Grind my Metal Gears

At the end of our MGS Novel journey, we read Project Itoh's Metal Gear Solid 4 novelization. Benson managed to capture the pulpy military sci-fi nature of the first two MGS games, while Itoh managed to beautifully capture the melodrama and emotional affect of MGS4. Despite one major misstep, we both LOVED this book, and as you can tell from the runtime, have a lot to say about it.Next time we're back in the realm of video games as we travel back to 1987 with Metal Gear for the MSX!Episode 53: Snotacon Vibes Off the Chart

Our journey through the literary world of MGS continues with Raymond Benson's MGS2 novelization! Unlike MGS1, this book is much more of a straight forward retelling of the game, but that doesn't stop us from going long discussing all our favorite parts of MGS2, and planning out our vision of a potential MGS2 remake. Konami, if you're reading this, we're available, hire us!

Last time we made the jump to the cinema, and now we're jumping into the world of literature with Raymond Benson as we talk about the official Metal Gear Solid novelization! You'd think we wouldn't have much to say, but you'd be wrong! We've got lots to say about what makes this novel a fun read and all the interesting adaptation choices Benson made.

We've gone to the movies to watch John Carpenter's 1981 classic, Escape from New York. We talk about all the ways in which this movie rules. We dissect and identify all the obvious and less obvious ways the movie influence the Metal Gear series.

We perform our due diligence by playing through the two DLC missions for MGR. Both are pretty inoffensive outside of some bad platforming and some S-Rank Metal Gear style horniness, so there's not too much to dive into in terms of story or characters. Thankfully Danny assembled some very thought provoking questions to get us thinking through our feelings about the Metal Gear Solid series as a whole, including the very important question: who would you want in your dream and nightmare blunt rotations?

Now that we've officially finished all the main Metal Gear Solid games, it's time to make good on our promise to play through the infamously ridiculous Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. We talk through our varying feelings about the combat, level design, the memes, and how much the characters and storytelling live up to our expectations from the main series.

We've done it! We've finished the Metal Gear Solid games. Time to wrap things up as we say goodbye to Quiet (questioning why we were supposed to be ashamed of words and deeds in the first place in the process), learning the truth (that we totally already knew) about Venom Snake, and hearing for the first time in a long time from our ol' pal Zero.

With the Skull Face taken care of, it's time to direct our attention towards Mother Base. Like finding out what sort of shady stuff Eli and the child soldiers are up to (and also thinking about what they could have been up to if the development team got more time to make this game), and learning about just how awful Huey Emmerich really is. Oh, and Master Miller's busy trying to break into the food industry.

31 missions/episodes later, we've come to the end of Chapter 1 of The Phantom Pain. It's time to get to the bottom of what's happening with the virus with the help of a new (but also very old) ally, confront Skull Face via the back of a jeep, and put a stop to Sahelanthropus, but not so much of stop that we can't bring it home to Mother Base when we're done.

So last time we rescued a bunch of child soldiers. Now, what MGS character do we know was a child soldier around this time. That's right! It's Eli. You know, Eli. Or perhaps you know him by his other name: The White Mamba. No? Well that's ok. No time to worry about him anyway because now everyone on Mother Base is dying of a mystery virus, so we should probably try to sort that out first.