. But it was my first in around 3 years. So I forgot enough small details for it to be a fresh, fun experience.As I rambled on about to my friend Sam the other day, I'm still learning new things about the original MGS. I never realized the Stinger was so useful. I used my weapons a lot more. I fought Vulcan Raven in a completely new way. Etc. Etc. And I still think the Otacon ending is the best of the two. That's the one I intentionally got this time. Mainly so I could see it again, but also so I can use Stealth the next time I play it (Otacon gives it to you at the end of the game). It's such an awesome game. So, yeah, anyways, after I beat MGS1, I decided to start up a new game of MGS2 on Easy. This time around, I decided to collect dogtags (so that maybe eventually I can get Stealth, heh) Anyways, by skipping most (not all) of the cutscenes and codec conversations, it didn't take me long to get to where I'd been before, fighting the RAYs. Of course, killing only five RAYs was extremely easy and I beat them on my first try. Then I beat the game completely, seeing as there's just a boss fight after that. The Substance version of MGS2 comes with some extras. One of which are some missions playing as Snake, called Snake Tales. I played part of one of them. Whoever made it was really uninformed about the plot of the game and made some big story mistakes. So I didn't even bother playing the rest of them. I will eventually, I'm sure. But I read this on a cheat page, "Successfully complete a Snake Tale to unlock the M9. Begin a game and use M9 to stun the Bosses instead of killing them to view an alternate ending sequence." I'm going to assume it means to stun the bosses and you'll get an alternate ending in the main game (Sons of Liberty). If that's true, I might just have to play through the game AGAIN, just to see that ending. But that can wait...

----- COMMENT: AUTHOR:  KyoshoBallard EMAIL: URL: DATE: 20:00 Yeah, I'd say it might take 10 hours your first play through. But did you see what I said in the post? It was my ninth time through. Because it's so story heavy, I like to play through it a lot. I mean, it's like watching your favorite movie a bunch of times.

Oh, and Joq, if the reason you don't want to play MGS is becaus of inferior graphics and play mechanics, you could always get Twin Snakes, if you have a Gamecube. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR:  KyoshoBallard EMAIL: URL: DATE: 00:02 Yeah I was hoping for the sword too. Seemed logical to give it to you. But no. Very annoying. Oh, I'm going to have to play those Snake Tales. ----- --------