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I have MGS1, 2, and 3 on like three different systems each. I didn't realize until Leon brought it up that MGS4 still isn't available on modern hardware, it's such an odd choice. At least Mother 3 has the translation issue.

And with that, I'm calling the topic. Thank you all for participating and indulging me, and I hope everyone enjoyed it like I did. Someday, I'll do another one of these.

You're All Diamonds
Monsoon's Meme Quotes
Monsoon
Games' Subtitles
Huey Emmerich
A Codec Call to Remember
Vulcan Raven
Major Zero
Metal Gear Solid 4
Sniper Rifle
Cartoon Foxhound Logo
MGS5's Gameplay
Naked Raiden
MGS3 Survival System
Naomi Hunter
Bladewolf
Codecs in Smash
Kojima's Prescience
Fission Mailed
Emma Emmerich
Tranquilizer Guns
Quiet's Theme
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes
Patriot AIs
Liquid's Arm
Metal Gear Acid
David Hayter
Kazuhira Miller
CQC Gestures of Affection
Fake Death Pill
Soliton Radar

At Least I Always Fought For What I Believed In
Nastasha Romanenko
Screaming Mantis' Dolls
Body-Snatchers
MGS1 Torture Sequence
The Best is Yet To Come
Nanomachines
Miuano Sam
Ninja Cat
Zone of the Enders
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX)
TNT
Crab Battle
Shoot Gunner
Wound Treatment System
Decoy Octopus
Subsistence's Changes to MGS3
Rations
iPod
European Extreme
Diamond Dogs
Vamp: Vamp obviously should have just been a vampire. This has been discussed before. Aside from that, Vamp is this weird mystery guy in MGS2, then everything about him is explained in MGS4, and you're like "okay," and that's that. Is he the biggest example in MGS4 of "nanomachines?" I can't imagine Vamp being anyone's favorite character, right? The only interesting thing about him is the dual-screen boss fight.
Mega Man Battle Network

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Tanker (MGS2)
Liquid Snake's Disguise
Metal Gear (name)
Big Boss as the Protagonist
Metal Gear (MSX)
"70% of my body is made of movies. The other 30% is up to you."
Snake vs. Monkey
Twin Snakes Cutscenes
Holly White
Rules of Nature
1997 Tokyo Game Show Ad for Metal Gear Solid
Snake Tales
MGS4 TV Spots
Johnny Sasaki
Taking a Dump
Characters Wetting Themselves
Patriots' Identity
Metal Gear: Ghost Babel
Solidus Snake
Drebin
Pooyan Mission
Sunny Eggs Joke: Instead of talking about this, let's talk about Olga and the Patriots. I know everyone justifies Para-Medic being Dr. Clark by saying that Naomi never met her and just assumed it was a man, which makes no sense, but sure, let's go with it. The issue is this: in the English dub, were the Patriots sending pictures of an unrelated baby boy to Olga, and that's why she thought it was a boy? And if so, why? What was their endgame? I must know the truth. In all seriousness, we also never got a game of Raiden rescuing Sunny. I guess Raiden, who's moderately competent at the best of times, defeating the Patriots is best left unshown. Although, after Olga's death, I imagine that Sunny was probably not the highest priority prisoner they had. Maybe they just let Raiden rescue her. Maybe he geared up to go rescue a baby boy, got all the way into the secret Patriot baby storage facility, learned the truth, and said "argh, I only brought blue blankets," and had to steal a pink blanket from another kidnapped baby, and that emotional pain is what led him to give up his humanity and embrace cyborgization.
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
MGS4 E3 2005 Trailer

They Played Us Like a Damn Fiddle
MGS Theme (Evolution Skateboarding)
Paz Ortega Andrade
Rosemary
Konami
The Future of the Series: MG has absolutely everything against it as far as the future goes. The entire storyline is wrapped up, the main character is dead, it's owned by Konami, the subseries about Raiden seems to also be dead for no reason, and the last release for it was a cheapo spinoff. The only directions you can take things are MGR2, MG1 + MG2 remake, a new series set in the same universe about someone else, or rebooting everything. Yes, MGR2 or MG1/2 remakes could theoretically be good, but I think MGR was an anomaly, and I don't think it'll happen anyway, since Konami just doesn't care. This may be the biggest series where I have no hope for anything good happening in the future... Or Castlevania. Which one counts as bigger? I'm not sure.
Fatman
Metal Gear Solid V
Running Man
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
Nuclear Disarmament: I really did want to avoid constantly complaining about MGSV, I swear, but you guys just keep bringing it up, and it's too easy. The idea of competing against other players in this way is kind of interesting, but like everything in MGSV, this is half-baked and just plain bad.
Rathalos
Raging Raven
Skull Face
Poisonous Zanzibar Hamsters
Love Deterrence
Death Stranding
This is How You Don't Play MGS3: I watched six minutes and had to stop. I had set it up to listen while I played another game, but this guy is just so completely unpleasant to listen to that I had to stop. Is this guy popular? He's just the most obnoxious person ever. Yes, him complaining about not having the M9 while it's on-screen is mildly funny, but that's about it. I eventually turned it off and just started listening to Ace Attorney music.
Hideo Kojima
Gurlugon
Original MGS4 Ending
Quiet's Skin Breathing

More Than Enough to Kill Anything that Moves
MGS4 being a PS3-exclusive
Metal Gear Survive
MGS Snake Eater Pachinko

I decided to just rank both of Leon's nominations lol

You're Pretty Good
Metal Gear Solid 3
English Voice Acting
Metal Gear Solid (PS1)
Playstation
MGS Dialogue
Codec Sound Effect
Revolver Ocelot
The End
Last Days of Foxhound
Solid Snake
Groznyj Grad
Big Boss Saluting The Boss' Grave`

The Lightning in the Rain
The Boss
Liquid Ocelot (Boss)
!
Snake in Smash
The Sorrow
Metal Gears
Original Main Theme
The Ladder
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Senator Armstrong
Old Snake
Snake Eater (song)
Cardboard Boxes
Arsenal Gear Sequence
MGS3 OST
Hiimdaisy Comics
REX vs RAY: As a thematic and dramatic cap to the series and to metal gears as a plot element, the idea of old, broken-down Snake having to use the old, broken-down metal gear that he destroyed, that was built with love by his best friend and piloted by his evil clone, that was abandoned by the government and left to rot for a decade in a cold warehouse in order to fight a soulless mass-produced machine (in the war of soulless mass production) is incredibly strong. The metaphor breaks down when you remember it's Ocelot, who is also old and not fighting on behalf of the Patriots, piloting RAY, and not some young gun or whatever, but it's fine. If you wanted maximum poetry, RAY would be piloted by one of the B&B Corps, but it's still fine. And yes, sure, you can find a million logical problems with this (how does REX still work, how does it still have electricity, how is it that RAY, designed for the sole purpose of killing REX, is so bad at it?), but it's all fine. One thing this series does well is emotions.
Calling to the Night
Big Boss
Ocelot Reloading: It's all the little things. Ocelot could have just been an evil guy who's good at making plans, but instead he's an evil Russian cowboy spy obsessed with your father who gets off on torture and masturbates by reloading a revolver. That's what separates this series from any other.
Shadow Moses Dream (MGS4)
The Winds of Destruction
EVA
Ocelot Hand Gesture

What a Thrill
Stealth: For a game series ostensibly about sneaking around, it's actually not as important a mechanic as you'd expect. It is important, but so much of the games don't involve stealth. How many boss fights in the series involve stealth in any way? Sniper Wolf 2 (if you're stretching the definition), Vulcan Raven, The Pain, The Fear, The End, The Fury, The Boss, Laughing Octopus, and Crying Wolf... You know what, that's a substantial number, I take it back. I think the important thing about stealth to this series is that this really is not ABOUT stealth. That's why MGR can just be a DMC-style combat simulator and still retain everything that makes the series great, and I've heard Acid is pretty good despite just being a card game. I think what I'm saying is this: one of the least important elements of Metal Gear as a series is the stealth.
Otacon
Yoji Shinkawa
Metal Gear Solid 2
Guy Savage
War has Changed
Ghost Babel's E-rating
Colonel Campbell
Patriot Plans
Para-Medic Movie Conversations
Tragic Backstories: Who's the most important character in the series to not have a tragic backstory? I'm going to google "MGS characters" and see who comes up first. Solid Snake, Big Boss, Raiden, Liquid Snake, Revolver Ocelot, Otacon, Master Miller, Psycho Mantis, Venom Snake, Gray Fox, Solidus Snake, Meryl, Campbell, The Boss, Naomi Hunter, Donald Anderson, Colonel Volgin, Mei Ling... Okay, I'm calling it at Mei Ling. Tragic backstories are a staple of fiction, and MGS in particular makes excellent use of them... when it bothers giving backstories at all. I love the Cobras and everything, but they're the most thinly-sketched excuses for boss fights ever.
Jetstream Sam
Remaking MG1 and MG2
MGS3 Secret Theater
Mesal Gear Solid
Microwave Hallway
Raiden
La Li Lu Le Lo
Liquid Snake
Psycho Mantis
Butts
Liquid Snake Explains Big Chungus
Memes
Snake? Snake! Snaaaaaaaake!
MGS2 Mass RAY Battle: Thematically and dramatically, this is excellent. Raiden's in this upside-down weirdo world where the rules make no sense and reality is falling apart and it's based on Shadow Moses, and now there's a replay of Snake's epic battle with REX, except that it's just wrong. The entire thing is just wrong. Like, where even is this giant glowing square platform? Why was it built, and by whom? How are we in a giant featureless void? Why is Raiden so important that someone will send all of these expensive machines to fight him? Why is Raiden suddenly so skilled that he can fight an army of super tanks by himself? What is actually happening here? None of that matters. What matters is the feeling of it. However, it's worth saying that of all the big robot fights (REX, RAY, Shagohod, REX vs RAY, ZEKE, Shaodjwefdvbwe), this is definitely the weakest from a gameplay perspective. It's just you running around firing missiles at their legs forever. Actually, let's rank these. Gameplay: REX vs RAY > Shagohod > Shadewadsv > REX > RAYs > ZEKE. Thematics/Drama/Story/Making you actually care: REX vs RAY > REX > Shagohod > RAYs > ZEKE > Shadqwrfdb.
Metal Gear Solid in 5 Minutes
Post-Credits Conversations
Samus x Snake Ship
Meryl Silverburgh
Les Enfants Terrible
Love Theme
Smoking

Divinity: Original Sin
I've heard people claim the second game is much better, but after this 70~ hour monstrosity, I'm WRPGed out for at least the rest of the year.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

With best girl Miu's passing, I can't help but bring up my "favorite" Danganronpa factoid.

Kodaka designed Miu to be the most hated character in all of Danganronpa. He truly believed that a girl like Miu would be disliked by literally the enitrety of the fanbase, he came up with her as the worst woman he could imagine.

What a moron.

Bad move.

Snake5555555555 posted...

I always wished for so much more out of Decoy Octopus, I love characters that can disguise themselves like that.

I'm fine with the idea of him dying without you even realizing you met him, and then his corpse is used in a wacky plot. I just think it's odd how many prequels were made that don't use him for anything, when Kojima seems like a very 'use all parts of the buffalo' type of writer.

One more, and then we'll end the topic.

You're Pretty Good
Metal Gear Solid 3
English Voice Acting: There are a few series that I would say are defined by their voice acting, that just go above and beyond, where I can't imagine anyone else in the roles. MGS is the definitive version of that. Aside from TTS, where everyone except Snake and Ocelot inexplicably sound terrible, there's not a single dud among the main cast in any of the games. To find a bad VA in the series, you have to look to the really 'who cares' characters, like Code Talker (who unfortunately does have a ton of dialogue) or random guards. Just every single VA completely nails it. Even Keifer Sutherland isn't bad, he's just not as good as David Hayter. You know what, actually, I'm taking this back slightly. Ocelot sounds terrible in MGSV, I don't know why he has a Texan accent besides 'cowboy,' but it's fine. Overall, I'm willing to say this series has the highest quality voice acting of any series with more than four games. What's a singular game with better voice acting overall? Maybe Star Fox 64, another example of everyone nailing the job.
Metal Gear Solid (PS1)
Playstation
MGS Dialogue
Codec Sound Effect
Revolver Ocelot
The End
Last Days of Foxhound
Solid Snake
Groznyj Grad
Big Boss Saluting The Boss' Grave`

The Lightning in the Rain
The Boss
Liquid Ocelot (Boss)
!
Snake in Smash
The Sorrow
Metal Gears
Original Main Theme
The Ladder
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Senator Armstrong
Old Snake
Snake Eater (song)
Cardboard Boxes
Arsenal Gear Sequence
MGS3 OST
Hiimdaisy Comics
Calling to the Night
Big Boss
Shadow Moses Dream (MGS4)
The Winds of Destruction
EVA
Ocelot Hand Gesture

What a Thrill
Otacon
Yoji Shinkawa
Metal Gear Solid 2
Guy Savage
War has Changed
Ghost Babel's E-rating
Colonel Campbell
Patriot Plans: I still don't completely understand it. They want to take over the world by controlling all information, I get that. And they want to industrialize war by controlling all weapons and creating an endless series of proxy wars, got it. But they also want Ocelot to die because they know he's plotting against them, so they allow Ocelot free reign to do anything he wants while they support Snake through Drebin? And this is because Ocelot tricked them into thinking that he's possessed by Liquid Snake's ghost, which was only temporarily true, but also he had to hypnotize himself into believing it for real because they could've told if he was lying? Big Boss also factors into this. I'm just saying, there's complicated and then there's complicated.
Para-Medic Movie Conversations
Jetstream Sam
Remaking MG1 and MG2
MGS3 Secret Theater
Mesal Gear Solid
Microwave Hallway
Raiden
La Li Lu Le Lo
Liquid Snake
Psycho Mantis
Butts
Liquid Snake Explains Big Chungus
Memes
Snake? Snake! Snaaaaaaaake!
Metal Gear Solid in 5 Minutes
Post-Credits Conversations
Samus x Snake Ship
Meryl Silverburgh
Les Enfants Terrible
Love Theme
Smoking: Call me crazy, but I don't think cigarettes kill you that quickly, or reveal invisible laser beams. I enjoy Naked Snake's cigar more, since it's also used to burn off leeches. Too bad the other Snakes don't get anything. What's even left after cigarettes and cigars? I guess I don't want Solidus to run around with a vape pen or something.

You're All Diamonds
Monsoon's Meme Quotes
Monsoon
Games' Subtitles
Huey Emmerich
A Codec Call to Remember
Vulcan Raven
Major Zero
Metal Gear Solid 4
Sniper Rifle
Cartoon Foxhound Logo
MGS5's Gameplay
Naked Raiden
MGS3 Survival System
Naomi Hunter
Bladewolf
Codecs in Smash
Kojima's Prescience
Fission Mailed
Emma Emmerich
Tranquilizer Guns
Quiet's Theme
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes
Patriot AIs
Liquid's Arm
Metal Gear Acid
David Hayter
Kazuhira Miller
CQC Gestures of Affection
Fake Death Pill
Soliton Radar

At Least I Always Fought For What I Believed In
Nastasha Romanenko
Screaming Mantis' Dolls
Body-Snatchers
MGS1 Torture Sequence
The Best is Yet To Come
Nanomachines
Miuano Sam
Ninja Cat
Zone of the Enders
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX)
TNT
Crab Battle
Shoot Gunner
Wound Treatment System
Decoy Octopus: I guess Octopus is the first character to die in the MGS, huh? I mean, I know you can kill unnamed guards, but they don't count. There's not a lot you can say about him. I know Kojima planned for him to have a boss fight that was cut because of hardware limitations, but all that leaves you with is "this guy is good at disguises." We don't even know HOW good. I guess he must be pretty good, since they released art of his true form, and he looks nothing like Sigint. He's Mexican, huh? Was that done just to include another random country in here? Actually, hold on a second, is Octopus the only person in a boss squad who's never fought? What a missed opportunity in MGSV, you could've inserted him somewhere and had a boss fight with him! ... Anyway, look, he literally has no personality or backstory beyond "served with Liquid I guess." I guess it's appropriate that the master of disguise has the most ambiguous backstory, but with five more main series games and MGR after, they never found the time to give him anything more? Hell, at least have Drebin tell us his secretly tragic backstory over the course of ten minutes in a codec call.
Subsistence's Changes to MGS3
Rations
iPod
European Extreme
Diamond Dogs
Mega Man Battle Network

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Tanker (MGS2)
Liquid Snake's Disguise
Metal Gear (name)
Big Boss as the Protagonist
Metal Gear (MSX)
"70% of my body is made of movies. The other 30% is up to you."
Snake vs. Monkey
Twin Snakes Cutscenes
Holly White: Had to look her up. Is this the proto-Meryl?
Rules of Nature
1997 Tokyo Game Show Ad for Metal Gear Solid
Snake Tales
MGS4 TV Spots
Johnny Sasaki
Taking a Dump
Characters Wetting Themselves
Patriots' Identity
Metal Gear: Ghost Babel
Solidus Snake
Drebin
Pooyan Mission
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
MGS4 E3 2005 Trailer

They Played Us Like a Damn Fiddle
MGS Theme (Evolution Skateboarding)
Paz Ortega Andrade
Rosemary
Konami
Fatman
Metal Gear Solid V
Running Man
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
Rathalos
Raging Raven
Skull Face
Poisonous Zanzibar Hamsters
Love Deterrence
Death Stranding
Hideo Kojima
Gurlugon
Original MGS4 Ending
Quiet's Skin Breathing

More Than Enough to Kill Anything that Moves
MGS4 being a PS3-exclusive: This has to be the highest-profile game to not be ported to modern hardware, right? I mean of any generation. MGS3 is second only to RE4 in terms of games from that era being ported to everything, but MGS4 is just inexplicably still a PS3-exclusive, like fourteen years later. It can't possibly be that hard to port, either, so I just don't know what the reason for this is. Is it some kind of rights thing with Kojima? Because it was still exclusive when he was still on good terms with Konami. There are a lot of games from that era, particularly horror and mystery games, that aren't available on modern hardware, and it's not a specifically Sony problem. You know you STILL can't play FE9 except on the Gamecube? Is it just something with 2002-2008? Is that stretch of six years just cursed? I can't even remember if I played anything else on the PS3, too. I feel like I must have played at least one other game on it, but damned if I can think of it.
Keifer Sutherland as Snake
Metal Gear Survive
MGS Snake Eater Pachinko

Oh, is Boss in the trailer? I didnt see her.

If we're counting this as a mystery game series alongside AA, DR, and ZE, I found the first game to be the weakest of them, but I'm open to this second game. I'll definitely buy it.`

That's okay, because I didn't know anything about Boktai and had to look it up.

You're Pretty Good
Metal Gear Solid 3
Metal Gear Solid (PS1)
MGS Dialogue
Playstation: Pretty easily the winner of its generation. The N64 has like nine must-plays and then a whole lot of garbage, while the Saturn and Dreamcast (does it count as this gen, or the next?) just have nothing. And yeah, Shenmue counts as nothing. Shenmue was always bad.
Codec Sound Effect
Revolver Ocelot
The End
Last Days of Foxhound
Solid Snake
Groznyj Grad
Big Boss Saluting The Boss' Grave: Again, this says everything without a word of dialogue. I like MGS' clunky, bad dialogue a lot, but sometimes you need actions instead of words, and this is the perfect example of that.

The Lightning in the Rain
The Boss
Liquid Ocelot (Boss)
!
Snake in Smash
The Sorrow
Metal Gears
Original Main Theme
The Ladder
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Senator Armstrong
Old Snake
Snake Eater (song)
Cardboard Boxes
Arsenal Gear Sequence
MGS3 OST
Hiimdaisy Comics
Calling to the Night
Big Boss
Shadow Moses Dream (MGS4)
The Winds of Destruction
EVA: The perfect encapsulation of all things Bond Girl. I would call EVA the best Bond Girl, in fact, and by quite a large margin. She's compelling, her motives always make sense, she has no bad scenes (except, I guess, revealing that she took a Japanese woman's mitochondrial DNA, stuck it into zygote Snake, and stuff it all into her womb to use the Super Baby Method, which to be fair is pretty bad), and she avoids the interquels. Sure, her death is completely pointless and just exists to wrap up her story, can't have any of the old characters surviving, I guess (who's the most important MGS3-era character to survive MGS4? Is it Raikov?).
Ocelot Hand Gesture

What a Thrill
Otacon
Yoji Shinkawa
Metal Gear Solid 2
Guy Savage
War has Changed
Ghost Babel's E-rating
Colonel Campbell: If I was going to get 2deep4u, I would say that Campbell and Snake being more sympathetic and ultimately heroic than Zero and Big Boss is a product of their circumstances. The latter grew up in the Cold War and saw the world split in two, and had it driven into their minds that unity was a noble goal and that existing authority would never allow it. Meanwhile, Snake and Campbell grew up in a comparatively peaceful world (I guess "grew up" is wrong, but Campbell still wouldn't have seen WWII or the worst of the Cold War), and saw less of a need for either forced unity or tearing down existing structures. However, I don't feel like being 2deep4u, so I'll just say that I like Campbell's voice. Really nails the "older voice of reason" character. Too bad he's completely superfluous in MGS4, though. Oh man, I totally just remembered his fake marriage to Rose in that game, that subplot exists. I actually am shocked, now that I think about it, that Campbell doesn't show up in PW or MGSV. I guess Miller fills his role already, but still.
Para-Medic Movie Conversations
Jetstream Sam
Remaking MG1 and MG2
MGS3 Secret Theater
Mesal Gear Solid
Microwave Hallway
Raiden
La Li Lu Le Lo
Liquid Snake
Psycho Mantis
Butts
Liquid Snake Explains Big Chungus
Memes
Snake? Snake! Snaaaaaaaake!
Metal Gear Solid in 5 Minutes
Post-Credits Conversations
Samus x Snake Ship
Meryl Silverburgh
Les Enfants Terrible
Love Theme

You're All Diamonds
Monsoon's Meme Quotes
Monsoon
Games' Subtitles
Huey Emmerich
A Codec Call to Remember
Vulcan Raven
Major Zero
Metal Gear Solid 4
Sniper Rifle
Cartoon Foxhound Logo
MGS5's Gameplay
Naked Raiden
MGS3 Survival System
Naomi Hunter
Bladewolf
Codecs in Smash
Kojima's Prescience
Fission Mailed
Emma Emmerich
Tranquilizer Guns
Quiet's Theme
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes
Patriot AIs
Liquid's Arm
Metal Gear Acid
David Hayter
Kazuhira Miller
CQC Gestures of Affection
Fake Death Pill
Soliton Radar

At Least I Always Fought For What I Believed In
Nastasha Romanenko
Screaming Mantis' Dolls
Body-Snatchers
MGS1 Torture Sequence
The Best is Yet To Come
Nanomachines
Miuano Sam
Ninja Cat
Zone of the Enders: I've seen clips of these games online, but never played them. My understanding is that they're basically remembered as Kojima's "other" series, and while they have some merit to them beyond that, they'll never be remembered as anything else, particularly because they aren't even the best mecha games out there.
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX)
TNT
Crab Battle
Shoot Gunner
Wound Treatment System
Subsistence's Changes to MGS3: Had to check the differences. Has a 3D camera, more minigames, and the cutscenes turned into a movie... okay? Remember Other M's film mode, where it's all just a movie, as if anyone would ever want to experience Other M for its fantastic story? Anyway, is the movable camera that good a change?
Rations
iPod
European Extreme
Diamond Dogs
Mega Man Battle Network: I've played exactly one of these games, which was my friend Preston's copy of the first game in high school, and I played maybe half an hour. I remember getting to at least the first combat. I assumed the nomination was because someone who worked on MGS worked on this, too, or that Kojima coproduced one game or something. I can't find anything about that, though. The best I could find was Brian on Twitter (you know, Brian) saying that a minor character is "literally" Hideo Kojima.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Tanker (MGS2)
Liquid Snake's Disguise
Metal Gear (name)
Big Boss as the Protagonist
Metal Gear (MSX)
"70% of my body is made of movies. The other 30% is up to you."
Snake vs. Monkey
Twin Snakes Cutscenes
Rules of Nature
1997 Tokyo Game Show Ad for Metal Gear Solid
Snake Tales
MGS4 TV Spots
Johnny Sasaki
Taking a Dump
Characters Wetting Themselves
Patriots' Identity
Metal Gear: Ghost Babel
Solidus Snake
Drebin: You know what, I'll just say it: Drebin is the most useless character in the franchise. Cecile is more pointless, but she at least does something no one else could have done. I can accurately say that no one else exists in the MGS universe with established ornithology skills. Drebin's only purpose in the game is to be knowledgeable about weapons and to tell Snake the tragic backstories of the B&B Corps. That would fine, except that Nastasha exists! And she's knowledgeable about weapons! And I wouldn't care, except that MGS4 goes out of its way to tell us the fate of every single surviving named character in the first three games EXCEPT Nastasha. I don't know why this guy exists, I guess to help establish the details of the war economy? To reveal at the end that he was working for the Patriots all along, to add one more layer of complexity? Funnily enough, he'd have fit in just fine in MGR... except that he just doesn't show up. Was... was it just that they needed a black guy? I guess every game introduces a new black guy, so alright.
Pooyan Mission
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
MGS4 E3 2005 Trailer

They Played Us Like a Damn Fiddle
MGS Theme (Evolution Skateboarding)
Paz Ortega Andrade
Rosemary
Konami
Fatman
Metal Gear Solid V
Running Man
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
Rathalos
Raging Raven
Skull Face
Poisonous Zanzibar Hamsters
Love Deterrence
Death Stranding: The only thing I know about this game is the Princess Beach scene. Man, Kojima's attempts to make games post-Konami just really didn't work out at all, huh? Freaking P.T. isn't even available as a teaser anymore.
Hideo Kojima
Gurlugon
Original MGS4 Ending
Quiet's Skin Breathing

More Than Enough to Kill Anything that Moves
Keifer Sutherland as Snake
Metal Gear Survive
MGS Snake Eater Pachinko

I play a lot of big isometric WRPGs, and I've been wishing lately that there were more shorter options. There aren't any like 10-15 hour examples in the genre, which would be ideal for me.

Basically everyone agrees that 3-3 is the most 'missed opportunities' chapter in the series.

Unless people are really into this, more than I think, I think I'll call the list at 250. I'm not sure MGS has as much to talk about as Star Trek, Star Wars, and Final Fantasy.

You're Pretty Good
Metal Gear Solid 3
Metal Gear Solid (PS1)
MGS Dialogue
Codec Sound Effect
Revolver Ocelot
The End
Last Days of Foxhound
Solid Snake
Groznyj Grad

The Lightning in the Rain
The Boss
Liquid Ocelot (Boss)
!
Snake in Smash
The Sorrow
Metal Gears
Original Main Theme
The Ladder
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Senator Armstrong
Old Snake
Snake Eater (song)
Cardboard Boxes
Arsenal Gear Sequence
MGS3 OST
Hiimdaisy Comics
Calling to the Night
Big Boss
Shadow Moses Dream (MGS4)
The Winds of Destruction
Ocelot Hand Gesture

What a Thrill
Otacon: An excellent second main character... if he was one. In MGS1, it's Meryl, in MGS2, it's Snake, in MGS3, it's EVA, in MGS4, it's... I *guess* it's Otacon. Otacon plays such an important role as the tech guy, but he's integrated well beyond that as Snake's actual friend and the voice of naivety and innocence. Because Snake is already an experienced soldier who's seen it all at the start of the first game, they needed someone else to go from the noobie to the veteran, and that's Otacon. Worse for him, though, is that that remains true in every single game. In MGS2, you can't have Snake go through any heartbreak, because everyone he cares about besides Otacon, Meryl, and Campbell is already dead, and it can't be Raiden, because Raiden has to suffer at the end of the game instead of the middle, so Otacon suffers again. And then in MGS4, Kojima had no idea how to wrap up the Naomi storyline, so Otacon just suffers even more. I'm just saying that although Otacon is a tall, handsome super scientist with an IQ of 500, if you are a woman, don't go within a mile of the man. I still want to know what happens to him in the canon Meryl ending. I guess Campbell must've sent a helicopter to pick him up or something? Anyway, yeah. Snake has an IQ of 180, but whenever the plot needs a tech garbage to happen, Geordi is the guy called instead of Dat--I mean, Otacon is. Speaking of which, explain to me why Otacon doesn't just give you cloaking tech at the start of MGS4. Actually, explain to me what he actually invented that was new, since Huey invented superior Metal Gears in the 70s and the Pain had cloaking technology in the 60s. I guess Otacon is also a 1337 haxxor, though.
Yoji Shinkawa
Metal Gear Solid 2
Guy Savage
War has Changed
Ghost Babel's E-rating
Para-Medic Movie Conversations
Jetstream Sam
Remaking MG1 and MG2
MGS3 Secret Theater
Mesal Gear Solid
Microwave Hallway
Raiden
La Li Lu Le Lo
Liquid Snake
Psycho Mantis
Butts
Liquid Snake Explains Big Chungus
Memes
Snake? Snake! Snaaaaaaaake!
Metal Gear Solid in 5 Minutes
Post-Credits Conversations
Samus x Snake Ship
Meryl Silverburgh
Les Enfants Terrible
Love Theme: I don't quite know how to explain it, but the opening of the theme, like the first ten seconds, with the groaning string instrument really sets the painful, despairing, old-feeling tone of the game. It's better than the rest of the song. Once the woman starts singing, I lose interest. Did they choose Hebrew because it's an ancient language and Snake is now super old, or am I looking into things too much? By the way, as an official Jew who went to Hebrew school, I have no ****ing clue what she's saying. Here are the words I remember in Hebrew: Yes>Ken, No>Lo, Hello/Goodbye>Shalom, Fish>Doug, House>Buyit.

You're All Diamonds
Monsoon's Meme Quotes
Monsoon
Games' Subtitles
Huey Emmerich
A Codec Call to Remember
Vulcan Raven
Major Zero
Metal Gear Solid 4
Sniper Rifle
Cartoon Foxhound Logo
MGS5's Gameplay
Naked Raiden: Another bizarre thing that you'd never see in a 'normal' series. I know people aren't fans of this, but I think it's this kind of stuff, the good and the bad, that really define MGS as a series, more so than the actual plot or characters or gameplay. Not sure what to make of the cartwheels, though. I guess that's the difference between Raiden and the other Snakes: dignity. Even at Raiden's coolest, he's still a goofy, lovable doofus.
MGS3 Survival System
Naomi Hunter
Bladewolf
Codecs in Smash
Kojima's Prescience
Fission Mailed
Emma Emmerich
Tranquilizer Guns
Quiet's Theme
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes
Patriot AIs: I don't really mind AI dropping into the series out of nowhere. Like, that's the appropriate type of military sci-fi for Metal Gear. They're utilized well, too. I'm not too hot on their actual plans, but it's okay.
Liquid's Arm
Metal Gear Acid
David Hayter
Kazuhira Miller
CQC Gestures of Affection
Fake Death Pill
Soliton Radar: A perfectly serviceable gameplay conceit. I appreciate how they tried to integrate it into the story. I also appreciate how the prequels don't include it, since Mei Ling hasn't invented it yet.

At Least I Always Fought For What I Believed In
Nastasha Romanenko
Screaming Mantis' Dolls
Body-Snatchers
MGS1 Torture Sequence
The Best is Yet To Come
Nanomachines
Miuano Sam
Ninja Cat
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX)
TNT
Crab Battle
Shoot Gunner
Wound Treatment System
Rations
iPod
European Extreme
Diamond Dogs

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Tanker (MGS2)
Liquid Snake's Disguise
Metal Gear (name)
Big Boss as the Protagonist
Metal Gear (MSX)
"70% of my body is made of movies. The other 30% is up to you."
Snake vs. Monkey
Twin Snakes Cutscenes
Rules of Nature
1997 Tokyo Game Show Ad for Metal Gear Solid
Snake Tales
MGS4 TV Spots
Johnny Sasaki
Taking a Dump
Characters Wetting Themselves
Patriots' Identity
Metal Gear: Ghost Babel
Solidus Snake
Pooyan Mission
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
MGS4 E3 2005 Trailer

They Played Us Like a Damn Fiddle
MGS Theme (Evolution Skateboarding)
Paz Ortega Andrade
Rosemary
Konami
Fatman
Metal Gear Solid V
Running Man
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
Rathalos
Raging Raven
Skull Face
Poisonous Zanzibar Hamsters
Love Deterrence
Hideo Kojima
Gurlugon
Original MGS4 Ending
Quiet's Skin Breathing

More Than Enough to Kill Anything that Moves
Keifer Sutherland as Snake
Metal Gear Survive
MGS Snake Eater Pachinko

You're Pretty Good
Metal Gear Solid 3
Metal Gear Solid (PS1)
MGS Dialogue
Codec Sound Effect
Revolver Ocelot
The End
Last Days of Foxhound
Solid Snake
Groznyj Grad

The Lightning in the Rain
The Boss
Liquid Ocelot (Boss)
!
Snake in Smash
The Sorrow
Metal Gears
Original Main Theme
The Ladder
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Senator Armstrong
Old Snake
Snake Eater (song): It's bizarre how it took until MGS3 for us to get a proper Bond song, and it's strange that we didn't get another after it. This has it all: the strong belting vowels, the... I don't know anything about music, so I can't really go on from there, but you know what I mean. I love this kind of spy music, even if it's actually weird and rare and most aren't very good. And I say that as someone who's watched every single James Bond -- 80% of those movies are garbage, and most of the songs are borderline. In the ranking of Parody Bond Songs, I'll say Snake Eater > I Expect You To Die > Dr. Evil. Comparing it to real Bond songs, though, it trounces most of them. The only ones I'll accept arguments for are Goldfinger, Diamonds Are Forever, and Spy Who Loved Me. Live and Let Die I don't count, it has nothing to do with anything and is barely a Bond song. I just noticed all of my best Bond music choices are from the 60s-70s, well, maybe that's because that's the best type of spy music, and Snake Eater delivers.
Cardboard Boxes
Arsenal Gear Sequence
MGS3 OST
Hiimdaisy Comics
Calling to the Night
Big Boss
Shadow Moses Dream (MGS4)
The Winds of Destruction
Ocelot Hand Gesture

What a Thrill
Yoji Shinkawa
Metal Gear Solid 2
Guy Savage
War has Changed
Ghost Babel's E-rating
Para-Medic Movie Conversations
Jetstream Sam
Remaking MG1 and MG2
MGS3 Secret Theater
Mesal Gear Solid
Microwave Hallway
Raiden
La Li Lu Le Lo
Liquid Snake
Psycho Mantis
Butts
Liquid Snake Explains Big Chungus
Memes
Snake? Snake! Snaaaaaaaake!
Metal Gear Solid in 5 Minutes
Post-Credits Conversations
Samus x Snake Ship
Meryl Silverburgh
Les Enfants Terrible

You're All Diamonds
Monsoon's Meme Quotes
Monsoon
Games' Subtitles
Huey Emmerich
A Codec Call to Remember
Vulcan Raven
Major Zero
Metal Gear Solid 4
Sniper Rifle
Cartoon Foxhound Logo
MGS5's Gameplay
MGS3 Survival System
Naomi Hunter
Bladewolf
Codecs in Smash
Kojima's Prescience
Fission Mailed
Emma Emmerich
Tranquilizer Guns
Quiet's Theme
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes
Liquid's Arm
Metal Gear Acid
David Hayter
Kazuhira Miller
CQC Gestures of Affection
Fake Death Pill

At Least I Always Fought For What I Believed In
Nastasha Romanenko
Screaming Mantis' Dolls
Body-Snatchers
MGS1 Torture Sequence
The Best is Yet To Come
Nanomachines
Miuano Sam
Ninja Cat
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX)
TNT
Crab Battle
Shoot Gunner
Wound Treatment System
Rations: I appreciate the reasoning behind regenerating health, but it completely breaks the flow of the game to have to find a safe place to lay down and wait for your health bar to crawl up. Rations break immersion by putting you into a menu, but at least you're back to the fight immediately afterward. There was one fight in MGSV in particular, the one where Quiet leaves after, where I had to hide, regenerate, fight, hide, regenerate, fight, hide, regenerate a ton in order to beat it because I was basically just ignoring the game's crafting system and had garbage weapons.
iPod
European Extreme
Diamond Dogs

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Tanker (MGS2)
Liquid Snake's Disguise: I mean, either Snake can see the codec portraits even though it's audio only, or he can't. But Liquid makes a huge show of revealing his true identity, and Grey Fox's static screen seems in-universe, so I assume it's real... but if that's the case, shouldn't Snake and Campbell immediately know that this guy looks exactly like Snake? And that he looks suspiciously 32 years old and not 60? And isn't Miller Asian? And did Liquid's plan really require impersonating him? It's all such a dubious veneer to explain why Liquid impersonates this guy when the real reason is to give more time interacting with Liquid, which, fine. Compare Liquid's screen time to Solidus' and ergh.
Metal Gear (name)
Big Boss as the Protagonist
Metal Gear (MSX)
"70% of my body is made of movies. The other 30% is up to you.": What a weird quote. Anyway, the idea of the game's creator as a hidden unimportant character is fine. I kind of like when games do that. I never knew Hideo was in the games, though!
Snake vs. Monkey
Twin Snakes Cutscenes
Rules of Nature
1997 Tokyo Game Show Ad for Metal Gear Solid
Snake Tales
MGS4 TV Spots
Johnny Sasaki
Taking a Dump
Characters Wetting Themselves: Again, chalk this one up to Weird Kojima Things. It stops after MGS4, though. Weird thing to cut.
Patriots' Identity
Metal Gear: Ghost Babel
Solidus Snake: Argh, this guy. He was easily the least interesting Snake up until Venom. His character boils down to "I must do bad things to stop a greater evil," but he's not FUN like Liquid or Ocelot, he has no presence like The Boss... hell, he doesn't even have a personal connection like Paz. And don't say that saying "LOL WAIT WAS IT YOUR PARENTS I KILLED THIRTY YEARS AGO?!" at the end of the game counts. I guess it makes sense in a metacontextual way, since the real villains are the Patriot AIs, and Solidus and Raiden both know they're pawns who just have to play out their roles, but Solidus makes zero attempt to be interesting. For most of the game, he's very blunt and straightforward, and then when he remembers who you are, he's just a jerk about it. I guess it also fits that Solidus has such a lame boss fight, since by that point he's completely lost control of what's happening. Hell, even Skull Face has more of a presence than this guy. And let's not ask questions like "didn't everyone notice that the President of the United States looks exactly like the legendary mercenary Big Boss, that crazy guy who had his own island nation in the 1970s and 80s, and also Liquid and Solid Snake?" He's also the only Snake to rely on technogadgets; the others just use normal guns and munitions, which makes him seem even weaker by comparison. I refuse to believe this guy above the bottom 2 in anyone's list of Snakes.
Pooyan Mission
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
MGS4 E3 2005 Trailer

They Played Us Like a Damn Fiddle
MGS Theme (Evolution Skateboarding)
Paz Ortega Andrade
Rosemary: I guess you can technically argue that Rose is the Meryl of her game, in that she's the romantic lead, but I don't count her. Anyway, Rose is kind of a bad person? She's one of those people who basically gets away with everything, I guess. I'm going to just say it: of all the character who have Codec numbers, Rose is the worst and least interesting one relative to the amount of lines she has. Like, sure, black bomb guy is worse than her, but he dies five seconds after you get his number. Rose is there for two entire games. I appreciate how MGR references her once, and then she just doesn't exist for the rest of game. Like, I'm sorry, but this character is a complete nothingburger.
Konami
Fatman
Metal Gear Solid V
Running Man: "Running Man was once a well-known short-distance runner who gained his fame during the Barcelona Olympics, in which he ran the 100-meter dash in 9.69 seconds. His athletic career was put to an end when he was caught doping, using steroids, and he became a mercenary afterwards." That's a bit of a change of careers, pal! Anyway, this character just exists to be an Arnold reference.
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
Rathalos
Raging Raven
Skull Face
Poisonous Zanzibar Hamsters
Love Deterrence
Hideo Kojima
Gurlugon
Original MGS4 Ending
Quiet's Skin Breathing

More Than Enough to Kill Anything that Moves
Keifer Sutherland as Snake
Metal Gear Survive
MGS Snake Eater Pachinko

Torlovsk posted...

"70% of my body is made of movies. The other 30% is up to you."

I don't know how to rank this, I can't find who said it

handsomeboy2012 posted...

Dammit, can't believe I didn't notice it was already there

Nominate Rations

Sorry, I meant to mention that it was already nominated.

You're Pretty Good
Metal Gear Solid 3
Metal Gear Solid (PS1)
MGS Dialogue
Codec Sound Effect
Revolver Ocelot
The End
Last Days of Foxhound
Solid Snake
Groznyj Grad

The Lightning in the Rain
The Boss
Liquid Ocelot (Boss)
!
Snake in Smash
The Sorrow
Metal Gears
Original Main Theme
The Ladder
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Senator Armstrong
Old Snake
Cardboard Boxes
Arsenal Gear Sequence
MGS3 OST
Hiimdaisy Comics
Calling to the Night
Big Boss
Shadow Moses Dream (MGS4)
The Winds of Destruction
Ocelot Hand Gesture

What a Thrill
Yoji Shinkawa
Metal Gear Solid 2
Guy Savage
War has Changed
Ghost Babel's E-rating
Para-Medic Movie Conversations
Jetstream Sam
Remaking MG1 and MG2
MGS3 Secret Theater
Mesal Gear Solid
Microwave Hallway: Yeah, this is another one of Kojima's random good ideas. It doesn't make a lot of sense, for several reasons, but getting to see Snake go through all of this effort for what he knows is right despite never getting any of the honor or rewards he should is heartwrenching. The way he's pulling himself forward by the end with his fingers? Perfection.
Raiden
La Li Lu Le Lo
Liquid Snake: I'm not absolutely certain how to rank Liquid Snake. He does a good job of the "there but for the grace of god go I" stuff for Snake, of course, but Liquid as a character is almost entirely just a giant inferiority complex, the biggest one ever. It's literally built into his DNA. That's probably why he's not as well-remembered as Ocelot and The Boss, who have a bit more complexity to them. I think my favorite Liquid memory is actually not from a game. Like ten years ago, people on B8 were discussing what the next MGS could be after MGS4, and some people pitched a Foxhound game starring Liquid. I said "Do you really want a game where the protagonist says things like I'M YOU I'M YOUR SHADOWWWWW," and Leonhart responded with "why would I ever not want that?" But anyway yes, Liquid's ultimate demise at the hands of Fox-Die is nicely poetic, even if a James Bond movie stole the idea twenty years later.
Psycho Mantis
Butts
Liquid Snake Explains Big Chungus
Memes
Snake? Snake! Snaaaaaaaake!
Metal Gear Solid in 5 Minutes
Post-Credits Conversations
Samus x Snake Ship
Meryl Silverburgh
Les Enfants Terrible

You're All Diamonds
Monsoon's Meme Quotes
Monsoon
Games' Subtitles
Huey Emmerich
A Codec Call to Remember
Vulcan Raven
Major Zero
Metal Gear Solid 4
Sniper Rifle: It's interesting. Theoretically, this is just another weapon in your inventory. It functions the same way as other games' sniper rifles. Yet, the MGS version feels very different, both because Snake just will not keep his damn hands steady, and because it's unfortunately associated with the most annoying parts of the series. "Go back the entire game to find one" is the most annoying thing ever, and it happens in both MGS1 and MGS2. The Sniper Wolf battles are kind of frustrating, and are more fun to use radio missiles on. Quiet's boss fight is simply boring, Crying Wolf's boss fight is a complete whatever... Really, this weapon only has The End, but what a fight, eh?
Cartoon Foxhound Logo
MGS5's Gameplay
MGS3 Survival System
Naomi Hunter
Bladewolf
Codecs in Smash
Kojima's Prescience
Fission Mailed
Emma Emmerich: Dramatically, Emma's purpose is to be her game's Meryl and Sniper Wolf rolled into one, but with a much condensed role. She's technically your female supporting character, but she dies so damn fast that you'd be forgiven for forgetting that. And Otacon suffers so much that having one MORE thing is almost forgettable. I like her just fine, but this girl is incapable of catching a break.
Tranquilizer Guns
Quiet's Theme
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes
Liquid's Arm
Metal Gear Acid
David Hayter
Kazuhira Miller
CQC Gestures of Affection: Again, this is just another one of Kojima's weird things. Nothing else I can really say about it.
Fake Death Pill

At Least I Always Fought For What I Believed In
Nastasha Romanenko
Screaming Mantis' Dolls
Body-Snatchers
MGS1 Torture Sequence
The Best is Yet To Come
Nanomachines
Miuano Sam: I have zero memory of this, but I'll trust you. Honestly, I don't mind it. The idea of a nickname for your silly codename, which itself is useless since everyone knows your real name anyway, is kind of neat.
Ninja Cat
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX)
TNT
Crab Battle
Shoot Gunner
Wound Treatment System
iPod
European Extreme
Diamond Dogs: Complete whatever from me, bro.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Tanker (MGS2)
Metal Gear (name)
Big Boss as the Protagonist
Metal Gear (MSX)
Snake vs. Monkey
Twin Snakes Cutscenes
Rules of Nature
1997 Tokyo Game Show Ad for Metal Gear Solid
Snake Tales
MGS4 TV Spots
Johnny Sasaki
Taking a Dump
Patriots' Identity
Metal Gear: Ghost Babel
Pooyan Mission
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
MGS4 E3 2005 Trailer

They Played Us Like a Damn Fiddle
MGS Theme (Evolution Skateboarding)
Paz Ortega Andrade
Konami
Fatman
Metal Gear Solid V
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
Rathalos
Raging Raven
Skull Face
Poisonous Zanzibar Hamsters
Love Deterrence
Hideo Kojima
Gurlugon
Original MGS4 Ending
Quiet's Skin Breathing

More Than Enough to Kill Anything that Moves
Keifer Sutherland as Snake
Metal Gear Survive
MGS Snake Eater Pachinko

Leonhart4 posted...

That wasn't what happened to Zero. Skull Face poisoned him with a fake pin that he claimed belonged to The Boss. I thought the Zero Tapes in MGSV were great, actually. I just wish they weren't, you know, just tapes.

Nominate Emma Emmerich

I Remember the fake pin, but I couldve sworn that was just a pretext. Oh well, thats what I get for not looking it up.

You're Pretty Good
Metal Gear Solid 3
Metal Gear Solid (PS1)
MGS Dialogue
Codec Sound Effect
Revolver Ocelot
The End
Last Days of Foxhound
Solid Snake
Groznyj Grad: Easily the best final level in the series. Shadow Moses doesn't really have a final area, Arsenal Gear is good, but not that good, Ocelot's submarine is trash, that super long tunnel in PW is trash, and does MGSV even have a defined final level? I don't remember. Anyway, having to infiltrate this super secret awesome Russian base thath even the government can't get into, full of fanatically-devoted soldiers, is great. All of the little things you can do in it are great. Everything about it is great, except that it's really hard to spell.

The Lightning in the Rain
The Boss
Liquid Ocelot (Boss)
!
Snake in Smash
The Sorrow
Metal Gears
Original Main Theme
The Ladder
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Senator Armstrong
Old Snake
Cardboard Boxes
Arsenal Gear Sequence
MGS3 OST
Hiimdaisy Comics
Calling to the Night
Big Boss
Shadow Moses Dream (MGS4)
The Winds of Destruction
Ocelot Hand Gesture

What a Thrill
Yoji Shinkawa
Metal Gear Solid 2
Guy Savage
War has Changed
Ghost Babel's E-rating
Para-Medic Movie Conversations
Jetstream Sam
Remaking MG1 and MG2
MGS3 Secret Theater
Mesal Gear Solid
Raiden
La Li Lu Le Lo
Psycho Mantis
Butts
Liquid Snake Explains Big Chungus
Memes
Snake? Snake! Snaaaaaaaake!
Metal Gear Solid in 5 Minutes
Post-Credits Conversations
Samus x Snake Ship
Meryl Silverburgh
Les Enfants Terrible

You're All Diamonds
Monsoon's Meme Quotes
Monsoon: I basically said everything I have to say about Monsoon already, sorry! Guy's fun and everything, but that's all he is. His only actual contribution to the plot is convincing Raiden to enjoy killing, which has no effect on what happens later.
Games' Subtitles
Huey Emmerich
A Codec Call to Remember
Vulcan Raven
Major Zero: Blegh, another hard-to-rate character. Major Zero is great in MGS3. He's a variation on Campbell; a little warmer and sillier, but still clearly a professional who knows his stuff -- and yet significantly less ethical than Campbell, and more certain of his beliefs. Campbell will feel sorry for keeping info from Snake, will sympathize with what's happening, and will hesitate when he does sketchy stuff. Zero is just like "kill who you need to kill lol" and shows basically no remorse for anything even though he's polite and tries to help you emotionally. I really like the contrast there. Like with Big Boss himself, that was all we needed from him, and anything else damages his character. Don't get me wrong: it's fine that he shows up in MGS4, and he's super old and in a coma, and Big Boss gives a rambling speech about how he needs to take everything back to zero by pulling the plug on his breathing machine, that's fine. It's fine because he doesn't talk, so it's all Big Boss resolving their relationship. But MGSV (I truly am sorry for constantly bringing up MGSV, but it just won't stop intruding) devotes a lot of side content to Major Zero that's both bad and boring. I guess in MGS4, I assumed Zero was braindead just because he was really old, but no. He's braindead because of a 500 IQ plan by a guy we'd never heard of who poisoned him using tea (because all British people love tea) served to him by a sexy blonde Latina who looks fifteen and is named "Pacifica Ocean" and has a bomb in her womb because although he's 500 IQ he also wastes decades planning useless revenge schemes and screaming WHOOOOOOOO, and then his followers kept him alive in a coma for thirty years because ???. This is legitimately the most important part of MGSV as far as the broader lore of the series goes. I also find the idea dubious that the Patriots' grand plan to unify the world with information control and erase all differences between people was his doing. Major Zero did not seem that subtle in MGS3, he seemed about as blunt in his methods as a spymaster could possibly be. 500 IQ plans where you manipulate the entire world was Ocelot's shtick. The idea that Zero has good intentions, but as soon as he slips into a coma, all of his AIs go awry and his friends turn evil and start reviving dead soldiers as robot zombie slaves isn't completely terrible, but I still feel it could have been done better.
Metal Gear Solid 4
Cartoon Foxhound Logo
MGS5's Gameplay
MGS3 Survival System
Naomi Hunter
Bladewolf
Codecs in Smash
Kojima's Prescience
Fission Mailed
Tranquilizer Guns
Quiet's Theme
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes
Liquid's Arm
Metal Gear Acid
David Hayter
Kazuhira Miller
Fake Death Pill: Great idea, but not much to say about it. Clever usage in the Sorrow fight.

At Least I Always Fought For What I Believed In
Nastasha Romanenko
Screaming Mantis' Dolls
Body-Snatchers
MGS1 Torture Sequence
The Best is Yet To Come
Nanomachines
Ninja Cat
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX)
TNT
Crab Battle
Shoot Gunner
Wound Treatment System
iPod
European Extreme

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Tanker (MGS2)
Metal Gear (name)
Big Boss as the Protagonist
Metal Gear (MSX)
Snake vs. Monkey
Twin Snakes Cutscenes
Rules of Nature
1997 Tokyo Game Show Ad for Metal Gear Solid
Snake Tales
MGS4 TV Spots
Johnny Sasaki
Taking a Dump
Patriots' Identity: I liked this when I was twenty or whatever, but I don't like it anymore. Sure, I believe that Major Zero and Big Boss have the connections to be among the world's movers and shakers, but Para-Medic? Sigint? EVA is just a ****ing Chinese spy, what was her role in this? I mean, look, I get the appeal of wanting to tie everything together in a neat bow, but the secret people who control the evil shadow government should have just been random CEOs who have public Wikipedia articles, but you've still never heard of them. The idea that they were ALL involved in an obscure mission in Russia and ended up choosing a side in a secret war between Major Zero and Big Boss interpreting the Boss' legacy about how to unify the world is really dumb, especially when Kojima starts trying to tie everything together by having Sigint be the DARPA chief (who is clearly not in his late 60s in MGS1) and Para-Medic be the inexplicably evil torture doctor who drove Grey Fox insane. I know people can change over the course of forty years, but that was just so goddamned random. Having our two really sympathetic, kindhearted supporting characters turn evil and corrupt and die ignobly off-screen is one of the most bizarre decisions in this entire series.
Metal Gear: Ghost Babel
Pooyan Mission
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
MGS4 E3 2005 Trailer

They Played Us Like a Damn Fiddle
MGS Theme (Evolution Skateboarding)
Paz Ortega Andrade
Konami
Fatman
Metal Gear Solid V
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
Rathalos
Raging Raven
Skull Face
Poisonous Zanzibar Hamsters
Love Deterrence
Hideo Kojima
Gurlugon
Original MGS4 Ending: This would have been awful. There needs to be some kind of hope or redemption, this is just despair.
Quiet's Skin Breathing

More Than Enough to Kill Anything that Moves
Keifer Sutherland as Snake
Metal Gear Survive
MGS Snake Eater Pachinko

Actually, was Vulcan Raven retconned to be mundane instead of magical? I can't remember.

What a Thrill
Yoji Shinkawa
Metal Gear Solid 2
Guy Savage
War has Changed
Ghost Babel's E-rating
Para-Medic Movie Conversations
Jetstream Sam
Remaking MG1 and MG2: I normally oppose remakes, both of video games and movies. My position is that you should only remake something if you can meaningfully improve it because it's flawed in some way. I was okay with FFVIIR, and I would accept a MG and MG2 remake. Both are clunky games because they're just too ahead of their time, and both would benefit from modern technology. I'm kind of surprised MGS1 was even a sequel to them instead of just a remake itself.
MGS3 Secret Theater
Mesal Gear Solid
Raiden
La Li Lu Le Lo: See, this could have easily just been a screeching censor bleep, or a blank silence. Instead, they turned it into something weird and fun.
Psycho Mantis
Butts
Liquid Snake Explains Big Chungus
Memes
Snake? Snake! Snaaaaaaaake!: Easily the best game over screen in gaming.
Metal Gear Solid in 5 Minutes
Post-Credits Conversations
Samus x Snake Ship
Meryl Silverburgh
Les Enfants Terribles: I love how casually Liquid throws this out there. "Oh yeah, they created us with the super baby method, no big deal." Imagine being a scientist and naming your idea that. I'm going to quote the MGS Wiki now: "A technology for intensifying fetus growth in the womb. A fertilized egg created using a cell nucleus is divided and eight cloned babies are transferred to a womb. Then, by intentionally weeding out and eliminating six cloned babies at a specific point in time, the growth potential of the remaining two cloned babies is increased." I appreciate how the later games never reference this or the dominant/recessive genetics thing ever again. And the idea of cloning Big Boss because he's the ultimate soldier is wonderful, of course. Even ignoring how they do this with 1970s technology, the idea that they want more ultimate soldiers, but only exactly three, two of which immediately leave for Africa, is so, so dumb that I can't help but love it. It's also weird how little the games play up the Snakes' similar appearances. You'd think there'd be a whole subplot about someone impersonating someone else, but it's just once in MGS2 where Solidus claims to be Solid Snake, and everyone just immediately knows it's a lie.

You're All Diamonds
Monsoon's Meme Quotes: If you were going to rank characters by how much they show up vs how much they're remembered by fans, the winner is Monsoon, and the loser is Olga. Monsoon shows up for ten seconds, spouts some crazy dialogue about memes, and makes Raiden question his entire life based on nothing. Then Raiden just immediately kills him, and that's it. It's shocking how small this guy's role is compared to how memorable he is. He also fulfills an important role mechanically as the "boss with a silly gimmick" that each game needs to have (Mantis, Fatman, The Sorrow, Laughing Octopus, and Monsoon).
Games' Subtitles
Huey Emmerich
A Codec Call to Remember
Vulcan Raven
Metal Gear Solid 4
Cartoon Foxhound Logo
MGS5's Gameplay
MGS3 Survival System
Naomi Hunter
Bladewolf
Codecs in Smash
Kojima's Prescience: He's like Star Trek. A very dumb version of Star Trek -- sometimes he perfectly predicts something, but more often, he gets things entertainingly wrong.
Fission Mailed
Tranquilizer Guns
Quiet's Theme
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes
Liquid's Arm
Metal Gear Acid
David Hayter
Kazuhira Miller

At Least I Always Fought For What I Believed In
Nastasha Romanenko
Screaming Mantis' Dolls: One doll is Psycho Mantis, the other is The Sorrow. How strange that she would have one supernatural doll, and one vocal cord parasite doll, I wonder what she was thinking?
Body-Snatchers
MGS1 Torture Sequence
The Best is Yet To Come
Nanomachines
Ninja Cat
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX)
TNT
Crab Battle
Shoot Gunner
Wound Treatment System: It fits the theme of survival that the game has going on, but I wouldn't say I love this or anything. It's just fine.
iPod
European Extreme: I had to look up the differences. It's just extreme mode, but being caught makes you lose? Eh. I mean, it's nice to include some kind of bonus content as an apology for the game coming out later in Europe, I guess.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Tanker (MGS2)
Metal Gear (name)
Big Boss as the Protagonist
Metal Gear (MSX)
Snake vs. Monkey
Twin Snakes Cutscenes
Rules of Nature
1997 Tokyo Game Show Ad for Metal Gear Solid
Snake Tales
MGS4 TV Spots
Johnny Sasaki
Taking a Dump
Metal Gear: Ghost Babel
Pooyan Mission
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
MGS4 E3 2005 Trailer

They Played Us Like a Damn Fiddle
MGS Theme (Evolution Skateboarding)
Paz Ortega Andrade
Konami
Fatman
Metal Gear Solid V
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
Rathalos
Raging Raven
Skull Face
Poisonous Zanzibar Hamsters
Love Deterrence
Hideo Kojima
Gurlugon
Quiet's Skin Breathing

More Than Enough to Kill Anything that Moves
Keifer Sutherland as Snake
Metal Gear Survive
MGS Snake Eater Pachinko

I just realized, what the hell happened to Chico in MGSV? Did he just die in the helicopter crash in GZ? And what was with the headphone jack in his chest? Am I insane for thinking that if you introduce a character who has a headphone jack in his chest, it demands some kind of explanation?

You're Pretty Good
Metal Gear Solid 3
Metal Gear Solid (PS1)
MGS Dialogue
Codec Sound Effect
Revolver Ocelot
The End
Last Days of Foxhound
Solid Snake

The Lightning in the Rain
The Boss
Liquid Ocelot (Boss)
!
Snake in Smash
The Sorrow: AKA the only good magic character besides Mantis, AKA the only Cobra who matters besides the Boss, AKA the only magic character Kojima didn't ruin later on (I bet he would have, if he'd finished the game), AKAnot even in the five most memorable parts of the game besides MGS3 is too good for its own good. The Sorrow acts as backstory for the Boss, and implication of greater things beyond the scope of Big Boss' adventures, and a way to force you the player to reckon with your actions. In that way, he's similar to Old Snake throwing up if you kill too many Afghani people in MGS4, but, uh, better. Classier. One of my favorite moments in my first playthrough was when a soldier on the river screamed Youuuu attttteeee meeeeeeee because I killed and ate a vulture that ate his corpse. The "boss fight" itself isn't even really a boss fight, I'm not even sure if you can lose it, but it's still so damn good. How do you even think of including a river of the ghosts of people you killed trying to zombie at you in a game about spies and robots? This is the good kind of inexplicable Kojima decision.
Metal Gears
Original Main Theme
The Ladder
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Senator Armstrong
Old Snake
Cardboard Boxes
Arsenal Gear Sequence
MGS3 OST
Hiimdaisy Comics: They're fantastic, of course. Too bad that Hiimdaisy not only never finished them, she later spoke out against them and complained that people wanted more, saying "it's like you were a teenager scribbling on the desk and you grew up to be a real artist, and people are coming up to you asking when you're going to go back to scribbling on your desk." It's like, sorry I enjoyed your product, man. Sometimes, I just reread all of these, because why not? They completely nail the series in a way nothing else does.
Calling to the Night
Big Boss
Shadow Moses Dream (MGS4)
The Winds of Destruction
Ocelot Hand Gesture

I have no memory of any of that except the Venom Snake part, but Ill trust you. I can retract that statement, then.

In my defense, I only played MGSV once, as opposed to the multiple playthroughs of the other games Ive done.

ctesjbuvf posted...

Opinions about it aside, this is incorrect.

I at least don't remember any! The revenge themes are way more overt. When does the 1984 stuff come into play?

Raka_Putra posted...

Heck yeah Tranq Guns. When I was playing Hitman I miss them dearly... :')

Also wow that was a long for MGSV tirade. What about the gameplay though? I guess it not being mentioned is already indicative...

I left it out because it was nominated separately.

At least one of each first entry and the third except Legends and Lets Go.

At Least I Always Fought For What I Believed In
Nastasha Romanenko: Literally the only named character of the four real games who doesn't get a resolution. What motivated that? It's so odd that Mei Ling, Meryl, Johnny Sasaki, Rose, and even Sunny show up, but not Nastasha. I guess she's also the most pointless character in the four games, since the only useful thing she ever says is "smoke reveals lasers," and then everything else is just rambling about nukes or exotic weapons.
Body-Snatchers
MGS1 Torture Sequence
The Best is Yet To Come
Nanomachines
Ninja Cat
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX)
TNT
Crab Battle
Shoot Gunner
iPod

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Tanker (MGS2)
Metal Gear (name)
Big Boss as the Protagonist
Metal Gear (MSX)
Snake vs. Monkey
Twin Snakes Cutscenes
Rules of Nature
1997 Tokyo Game Show Ad for Metal Gear Solid
Snake Tales
MGS4 TV Spots
Johnny Sasaki
Taking a Dump
Metal Gear: Ghost Babel
Pooyan Mission
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
MGS4 E3 2005 Trailer: Man, I didn't realize how angry people were about Raiden as the main character of MGS2.

They Played Us Like a Damn Fiddle
MGS Theme (Evolution Skateboarding)
Paz Ortega Andrade
Konami: I guess I can't really blame them for betting everything on pachinko, I'm sure that's much more lucrative than video games, and MGS had run its course as a series anyway... But they're still sitting on the Castlevania and Silent Hill IPs, so **** 'em, I guess.
Fatman
Metal Gear Solid V: I really expected you to nominate GZ and PP separately, I'm disappointed. MGSV is not the worst game ever, of course, but I do think it's the most disappointing. It had an unbelievably strong trailer, and I don't fault Kojima for people immediately figuring out the twist. But it's like... aside from the core mechanics of the gameplay and the premise of language as a weapon, everything is bad. The game banks everything on the twist, too. Like, okay, traditionally, when there's a big twist at the end of the story, something precipitates the hero learning the truth, and he has some kind of reaction to it. Darth Vader defeats Luke and reveals his parentage to persuade him to the Dark Side and Luke refuses to accept it, Bruce Willis is hinted by what's-his-face to talk to his wife and remembers his death, then is shocked, etc, etc. Here, Venom Snake just sort of remembers at the end of the game who he really is, and his reaction is just to smile. Like, first of all, having Keifer Sutherland deliver lines to Keifer Sutherland at the beginning of the game immediately gives away the twist, but fine. You can't bank everything on the end-of-story plot twist and then not have the character react to it at all. It's like, yes, I get it. I understand what you're trying to say, Kojima. Identity doesn't matter, whether you're Venom or Naked Snake, you're still Big Boss for any reason it would matter, the player is the true Snake and that's why he looks into the mirror and smiles and why you have a character creator at the start of the game. It's not that clever. I feel like Kojima felt like he needed some kind of epic plot twist, and bet it all on "you're not really you, you're just some guy," and it completely falls flat on its face. Not helping matters is how every other character is terrible, whether they be returning or new, the tape casettes are inherently worse than codecs because no one can react to what you see, and they're just worse in general period, and the game is clearly unfinished. I laughed when I got the "extra bonus content" of unfinished stills of the climax of the game they had to cut, which is still canon and required viewing. Oh man, what doesn't this game get wrong? How do you set a game in Afghanistan, then have Ocelot say "lol I already had my exciting Afghanistan adventures I told Snake about while you were asleep?" How do you set the game in an African jungle full of mercenaries and not include Solidus leading child soldiers with a conspicuous blond prettyboy one? Don't say that MGSV is set in 1984 and Raiden was born in 1983, either, because there's no reason for this to be set in 1984. There are zero 1984 themes, and the time period is relevant only insofar as you hear a lot of 80s music. No attempt is made to keep the game grounded in a 1980s setting like the 1960s setting of MGS3. Poor Liquid, too. Solid was mercifully spared having to appear in this game, but we finally get to see how "Big Boss" treats Liquid, and the entirety of Liquid's inferiority complex is revealed to basically be a misunderstanding. And then you have the just plain inexplicable decisions, like making this a direct sequel to PW, where you have missions instead of just a story, but 90% of the missions have nothing to do with anything. I don't know how many "crucial" people I had to fulton who were never brought up again. And what was with the credits roll at the start of every mission? Was it just so Kojima's name would appear literally sixty times in the game? I'll admit that GZ is pretty okay, it's not perfect, but it's okay, but PP is just a pile of poop. It needed better characters, it needed a cohesive story, it needed bosses, and it needed Venom Snake to either go nuclear or have a reaction to learning that he's an imposter. You can so easily imagine the good version of this game, and it's terrible that this is the last real game in the series. Why did the game even let you play as randomly-generated nobodies? Who would ever play as one when you can play as Snake? It's just so ****ing inexplicable a decision, and not in the good ways that things like Guy Savage are.
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
Rathalos
Raging Raven
Skull Face
Poisonous Zanzibar Hamsters
Love Deterrence
Hideo Kojima
Gurlugon
Quiet's Skin Breathing: I do not feel ashamed of my words & deeds.

More Than Enough to Kill Anything that Moves
Keifer Sutherland as Snake
Metal Gear Survive
MGS Snake Eater Pachinko

You're Pretty Good
Metal Gear Solid 3
Metal Gear Solid (PS1)
MGS Dialogue
Codec Sound Effect
Revolver Ocelot: I once had a college professor who looked and sounded exactly like Ocelot, except he taught us computer science. Anyway, I am fine with Ocelot as the 3000 IQ 8-dimensional chess master who planned everything out decades ahead of time and outsmarts the entire planet, but is secretly in love with Big Boss and also is sexually aroused by torture. All of that is fine. My concern is this: in MGSV, why does he no longer use revolvers? You can't tell me that it's a rights issue, I don't think Samuel Colt is going to sue him. If you know the answer to this, please explain, I genuinely don't understand. I also approve of Ocelot as the only character to appear in all games. Too bad they never made the WWII The Boss game, there could have been a giving-birth-on-D-Day minigame as the torture sequence. Don't pretend that's out-of-character for this series, either.
The End
Last Days of Foxhound: I read this long before I played MGS1, which spoiled most of the game for me, but that was okay. The jokes are almost always on-point, the characterization is loyal while injecting humor, and it does the best possible job of keeping to canon... for the first three games. Too bad for LDoF that MGS4 immediately contradicted everything it established. Very impressive job of making MGS3 make sense within the fanon it established prior to its release. Speaking of fanon, I know this is the origin of the fan assumption that Ocelot and Mantis hate each other, which is fine. One of the best webcomics out there.
Solid Snake: One of the best protagonists of any game series. Snake is super compelling, and unlike most video game characters, is an experienced veteran in his 30s instead of a teenage boy. When my sister looked over Smash characters, she declared Snake was "easily the hottest," so I know he has that going for him, too. Snake's a man who's constantly forced to reckon with who he could have been -- he could've been Liquid, he could've been Solidus, he could've been Big Boss, if only things had been a little different for him, but he instead manages to maintain almost a complete moral high ground compared to everyone else in the series. He fulfills the Boss' legacy without ever having met her, and is the only one of the Snakes to avoid being consumed by their shared trauma. And his reward? A few months or so of palling around with Otacon and Sunny before biting it of premature aging. Snake also has one giant advantage over Big Boss: they each have three games, but Snake's three are actually good.

The Lightning in the Rain
The Boss
Liquid Ocelot (Boss)
!
Snake in Smash
Metal Gears
Original Main Theme
The Ladder
Ocelot Hand Gesture
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Senator Armstrong
Big Boss
Old Snake
Cardboard Boxes
Arsenal Gear Sequence: Easily the best part of MGS2. The insane ramblings of an early-2000s Japanese man who has slightly more of a grasp on what the internet implies that most people, as filtered by fictional computers pretending to be your best friends, while a blond man does naked cartwheels, is super engaging.
MGS3 OST: Dun dun dun DO DUNNN DUNN DUNN DUNNNnnnnNNN~~~
Calling to the Night
Shadow Moses Dream (MGS4)
The Winds of Destruction

What a Thrill
Yoji Shinkawa
Metal Gear Solid 2
Guy Savage
War has Changed
Ghost Babel's E-rating
Para-Medic Movie Conversations
Jetstream Sam
MGS3 Secret Theater
Mesal Gear Solid
Raiden
Psycho Mantis
Butts
Liquid Snake Explains Big Chungus
Memes
Metal Gear Solid in 5 Minutes
Post-Credits Conversations
Samus x Snake Ship
Meryl Silverburgh

You're All Diamonds
Games' Subtitles: Hm... Sons of Liberty, The Twin Snakes, Snake Eater, Guns of the Patriots, Peace Walker, Revengeance, Ground Zeroes, and Phantom Pain? Pretty okay, I'd say. None are terrible. Although, MGS3 is the only one that has a song named after it. Imagine what the The Twin Snakes song would be. I suppose some kind of thing where two similar tunes are trying to drown each other out at the same time?
Huey Emmerich
A Codec Call to Remember
Vulcan Raven
Metal Gear Solid 4
Cartoon Foxhound Logo
MGS5's Gameplay
MGS3 Survival System
Naomi Hunter
Bladewolf
Codecs in Smash
Fission Mailed
Tranquilizer Guns: Aside from MGS1, I almost always just use the tranq gun the whole way through. Not because it tranqs, just because it's silent. I remember the Zero Punctuation review of MGSV being like "you can make five-million different guns, but you're immediately handed a silenced tranq gun with infinite ammo, so why bother," and he's right. The only reason to use a non-tranq gun is against enemies immune to tranqs.
Quiet's Theme
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes
Liquid's Arm
Metal Gear Acid
David Hayter
Kazuhira Miller

Only games that have proper endings, of course.

Are people reading my writeups? Because I only see a few direct responses.

You're All Diamonds
Huey Emmerich: Ugh, I was hoping no one would nominate him. Huey is the only part of MGSV that's sort of interesting. Not good, mind you, but sort of interesting. MGSV sort of redeems him: instead of just being Otacon in the past, he's now his own character. The audience is conditioned to expect Huey to be as noble as his son, and instead Huey turns out to be this complete sack of garbage who rewrites reality in his own mind to avoid taking responsibility for his own actions, this whiny, pathetic man who survives mostly out of Snake's pity and disgust. It gives him something to work with, whereas the other major characters in the game just have nothing. Eventually, someone is going to nominate Ocelot, and the entire writeup will just be a scree against MGSV, I swear. I would say that Huey is emblemized best by his tank creation: it's kind of cool in concept and I would have liked to see more, but instead Kojima just wrote it out of the game after introducing the interesting part. Seeing someone try to confront him about murdering Strangelove, or try to confront him about anything really, would have been nice. I mean, they come to suspect Huey of betraying them almost immediately, and while I'm okay with leaving it ambiguous if he was responsible for the end of GZ, the idea that Snake, Miller, and especially Ocelot would keep placing him in a position to betray them just makes no sense. They would have tossed him into the ocean immediately after they suspected him the second time. I guess what I'm trying to say is that although Huey is a neat concept, he clashes with the theme of the game. Venom Snake would not have tolerated this man for one second if he was really struggling with becoming a demon and thoughts of revenge and whatever.
A Codec Call to Remember
Vulcan Raven
Metal Gear Solid 4
Cartoon Foxhound Logo
MGS5's Gameplay
MGS3 Survival System
Naomi Hunter
Bladewolf
Codecs in Smash
Fission Mailed
Quiet's Theme
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes
Liquid's Arm
Metal Gear Acid
David Hayter
Kazuhira Miller: Jeez, do I even count MGS1? Because if I don't, then all he has to go on is PW and MGSV. Miller ends up being the most memorable and fun character in MGSV just because he's the only one who actually talks half the time, since Venom Snake is a non-character and Ocelot barely shows up, but Miller is just a dumpy, mean jerk the whole time. It is kind of an interesting take on a character, to introduce someone in the interquels we know will die in such an ignoble way off-screen later on, but for someone as important as "Snake's only codec call for two entire games," Miller has NOTHING to work with. Miller should be as popular as Campbell or Zero, but his only fun conversation is the hamburger one, and after that, he's got nothing. And he's still the most fun character in both games! PW and MGSV are crying out in vain for some kind of fun goofy boss fight.

At Least I Always Fought For What I Believed In
Body-Snatchers: Perfectly serviceable minigame side mission.
MGS1 Torture Sequence
The Best is Yet To Come
Nanomachines
Ninja Cat
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX)
TNT
Crab Battle
Shoot Gunner: Imagine being this super badass Russian mercenary, and your codename is "Shoot Gunner." It'd be like "Sword Stabber" or "Carman McDrive."
Vocal Cord Parasites
iPod

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Tanker (MGS2)
Metal Gear (name)
Big Boss as the Protagonist
Metal Gear (MSX)
Snake vs. Monkey
Twin Snakes Cutscenes
Rules of Nature
1997 Tokyo Game Show Ad for Metal Gear Solid
Snake Tales: Non-canon, non-voiced side missions starring Snake in a rerelease of MGS2 because of the poor reception to Raiden? This actually makes me respect MGS2 slightly less.
MGS4 TV Spots
Johnny Sasaki
Taking a Dump: I already ranked Johnny Sasaki; he's right above this entry. He's above it because there are aspects to his character unrelated to pooping.
Metal Gear: Ghost Babel
Pooyan Mission
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
They Played Us Like a Damn Fiddle
MGS Theme (Evolution Skateboarding)
Paz Ortega Andrade
Fatman: As far as I'm concerned, Fatman is the most "I'm just here to be a boss fight" character in the first two games. Raiden is like "what is this guy's backstory and motivation," and characters are like "lol he's just nuts." I refuse to believe that he places in the top half of anyone's boss list, right? He's just a big fat guy on roller skates who likes to drink wine, and unrelated to that, he also likes building bombs and wants to show up his mentor. He has no depth to him, doesn't fit into the game's theming at all beyond being a crappy knockoff of Foxhound, and 80% of his boss fight is you crawling under a shipping container to freeze bombs. I like MGS2 and everything, but it is not a good game as far as boss fights go, because this isn't even the worst boss fight in the game. Unfortunately, Fatman's "I'm just here to be a boss fight lol" character design, which actually makes sense in the context of MGS2, became the blueprint for most of the Cobras, all of the B&B Corps, and 2/3rds of the Winds of Destruction, but AT LEAST those characters all had some kind of sympathetic and sensible backstory (except the Pain, who as far as I'm concerned the canon explanation for his powers is in Last Days of Foxhound). I guess I'll give Fatman this, though: MGS is at its best when the characters are mostly just normal people with one or two hyper advanced normal skills, and only one person has very light supernatural powers. Fatman does follow that model, so okay.
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
Rathalos
Raging Raven
Skull Face
Poisonous Zanzibar Hamsters
Love Deterrence
Hideo Kojima
Gurlugon

More Than Enough to Kill Anything that Moves
Keifer Sutherland as Snake
Metal Gear Survive
MGS Snake Eater Pachinko

You're Pretty Good
Metal Gear Solid 3
Metal Gear Solid (PS1)
MGS Dialogue
Codec Sound Effect
The End

The Lightning in the Rain
The Boss
Liquid Ocelot (Boss)
!
Snake in Smash
Metal Gears
Original Main Theme
The Ladder
Ocelot Hand Gesture
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance: I'm actually shocked at how good this game is. I think when it came out, no one expected much from it? How many series get crappy unplanned spinoffs after they wrapped up, and the spinoffs end up being horrible? Then factor in how it shifted developers halfway through. Everything was working against this game, and then it's just really good? It's not a perfect game, but it can't be overstated how this game understands the appeal of the series. It's not really the stealth gameplay; it's the atmosphere, theme, characters, and extra weird ways to interact with enemies like crocodile hats... and this game delivers. The switch from stealth to DMC-esque gameplay is much less jarring than the later Solid games' switch from being good to being bad. Yeah, Raiden's support team is weaker than Snake's and Big Boss', and yeah, the setting of "modern city," "modern city," and "modern city" is less interesting than the other games', but I never said it was perfect. I mean, yeah, I could talk about how the final boss arenas of the series are: the flaming wreckage of the title giant robot (MGS1), Federal Hall (MGS2), a beautiful field of flowers (MGS3), the villain's giant submarine (MGS4), your military base (MGS:PW), and a normal airport (MGR). Where the hell is MGSV's final boss, isn't it just somewhere in the mountains?
Senator Armstrong
Big Boss
Old Snake
Cardboard Boxes
Calling to the Night
Shadow Moses Dream (MGS4)
The Winds of Destruction: It's kind of amazing how much more MGR understood the appeal of the series than MGSV. You need a group of wacky bosses with silly weapons, interminable backstories, and inscrutible accents. That's a core part of Metal Gear, and the Winds of Destruction deliver on that. Yes, Monsoon and Mistral are basically pointless and just show up to be bosses, and it's kind of hilarious how Raiden meets Monsoon for ten seconds and then questions his entire life and decides to give into his dark side, and since Armstrong and Sam aren't members, that means they only actually have Sundowner as a signiificant opponent... but they still work in a way that Dead Cell and even the Cobras don't. They talk, they have personalities and motivations, they taunt Raiden and have fun... I like the Cobras and everything, but the Pain, the Fear, and the Fury just kind of show up and fight you. The Fury is the most memorable Cobra (besides the Boss) just because he has a memeable line. So yes, I'd say that the Winds are the best-done straight example of a boss squad after Foxhound. I've actually also argued with people over if Snake could have defeated them. My position is that he'd beat Monsoon and maybe Mistral, but I don't see what he can realistically do against Sundowner.

What a Thrill
Yoji Shinkawa
Metal Gear Solid 2
Guy Savage: This is just another one of those weird things endemic to MGS. Who else would even think to include an unrelated hack-and-slash minigame accessible by saving and loading the game in a specific room at a specific time with no indication of its existence, and no logic as to why it happens in the first place? It's this kind of stuff that makes MGS MGS.
War has Changed
Ghost Babel's E-rating
Para-Medic Movie Conversations
Jetstream Sam
MGS3 Secret Theater
Mesal Gear Solid
Raiden
Psycho Mantis
Butts
Liquid Snake Explains Big Chungus
Memes
Metal Gear Solid in 5 Minutes
Post-Credits Conversations
Samus x Snake Ship: Is this popular just because they're conventionally attractive human characters in Smash who are from slightly dark series? Because at least Samus x Little Mac is based on five seconds of an ad.
Meryl Silverburgh

To be clear, I only mean 'super strong boss who's stronger than the final boss' examples.

I just realized re: Mesal Gear Solid that Monkey Gear Solid is staring you right in the face.

You're All Diamonds
A Codec Call to Remember: A standard rearview camera?! And it gets 34 miles to the gallon?! Campbell claims that this is perfect for driving around Shadow Moses Island, but I am confident he's overselling it. Even on the parts with roads, there's no way this admittedly nice sedan is going to be properly heated. And how did this commercial get the real voice actors when Ape Escape 3 couldn't?
Vulcan Raven
Metal Gear Solid 4
Cartoon Foxhound Logo
MGS5's Gameplay
MGS3 Survival System
Naomi Hunter
Bladewolf
Codecs in Smash
Fission Mailed
Quiet's Theme
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes
Liquid's Arm
Metal Gear Acid
David Hayter: I'm not sure, honestly. David Hayter had a right to think he WAS Snake, he had a right to expect to voice Snake in every upcoming game, and being completely betrayed by Kojima for no reason is pretty bad. Complaining about it on twitter makes you look petty, though, so... I don't know. I don't have an answer here, sorry.

At Least I Always Fought For What I Believed In
MGS1 Torture Sequence
The Best is Yet To Come
Nanomachines
Ninja Cat
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX)
TNT
Crab Battle
Vocal Cord Parasites
iPod

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Tanker (MGS2)
Metal Gear (name)
Big Boss as the Protagonist
Metal Gear (MSX)
Snake vs. Monkey
Twin Snakes Cutscenes: MGS1 vs TTS cutscenes is the difference between action movie logic and anime logic. Both have their place... but in the context of a spy movie sendoff, only the first should be present. It doesn't help that MGS is never like this otherwise. All of the other games have MGS1's atmosphere and capabilities. Even MGR feels more like MGS1 in tone and technology, no matter how many giant robots Raiden flips over.
Rules of Nature
1997 Tokyo Game Show Ad for Metal Gear Solid
MGS4 TV Spots
Johnny Sasaki
Metal Gear: Ghost Babel
Pooyan Mission
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker: The beginning of the end for Metal Gear as a franchise. Portable Ops could have just been written off as a one-time mistake, but this is something else. I appreciate that Kojima wanted to mix up the formula a little, so he introduced base building into his stealth game, but everything is just so bad. The base building elements are bad, the grinding to level up equipment is bad, the missions are bad, and the bosses are all just helicopters and tanks until the ending. I acknowledge that for the PSP, this is probably the best possible translation of MGS mechanics we could have hoped for, rather like Resident Evil Revelations, but everything new is terrible, and that's just the gameplay. The story is the bare minimum of passible, I guess, with a cast of characters who range from pointless (Amanda) to super pointless (Chico) to ultimate doubledog pointless (Vladimir) to super ultimate doubledog pointless (Cecile). And this game's flaws are not a minor thing, because MGSV is a direct sequel to it. This game, Portable Ops, and MGSV form the "how Big Boss turned into a bad guy" trilogy, and every mistake this game makes is magnified tenfold later on. I can appreciate that Huey is made more interesting in MGSV, and we'll get to that, but here he's just Otacon. Speaking of which, this is also the beginning of "we don't even care about technology being too advanced for the setting lol," where Otacon's claims that REX is the most advanced metal gear ever built can now only be rationalized as lies. This is also the game that introduces the characters with the stupidest names, who include Hot Coldman and Dr. Strangelove.
They Played Us Like a Damn Fiddle
MGS Theme (Evolution Skateboarding)
Paz Ortega Andrade
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
Rathalos
Raging Raven: The worst boss fight in MGS4... is still better than the best boss fights in PW and MGSV. This is a broader problem than just Raging Raven, but the B&B Corps really suffered from MGS4 already being too long as it was and trying to balance too many established characters, so the quirky boss squad ended up super weak as a result. They're just there, and their backstories are so outrageous that even by MGS standards, they just become comical. This is an important point, though: the quirky boss squad is still there. The B&B Corps sucks, but it's at least still present. I consider a group of 3+ insane people with impractical weapons and offensive accents done by Americans to be absolutely critical to the Metal Gear experience, even moreso than metal gears themselves. The B&B Corps is the weakest example of that, but it still fulfills that basic duty, unlike some games, so I'll give it that. Oh, Raging Raven? A garbage fight that exists as an excuse for a motorcycle chase, which is itself just a callback to the superior motorcycle chase in MGS3. It's kind of amazing how MGS1's boss fights are basically just normal people who are really good at a realistic skill (aside from Mantis), while MGS4 has active camouflage, flying missile ladies, psychic puppetmasters, a half-robot wolf woman, and a vampire.
Skull Face
Poisonous Zanzibar Hamsters
Love Deterrence
Hideo Kojima
Gurlugon

More Than Enough to Kill Anything that Moves
Keifer Sutherland as Snake
Metal Gear Survive
MGS Snake Eater Pachinko

You're Pretty Good
Metal Gear Solid 3
Metal Gear Solid (PS1)
MGS Dialogue
Codec Sound Effect
The End

The Lightning in the Rain
The Boss: Fighting your family, rival, friend, or mentor will always be more emotionally engaging to the audience than fighting a big robot. The Boss is all of those in one, to varying degrees. As far as being a properly-built up climatic showdown, The Boss is the best fight in the series, and it's not particularly close. It's also the only fight that really gives you options? Liquid Snake, Solidus, Ocelot, Paz, and Armstrong can only really be fought in one way each, and while Saldsfpjoergv has multiple options, The Boss has the additional benefit of not being terrible. Stealth, CQC, and even technically gunplay are all valid options to fight her. Even better, The Boss uses camouflage herself to fight you, except it's you the player who has to see through it to fight her -- when you've been using camouflage the whole game up to this point. You can tell that Snake is completely torn up during this fight, and might even join her if she would ask, and later revelations about her motives only make everything more painful. I'm not sure how I feel about the series basically turning into a battle of Zero vs Big Boss in how to respect The Boss' legacy, but fine. As far as characters who only have one game to establish themselves, the Boss does the best possible job. Thank God later games never try to revive her as a computer or Volgin as a fire zombie.
Liquid Ocelot (Boss)
!
Snake in Smash
Metal Gears
Original Main Theme
The Ladder
Ocelot Hand Gesture
Senator Armstrong
Big Boss
Old Snake: I don't really know if people like or dislike Old Snake as a concept, but I like it for two reasons. One, it really drives home how unjust Snake's life is. He's not only burdened by having to deal with his father's crazy legacy and being constantly betrayed by his friends and government, he's even betrayed by his own body. Second, it emphasizes how much time has passed since the first game. Everything is coming full circle for Snake, and it's taken a lifetime to deal with things... even though not really, it's taken like eight years. The bitter unfairness of it all is really good.
Cardboard Boxes
Calling to the Night
Shadow Moses Dream (MGS4)

What a Thrill
Yoji Shinkawa: Unlike Yoshitaka Amano, I can always tell who I'm looking at in this guy's artwork, so he has that going for him. His artstyle fits MGS very well, that sort of slightly-fantastic-but-mostly-real tone the games go for. He's not a crucial element to the series, MGS would still be what it is without him, but I'd say his art does positively add to the franchise, sure.
Metal Gear Solid 2
War has Changed
Ghost Babel's E-rating
Para-Medic Movie Conversations
Jetstream Sam
MGS3 Secret Theater
Mesal Gear Solid
Raiden
Psycho Mantis
Butts
Liquid Snake Explains Big Chungus
Memes
Metal Gear Solid in 5 Minutes
Post-Credits Conversations
Meryl Silverburgh: If we were talking JUST the first game, Meryl would place higher. But I have to include her MGS4 appearance, so she's getting knocked down a peg or two. Meryl functions perfectly in the first game as the innocent, wide-eyed wannabe who's just instantly smitten by Snake, but is completely out of her depth, and it's only by proving himself to be the hero that he claims he's not that Snake can save her. In this way, Meryl is the perfect Bond Girl. Unfortunately, MGS4 clearly just has no idea what to do with her (and most of the returning cast), so she's... a soldier again, after realizing she's not cut out for it, and she spent the last few years getting swole. Meryl in that game (if she even showed up at all, there's a good argument to be made that the story is better with her dying) should have just shown up to remind the audience of how unjustly Snake's body is treating him, by being basically the same age while he's an old man. She should have just been a Codec call, where she's trying to be supportive and inform you about whatever, but Snake is just ashamed of his body and loses psych whenever you contact her or something. And let's not get started with how she gets the epic romance.

Raka_Putra posted...

Raging Raven

Also cardboard gears exist though they're more like DIY/craft/science experiment material
https://id.pinterest.com/pin/50032245840080840/

This is actually news to me!

Leonhart4 posted...

Was she though? Did we actually know anything about the real Naomi Hunter?

I thought she was, but now I realize I don't remember for certain.

You're Pretty Good
Metal Gear Solid 3
Metal Gear Solid (PS1)
MGS Dialogue
Codec Sound Effect
The End: From a purely gameplay perspective, this is the best boss fight in the series. There are multiple ways to approach the battle, your skill determines how long it lasts, the arena itself is super complex and there's a lot to do in it, and it's the only well-designed sniper duel in the series (sorry, Wolf and Quiet fans). The End himself is the thinnest sketch of a character, just an ancient Civil War veteran who wants one more fight before he dies, but he sells it so well that you feel bad if you kill him in advance or wait for him to die. I love that if you kill him at the dock, Major Zero is ecstatic and can't stop complimenting you, but Snake feels awful for doing it.

The Lightning in the Rain
Liquid Ocelot (Boss)
!
Snake in Smash
Metal Gears
Original Main Theme
The Ladder
Ocelot Hand Gesture: Don't tell anyone, but I actually did this stupid gesture a few times when I was like 19 because I thought it was cool. I was way too old to be doing that.
Senator Armstrong
Big Boss
Cardboard Boxes
Calling to the Night
Shadow Moses Dream (MGS4)

What a Thrill
Metal Gear Solid 2
War has Changed: It's memed to hell, but this was another instance of Kojima correctly predicting the future of technology. Laugh if you want, but the monologue has some truth to it.
Ghost Babel's E-rating
Para-Medic Movie Conversations
Jetstream Sam
MGS3 Secret Theater
Mesal Gear Solid
Raiden
Psycho Mantis
Butts
Liquid Snake Explains Big Chungus
Memes
Metal Gear Solid in 5 Minutes: I love the terrible randomly-moving camera, but was it really so difficult to add the text during codec calls? I love the part where Snake and Meryl fight the guards. I love the stealth camo. Completely inaccurate Grey Fox fight, though, he deflects your bullets if you shoot him. Oh yeah, that's another thing, why was Meryl so attractable to men when she has mental implants? Ah well, whatever. Didn't expect Arin from Game Grumps to show up. Liquid skips my favorite part of the speech just before the fistfight, which is the words "super baby method." Changed the part where Naomi avoids answering your question about whether or not you'll die. Overall, a pretty good fan project, I approve.
Post-Credits Conversations

You're All Diamonds
Vulcan Raven: Vulcan Raven is the definition of a good filler character. He's not important to the story at all, and you could cut him super easily, but his shamanistic nonsense and warning Snake about the future adds something to the mystique of the slightly magical world the games are set in, and the fact that he's clearly too smart to really believe in Liquid's dumb plans but helps anyway helps sell his character. Also, his boss fight is fun. I know you're supposed to use landmines to beat him, but I always just use stinger missiles.
Metal Gear Solid 4
Cartoon Foxhound Logo
MGS5's Gameplay
MGS3 Survival System
Naomi Hunter
Bladewolf
Codecs in Smash
Fission Mailed
Quiet's Theme
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes: MGS1, but worse. This is the most actively wacky of the games, where characters just behave in slightly weirder, sillier ways than they did in the original. Theoretically, MGS1 with MGS2's gameplay should be good, but they just remade MGS1 with MGS2's mechanics, so the game is way, way easier because it's not designed for first-person shooting or the ability to hang off of rails. All of the dialogue is rerecorded, and for some reason, everyone sounds worse except for Snake and Ocelot. It goes beyond that, though. They just reused a lot of MGS2's assets, but MGS2's setting was intentionally very clean and sterile. Shadow Mosese was intended to be this rotting, icy craphole at the end of the Earth, with lots of trash and dust and rust everywhere. Giving it MGS2's aesthetic was a huge error. Here's an example: https://i.imgur.com/mvtRmYw.jpg That said, the game is still playable. It's not complete trash or anything, it's just the worst of the 'main' games, if you count it as one.
Liquid's Arm
Metal Gear Acid: I've never played this game, but I do intend to watch a LP of it one day. I really appreciate how the female lead's name is canonically misspelled because of the Japanese L-R thing, and she just kept it because why not. This is such an odd concept for a spinoff. A card game simulator? I never really liked those. I'll say this: Metal Gear doesn't have any completely lazy throwaway spinoffs. I would never play these games because I just don't want to, but this isn't a Resident Evil Gaiden or Soul Calibur Legends situation. The spinoffs are all bad (yeah, I said it, eat it, PW supporters), but none are irredeemable trash. Although, these games are also basically unobtainable now, being available only on the PSP and... J2ME? What the hell even is that? Anyway, just to be clear, I'm less certain of this placement than other placements because I haven't actually experienced this game yet.

At Least I Always Fought For What I Believed In
MGS1 Torture Sequence
The Best is Yet To Come
Nanomachines
Ninja Cat
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX)
TNT
Crab Battle
Vocal Cord Parasites
iPod: Nothing dates any game in the series quite like an iPod showing up. It'd be like in the original Metal Gear, if Snake had to use a betamax player. Anyway, within the game itself, this thing is a waste of time.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Tanker (MGS2)
Metal Gear (name): It's short and punchy, but the name itself makes no sense. Gears are always made out of metal, and even if they weren't, this is no way describes the idea of a giant robot. I guess "gear" is probably meant to mean "mecha," since mecha anime rarely use the word itself and usually think of a term for it, but still. Are there plastic gears? Are there wooden gears?
Big Boss as the Protagonist
Metal Gear (MSX)
Snake vs. Monkey
Rules of Nature
1997 Tokyo Game Show Ad for Metal Gear Solid
MGS4 TV Spots
Johnny Sasaki
Metal Gear: Ghost Babel
Pooyan Mission

They Played Us Like a Damn Fiddle
MGS Theme (Evolution Skateboarding)
Paz Ortega Andrade
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
Rathalos
Skull Face: Can you imagine being Hungarian? This is the most famous video game character out of your country. Anyway, here's the thing: Skull Face has a cool plan that I actually kind of like, his design isn't horrendous, and I'm okay with you never fighting him because he's not a physical threat, but everything else about him is terrible. In particular, the idea that Skull Face was always one screen behind you in MGS3, picking up all of your bullet casings to make sure that Russia wouldn't know you were involved, when the purpose of the mission was to make sure Russia knew you were involved, is baffling. Skull Face's motivations ultimately boil down to revenge, which is dumb and boring (I know the game has a theme of revenge, and that is also dumb and boring), and I don't even want to go into the jeep ride. You know what Skull Face needed? He needed a bodyguard who never speaks, and then at the end of the game you have to kill the bodyguard and stab him to death while he begs for his life, VtM:B-style.
Poisonous Zanzibar Hamsters
Love Deterrence
Hideo Kojima
Gurlugon

More Than Enough to Kill Anything that Moves
Keifer Sutherland as Snake
Metal Gear Survive
MGS Snake Eater Pachinko

LeonhartFour posted...

Naomi grew up in a British colony. Mei Ling grew up in America. If anything, you have this backwards.

(also Mei Ling's accent is bad anyway so I was glad they got rid of it)

I know that Naomi grew up in a British colony, but she was pretending to be American!

WazzupGenius00 posted...

The pun in Mesal Gear Solid is that Saru means monkey in Japanese so they turned Metaru into Mesaru and just didnt bother trying to translate the name for English in any way that would be understandable

Oh wow okay

Well, thanks for the explanation, at least!

You're All Diamonds
Metal Gear Solid 4: Yeesh, this is where things go a little downhill for the series. I'm just going to call this the RotJ of Metal Gear -- a step down from the previous games, but not ruinous. Not yet. It establishes trends that later games will make worse, until the series just becomes untenable. It's still a good game, and a worthy sendoff to the series, but of the real games, this has both the highest highs and the lowest lows. Shadow Moses, the Liquid Ocelot fight, REX vs RAY? All genius. Eastern Europe, the B&B Corps' outrageously tragic backstories, and some of the retcons? Not so much. It's made worse by how everything is mired in so many cutscenes. People make jokes about this game being more than half cutscene, but the thing is that they're not jokes. They are not jokes. I'm pretty sure that when I last played the game, it was legitimately more than half cutscene. So, while I appreciate that the game has really solid gameplay for the 45% of the time it matters, and that it perfectly ends Snake's storyline, and that it wraps up the themes the series really grappled with... everything has an asterisk. For every good thing in the game, something about it is slightly wrong.
Cartoon Foxhound Logo: Perfectly suitable.
MGS5's Gameplay
MGS3 Survival System
Naomi Hunter: Among the worst people in the series, morally. She does so much evil stuff that she never gets called on. I guess her fate was to become the fourth tragically dead character in Otacon's story, after Strangelove, Huey, and Emma. But yeah, do you mind if I complain about MGS retconning her and Mei Ling's accents? I acknowledge that it makes no sense for Naomi's accent to be British, but it still made sense for Mei Ling. Anyway, I just wanted to say that in Twin Snakes, they rerecord all of the dialogue, and every single person besides Snake and Ocelot sounds much worse, especially Naomi. I don't know what it is, and she sounds fine in MGS4, but in TTS, she legit sounds like she's reading lines directly off of the script.
Bladewolf
Codecs in Smash
Fission Mailed
Quiet's Theme
Liquid's Arm

At Least I Always Fought For What I Believed In
MGS1 Torture Sequence: I'm really bad at button mashing minigames like this. The first time I played, it legit took me like half an hour to do this.
The Best is Yet To Come
Nanomachines
Ninja Cat
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX)
TNT
Crab Battle
Vocal Cord Parasites

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Tanker (MGS2)
Big Boss as the Protagonist
Metal Gear (MSX)
Snake vs. Monkey
Rules of Nature
1997 Tokyo Game Show Ad for Metal Gear Solid
MGS4 TV Spots
Johnny Sasaki
Metal Gear: Ghost Babel
Pooyan Mission

They Played Us Like a Damn Fiddle
MGS Theme (Evolution Skateboarding)
Paz Ortega Andrade
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
Rathalos
Poisonous Zanzibar Hamsters
Love Deterrence: I mean, ignoring that this is competely at odds with the 1970s setting, while the other games' big themes fit their timelinese, I just don't like J-pop. It's not even really that fitting for Paz as a character, either. Her (fake) personality is upbeat, but not nearly this energetic, and she has nothing to do with Japan. Her theme should've either been American or Latin-inspired, or just a somber spy-ish theme, but not J-pop. Just a complete miscalculation, I think.
Hideo Kojima
Gurlugon

More Than Enough to Kill Anything that Moves
Keifer Sutherland as Snake
Metal Gear Survive
MGS Snake Eater Pachinko

You're Pretty Good
Metal Gear Solid 3: I changed my mind; this is the best one. I think the deciding factor is the gameplay; it's not the best gameplay in the series, but it definitely beats MGS1, and it trounces MGS4 and MGSV in every way besides gameplay, so it wins this title. This game just does everything perfectly, both as a prequel and as a standalone game. The story is tight and compelling, Snakes' fall from grace is executed flawlessly, the supporting cast does everything right, there are just the right number of plot twists, the boss fights are (mostly) really good, and it's the exact right length. The games after this drag on forever if you're not speedrunning, while this one ends just when it needs to. The Cold War setting of "neither side trusts each other, but they still have to trust each other in this specific instance to take down Volgin" is utilized super well, too, even if the game predicates itself on the existence of tropical Russian rainforests. And don't talk to me about that one "rainforest" in Siberia; I know about it, but it looks nothing like the obviously South American rainforest the game takes place in. I would call this a nearly flawless video game. One other thing I want to bring up: I appreciate that this game still has sci-fi elements, but keeps them in the realm of believable compared to the chronologically later games, as opposed to PW and especially MGSV having tech that's more advanced than anything we see "later" on. They really put a lot of effort into this game, and it shows.
Metal Gear Solid (PS1)
MGS Dialogue
Codec Sound Effect

The Lightning in the Rain
Liquid Ocelot (Boss)
!
Snake in Smash
Metal Gears: Metal Gear as a series is all about technology and weapons going out of control, and Metal Gears are the face of that. I think that's partly to the series' detriment, though, because 'weapons' today lean toward information and espionage, and not so much the Cold War-era LITERAL weapons. But hey, I'll admit that MGS4 got it right in that the metal gears are basically just fancy drones, and aside from MGR, metal gears always do feature prominently in the games' storylines, so alright. And don't say that Raiden beats up a metal gear at the start of the game, that scene is basically just to establish that Raiden is at a point where metal gears are no longer relevant threats.
Original Main Theme
The Ladder
Senator Armstrong
Big Boss
Cardboard Boxes
Calling to the Night
Shadow Moses Dream (MGS4)

What a Thrill
Metal Gear Solid 2
Ghost Babel's E-rating
Para-Medic Movie Conversations: I've said this before, but a good 25% of the series' appeal is having random dumb conversations about philosophy, military stuff, or just plain old nonsense with the supporting cast. This is absolutely critical; I would call it a non-negotiable part of the series... and only MGS1, MGS3, and MGR actually do it correctly. Having dumb conversations with Para-Medic about movies, having Major Zero bust in to talk about how awesome James Bond is, it all lends the game a ton of personality you don't get from gameplay, setting, and cutscenes alone. Too bad about what becomes of Para-Medic, though.
Jetstream Sam
MGS3 Secret Theater
Mesal Gear Solid: You couldn't get the actual voice actors for Campbell and Snake? Are Paul Eiding and David Hayter really in that high demand? This Snake VA is about the quality I could do. And "Mesal" means "toward the middle point," what does that have to do with anything? That said, this is a pretty faithful recreation of Metal Gear with Ape Escape mechanics, so I have to give it some credit on that front. It even has a final boss fight on a metal gear and really long cutscenes. Does this Monkey Snake count as one of the official Snakes of Metal Gear? And no post-credits dialogue... I have to give this to Ape Escape; this is a much better crossover than MGS' attempt.
Raiden
Psycho Mantis: I like Psycho Mantis and everything, but if we're being really honest, he's another example of MGS2-syndrome, where something that's mind-blowing in 1998 (reading your memory card) has been done so much better in the time since that he's no longer all that. The idea of beating him using fourth wall-breaking tricks like using another controller is amazing in 1998, but now it's... pretty clever. That's about it, though; just "pretty clever." It's also worth noting how important he is to the series given how little he shows up. He dies early on in MGS1, but thanks to VOCAL CORD PARASITES, his shadow looms heavily over the rest of the series in a way that doesn't make much sense. If he repents during MGS1, why is he an evil ghost in MGS4? Blegh, whatever. Let's not even get started on kid Psycho Mantis in MGSV.
Butts
Liquid Snake Explains Big Chungus
Memes
Post-Credits Conversations: Good way to set up later games. Were these the original Marvel credits scenes? I guess this is post-Mario Bros movie, so they're not. I remember playing MGS1 for the first time, and just knowing in my bones that Ocelot was going to end things with "Thank you, Mr. President," and being right.

At Least I Always Fought For What I Believed In
The Best is Yet To Come
Nanomachines
Ninja Cat
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX)
TNT
Crab Battle
Vocal Cord Parasites: Despite its low ranking, I don't hate them. I actually think that, thematically, this is genius, and it's one of the very few strengths MGSV has. The idea of communication being this super important element to society, so a weapon that disables your ability to communicate, especially targeting the world's most common language, is a super weird and very MGS-y idea. This absolutely fits into the game's obvious theme of language, and in a game that was finished and not trash, it could have been incredible. Like, this is genuinely a really clever idea! ... but then it's also used to explain away every supernatural event in the series, because Kojima decided afterwards that he wanted everything to be based in science... EXCEPT the ghost. And if someone tells me that you could possibly explain the Sorrow using vocal cord parasites or nanomachines, you're getting tossed out a window. It also doesn't help that all of the exposition about these things is delivered by Code Talker, who's the most longwinded character ever.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Tanker (MGS2)
Big Boss as the Protagonist: Again, I think that Hideo Kojima just didn't understand the appeal of his own series. MGS3 was the exact amount of Big Boss we needed. It was like scientifically measured in a laboratory to be the exact right amount, and anything more damages the character. But even more than that, Snake is better as the series protagonist than Big Boss. I acknowledge that Big Boss is the more complex character, but there's more to being the main character than just that. The normal guy who's burdened by his father's evil deeds having to right them is inherently a better perspective for the hero to have than Big Boss', which is compounded by the fact that every game Big Boss stars in besides MGS3 is just kind of bad, whereas all of Snake's games are still, shall we say, solid.
Metal Gear (MSX)
Snake vs. Monkey: Does anyone really like Ape Escape? It seems like one of those series that just sort of exists, but that no one is really fond of in particular. Getting a crossover promotion with MGS to me feels like the Dragon Ball Z x One Piece x Toriko crossover.
Rules of Nature
1997 Tokyo Game Show Ad for Metal Gear Solid
MGS4 TV Spots
Johnny Sasaki
Metal Gear: Ghost Babel
Pooyan Mission: I like weird little bonus content as much as the next guy, but who cares?

They Played Us Like a Damn Fiddle
MGS Theme (Evolution Skateboarding): I accept that this is the best job that could have been done, but I think MGS' somber-yet-wacky tone just doesn't fit with extreme sports. This is true for spy things in general; as someone with the shameful title of 'person who's seen all the James Bond movies,' I can tell you that one of the few things in Die Another Day anyone remembers is the surfboarding scene.
Paz Ortega Andrade
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
Rathalos
Poisonous Zanzibar Hamsters
Hideo Kojima
Gurlugon

More Than Enough to Kill Anything that Moves
Keifer Sutherland as Snake
Metal Gear Survive
MGS Snake Eater Pachinko

You're Pretty Good
Metal Gear Solid (PS1)
MGS Dialogue
Codec Sound Effect

The Lightning in the Rain
Liquid Ocelot (Boss): I'm not sure what I consider the best finale boss fight in the series to be, but this is one of the three contenders. It's not very difficult or anything, and it doesn't really use the game's mechanics to its advantages, and the fighting game section just comes out of nowhere (it's equivalent in my mind to the rail shooter segment of the Mundus fight in DMC1, where it comes out of nowhere and makes no sense). But it does have something no other fight has: a sense of finality. If you asked me to point to the Platonic ideal of final boss fights, this is it. This is what I would choose. This fight is the end of Metal Gear Solid, the culmination of Solid Snake, Liquid Snake, and Revolver Ocelot as characters. There might be things afterwards, but this is the end.
!: It's just so perfectly-designed. The sound effect gets into your spine and freaks you out. I don't know the name for this concept, but it's when a video game shows something that's not literally true, like an aura around a character who gives bonuses to others. The MGS exclamation mark is the perfect manifestation of that concept.
Snake in Smash
Original Main Theme
The Ladder
Senator Armstrong
Big Boss
Cardboard Boxes
Calling to the Night: Probably the best thing to come out of Portable Ops, honestly. It's so much better than the rest of the game, it's hard to even tell how this happened.
Shadow Moses Dream (MGS4)

What a Thrill
Metal Gear Solid 2: I played this game in 2008, and I was very impressed. At the time, I was super into surreal, abstract stuff. When I played it again after MGSV came out, I realized that it's the weakest of the first three. Gameplay-wise, it's a massive improvement over MGS1, of course. This is the first game in the series that really captures the feeling of a stealth game. And while I appreciate the idea of MGS2 being a lesser knockoff of MGS1 in-universe, at the end of the day, it's still a lesser knockoff. Until you get to Arsenal Gear, the characters are less fun, the location is less lived-in and interesting, the Codecs are weaker, and the story is more meandering. Then you get to Arsenal Gear, and... Well, I liked it the first time, but I'd say MGS2 is sort of damaged by the context (lol) provided by MGS3 and 4. Once you learn who the Patriots are and what's really going on, the abstract surreal elements to the game are no longer mindbreaking and are instead just kind of there. Solidus is also by far the weakest final boss and main villain besides Skull Face, I'd put him almost as low as Paz. Who are even the Codec advisors in this game? Rose? Fake Campbell? The one black guy? All are completely boring (until Fake Campbell and Fake Rose turn crazy at the end). It also hurts the game that although the fourth wall-breaking mindbreak elements were cutting edge in 2002, by modern standards they're really weak. Compare this to something like, I don't know, Undertale, and it just no longer measures up, whereas MGS1 and MGS3 remain solid. Basically, what I'm saying is that I recognize that MGS2 was designed in such a way as to emphasize the weakest points of the game on purpose, but at the end of the day, it's still emphasizing its own weakest points. Dead Cell in particular is really, really bad, and it's funny once you learn that they were selected because they were less interesting Foxhound knockoffs, but they're still less interesting Foxhound knockoffs.
Ghost Babel's E-rating: Yeah, yeah. Star Wars has a PG rating, this sort of thing just sort of happens occasionally.
Jetstream Sam
MGS3 Secret Theater
Raiden
Butts
Liquid Snake Explains Big Chungus
Memes

You're All Diamonds
MGS5's Gameplay: Yes, okay. MGS5 has the best skeleton of gameplay in the series. The actual gameplay of "run around where enemies can't see you" is at its best here. And you get a million weapons to choose from so you can approach things however you want. But literally every other aspect of the gameplay is worse. There are no bosses anymore, except Volgin (lol), Quiet (lol), and whatever the metal gear was called this time. The world is sprawling and gigantic, but most of it is a literal empty desert. You can approach things however you want, but the best way is to get on your horse and ride in plain view of the enemies because nothing matters except reaching your destination. And there are so many just inexplicable things in this game, like how you have multiple options for landing zones, but one is always closer to the target than the others, so why would you ever choose a different zone? Many people have said that Ground Zeroes is better than Phantom Pain because the Cuban base is at least better-designed, and they're right. If the whole game was like that one section, maybe MGSV would be remembered a little more fondly. The game makes a huge deal out of being able to play as characters besides Snake, but Snake has the highest stats anyway and you have to play him most of the time. So much of this game is clearly incomplete, too.
MGS3 Survival System
Bladewolf
Codecs in Smash
Fission Mailed
Quiet's Theme
Liquid's Arm

KazGT6 posted...

tc, were you a huge fan of V? prob my favorite in the series

Nope! But I'm sure we'll get to that.

You're Pretty Good
Metal Gear Solid (PS1)
MGS Dialogue
Codec Sound Effect

The Lightning in the Rain
Snake in Smash
Original Main Theme: The best theme in the series, which makes sense, since it was stolen from a Russian composer and they had to stop using it as a result.
The Ladder
Senator Armstrong
Big Boss
Cardboard Boxes
Shadow Moses Dream (MGS4): I remember being surprised when his face turns into the PS3 Snake face. Very well handled, I especially like how the controls and pause screen are preserved.

What a Thrill
Jetstream Sam
MGS3 Secret Theater: Best one is Payback, where the CIA Director forces Snake to shake his hand.
Raiden
Butts: In the grand debate of boobs vs butts, put me down on the side of boobs. That said, butts have their charm, and MGS is the only series I know of where the main character perving on a woman's ass is a plot point. God, can you imagine if that game came out today? And people had webms and memes of the player examining guards' asses? 1998 was a different time, I guess.
Liquid Snake Explains Big Chungus
Memes

You're All Diamonds
MGS3 Survival System: Vastly superior to its equivalents in other games. It really pushes the survivalism angle, which is weird, since the game isn't really specifically about survival? But in any case, I always just end up with a million captured animals I tranqed, then eat them one at a time later on.
Bladewolf
Codecs in Smash
Fission Mailed
Quiet's Theme
Liquid's Arm: Danganronpa 2 spoilers: The most bizarre thing ever to me is that both of these series, which have nothing in common at all, involve the second game's secondary antagonist sawing off the first game's antagonist's arm and attaching it to themselves. It's the most bizarrely specific plot point ever to come up twice. I like the idea of Liquid's ghost possessing Ocelot through the arm, but the later development that Ocelot replaced the arm and then hypnotized himself into just believing he was possessed... not so much. Or did he even replace the arm? It's been literal decades and I still don't know. No other series has ever so meticulously explained its plot only to leave so much unclear.

At Least I Always Fought For What I Believed In
The Best is Yet To Come
Nanomachines: I hate it when series use technology to explain why what was obviously intended to be magic in earlier installments is actually not magic after all. It doesn't happen often, but when it does happen, it's never done well. Vamp in particular should have just been a vampire with no explanation. With that said, at least nanomachines are the appropriate type of sci-fi concept for the series, as opposed to vocal cord parasites. I have things to say about vocal cord parasites.
Ninja Cat
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (MSX)
TNT
Crab Battle: This feels very 2006-y to me. The humor is much less refined than our modern fart jokes. When the guy starts screaming OLOLOLOLO, I just cringed.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Tanker (MGS2): It's fine, I guess. MGS is a series about technology and military stuff run amok, so it needs to be set in locations that emphasize that -- specifically, either military bases and evil laboratories, or very untamed nature-y places where the technology stands out. Having the opening of MGS2 take place on just a normal navy ship gets the job done, I guess, but it's the bare minimum. It's serviceable, but I never think of the tanker when I think of MGS locations.
Metal Gear (MSX)
Rules of Nature
1997 Tokyo Game Show Ad for Metal Gear Solid
MGS4 TV Spots
Johnny Sasaki: I'm fine with the idea of a random guy whose path just happens to cross Snake's during every spy adventure, that's fine. Turning him into a major character and giving him the romance arc is a bizarre decision, though. He should've just kept being a random guy who just keeps accidentally running into the heroes.
Metal Gear: Ghost Babel: I cannot believe this game came out in 2000. It's so strange to me that we were using GBAs the same year as the PS2. We were using the Gameboy Color until 2001! Anyway, I've never played this and I never will.

They Played Us Like a Damn Fiddle
Paz Ortega Andrade
Metal Gear Solid
Rathalos
Poisonous Zanzibar Hamsters
Hideo Kojima
Gurlugon

More Than Enough to Kill Anything that Moves
Keifer Sutherland as Snake
Metal Gear Survive
MGS Snake Eater Pachinko

Paratroopa1 posted...

Slowbeef's Metal Gear 2 playthrough isn't a video, it's all text and screenshots - it's actually so old that it's both pre-youtube and pre-the idea of people doing playthroughs of games. It's considered to be one of the first let's plays. I haven't read it in a while so I don't know if it's still funny but it's one of the classics of old internet humor:

http://effinslowbeef.com/MG2/

Didn't know this, thanks.