Board 8 > Anagram ranks anything Metal Gear-related, with writeups (spoilers)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Skull Face

Anagram posted...

But yeah, do you mind if I complain about MGS retconning her and Mei Ling's accents?

Maybe it's cause I played Twin Snakes first but I always thought the accents were a little dumb/cringe. Especially Mei Ling because she was born in America.

May as well nominate Twin Snakes then too

Anagram posted...

I acknowledge that it makes no sense for Naomi's accent to be British, but it still made sense for Mei Ling.

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)

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!

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

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

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.

Yoji Shinkawa

Raging Raven

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

A Codec Call to Remember | Ford Overdubs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9KongMgra0

Meryl Silverburgh

oh yeah that does look grittier, the ps1 version

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

Old Snake

Twin Snakes cutscenes (such as missile dodging and Matrix gunfights)

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!

David Hayter

The Boss (boss)

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.

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

The Winds of Destruction

Fatman

Kazuhira Miller

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

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

Guy Savage

Body-Snatchers

Shoot Gunner

Taking a DOOMP

Snake x Samus ship

Huey Emmerich

Snake Tales

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

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

The games' subtitles

Last Days of Foxhound

Metal Gear Solid V

Revolver Ocelot

Metal Gear Solid 3 OST

Solid Snake

Tranquilizer guns

The entire Arsenal Gear sequence between Raiden's torture session and the Ray fights in MGS2.

Nastasha Romanenko

Quiet's Skin Breathing

Konami

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

Yes for sure!

I'll say that your writeup about MGS4 gives me hope and interest in playing it.

Additionally

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.

Maybe mostly so, but the webcomic Brawl in the Family also paired them off and that's probably why I thought to nominate this pairing in the first place.

I read everything but I might not before I post my next nom