Retronauts - 497: The Metal Gear Ranking Hootenanny

Episode Date: November 28, 2022

Jeremy Parish, Kat Bailey, and Shane Bettenhausen connect via Codec to debate the ultimate truth of the entire Metal Gear saga: Which Metal Gear was best? Spanning the full history of the franchise, the canonical answer lies within! Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

You're listening to Retronauts, a part of the HyperX Podcast Network, brought to you this week by Omaha Stakes. This week in Retronauts, Le Infant Terib share their Terib opinions. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Retronauts. This is episode 497. I am Jeremy Parrish. And this week, we have, oops, another Hoot Nanny episode. We just did the Resident Evil Hoot Nanny. And I really want to space these out, so it doesn't seem like we're flogging a horse. But some things happened, some plans fell apart. And now we are talking about Metal Gear and which games are the good ones and which ones are the bad ones. So with me

here to talk about these things, we have two other people with esteemed opinions about this esteemed series. Who is that to my right? Hey, it's me, Cat Bailey. I'm wielding a sniper rifle. I got some dogs, taking

out snake from across the map, and then dying. And this is Shane Bettenhausen. I'm very slowly ascending a ladder being filled with Anwi. Oh, wow. Onwi.

That stuff will weigh you down. It's going to take forever to climb that ladder. Why do you have a soundtrack? Where's the soundtrack coming from? It's deep in my brain as I think about, you know, the persistence of memory. It's the sound of love blooming on a battlefield, really. So this being a hoot-nanny episode, there are some simple rules that we will adhere to. And those rules are, one, our opinions are correct.

And at the end of this episode, this is a whole. This is the official canonical ranking of Metal Gear games. No one is ever allowed to dissent. And this is Democratic, so that is why it stands. It holds. It's not just one person expressing their opinions. I'm going to go through a list of Metal Gear games chronologically, and each of us is going to talk about our thoughts on that game.

And where we place that game in the ranking of Metal Gear totality, there are 12 entries for this episode. I have combined games and their remakes into one unit. So Metal Gear MSX, Metal Gear NES, that's one game. One is better than the other. We're just going to look at the good one. We can talk about why the bad one's bad. Metal Gear Solid Twin Snakes, it's the same game.

It's a remake, one of the other. Disagree. But, well, I mean, Middle Gear Solid Twin Snakes would come in number 13 if we put it out separately. It deserves discussion, but it should not be on the same line as, is Metal Gear Solid. Thank you very much. But the original Metal Gear Solid overrides it because it's the good one and Middle Gear Solid. The Twin Snakes is the bad one. I wouldn't want someone to think that when I vote for Metal Gear Solid, I'm voting

for Metal Gear Solid. See, if you, no, you're not. You're saying here's the good one and there also is this disgrace. We'll discuss what happened. But if we broke out Middle Gear Solid and the Twin Snakes, we'd also have to break out Middle Gear Solid 2 and subsistence or substance and then Middle Gear Solid 3 and subsistence. It's just a big mess. If I were like feeling contrarian, we'd like, if I were like feeling contrarian,

I could say, I vote Metal Gear Solid number one, but I'm picking Twin Snakes as my kind of... Probably some insane twin snakes person out there, Dennis Dyak, who's they're going to say it's the best Metal Gear Solid. The GameCube stands are powerful these days, so we'll have to watch out. But, yes, we are ranking

these games from 1 to 12. So each of us will give a ranking 1 to 12 for each of these games. One is best, and 12 is worst, just like in real life. And that means that at the end, I'm going to add up all the point totals for each game and then figure out how they

actually rank. And we're going to come up with the official ranking that way. I did leave a few games out of this that were just a little too far off the mark from the standard Metal Gear experience. I just don't feel like it's fair to compare Metal Gear acid with Metal Gear Solid. They're just very different experiences. The one exception that I made was Metal Gear Solid or sorry, Metal Gear Rising, Revengence, just because that is an important part of the Metal Gear Series chronology. Actually, it's the furthest out point in the Middle Gear Solid chronology. So I feel, you know, that's an important kind of final step. So even though it's a different game and plays very differently, it still deserves some sub-discussion.

So that's the rules, and now we begin by looking back to 1987, 35 years ago, and the original Metal Gear, which came out for MSX, and then the following year for NES. One of those is very good and one of those is very bad. So, yeah, let's just start with you, Kat. What do you think of the original Metal Gear? Where do you rank that in your numeric rankings? I have it at number 11. Number 11.

Did you only play the NES version? Well, here's my thing with the original Metal Gear. I think that, relatively speaking, it is kind of a prototype version of Metal Gear Solid. And Hideo Kujima had big dreams, and he wanted to do a lot of things. things with the MSX. And those things that he did were quite admirable. And I think that it deserves a lot of credit for being a pioneer in the genre. But relatively speaking, it's also, I think, kind of an early prototype.

And it's not necessarily a game I would want to really go back to, certainly not compared to any of the other games on this list. I have to ask, Kat, in what year did you play Metal Gear? I played the original Metal Gear. on NES in the early 90s, and I remember being very confused by it. That's because Metal Gear NES is really bad. And then some years later,

I learned that people liked that game. And then years and years later, I believe on the 20th anniversary of Metal Gear, the original Metal Gear, Jeremy and I played the original Metal Gear on MSX, I want to say. We were playing the one in the collection.

Okay. Yeah. We were like, let's play the original Metal Gear. and then write about it. And I didn't know much about the original Metal Gear at the time. And so I was really shocked to be like, oh, Metal Gear Solid is a stealth remake of the original Metal Gear. Okay, well, I love the original Metal Gear Solid. And to me, that's like the main one.

So in that respect, Metal Gear, the original will always, as much as I respect what it did for the genre, it'll always be like overshadowed heavily by what followed. Hmm. Interesting. Shane, what about you? I disagree a lot, but I think part of it... What's the number you're going to put out? So I have Metal Gear on my list as the fourth best Metal Gear.

Interesting. I really loved it when it came out. And I think, you know, part of this could be nostalgia, rose tinted glasses, but it was a very complicated, serious, different kind of game. in that era in 1987. Like, you know, it was like... Well, I'm assuming you played it in 88. You weren't importing in the sex games.

I wasn't imported. But if you recall, Jeremy, it was like kind of like hyped up before launch. You know, it was the first game from Ultra. There were, there were ads in Nintendo Power for months before it came out. Nintendo Power didn't have ads, but I'll allow it. I guess it was EGM and game players. But it was seen... EGM wasn't around in 1988, but I'll allow it. EGM...

Nope. It's trying to game me monthly... Nope. Buyer's Guide, the first one? Anyway, so, anyway, I'm just being, I'm just being obnoxious. I remember the early ads. Yeah, they were in comic books a lot, magazines, yeah. And the fact that it was a complicated game that had all this equipment and it was difficult,

it took me a long time to get through it. It had, you know, a formative impact on me as a young person. I really enjoyed the game on NES. Like, yes, is it Janky compared to the MSX version? Yes, I'm glad much later to be able to play that version. But for me, because it's so formative, so, you know, early and compelling for me, I rank it very highly. All right.

And I put it at number six, kind of toward the middle, but I do agree to a certain point with you, Kat, that it is, it's a prototype, it's an experiment. But also, like Shane, I was salivating for that game when it first came out. I saw those ads, and I was like, this looks really cool. And when I played it, it was, what if someone. made Zelda but with G.I. Joe. Well, to me, it was like, what if a Carrey Warriors was Zelda or something like that?

We'll see, Carrey Warriors is bad. What if Victory Road was Zelda? Victory Road is just weird. What if Iron Tank was slightly better? Yes, okay, there you go. Iron Tank. We've even got a guy named Snake. Iron Tank's secretly fantastic NES game. Do you play that? No, I wouldn't say it's fantastic. I don't know that one. It's, anyway, we're getting

off track here. Yeah, Middle Gear, like, I really, really loved it, but I, you know, the NES game was very janky to the point where it has some flaws and I actually got stuck in the game because of a glitch and got really frustrated by it

but I went back to it a little while later and finished it and realized you know like this is really cool and then didn't play another Metal Gear game until actually I rediscovered Metal Gear in like 1995-96 when I went to someone's house

and they had an NES hooked up I was like whoa this takes me back like, wow, so long ago, childhood. And what they had was Middle Gear, so I played it, was like, oh, I love this. And then a couple of years later, Metal Gear Solid came out. And I was like, wow, this really feels like Middle Gear. I'm sneaking around these tanks.

But it's funny, I think by 95, like, Metal Gear for NES felt would feel archaic and, like, very difficult and difficult to parse. You know, I think, like, there's so many strides in game development in a decade that, like, yeah, like, for me, like, part of why Metal Gear so highly ranked is, like, it was doing things when there wasn't really the language in games

to convey what Kojima was trying to do. Yes. Back in, sorry, I just have a little more to say. Back in 2017, I finally sat down and played Metal Gear MSX all the way through on the PSP Metal Gear Solid HD collection

that has a translated version with some, you know, fixes and things like that. And I was really impressed by how good it is. At the end, it does get a little bit into the bullshit where you walk onto a screen and you're immediately attacked.

There's no way to avoid setting off alerts. And that's kind of BS. And also the way you have to, like, write down someone's hint about the order in which to place plastic on the legs of Middle Gear. But, on the other hand, there's Metal Gear. And that was a thing that was really lacking in the NES game. You blow up a computer that just sits there. It's not exciting. And I remember sitting in math class, which is why I ended up not doing very well in math,

drawing out ideas for a Metal Gear sequel where you would actually see Metal Gear because you saw it on the box, but then it never showed up in the game. I was like, that's the one thing that I would want in this. So, you know, playing MSX Metal Gear actually kind of brought that all, you know, 30 years later, brought it back home and was a very satisfying full circle experience. But it is an innovative game, you know, just in terms of narrative, in terms of structure, in terms of the use of items and objects and tools and weapons and avoiding using weapons and making use of stealth, like really, really cool.

Also, totally a rip-off of Super Rambo for MSX, but that's another story altogether. It showed to me how Hideo Kajima was thinking about video games differently, even in the late 80s, when he was thinking in terms of stealth and a variety of items and big storytelling moments. You could tell that you wanted to have huge set pieces as evidenced by, like, when you're fighting the hind D, you can see the ghost of what would become the high D. segment, to me, one of the greatest boss fights ever in a video game period in the original Metal Gear Solid. You can see the ghost of that in the original

metal gear, but the technology isn't there yet. And actually it reminds me a little bit of what Richard Garrett, for example, was doing with the Ultima series, where Richard Garrett was laying the kind of the groundwork. He was thinking in terms of like Skyrim in the freaking 80s.

And so, Kojima was sinking in those terms too, and I respect that a lot, but this is like the rough draft. Yeah, there are a lot of 80s games from Japan that are inspired by action movies, but I feel like Metal Gear is a step above all the rest of them. Now we move on to Snake's Revenge for NES. I guess that's not really a Canon game.

game, although, you know, the whole, like, big boss as a cyborg thing eventually kind of came back around. But this was made, this is the one Metal Gear game on the list, I think, that was made without Kojima's input. And, you know, it's just Metal Gear did really well in the U.S. and Konami said, cool, let's make a Metal Gear game for the U.S. and let's make it more actiony and put in some side-scrolling segments. It's really strange. What do you think about it, Shane? I would have that at number 12. So the bottom of the list. It is my least favorite.

I've only played about an hour of it. And that isn't for lack of having it. I actually've had it since about a year after it came out. Because remember, I was able to buy a used copy fairly cheap quickly. And I did not like it very much. I've always kind of meant to go back and get deeper in, but it's not great. It's not. I put it at number 10 because I remember,

being a huge Metal Gear fan being very excited when a sequel to Metal Gear came out. But then I looked at the back of the box and was like, wait a minute, what's this side-scrolling stuff? This is not this isn't what I was into Metal Gear for. And I actually

put the game back and took codename Viper and play that instead. Which is actually kind of a good game. It's a great ass rolling thunder rip-off. Whereas Snake's Revenge is really weird. It's not terrible. And it's got a great soundtrack. That came out recently for Mondo on vinyl.

Is it worth revisiting? Yeah, yeah. Just get the soundtrack, ignore the game. I hate it when someone takes a complicated first game and then makes a dumbedown sequel, like, C-Zillion to Zillion 2 Trifformation, where it's like, oh, the first game was really complicated. Here is just like a simple arcade game. Yep. It's a bummer. Kat, what about you? I've never played this one.

You're not missing that out? Well, you know, I'm going to allow you to put a number on it. It's fine. I put it at number 12. Okay. Bad news for Snake's Revenge. Wow. I've never met a Snake's Revenge Stan. Have you? No. I mean, I'm willing to say it's not like the worst game imaginable. It's just not what anyone...

There are worst Konami games. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Even on N.S. Even at the time. I mean, it's not nearly as bad as ContraForce. What about G.I. Joe isn't Konami. Who's that? That was a kid developed for Taxan. Oh, never mind. And G.I. Joe, the first one is really good.

Second one, not so much. Anyway, the good thing about Snake's revenge is that Kojima caught wind of it and was like, what the hell? No, I want to make a Metal Gear sequel. And Konami said, eh, sure, you're not doing anything else. Why not? So we put together the pinnacle of 8-bit action adventure games. I would argue, Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake for MSX2, and a prodigious accomplishment.

It's astounding. It's one of the few games in the series I've never actually found. finished, but I've played quite a bit of it. And Metal Gear Solid is just a Snake's Revenue or a Metal Gear Solid to remake. Like literally, all the mechanics in Metal Gear Solid come straight from Metal Gear 2. You've got, you know, crawling and, you know, slipping through pipes and knocking on walls to distract enemies. You've got alert stages. It's just astounding what he managed to do in a piece of technology that was, you know, eight years old at that point.

You know, by this point, the Super Famicom was out in Japan, I think, or just about out. The Genesis, the Mega Drive, you know, that was out, PC Engine. And yet, he made this game for the MSX2, a dying computer platform in 1990. Like, who was even playing that? But he did it, and it's astounding. So central to the lore of the series? It is, yes. There's a, the actual fate of Big Boss is discussed in this game, as opposed to he,

becoming him becoming a cyborg who runs around. Anyway, I put Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake as a five. So a step above the original Metal Gear for me, I think there are some other better games in the series, but God, I just can't explain. I can't really voice what an incredible accomplishment this was for that level of technology. I really feel like you would be hard-pressed to look at any 8-bit game that not only would was that ambitious and complex, but also managed to pull it off convincingly. You saw lots of ambitious eight-big games that were just like, wow, this is a burning mess of

garbage, but it's smooth, it's slick, it's really good. I put it at number eight. Number eight? Yeah, I have it as actually the best of the eight-bit games and the top-down games and the spin-offs and whatnot. I think I hold the Metal Gear Solid games in general. in higher esteem because they maybe match much more closely to Kojima's vision for the series. And it's an amazing game.

And it's great to go back to, in many respects. I think it holds up far better than the original Metal Gear. And it's not close. It's a beautiful game. When I played it not too long ago, like 2015, 2016, thereabouts when I was kind of like going back and revisiting Metal Gear, I was like really struck by how impressive and well done that it was. It was far closer to what would eventually become Metal Gear solid than the original Metal Gear. And as we were already talking about, it has a huge impact on the overall story of the series.

It was a real trying shame that it was so hard to access for such a long time. And in many ways, still is kind of hard to access because... Yeah, I guess it is. Yeah, because at this point, the HD collection is only really available on PS3 and PSP, so you kind of have to work hard to be able to get it. I hope that we

can get a version again that we can easily play so that people can kind of revisit this gym. But yeah, like, generally speaking, I think this is less a mark against Metal Gear Solid or Metal Gear 2 and more me paying a lot

of respect to the chorus series. Well, now I'm feeling guilty because I kind of took a very similar approach to Kat, and even though I have mad respect for this game, I have it at number nine. You put it below the original metal gear. Yeah, and for me, the problem is

I haven't gotten through it. I've only gotten about a third of the way through this game. In America, we didn't get it until subsistence came out, and it's also quite difficult. It's not an easy game, right? So you kind of have to want it, and just

like all this discussion has made me, like, I need to dig out my save. It's on PS3. I need to go back and like finish this game because it is fantastic but because I don't have a personal connection with it in quite the same way. It took so long to come out here and I love some of the other games more.

It is lower out of the list for me. Okay. You surprised me there, Shane, but that's good. That's what these conversations are about. It's about being surprised. I'm going to finish this game by 2024. All right.

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Sales will be going on at all major e-tailors, but be sure to head to HyperX.com and sign up for the newsletter to get the scoop on the biggest deals. Happy holidays from HyperX. So Kodima took an eight-year break from Metal Gear to create Snatcher and police knots and so on and so forth. But in 1998, he came back and revolutionized video games with Metal Gear Solid for PlayStation. that also, under this umbrella for this discussion, that also includes VR missions and twin snakes,

which you're welcome to discuss separately from this game, but just rank the one that you feel stands out the most. To me, that's... Sherevulsion in Shane's voice the second you say twin snakes. To me, that's Metal Gear Solid. What do you feel about Metal Gear Solid, Kat? Metal Gear Solid is number one on my list. Wow.

But, you know, I can't... Metal Gear Solid is the best. game on the original PlayStation. It is a true accomplishment. It kind of inaugurated the modern day, the modern era of blockbuster games. I actually agree with you there. And I'll say I was at the E3 where they debuted Metal Gear Solid, my first E3. And it felt like I was watching something that nobody had ever seen.

Like the birth of AAA games. The way it was marketed, that original CG video for it, the logo. the art, everything. No, they had a CG cutscene. Yeah, at E3 was CG. Before they realized, you know, we should just do the in-game cutscenes as real models. And they had it as this beautiful, like, you know, brochure thing that folded out and had beautiful art on it. It just felt like the new generation had arrived of AAA game.

Yeah. I think that in this case, we would say art through adversity, Kojima didn't yet have the full canvas. And in some ways, this was to his benefit because it forced him. to be more limited and more focused in the gameplay, in a way, or in the story, the gameplay, his vision, in a way that he wasn't even in Metal Gear Solid 2, 3, et cetera. And I think it's to the game's benefit. I think the boss fights are still incredible.

I already mentioned the Hindy, the Metal Gear fight. I think all the boss fights. All the boss fights. Each one is different. The final set piece, having to, the, the, The torture sequence, which, by the way, I've never finished successfully. I always panicked because I'd be like, I can't do it. I'm going to lose.

So I never, I end up seeing her. So you're human after all. The Kodick stuff looks is really good. How it uses the dual shock? It broke the fourth wall. It introduced the concept of breaking the fourth wall and it was very clever about it. Of course, everybody always remembers. They plug the controller into the second port and everything.

thing. And if I go back to it today, I still find it really fun to play. That kind of top-down viewpoint really actually works for me in a lot of respects. I agree. And I played through this game many, many times. Metal Gear Solid for me is what the original Metal Gear is to you, Shane, because it was my introduction to the proper introduction to the series. And, you know, beating it on hardcore without killing anybody like doing just all of the without the map to rely on

especially when you're fighting like Vulcan Raven and whatnot it's a phenomenal game even today and you love twin snakes too right you know I've never played twin snakes keep it that way Shane what do you think where do you put Metal Gear Solid? So I have Metal Gear Solid in slash VR missions

as number two and for all the reasons the cat said and it really did feel like this page had been turned in the seriousness by which gaming was just considered, right? Like there's the aesthetic, the, just the

approach to the world, the way the characters are presented, the codec, the art, the music, everything. And just like, this was so when 3D in games was difficult to convey and be, you know, compelling and for the pleasure to buy it. And this felt like

ironically solid. Like, you actually were in this 3D space and it felt filmic, it really was like, oh, wow, games can do more than what we thought they could do. And it holds up. And, you know, I think we wouldn't be having this conversation if Metal Garsall didn't exist. Like, this, this, it kind of is the er of like where it all came from, really. Um, yeah, I can't say enough good things about this game. I also have it as number two. Um, it's, yeah, like, it just hit like, um, you know, a high megaton missile impact. It was just astounding.

Playing that in 1998, you know, at the same time, you know, it came out the same year as Parasite Eve, which tried to do the movie thing in a very different way, heavy focused on CG and, you know, RPG mechanics. It's good. I like Parasite Eve. But this just felt like something different.

It was like, wow, you know, there's no real distinction between the cutscenes and the action. They blend smoothly into each other in a way that's much more natural than what they did in Final Fantasy 7. But I think there's like an intention. thing about Metal Gear Solid, it felt important. And that's difficult to like, to

clarify, but, you know, I was so excited about it for seeing it at E3 that I priorited the premium edition. And like, remember that arrived at my house, it was just like, oh, wow, this is, this is like a big deal. Like, this game, yeah, like, I think, you know, all these years later, it's true. It's like,

like, he was trying to do something. He really put himself out there with this game. And Konami gave him the money and the resources to do it. Like, it was a big production. Yeah, it was. I was actually kind of intimidated by this game when it first came out just because it seemed so sophisticated and so complex. And eventually, you know, I kind of eased into it and I just spent a weekend playing it and being immersed and I just kept driving through it. You know, I do feel it's important, but it's also kind of self-important, which is to its detriment.

Like, you know, the final hour of the game is mostly it pontificating at you. Well, but like, again, at this time, who else was going to talk about geopolitical? No, no, the geopolitics was fine, but it was just, like, getting into bad genetics and, you know, some of those final conversations really... The Metal Gear's foot on top of the cyborg, I forget his name, for the Grey Fox, yeah. And he's, like, giving his whole speech snake, we're not tools of the government. I mean, he can be a little melodramatic, but, like, I applaud Kojima for reaching, reaching... In 1998, come on. Yeah, I mean...

I was making games like this on console. And then for those who were just into the gameplay part of it, VR missions came out a year later and was just like, here you go, just play with all the tools, do whatever you want. You can, you know, shoot giant genome soldiers, you can take photos of meleeing, you can practice your sniper skills, all of it's in there. It was all over the place. I also like the aesthetic, you know, the lowered color palette, the kind of mixture of this like, you know, very... Metal Gear Solid did color grading.

before Hollywood did color grading. But there's also this high culture approach, but also kind of this lowbrow humor. You know, it's this interesting perspective that has a flavor all to its own that is Metal Gear Solid. You got to know who the person was who made it through the game

at a time when Auteur Gaming wasn't the mainstream. He put his name in there. You don't have video. You have Hideo. Right. Yeah. It's full of age.

And it was the first game that knew that I'm a Castlevania fan. Right. But at the same time, it was avant-garde and mainstream. I worked at retail. regular people loved this game. Yeah, I mean, it was, it was so cool looking.

Yeah, I mean, he's going to Kuberkian, really, in a way. I wasn't, I didn't have a PlayStation until like 2000, 99, 2000. But, so I was mostly playing on PC and it still penetrated my consciousness. Didn't Microsoft publish Metalikersault on VC? Didn't that happen? They, I think they did because they also, I think they paid to get it on Xbox. I definitely did not play this. My Pentium 200 definitely was not good enough to run the original Metal Gear Solid.

You could always play it on Bleemcast. So I got a copy of Metal Gear Solid. I think because I bought my PlayStation from a friend in high school, I got an original copy of Metal Gear Solid. I plugged it in. I started playing. I got into the initial room. I laid on my belly underneath the thing while the guard patrolled back and forth.

And I was like, I don't know what to do in this game. And then I turned it off and went away. And so that was my Metal Gear Solid experience. And then people were like, no, it's really good. Like, you got to keep playing. And so finally I got another copy that I purchased. And I started playing it. This time I got to the elevator, got out.

And then I was looking at the helicopter, the Hindy helicad. And, you know, this wonderful little sandbox. And I would almost, I would compare it to, like, white orchard in terms of, like, design. Like, if you want to talk about the toy, those first couple areas are absolutely masterful for teaching you the basics of everything you're going to need to know from dealing with the guards to the way that like you have your footprints in the snow and they're going huh yeah that that airfield with the uh the helipad it's such a great scene and there's a reason there went back to it in metal gear solid four

yeah well i mean they they made a big deal about uh in magazines about how this game was constructed they actually built Lego models of all the environments to just get a feel of how they should work. And Shadow Moses, I think, is, it's iconic for a reason. And that's because it feels like one of, people talk a lot about the original Dark Souls as like one of the finest video game maps ever constructed. I would argue that Shadow Moses Island is up there as well. It feels like a real contiguous place that you come to know over the course of the game. game that you backtrack through at various points and as you get deeper and deeper and deeper into it. And then finally, when you escape on the Jeep, it's, it really comes together.

There's a real sense of place. Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. Structurally, actually, I think Halo borrowed a lot from it sort of unintentionally, you know, a lot of the backtracking and the Jeep escape at the end. But I feel like this pulls it off better. It's more, it's not broken into missions so much as the story unfolds and you go to places and you come up against natural barriers and you have to get the key cards and you have to get the tools to advance beyond. It really makes full use of the tool set, although you can also play without switching to lethal weapons. And, you know, that run up the staircase where people are just constantly on alert, it's really tough to do that. I've never made it through without killing anyone.

But in theory, you can. And yeah, just the freedom to play the game however you want. The fact that there were all these replay incentives like depending on which torture sequence you, how you completed the torture sequence, you would get different items at the end of the game that you could then roll into the next game. If you beat it again, you got to play

in a tuxedo, which didn't do anything. It was just funny. Yeah, it was just so much detail, so much love and attention poured into it. And then also there was twin snakes. Anyway, enough about that. So, one, two, two. It's going to be tough for anything to beat.

Metal Gear Solid. also known in Japan as Ghost Babel because G.B. for Game Boy. Aha. There you go. Came out two years after Metal Gear Solid for PlayStation. The weird decision that Konami made to call it Metal Gear Solid in America I think really undermined its performance here

because people thought, oh, it's just a scaled-down version of Metal Gear Solid. But it's not. It's a completely different game, completely different environments, completely different storyline, different characters, it's an amazing adaptation of Metal Gear Solid into Game Boy form that becomes less amazing once you play Metal Gear 2 and realize,

oh, this is just a refinement of what happened a decade ago on MSX. But still, an amazing piece of work for Game Boy Color. Shane, where do you fall on this one? I'm the wrong person to ask because I have it at number 11. And that's because I've only played it once in my entire. life and I was mad I was mad I was mad that it existed like yeah like at this point in my life did I want to play a game boy game I mean Jeremy you love original game boy but like I think most melanchol games in general the average belgusolled van saw this as an affront I don't think

that's true I think they just saw it as pointless nobody wanted nobody wanted to play a game boy game at the year this came out man and I'm sure it's fantastic and like now I wish it wasn't like a thousand dollars. Shane, this was the year that Pokemon, uh, silver and gold came out. Which were, millions of people wanted to play Game Boy. Was this 98? I actually did. It was 2000. 2000. Silver and gold. I actually did play

Pokemon Silver and gold. There you go. Grudgingly. But I think, begrudgingly. I did. The best one. I mean, Game Boy, game, I like Game Boy Advance. This is not for Game Boy Advance. No, Game Boy Advance was talking to the number one Game Boy fan. I'm sure this is a really good game for the Game Boy platform. it is i would say it's arguably the best original game for game but wouldn't it be better on any

other platform besides like you know no i think it fits it fits the platform it fits the technology i rank it as number four because it is a refinement of metal gear two it's one step better you know it does have the the conveyor belt maze because everyone was like we got to do something with color and that's their color gimmick it's it's kind of bad but everything else is great. So it is Game Boy Color compatible, at least. It's a Game Boy Color game. Oh, I thought it was a Game Boy.

It is a full Game Boy Color game. Yeah. And it has, it has, I wish I owned it. It has a sophisticated storyline. It's, it's not canon, but it deals with snakes trauma and Colonel Campbell's past. And the choices that he made in the line of being in the military and being a commander in an interesting way. It kind of predicts what Middle Year Solid 2 would do with the dead cells Because the enemies you fight are basically

Like a splinter faction of Foxhound And so you're basically fighting, you know Elite soldiers who used to be associated with Colonel Campbell It's really good Well, it needs a remake or a new way to play it Because I don't think I'm alone at the time It being like the large swath I highly recommend playing it on Analog Pocket

But that's a beautiful way to play that game. And I think if you like Metal Gear 2, what did you give Metal Gear 2? Well, I gave it a 9 because I haven't gotten through that. That's right. Okay. Maybe I'll try to try to try to both of these in the next few years. Yeah, you should. Actually.

It's only about $60 if you get the loose cartridge on. Really? Oh, that's not bad. I was just looking at eBay. Yeah. If you buy it complete, it's going to be a few hundred. Yeah. Well, that's how it be these days.

Or you can play the Japanese version, which is cheapest chips. Kat, where do you weigh in on Metal Gear? I put it at number nine. So just below Middle Gear 2, which I have a huge amount of respect for. And I stand by my statement that I think that the broader Metal Gear Solid series are more sophisticated and more approachable in many ways and more in line with how Hideo Kojima kind of saw the actual franchise and everything. But a lot of respect for Ghost Fable. I'll admit that it's a bit of a blind spot for me in the series. I only played a little bit of it.

I'd heard 8-bit and thought they said hate bit. Yeah, I love 8-bit games for sure, but Metal Gear is always kind of straining against the bounds of what's possible in games. So maybe that's why I'm a little more biased for the more modern entries, even though I put the original Metal Gear Solid at number one. And GBC was low-tech at the time, It was. But why does that matter?

Game Boy, or Neogeopocket Color was also out of the same time, and it was a little better. At this point, a lot of respect for it. At this point, Metal Gear hadn't come out for, like, a lesser platform. And so it was like, oh, here's a new Metal Gear on a lesser platform. It was a disappointment. I don't know. Metal Gear Ghostbable is also important because if you play through the VR missions, you realize it's actually a tie-in to Middle Gear Solid 2.

The entire thing, I'm going to spoil it here. the entire thing is actually one of Ryden's VR Sims and they drop references when the computer starts hallucinating in Middle Gear Solid 2 it drops references to the Fortress Gall body

or whatever you infiltrate so it's like all of his VR experiences being back out to him but Kojima didn't work on this one he did well he was like a producer but yes this is I can't remember his name

the the guy who would go on to make bacti This is like Boktai Zero, basically. No solar sensor, just stealth. But wouldn't this have been better with a solar sensor? No, absolutely not. Every game should have a solar sensor.

Absolutely not. Anyway, I'm going to stand out for Metal Gear Solid for Game Boy Color, which is phenomenal, and you both need to play it. I recommend trying it on Game Boy or Analog Pocket or a biverted or, like, you know, funny playing, freckle shack, whatever they're called, modded Game Boy. I've got an analog pocket. And if I see Ghost Babel floating around, I'm going to totally pick it up. I guess I need to lead off with this one.

I put this one at number eight. I really respect the postmodern approach that this game takes. I respect how daring it is and how it basically the entire thing is a subversion of expectations. But I feel that as a game, it's really lacking. It's the worst of the Middle Gear Solid games. There's the environment, you know, you go from Shadow Moses, which is the big shell is bad on purpose. I know, but, you know, there's this thing where you make something bad on purpose, it's still bad. But it's supposed to be so success.

Yeah. So, well, job, well done. Okay. Congratulations. You deliberately made something bad, and it's not fun to play. Like, the narrative in this game is extraordinary. The metatextual elements are mind-blowing, but just in turn, And, like, it has all these really cool things you can do. But it just doesn't gel. The boss fights aren't as good.

The mechanics don't quite work. Does it need one more boss? Yes, it does need, like, more boss. No, it just needs better bosses. It just needs a better environment. Why are you hitting on Fat Man? You just spend so much time running back and forth between these completely identical environments. You know, when we saw the tech demo for this, that became the,

the prologue. The tanker. Yes, the tanker scene. Brilliant. It seemed like, you know, video gaming's future had arrived. This is the step up that Metal Gear Solid was

over previous games. How much time it took to make that bar with all this stuff you can shoot? Yeah. It's just, it's all like,

here's a bunch of ideas that we threw in here. Here's stuff you can do. Almost none of this comes into play anywhere else in the game. It's, it just feels like

a lot of ideas. A lot of the greatest films only have a few great scenes. Okay, but when your greatest scenes are released as a free bonus in another game, that's rough. But you're putting it in the middle. You're not hating. No, I don't hate it. It's an eight. It's not a 12. It's just I want the game itself to be better. And also, I said, you know, Metal Gear Solid was self-important, but this game just won't shut up. I don't need to hear Peter Stillman confessing about how he lied about being injured and holl. in an explosion that he let have it's just like shut up everyone just please just let

ride and do his thing come on i don't need it just it tries to do too much you have like this whole storyline with ride and it's a big fake out but then you also have all these other characters who are just there running their mouths they're not part of the simulation they're just a distraction and they really bogged down the game there's some great scenes like the sniper section where you're protecting emma is so fantastic oh my god like Every time I just, like, my hands shake when I play that because I want to protect that girl. And I know I can't because I know how the story goes. But, you know, you just, like, it just really pulls you in.

But those scenes are so few and far between. And the rest of the time, it's just kind of like, ah, why am I playing this? Can we get to the good parts? I don't know. So that's it. Metal Gear Solid 2 for me is an 8. I do like the fact that they released an exclusive version for Xbox where you can play David. David Hater Pro Skater.

Yep. But that's neither here nor there. Kat, where do you stand in Middle Gear Solid 2? I bet you're going to disagree with me. I put it in number 6. So you disagreed me a little bit. Metal Gear Solid 2 is a game that I did not own a PlayStation 2 for when it came out in 2001, I want to say. And of course, I was extremely excited about it.

Like everybody else, I played the tech demo. I was wowed. I was blown away. And it was only years later that I learned about the, the big. Switch. The big switch, the big reveal, how it was pulled, the rug was pulled out for everybody. Everybody complained relentlessly about Metal Gear Solid Tube for a long time. And then, of course, I listened to people like Bob and Jeremy be like, actually, we should reconsider this game. I never, I never disliked Ryden. I spent the whole game thinking, when do I get to play Snake? And then at the end, I realized, I missed the point. Like, this wasn't about Snake. Well, also, there was a really spoke to toxic gaming culture, the way that we reacted to Riden in the early 2000, like, I'm so effeminate and, you know, it was kind of gay, et cetera. And now we look back, that was the selling point for it in Japan. And we look back on it, you're like, but wait a minute, okay, let's think about Riden a little bit more carefully here, child soldier, very traumatized and that kind of thing.

And I think it marked, it was interesting because it kind of showed how avant-garde filmmaking, post-modern filmmaking can be really at odds with the meat and potatoes of making a video game. I was just listening to Jeremy talk about like, yeah, like, I don't want to hear you talking about this. Shut up. I'm trying to like focus on this mission, on Riden and that kind of thing. And the disconnect there is really interesting to me. Having said that, like, in so many ways, it's actually a little frightening, like, how much foresight Metal Gear Solid 2 ended up having in terms of its impact on social media. There are layers within layers. We're going to use the word metatextual a lot when you're talking about Middle Gear Solid 2.

But also, I mean, the ending is you fight the rays and then, you know, it just keeps going, right? And there's... Depends on the difficulty level. Way too much talking. A lot of cutscenes. And this is where Kojima became a little bit of his own worst enemy, I would argue. Yeah. He had enough power at this point to cut out the people who disagreed with him.

The editors. Yeah. And also, in terms of localization, Jeremy Blasstein did an extraordinary job localizing the original metal gear solid. And there's an episode about that, right? Yeah, yeah. It's fantastic. People haven't listened to that. Yeah. Pulling, like, reworking Metal Gear Solid to work better in the context of an American audience and still be true to the material.

But Kojima knows, I think he's familiar enough with English that he was like, this isn't what I said and this isn't how it should be and it should be this way. And I don't have anything against the localizers who stepped in, Agniskaku and so forth. but they didn't have as much liberty to, you know, do the work they wanted to do as Jeremy did. And I think that's to the game's detriment. Like, it needed, it needed a little bit that punching up to kind of smooth over the awkward bits and just make it more accessible. But you were mentioning the meat and potatoes and people reacting negatively to Riden, like, that honestly didn't occur to me personally when I was playing. I, you know, was steeped of an anime at that point that I was like, yeah, okay, sure.

But we were coming off of, you know, like the 1990s, which was very, you know, very manly. Lots of movies like Navy SEALs and so forth. URA. And rolling right into the, like, literally the post-9-11 era where it was all about, you know, very defiantly wading flags and being manly. So it was the same year we were complaining about Titus and we were trending toward games like, Halo and Splinter Cell and whatever

you know, Def Jam Vendetta But it's funny, all these years later I think the Rydins and Tiduses have won actually. I think they were present and like Gen Z culture is more likely to think they're cool than people Yeah, oh yeah. Gen Z is like Twinks give it to me. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, like furry twink little Nazak It took America a long time to catch up to Japan and we'll talk about this when we get to Revengeance but now people like Ridenes for the most part. because he became angry and sullen and they took away parts of his body and he's a badass with a sword. But I think people sort of go back and appreciate the reveal, the way that the rug was pulled out under you from under you. I certainly do.

Well, I mean, it's no surprise. Did you review this game for EGM? I feel like I didn't. I wasn't on the original review. I ended up reviewing substance. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

I just remember reading the EGM review right before the game came out. and it was actually really positive on the game and maybe it was Mark McDonald who was like, you know, it's Snake Story but there's also another hero that you'll learn about. They couldn't spoil it in their reviews. But he did a good job of, I feel like people who read that review maybe

had it in their mind that, hey, there's more going on here than just Snake and, you know, it's a bigger story. I think that probably helped me to kind of say, oh, okay, yeah, I'm okay with this. Well, it's not surprised I have it higher than either view. I have Sons of Liberty as number three. And it's like

in some ways in my heart, it's number one in terms of its audacity. It's like this difficult third album that a band would make where it's like, hey, I'm going to like throw everything into the ditch and do the thing I want to do even if it offends everybody and his non-commercial.

And like it's a pure, it's a pure point of vision that the thing he wanted to do. And it confounds the user. But there is most of a great game in there but like it doesn't give you the full experience that I think the best my

my number one number two do it's not as it's not as fully formed as metal console one for sure but like what it's doing narratively with his characters is so so ahead of the curve what he's saying about the internet when the internet was nascent is like

you know 20 different era of this is pretty social media he talks about what the dissemination of information will do. You can go back and look at this as a text and be like, oh yeah, this was really prescriptive of what was going to occur in reality. And we're recording this

the same week that Elon Musk is setting fire to Twitter. We don't know how that's going to turn out. Yeah, like literally MGS who talks about what we're going through right now on Twitter. And it is, it's a huge reach. It's an overreach. He lost probably a third of his fans along the way. But I just give him so many props

for going there, but still putting most of an amazing video game there with amazing animation and graphics and music and voice acting. Like, you know, it's rare to see someone like this doing this so quickly. You know, it's not a Spielberg move. It's more of a David Lynch move. You know, it's really shocking. And it's not surprising that it was divisive.

But for me, this is the firewalk with me a video game. It really is. Yeah, it's like, oh, real fans will get it. Everybody else get the fuck out. Like, for real. Like, if you weren't on board for what he had to go through, I don't a lot of people who never finished this game. they were like, I hate writing, you know, but like, you are write-in.

Right-ins is the guy who played Millerger Solid. Yeah. And you can go back and listen to the two hours we recorded two years ago on this, but like, I love this game. I think we wouldn't, we wouldn't have, you know, some of the modern Auteur gaming that we have today if we didn't have this game. And I give, I give Codium a lot of credit for it.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the term, the difficult third album, because that was something that I wanted to say myself, actually. Because his approach to creating that difficult third album is just to recreate the first two albums, but make it weirder. Yeah, ironic. Like, it's, every set piece in the game

is something you've already done before in the game, you know, the sniper duel, the hind deep fight. But he's kind of like nudging you, like, don't you get what I'm trying to say here? Kind of, but at the same time, like, you've already done that.

If you've played Middle Year 2, you've done it twice. And it's kind of like, well, surely with a sandbox of ideas and gameplay mechanics, and, you know, now there's like the stamina kills and things like that,

surely there's something, more you can do than just rehashing the same things from Metal Gear 2 and solid again. And that's, yeah, that's a big part of the disappointment for me, is it just, it feels so stifling and contained. And I get it. That was deliberate, but that doesn't make it fun. I do agree. Remember, playing it the first time, feeling like, oh, the big shell, like, there has to be somewhere else. Like, oh, right, right? Oh, no. No, you're just going to run through those corridors back and forth over again. It's deconstruction before deconstruction was cool. Yeah, very much. But on the flip side, I don't necessarily like.

when media gets really introspective and turns inward, because I think that there's a self-indelgent element to it. A lot of people had a lot of praise for how the Rebuild movies ended. And to an extent, I thought... You're talking about Evangelion. Evangelion, sorry. Are you started to start another fight here? Rebuild Evangelian.

And in many ways, I found it cathartic, and I was happy by the time that it was over. but it felt almost a little bit too for Ano and I didn't necessarily I am at odds with when a story like turns inward I actually I needed 3.0 plus 1.0 to go where it went but Metal Gear's never gone there. No it hasn't.

I thought that the original series plus end of Evangelion and of course we have to bring up Evangelian in the context of Metal Gear Solid it was inevitable. It's funny. I was there. like the last four years of reality, living through everything, you know, modern life. I needed Shinji to forgive his father actually and understand his father.

Like, I didn't think I needed that five years ago, but it turns out I did. It's just a better story, I think, whereas if you get so self-indulgent, you forget the actual story and you're trying to, I don't know, you're speaking more directly to the audience. So I'm not as big of a fan of that. And I think Metal Gear Solid. is where it kind of gets lost in itself. This is when the series starts to get lost in itself.

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visit omahostakes.com. Use promo code N-A-U-T-S at checkout to get that extra $30 off your order. Minimum order may be required. So, I guess that takes us to Metal Gear Solid 3. At this point, do you feel Metal Gear Solid is totally lost because of 2? Where do you put Metal Gear Solid 3 in your rankings, Kat? Wow, Metal Gear Solid 3. So I played that one for the first time in 2007.

I borrowed it from a friend while I was living in Japan. And at the time, like, Metal Gear Solid 2 had been kind of a disaster in a lot of ways. Like, Metal Gear Solid 1 had been the biggest game on console, period. And then Metal Gear Solid 2, I didn't feel the same level of hype for 3. I'll put it that way from my vantage point. I wasn't in the media. I wasn't as close in to all of this stuff. But when I played three, I was so impressed by it.

It felt like one, but bigger. I loved the concepts of, I actually really enjoyed the concepts of the survival, the camouflage. I mean, of course, it has many of the best boss battles of the entire series. I believe we put this as the second best game of the 2000s when we did our 15 best games since 2000. 2015, I think it's number two on my list after the original Metal Gear Solid because if I like sit back and I think for a hot second, I'm like, I would rather go back to Metal Gear Solid 1 and play that one because Metal Gear Solid 3 I think is showing its age because it's so ambitious in so many ways, especially the original Metal Gear Solid 3, which is the one

I played, which I was struggling constantly against the camera and a lot of things And they improved that with subsistence in the HD version. There's, of course, many amazing boss battles again. Everybody loves to talk about what happens with the end and all of that stuff. If you want to talk about like a sense of place, once again, incredible sense of place, the boss, amazing. Amazing character. And I think Kojima, long before the. current era of prestige video games

that aimed to make players feel like feel that moment, you know, when you're doing a thing in the story, Kojima like was again ahead of the curve with the moment where you had to pull the trigger on the boss. And you were the one doing it. Unbelievable.

And I think that... Mom and O'Leal are all together. Terrible. Just heartbreaking. And that final boss battle, I'm sorry, is I think, a top one. You read the best graphics on PlayStation 2? Best Graphics PlayStation 2. It brings every single aspect of it.

I'm a sucker for a one-on-one just straight-up dual. To me, it's a textbook finale to a game. Yeah. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, emotionally loaded. Climactic. Yeah. Metal Gear Solid 3 is a damn good video game.

It's up there. Shane, where do you put it? It's my number one. And it was the first Metal Gear Solid that I reviewed, and the review build, I had to go to Konami to play it, and it was harder than the final version. It took me an hour and a half to beat the end. It was like the longest battle in my life.

I spent two hours on the end. This was in subsistence. I waited for subsistence. This was the original. I spent two hours stalking through that field, trying to fight him, trying to take him down. That was my evening. That's all I did that. And obviously, I had loved MGS and MGS too, but I loved that this took a broader approach.

It was even like higher budget, you know, more, more and more of everything. But it was a period piece. So, like, it didn't have to, like, be as future-facing as Sons of Liberty was. And it allowed, it was more of a character-character study and, you know, more about the environment. And it was felt lusher and larger and all the subsystems, even though I felt like there was maybe one subsystem to many between the healing and the camouflage. But, like, I was completely enraptured. It's one of the best-looking PlayStation 2 games of all time, like this in Silent Hill 3, maybe. It's certainly a top five PS2 game, period.

Unbelievably beautiful. Is it the number one PS2 game? Like, is there one that's better? It might be. Amazing. I think that's 12, hard to beat that. I also think the MGS3 soundtrack is underrated. I think it's just spectacular.

There's so much music. There's all, like, the radio songs you hear, too, that are fantastic. Snake Eater is still very catchy. Snake Eater is fantastic. This is the scope, it feels, it's so much longer. And it's the biggest one. It's the best one. I love Metal Gear Solid 3, Snake Eater.

so much. I've sung Snake Eater at karaoke. I'm sure you have. So I'm afraid I put Metal Gear Solid 3 as number one also. Wow. Jeremy and I agree. That's amazing. You just can't beat this game. I don't know why, but I didn't play it for a few years. There was something about it where I just said, I don't know if I want to play this. And then once subsistence came out, I said, you know what? I need to do this. People kept telling me how good it was. Hot take alert. I actually think original MGS3 is easier than subsistence in some ways. I kind of like the top-down perspective. That's just my hot-take. Fair enough. But I just, I can't tell you that many games that I've been pulled into to that same degree. Like, in every scene, I tried to sneak around as stealthily

as possible. I would go in, fooled my camo index. There's just more going on because of the animals. Well, there's an animal. I mean, There's so many systems, and all of them work in surprising ways. You know, like the fact that you can get a stamina kill on the fear by tossing rotten food out there because he has the invisibility that he needs to maintain by keeping his stamina up. And if he eats rotten food that you throw out there to bring a stamina up, it'll drain it and knock him out. Well, and all the bosses, except for the pain are so cool, like, because of the coolest bosses. The Osloat fight?

Oh, well, and like the boss And the Osolot are like these B characters that are so good But Revolver Osloat's a fantastic character Yeah, I think it took Osloat to a new level I mean, of course everybody remembers the time paradox moment And I mean, also walking down the river So I'm not very good at stealth games The sorrow or?

I'm not very good at stealth games So you'd murdered lots of people in a really grisly way There were a lot of dead people walking down that river There was the one, there were the helicopter pilots pilots who were on fire. So I think we all remember that scene because it's the first time it makes you think about, oh, in video games, you never think about all the people you're killing. It's something you actually have to like think about the repercussions of that.

Yeah, I thought I was being very stealthy and trying to avoid actual kills. And I still, it still took me like five minutes to get through that river. I was like, whoa, did I kill all these people? I thought I was being, you know, like, I thought I was being good. I've just used my trink gun. But no. And it's funny, in comparison to what you're saying about the big shell, like the, the sense of place in Snakey

is so important. Like, you're in this fucking physical place, you know? Like, it's real. And I just like a good Cold War drama. I'm sorry. Yeah, no, it's great. You wouldn't think that Metal Gear's stealth gameplay,

which had always been based in buildings, facilities, military structures, all this time, would translate to the jungle. I think that was the main reason I didn't want to play it. But once I actually played it, I realized, no, this is what wanted for Middle Gear Solid 2. It's, it works, it's stealthy. There's more opportunities for stealth. There's more complexity. There's more ways to do stuff. And I don't feel like I'm just

always going down the same corridor. Like every space is going to be different. Like here's a swamp and there's alligators in there that you have to avoid. Here over here, you know, this is just like a forest. There's a bridge and there's a beehive next to the bridge. What can you do with the beehive? Oh, now I'm in the desert. You know, now I'm fighting my way through the mangroves. And like dudes on hovering platforms that I'm trying to avoid. It's just constantly different. And then, you know, you do go into facilities. You have, like, barracks, and then you have

military bases. And then it kind of shifts to more like, oh, this is what I know from Metal Gear or Solid Millichel. It wraps up at the end. And, like, the end game between the Shagohad, which is so thrilling. Now, that, that boss battle is kind of I love the Shagohat. It's really, it's really darky. The Shagohan was awesome.

I love it. Yeah. I thought it was amazing. With Vulgan riding around the back in it, like this chariot. It's so dumb. Oh, I love it. I mean, it was... But the Shagohad itself was a... I don't put it on the level of the Metal Gear Rex fight in the original Metal Gear Solid, which, by the way, looking back on the original PlayStation, what they accomplished with that,

the Metal Gear Rex, which is, again, why I put that at number one as opposed to MGS3, but... And it felt very, like, you know, at that era, a 3D huge battles like that didn't feel very solid, it felt solid. Yeah. Like a real thing, you know, that was happening. The MGS 3, but the Shagahad fight in MGS 3 is still. excellent yeah very filmic too like and then like leading up to the boss the fight with the boss at the end it was like yeah it was on a level of like you know film's style production that even went beyond mjs 1 mjs 2 yeah the the boss battle at the very end um it's one of the rare battles that makes full use of all of your abilities you need to understand the camo index you need to understand cc you just need to understand how the game works well and i think the cc actually adds a lot to this game because like you know And just one and two, like, the fisticuffs weren't great.

No. No. You just, like, punched a guy three times and they fell down and had little stars over their head. It was so much better here, although it was a little too complicated and you'd constantly break a guy's neck when you were just trying to hold them up or something. It happens. But, you know, got to break some eggs. Yeah.

Okay. But, yeah, on the whole, it's just, it's hard to beat this game. I don't think Metal Gear ever quite reached this high again. And just an astounding feat, like a truly. high watermark for video games. It showed the level to which developers had mastered the PS2 by 2005.

And there's a reason that some of the greatest games of all time came out in that era because, wow, the PS2 I think might be the best console ever made in a lot of respects. And while so many creatives were at the top of their game and Kajima was one of them.

Yeah, and you said that limitations breed creativity. And I feel like that was kind of it for that being a real thing in mainstream gaming, because after that we went to HD and the requirements for fidelity and detail and just the budget people have to pour into art grew exponentially, and video games had to become a lot safer. But here, you could make games that looked great, but still kind of adhere. to low-resolution standards, and so a lot more investment could be made into systems and concepts and taking risks. Yeah, you just, like, you still get a lot of creativity in the indie

space now, but you don't get this kind of creativity, like PS2 level of creativity from the big studios. They just can't do it. I agree. We lost a lot in the transition to HD. Freaking technology in advances. And here, you know, I just play on PBMs these days. So back to the standard definition. Anyway, so we go from the high watermark of Metal Gear Solid to, or Metal Gear Solid to, I don't know. Where do we stand on Metal Gear Solid? portable apps. Shane, do you have to weigh in here first? I think you do.

Yeah, I actually, I have this a little higher than maybe it should be at number seven. Maybe I should have this at eight. But I haven't at seven because like at the time it came out, PSP was desperately in need of, you know, more games. And even though it's slight, portable ops does deliver what it meant to do in, in a good way. And like, it fit, it like did what it needed to do when it came out and it made me happy at the time. time, even though it is a little bit slight. Yeah, I actually have it at 12, and I feel kind of bad about that, because I like the people who worked on it.

And I don't think it's a bad game, but it's just, like Snake's Revenge, it's just not what I want from Metal Gear. Everything is broken into these tiny little, you know, self-contained spaces, and it doesn't feel like there's real continuity to the gameplay. It's very fragmented, yeah. Yeah, it feels like. the story barely exists. It's just...

The gameplay's there. The game plays there, but it's divided out and parsed in such a way that it just doesn't work for me. And, you know, a couple years later, a few years later, they would release Peace Walker, which I feel like Peace Walker took what Portable Ops was trying to do and properly

realized it into a real Metal Gear game. But this one is just... It feels like a half, you know, like the first effort. Yeah, I mean, it just it almost feels more like a mobile game than a PSP game like it's so bite-sized every mission is just like here you know go in capture some guys and leave um you know that's the the majority of the action and it just uh yeah i've never seen this one all the way through just because it can't keep my interest that long um i've

played it you know for four or five hours and said i think i've seen all there is to see so number 12 for me cat where do you stand on portable ops number 10 number 10 yeah i thought it was being too high on it. But if the original Metal Gear is a rough draft for Metal Gear Solid, then PortalOps is kind of a rough draft for Peacewalker. Well, and early PSP was rough. It was rough out there, the first year

PSP, man. I remember Portable Ops because a friend of mine was actually playing it when I was living in Japan and I remember looking at and thinking, this is kind of neat. And then I ended up trying it myself, and I was like, I kind of like the idea of having multiple different people and these little bite-sized missions and everything.

It was, and it was coming after Metal Gear Acid, and this was, it felt much more faithful. Yeah, it played like you thought a Metal Gear game would play it. It was multiplayer at a time when, like, you know, getting people to play multiplayer games on portables was new, you know, and kind of ambitious. Maybe it's sacrilegious to put it ahead of the original Metal Gear, and actually, in hindsight, I'd probably rank the original Metal Gear ahead of this one. I apologize. You blew it, Kat. I blew it. I blew this ranking. But, yeah, so I'm going to just say in hindsight that actually, this is probably number 11.

I don't know. I think it's before Monster Hunter, it's kind of like, it takes me back to this halcyon days of early PSP. Like, I have kind of like... It's like lost to history in so many ways. Yeah. So much of PSP is like that. It really is. And Sony has nobody to blame but themselves for that, I would argue.

Well, I've recently, like, this is a podcast they were talking about the 20 best-selling games of all time in Japan. the only Sony game on there is a PSP game, a Monster Hunter game, is the only non-Nintendo game on the top of the best selling games of all-time image event. Yep. Anyway, portable ops didn't quite do it for me.

And neither did Metal Gear Solid 4. At the time, I ranked it, I ranked it okay. You know, I graded it. I gave it a good score. And I was like, yeah, I think this was what I wanted. I think this was a good resolution for Metal Gear. But it turns out it wasn't. It wasn't what I wanted.

And going back, this game doesn't hold up at all. It doesn't hold together is the problem. There's a lot of ideas here. It does a lot that's interesting. And every single chapter of the four chapters of the game is interesting in a different way. One of them is really good. One of them's really good. And if they had followed through that thread throughout the entire game and made all of Middle Year's Solid Four like it was in that first mission, that first chapter. Incorrect. Chapter two is the good one, bro. Chapter 2 where you're... Act 2 is the good one.

Building and you're fighting, like, the octopus lady. I think Act 2 is the best act. I feel like Act 1 is really interesting. I think they both... Act 1 is what they promised us with their hype, you know, like... Yeah. You know, there's dynamic stuff, and... Yeah, like, that's really what we were sold.

But Act 2 plays more like MGS 3. It does, but I, you know, I'm okay with it being different, and I liked the direction that four went in Chapter 1, but... it just yeah what's your rank I'm scared number 11

wow it just I just feel like it really went off the rails and like the further you get into the game the worse it gets until you're at chapter four

like the whole you know I've talked about this before but you go to you go to Shadow Moses Island and it just feels so small because you have so many

more capabilities now it just feels like it diminishes everything that you did in the first game. And then they're making jokes about how you don't just have to switch the disc now. No. You have to wait 10 minutes for each chapter to install.

That's such a big improvement over switching the disc. You get to watch Snake Smoke. God, that, yeah, like no other PS4 or PS3 game did that. I can't think of any other PS3 game that had 40 minutes of its 10-hour runtime.

Number 11. Dedicated to watching the the character smoke while it installed the software. Just, it's just, it's just a mess. I mean, I feel like chapter one is really what the team wanted to do, and it just got away from them. It got so big that it just spiraled out of control, and they had to scale back progressively with each chapter

and make the game less and less as it went along until the final chapter is like literally just one boat, and you're fighting from the start to finish across the deck of the boat trying to fight the tingu's or whatever they're flying in and that's it and then there's the microwave hallway

the final sequences are so they just feel so forced and overwrought like Kojima was just he just wanted to be done with the series he was like I've got to wrap everything up I've got to give everything a tidy ending there will be no loose ends

and everything will be tied up by nanoboths it's just it's just like it's the rise of Skywalker for video games sorry man but it's true it's bad it's bad in a different way than rise of sky it's not that bad it's hard to be worse than sky rise of sky okay okay that was mean

all right it wasn't it wasn't that bad it's the matrix resurrections of I liked matrix resurrections no wait no sorry I haven't seen resurrection just the third one the matrix revolutions revolutions revolutions is laughable resurrection is good I haven't seen Resurrection. No, no, no, no, sorry, sorry.

Sorry, I was thinking Resolutions. It's not my fault that they made the title soon. 11 for Jeremy. I would count somewhere in the middle. Where are you got? I am somewhere in the middle. I believe I have it at number 7. Yeah, centrist, no great opinions.

Okay, so it comes out on PS3. I'm, again, living in Japan at the time. It's 2008, and I was listening to One Up Yours and Retronauts at the time. And Metal Gear Solid 3 felt like a very big deal because, 4, sorry, 4, because the PSS... It was like the first real PS3. The PS3 was floundering at this time. Japanese gaming was floundering. A lot of people were going, what's wrong with Japan, what's wrong with the PS3?

Unreal Engine was starting to affect things. Here it comes. It's all on Metal Gear Solid 4. It was huge high. I went to TGS 2007. and that was the first one I ever covered as a game journalist for some site you've never heard of before and I went through the demo

I played through the opening sequence and everything I got to try the freaking dual shock three because as you recall the six axes came out at that time and I was like this is neat and everybody was making a big deal about how they finally fixed the controls because Ryan Payton had come in this is all like a piece of the kind of anti-Japan narrative. Oh, a Westerner

had to come in and fix this game for the great Hideo-Kajima. And it came out and I remember it got a very high score on OneUp.com and... And then the backlash, the backlash began

against Metal Gear Solid 4. I think that it is really concerned with tying up a lot of loose ends. It's looking back too much. rather than looking forward. I don't think that

when a, when something gets so obsessed with like wrapping up everything cleanly, I think that it can it doesn't stand as well on its own, unfortunately. And of course, it was also trying to push the technology of the, of the PS3 a lot. And when you look back

at the time, it was a real technological accomplishment. But now, like, middle gear solid four it doesn't hold up that it's very off its time in many respects I would argue it's still a very good looking PS3 game I mean I think aesthetically it does hold up weirdly because it's like of a piece and it's unique and strange actually so I have it right above you I have it at number six and I realized that it's that it is higher than most people would put it I think part of that is because it was something I went and reviewed in Japan And, like, Konami invited us to this, like, their basically resort that they own and with the hot springs.

And we had, like, three days to play the game. And every night we had, like, a fireside chat with Kojima where we had, like, private time to ask him questions, which was pretty amazing. That's amazing. It was. It was, like, remarkable. I remember me talking about it on the podcast. And I'm, like, I still remember that very clearly because my mind was blown at the time. Because I definitely had, like, a 20-minute talk with Kojima about MGS2 and about, like,

how present it was and like the internet and shit. And like is MDS4 a mess? Yes. It is five different games. Each of the five acts had a different director. Was there five acts? God. Yeah, there's five acts. Each act has a different director. So that

kind of explains it, right? They're all kind of like it's like five different games. You know, I actually like the Prague chapter a lot. So it's funny because like I would say acts one and two are the best. And Prague is beautiful. But like when we played it for a review, it was broken. It was really hard because it's stealth and it was like you would get discovered

immediately. It was so hard. It took us hours to finish that chapter. And then four and five, you're right, Jeremy. Four feels like, oh, quick fan service where like you're happy it's happening, but it's over before you knew it and didn't quite have the impact you thought it would have. But I wasn't even happy about it. It just didn't feel good. Nothing about it felt good. Like everything about it felt hollowing. The nostalgia piece worked for me, but it felt a little like rushed to me. And then five. And it was also diminished by the ridiculousness of, like, the Mount Rushmore boat with the sons of big boss on it. That was, like, there was so much just stupidity in the storytelling.

So, yeah, it's disjointed. But I think the highs are high, the lows are very low. I think in post Beauty and the Beast Corps is a little problematic. Yeah. Especially with Drebbing is like, let's salivate over this woman as I tell you about her trauma. No, don't do that. Let's not do any of this. Yeah, some of it may be slightly canceled now.

That's Metal Gear solid for you, right there. Yeah, it's a weird, weird thing. I like Sunny. Yeah, yeah. I like eggs. Yeah, she makes eggs. That's great. She makes eggs.

I like how. I like that Rose gets redeemed in that. Rose is redeemed. I like a lot of the narrative. I like that the ending is incredibly long. and that, like, at the very last minute, Kojima and Old Snake both can't pull the trigger, both metaphorically and literally.

But then you have Big Boss to show up and tie up all the other loose ends that were still remaining. Yeah. Which was almost satisfying, but not quite. It just didn't quite work. Yet, I still rank it in number six. I reviewed that at Konami's U.S. headquarters

with, let's see, Andrew Fister was there and I think Matt Leone because we were doing like a three-person panel on it and I remember watching the end credits roll and at the very end it has like Big Boss voiced by I was like wait where did Big Boss show up and Andrew Fister is just like oh just wait for it

just like this heavy sigh like yeah here it comes Hello, my name's Jonathan Dunn, host of the O3C podcast every week. I'm joined by my two best gaming buddies, Chris and Minty, and we talk about the games we're playing, the games we love, and how they rank alongside our sacrosanct top hundred favorite videos. video games of all time lists. Deep dives into gaming mechanics, history and law, bound, all topped off with lachings of irreverent bribe, British wit, witterings, and wisdom. The details on the show and more, head to 03C.games, and tune in every Monday on the HyperX podcast network.

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Happy holidays from HyperX. But for all the bad taste that left in my mouth, next up was Middle Gear Solid Peacewalker. Kat, where do you stand on Peacewalker? I think it's good. Yeah. Put a number on good. I put it at number six.

Okay. I think that it was helped a lot by the HD remake when it came out. Because, I mean, it was definitely, it was late era PSP. I remember very well when it came out on the PSP. And it was very much following in the footsteps of, let's do multiplayer. on the PSP in the monster hunter sense but it was a huge

step up from portable ops it was one of the best looking games on the platform per usual I love the setting 1970s Latin America

Latin America PAS is cool different era for for Big Boss and it's seemingly laying the groundwork as we're heading toward the original Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2. And I was like, that's really neat.

And I love the self-contained nature of the missions. Yeah, and you get the idea of this game that Big Boss is really a stand-in for Kojimo, who's very disillusioned about the whole thing that he's been brought into, about being this legend. And he's just like, I don't want to do that. But he just kind of becomes a leader by default anyway and does what he has to do. And then I think it would have been desperate. to have been lost to history or

kind of a curiosity, except that it was included as an HD remake with major major improvements in the HD remake version. And I think that brought it up another level. I've never actually played the remake version. Oh, it was great. It was excellent, yeah.

It's still very playable now. Well, just wait until you hear what I scored it, because I've only played the original. I think it's better than four. I'd rather play Peace Walker than I would than play four. I mean, sure, yeah. But again, kind of middle of the pack

and was otherwise an amazing series. Okay. Shane, where do you stand on Peacewalker? I'm very similar. I have Peacewalker right above MJS4. I have it at number five. And in many ways, I feel like it's like the sequel to MGS 3, like the more online multiplayer spinoff of three.

The aesthetics are fantastic. It's, yeah, it's one of my favorite PSP games. I enjoyed playing the HG remake. Yeah, I think it's underrated, if anything. I think if you like MGS3, you should play Peacewalker. It is kind of like the next thing after MGS3. So apparently I've been playing it wrong. I only played it solo.

I mean, I did a little obligatory multiplayer stuff because I had to because I was reviewing it. But that's not how I like to play video games, and that's how I wanted to play this. So I played it solo. I've never played the remaster. I've only played the original PSP version. And I rank it as number three. actually, despite all of these mistakes. You should play the PS4 version, man.

This game was such a surprise to me. After Portable Ops and Metal Gear Solid 4, I just thought, you know what, there's no more blood that they can squeeze from the stone. I just, I don't want to play Metal Gear again. But I was a Tokyo game show and the EIC for one-up, Sam Kennedy, set me up with an appointment to see this at the very end of the show. It was like the last hour or the last day. and I was told, hey, go here and meet Konami Rep J. Boer, and he's going to do a Metal Gear demo with you. And I was like, okay, I can't see how this is going to be good.

So I met him, went to this place, like, totally off the show floor. It was like one of those conference rooms in the international hall at Makuhara Mesa that I'd never been in before. It was like, this is where I would go to take like an SAT test. It's really weird. But they just had some desks set up and like these long tables with chairs. and Jay was like, hey, so yeah, this is a Peacewalker, check it out. No preamble or anything. I was like, man, this is going to be real, real bad. And I sat down and played it and spent like half an hour with it. And at the end, I was blown away by how good it was. It just came out of left field and renewed my faith in the series in a way that I did not think was possible. And so, you know, as soon as that came up for review, I was like, I I've got to review this and played all the way through it. The story's kind of goofy, but you kind of expect that with Middle Gear.

And, you know, for every, we've made the boss into Hatsunay Miku, who's now piloting robots, and every hot, hot coldman or whatever, hot guy, cold man, whatever his name was, you know, you have characters like Paz, you have, you know, Kazu Hsuhira Miller. You have, like, the young... Miller was so... They did such a great job. Is the hippie version of Campbell in this? I'm trying to remember.

Yeah. Like there's just, you know, you've got Huey and you're kind of like, whoa, this guy is gross. I don't, you know, I know what's going to happen with him and it's horrible. It was just really interesting. Like, the characters were great. There was so much stuff under the surface of the game. They didn't force cutscenes on you.

They didn't force Kodak conversations on you. But all that information was in there optionally. You could access. dossiers. And, you know, they had, you know, some, some anachronistic technology in there where you could access tape recordings and stuff like that. But yeah, all the, all the stuff that was normally a mandatory codec conversation now was optional. And it just gave you a chance to kind of sit back and drink in the details of the world at your own pace. And when you did co-op with people, it was a lot of fun. I didn't really do like the Monster Hunter tie-in stuff, but that was

okay, too. I was always amused, by the way, that the branded collaborations and the Japanese version became generic. Like, it's a triangle chip. It's not a, it's not a Dorito. What are you talking about? It's not a calorie mate. I was not like I branched metal gear solid, you know, chronology with original

Metal Gear chronology. And, like, I leaned into the history of the franchise. Yeah, yeah. No, it just, like, the base building feature, like, all of it just felt really great. Yeah. For sure. Putting balloons on people. Yeah.

Like, it felt like. portable ops like really they took those elements and said let's put it into a full middle gear plus ms3 it was good yeah it was really good so as you know prequels are a thing right now and so many prequels feel hollow because they're just an excuse to be fan service they're not really going anywhere i enjoyed house of the dragon but we already know the conclusion of house of the dragon it's hard to imagine what exactly it adds to the original series, whereas, please, God forgive me for saying this, I think that the big boss era of Metal Gear and then the Solid Snake era of Metal Gear have more

in common with Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad in the sense that, yes, Better Call Saul is a prequel, but also it is a sequel, and they are all wheels within wheels. They are of a piece. And also, Big Boss is a better character than Solid Snake, just like Saul is a better character. Agreed. Walter White. Like, I think everybody kind of liked Big Boss more than Solid Snake. Well, Kojima definitely did. Yeah.

Yeah, I would say Peace Walker is the Andor of Metal Gear. Yeah. I've only watched up to episode three. Oh, it's shockingly good. A lot of people's, I'm going to watch more. It was a series that I thought, I don't need to see this. I don't care about this character. I don't need another prequel.

You don't care about Cassie and Andor? No. but it's like it's so good it's shockingly good and this was the same sort of thing I need to watch it I've heard it's fantastic I like Rogue One I've heard it ends very strong so yeah and or I haven't heard I haven't seen the end yet it's not done oh I thought it ended last week no no it's getting better and better yeah it's still got another few episodes to go and then there's a second season yeah uh Peace Walker really takes the notion of um big boss's story being its own series and connects it's the connective tissue between

Metal Gear Solid 3 and Metal Gear Solid 5 for better or worse. I guess we'll get to in a minute. All right. So that was Peace Walker. And then we step out to a game that is not. Metal Gear in the traditional sense. Metal Gear Rising Revengeance, which is about as far removed from the series as Snake's Revenge, really. Interestingly, isn't the first attempt at this game.

There's like a game that never got produced called Metal Gear Rising that was a direct sequel to the Solid Snake chronology that got rebooted into this game with a different narrative. Yeah. Yes. So where do you stand on the revengeance that we got, Shane? I have it kind of low. I have it at number 10.

Although I do like it. I think it's a fun action game. But do I consider it an important Metal Gear solid game to the overall narrative that I enjoy narratively? Not as much. I put it at 9 because it's, you know, To me, it's not what I want from Metal Gear. There's really no stealth to speak of. It's very much about, it's like they took the PS2 Shinobi.

Which I like. Which is cool. And so let's tie this into Metal Gear. Like, to me, the thing that really redeems Revengeance is the weird bonker storyline that it actually shows you, you know, a little bit of the future beyond Middle Gear Solid 4. I wish that had any real meaning. But do you think it leans into, like, a wackiness that maybe's too wacky? I don't know.

Like, basically, the main villain is a maga politician. You know, and this was, this was three years before that. It could have been at the time, I was like, this is too broad. This is too unbelievable. Like, oh, no. Once again, they totally nailed American society. Whoops. To me, yeah, like, it is ridiculous.

like nanomachine son but I don't know it kind of rings true in some ways and I feel like you know there is a different tone to it but it kind of needs the levity a little bit to pull right in back from what he was in Metal Gear Solid 4

which was way too like new metal I'm angsty everything is bad they took away my jaw I think you're right this game was like a decade too early maybe and now we're ready for it yeah I think it needs to to be released into a post-Bayonetta World, which, what, actually, was it?

No, I guess Bayonetta was... No, but you're right. There's like, there's a post-modernity to this game that at the time felt just kind of cheesy, but now it feels kind of like right, actually. I don't know. Kat, where do you stand? I'm way higher on this game. Really? Okay, cool. Than either of you are. That's great. Number four.

Wow. Tell us about that. Metal Gear Rising Revengeance, a game that should never have happened. For the longest time, it was just this teaser trailer. of Riden doing the little sword cuts of the watermelon and Cochima Productions That was when it was still rising, wasn't it?

Yeah, right, Metal Gear Rising. Yeah. And at that time, this was post Metal Gear Solid 4. There's a lot of weird things happening at Kojima Productions and Konami in general. I remember that they were working on in Zone of the Enders HD remakes

and then a Zone of the Ender's sequel and there were a lot of rumors about Metal Gear Solid 5. So it was a very unsettled time. And if I recall the history behind this game is that some developers were just kind of noodling on it, but it wasn't really going anywhere. And finally, they brought in platinum, as we know, and this was a very different platinum than they are now. This was much closer to the, like, all-star team of amazing action developers who made the original bayonetta. and what they came up with was one of their finest works, I think.

Metal Gear Rising Revengeance, there's a reason that people are still playing this game today. It is hell of fun to speed run. It is beautiful as a late era Xbox 360 slash PS3 game. I really love what they do with the actual sword combat and the mechanics. It still, even though it's not a stealth game, it still feels face. faithful to the Metal Gear world I think

like in terms of a setting a sense of place the you know the little metal gears from Metal Gear Solid 4 that you end up spending a lot of time

fighting the boss battles are absolutely lit in that action adventure kind of way is very digestible you can just get through it in a hurry

I'd much rather play this than Metal Gear Solid 4 or a lot of the Metal Gear games. Maybe Revengeance needs a remake. It might. Or an HD remaster would be really great. I think that it, okay, it turned right it into a badass, but it's a good character. I'm sorry.

Like, great design, really neat. And then again, like, when you're fighting the U.S. Senator at the end, very broad, as you said, but feels faithful to Metal Gear. And once again, you may have been ahead of its time in that respect. But I actually reviewed Mental Gear Rising Revengeance. And I remember being, like, really seriously impressed by it. Really, really fun. Yeah, I do think time has been kind.

Like, reappraise the people are like, oh, yeah, it's actually better than we thought. Very focused, very solid, as you could say. So, yeah, a lot of the games below it are either kind of dated or, maybe a little too introspective, a little too navel-gainz-y. You're making me want to go back to this game because it's been a long time since I've played it, yeah. It's kind of a classic of the action genre at this point.

People still have a lot of love for this game. It was actually at the Summer Games Done Quick, and actually, famously, the guy who did the speed run for it was disqualified and banned from Summer Games Done Quick because he cheated and did a pre-recorded run through the DLC because it was a bonus, but the speed run of that game, the base game was so cool.

It was so much fun. A lot of finesse. It's a real game-play game. Yeah. And you could say that it's a little too separate from the core series, but... I think it's more mainline than some of them.

But weighing on its own merits, I think it's easily the best spinoff of Metal Gear. and a nice little side story and eminently playable today and I put it very high. All right. The good news is that Revengeance

is backward compatible on Xbox. Hey. You get it on Steam, too. I stole my PS3 disc somewhere. Just play on your Steam deck. Why would you do that, though? Just play it on Xbox. It's okay, Shane.

I know, you're the Sony guy. You literally work at Sony. My PS3 is still hooked up. Okay, okay, okay. It's all good. All right. So Revengeance, maybe I need to reappraise it. maybe it deserves better than what I gave it.

So that means I need to go first for the final entry in this episode, which is Metal Gear Solid 5, the end of the line for Metal Gear. This encompasses ground zeros and the Phantom Pain. Because they are really just, it's like the tanker chapter. Yeah, it's a prologue, you had it by separately. Yeah. It's the tanker and the big shell, yeah. So I puts down as a seven, middle of the road.

I like it, but as much as I like Metal Gear Stealth and I like Open World, I just don't feel like they quite jelled. And the fact that it just kind of peters out and doesn't really, wrap up the storyline that it should, especially now that Kojim is no longer involved to the series and it's never really going to continue or have a proper resolution, like, that just kind of kills me. I feel like this was the chance to pull everything together, to make a final statement. And it's almost that, but not quite. And I don't know, it just doesn't, I didn't love it as much as I thought I would. I haven't finished it.

So, but I really, I wanted to love this. game and it just didn't quite land. We have, like, the same perspective on this. Like, I, I, I, I, you have it, would you have it at, would you have it at nine? I had a seven. Okay. I have it at eight. Okay.

And similarly, it's like, it's less of a mess than MGS4, but I somehow like it less. Because it's not going that far. Yeah, no, you're not going that far, but, but, you know, like, similarly, I, I, I was excited about it, and it seemed to, like, take elements of MGS3 and elements of MGS4 going to combine them together. and I actually ended up never finishing it. I got about halfway through Phantom Pain and, yeah, just never quite saw all the way through.

I was so excited for this game, but when it came out, it just kind of was like... Well, I don't know. And I actually have to admit that, like, at the point of which this came out, Ground Zero's, it's like, Cojima had heard the criticism about, you know, some perspective of saying his treatment of female characters was misogynistic, yet I was so offended by...

Quiet. Quiet. And how quiet was treated in the prologue, that it actually put a bad taste in my mouth. And I think, like, it never made me actually be able to fully appreciate this game. Yeah. It's like... The mods that turn, take quiet, but replace her with, like, Revolver Ocelot or some other character and just watching them move, dancing in the rain and all of that.

It's amazing. Yeah. You would regret your words and deeds. This whole episode is maybe when I go back and finish Solis, I'm going to go back and finish Phantom Payne. I'm going to finish it. Okay.

Yeah. I mean, I think all of these games are worth playing all the way through. It's a really great series. And even the worst of these games is still good. That was my point. I was like, you know, when I was rating some of these games lower, I'm like,

please remember the context here. This is still like a 7 out of 10. Yeah. And I'll say, Phantom Payne is more reined in. It's more him trying to deliver something for the mass. It's not as weird. It's fucked up, really. One of my other issues is, like, I don't think it needed Kiefer Sutherland to be in it.

Oh, he wanted to be buddies with Kiefer Sutherland. Yeah. That also, like, he's probably, probably the wrong way. Yeah. Sure does love Hollywood. He even had a studio there for, like, a year before he got kicked out of Konami. Anyway, Kat, where do you place middle of your solid fire? Bring it on home.

Let's wrap this up. I put in number three. Wow. Oh, okay. Let's hear this. That's amazing. I reviewed Metal Gear Solid 5 for a U.S. Gamer. I know that site. It was one of the weirdest review experiences of my life because I flew down to Kojima Productions in L.A. after Kojima had been fired.

And I recall that at the time, it was all very strange. Like, nobody was really talking about what the heck was going on with all of that. We sat in that office from 9 a.m. to, like, midnight for like a whole week there was an open bar i was getting completely loaded the entire time you should be playing yeah playing metal gear solid five um and i can't even remember what i gave it but i remember being very impressed by it and is the ending good um does it have an ending i don't know that i care about the story as much as i yeah because i think i think that what they did with the base building, the nuclear proliferation meta game, where all of

the players were coming together to try and get rid of the nukes was awesome. I think that the actual sandbox approach to the stealth was absolutely brilliant, and it was so much fun to play through those missions over and over and over again and try to come up with a variety of ways to successfully resolve them and that was like in so much so many ways the the true spirit of middle gear solid and that was really embodied by ground zeros i think and um i liked all of the i liked your dog i liked the dog uh i loved the vocal parasite um conceit and how you're like getting all of these characters uh it felt like the final evolution of portable ops and peacewalker where you're getting all these dudes in your base.

I love that you could capture them. You could put the little balloon and send them flying back up to your base. But then they start dying. You're like, what the hell is going on? It's like actually a genuinely freaky moment. And there are like several chilling moments in this game. Kojima does horror really well. And I'm still waiting for him to make a true horror game.

We were getting in that direction with Death Stranding. With PT? Oh, Pee's, recipes. but RIPPT I have so much respect for the setting

the meta game aspects the actual core sandbox gameplay that I find myself ranking it quite high that said what they did to PAS was horrible

and I think you wrote a great article actually about it did I? Cool right to go me right after ground zero's came out and And oh my God. If you ever play Smash Brothers Ultimate and then look at the special or whatever?

Yeah, just remember exactly what happened to pass and it is a complete another disaster. It is. It's the worst. It's the worst thing. It's worse than quiet. Oh, yeah. It is literally the worst thing. Man, I remember when I used to write good stuff, Metal Gear Solid, Ground Zero's, and the Trouble with Tone.

Yeah. It was a good article and it stuck with me. I was just like, yeah, you're right. I think that Metal Gear Solid 5 is the most toxic Metal Gear Solid game, which makes me, on the one hand, like, I want to put it really high. And on the other hand, like, it makes me want to go, oh, God, no. It was Lady Ira Kajima for sure in so many ways. But, you know, in terms of production quality,

in terms of like how smartly designed it was I'll say yeah in terms of like it's succeeding as a game I'm happy it exists because it's much more of a fully flesh out game than MJS4 It's the opposite of two in that it succeeds so much better

as a game than narrative whereas two succeeds as narrative better than game. It's game forward yeah. All right well you've actually made me want to go back and give this another shot I think this whole episode maybe one of Yeah, it's like time to do a full Metal Gear replay.

No joke. MGS 5 might be the best, one of the best pure stealth games ever made. It's true. Just like, I remember playing and like, you know, as you would go to attack a base or something, like, yeah, you feel like there's so many possibilities, anything can happen, and they really can. Like, the game allows itself to unfold depending on what you do. It's really well made.

All right. Well, thanks everyone for your opinions. It's a shame we couldn't have had a larger panel here, but one of our participants whose planned for this episode was sick. But I still feel like we have. of a canon here. So, let's go through the rankings and the numbers. Surprising no one at number 12, the worst of the Middle Gear Solid Games, deserving only a 6.5 out of 10, with 34 points, is Snake's Revenge for NES. That's a little high, a 6.5 for Snake's Revenge. No, that's totally fair. Oh, I know, Mr. 6.5 is reclaimed for good.

I did give, yeah, Snakes Revenge is not a bad game. It's just not quite quite. Metal Gear. It's just not quite right for Middle Gear. At number 11 with 29 points is Middle Gear Solid Portable Ops. Yeah, I agree with that. And number 10 with 24 points, actually there's a tie for ninth place, I guess. We have Middle Gear Solid 4 and Middle Gear Solid Ghost Babel. One of those, I like much more than the other. But that's interesting. That's the great leveling effect of combining rankings of people with very different opinions. At number eight, with 23 points, barely coming in ahead of Ghost of Abel and Metal Gear Solid 4 is Metal Gear Rising Revengence. And barely coming in ahead of that with 22 points at number 7 is Metal Gear 2, Solid Snake. And barely coming in ahead of that, surprisingly enough, at number six is the original Metal Year.

I actually thought it would have been flipped, but no, nope. Okay. Top five. So top five. At number five, with 18 points, is number five, Metal Gear Solid Five. Higher than I would have guessed, but it makes me think I need to re-agree. It's because I pushed it so high. Kat was the extreme vote on that.

I'm the extreme votes on a lot of these. Yeah, she heard the vote the judges would have thrown away. I think it can be ripe for reappraisal. I agree. It's been 12 years, almost 8. Or not, sorry, next time, 12 years. 12 years. What?

It's been, sorry. Seven years. Seven years, almost eight. Still too long. It feels like 20 based on what's happening to me. I know. Yeah, right. How long ago was 2015? Oh, it was an entire life time. That's a multiple lifetimes.

The before times. All right. At number four, with 17 points, barely edging out Metal Gear Solid 5 again, is Metal Gear Solid 2. At number three, with 14 points, is Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker. And I think that's because of me, with the extreme vote that the judges would have thrown out. Wow, Peace Walker that high. That's amazing. That's what happens when Jeremy Perry Perry Perry. Shaltz the episode. But I like any of the Peacewalker and five are like right for reappraisal by the people who might have discounted them because they were later. Yeah, yeah. I agree. And then probably knows big surprises here. Number two with five points, Metal Gear Solid and VR missions, but not Twin Snakes. And at number one with four points, just, just edging out. Metal Gear Solid

is Metal Gear Solid 3. I'm very happy with that choice. Can't hate. Yeah, like I'd be happy with MGS want to be there also obviously, but like, yeah, MGS3 is very special to me. I mean, those two games. I was being a little bit contrarian because I've said over and over again, MGS3 is not just the best Metal Gear

solid game, but one of the all-time best video games made, period. But then I was like, but when I was thinking about this list, I was like, Metal Gear Solid. And that's okay. I mean, really, how contrarian are you being if you say... So contrarian.

game is number two instead of number one. But I put five at number. But I put number at three. Here's by the Hotdick. I think if, yeah, I don't know what the Metal Gear Salt feature will be, but if I had a choice, I would rather it be Metal Gear Solid 3 story. I think that'd be the best movie of a native other year games. Doesn't Twin Snakes have you

riding a missile? Is that a thing that happens? Yeah, something like that. In which case, that should be in the movie, right? So you never play Twin Snakes. No. But like... I've played enough of it to hate it. I mean, it's, it's a broken version of Metal Gear Song.

But they changed a bit. They changed the tone. The tone is so off. Yeah. Well, but it's actually, it's a lot more ridiculous. It's like a parody of Metal Gear. But it's actually gameplay broken because you can switch to first person. And if you switch to first.

The, uh, yeah, the Oswald battle. Yeah, if you switch to first person in several of the boss battles, it like breaks the game, including the Revolver Osloat. Yeah, and also, um, uh, what do you call it, the, um, the one with the minds, what's his name? The big guy, the turret. Vulcan Raven? Yes, Vulcan Raven. That one's also really broken. And as much as I like, in theory, the cutscenes directed by Yuhei Kitamura, they're so over the top.

They don't really match with the rest of the game. So, yeah, it's a bit of a dog's breakfast. Don't recommend it. Nope. But the great thing is you don't have to play that game. And it's actually the hardest version of the game to get a hold of it because it's GameCube only, never been remade, never been remastered, will never be remade. made a remastered.

Whereas Metal Gear you can get on PSN and a few other ways. Like, yeah, there's a few different options. Jeremy, I love Metal Gear so much that I do own the Metal Gear Solid GameCube, the physical GameCube that is bundled with this game. And it came with the GameCube version of the NES version of Metal Gear. Right. And that's why Kojima left Konami. Yeah, and I made Hideo Kojima autographed that GameCube copy of the NES version of

the NES version of Metal Gear. And then he never talked to you again. When he autographed it, he said, like, I don't like this game. it is a mess like it's it's actually broken in the same way that twin snakes is like there are parts of it that are not compatible with the actual design

of metal gear and at the end here if we can have one remake of any of these games what would you guys want oh three three yeah I think it's time I don't think we need a remake of three I think three we just need an HD remaster

which already exists subsistence yeah and no if I were to solve for a remake no it would be a Metal Gear Solid Game Boy Color. Oh, wow. Okay. I would love that too.

So people could finally appreciate how good it is. Me, the person who wouldn't play at the time because of the platform, but like, yeah. But I do think a lot of the genius of that game is in how it makes use of the limitations of the system. Again, to Kat's point, that limitation breeds innovation. And it really pushes that platform to its limits. Maybe you're part to mobile?

No. But, you know, it doesn't have to be high spec. It could be, you know, like like Blastermaster Zero to Blastermaster where it's higher spec, it's like going from

NES to PC engine. Like that's the way to do it. You don't need to go all in. Right. Make it like a 16 bit. Yeah, like a 16 bit. Exactly. That would be,

I think that would be the thing to make people realize, wow, this game was actually genius. Metal Gear 2, a remake of Metal Gear 2 would be really cool. And I think one of the things that frustrated people about MGS5

was that at the end, There's a big reveal, and it throws the canon into even more doubt as to who was doing what in the original Metal Gear. And it didn't bring things full circle in a way that maybe people quite hoped. I don't think there's a lot to unpack from the end of the original Metal Gear Solid 5. It would be nice if you got a remake of either the original Metal Gear or Metal Gear 2, that really did truly bring things full circle and connect everything. I think it'd be interesting to somebody to approach both Metal Gear and Solid Snake and do both of them in the same style.

Like, think about it holistically. Yeah, I was hoping that would happen that, you know, after we got through Metal Gear Solid 5, that we would get a proper remake of Middle Gear, but then Coachman left. The rumor out there in the ether right now is a Metal Gear Solid remake, a new Red Metal Gear Solid remake, not Twin Snakes. And like, I'm down for that, too, curious to see what it would be.

The rumor I've heard is Metal Gear Solid 3. Oh, really? Yeah, but it's just a rumor. I have a contrarian opinion. So obviously, Kojima's done with Metal Gear. He's long gone from Konami. He's never returned to that series. I think that the series could benefit from a fresh eye because Kojima got so, he himself became so wrapped up in it in the same way that maybe Stephen King became so wrapped up in the dark tower.

That he wrote himself in at the end as a day six-knocker. Yeah. I mean, you were saying that in a way, big boss was Kojima. In Peacewalker. Yeah. So I think that fresh eyes could be really interesting, like Brandon Sanderson coming in at the end of Wheel of Time or something, somebody who appreciates the original work,

but can also, you know, give it something, put a new spin on it. So we need a Ryan John. not a JJ Abrams. Yes. I would love a Ryan Johnson Metal Gear Solid, yes. And everybody would hate it. Oh, my God. I don't care.

And I would love it. I would love it. Now we're dreaming about things we can't have. Anyway, that's how you know a series has made its mark on you when you daydream about the impossible. Anyway, so thank you, Kat. Thank you, Shane, for finally, you know, officially letting everyone know what good metal games are and what okay middle game Metal gear games are, geez. Metal gear games are pretty metal.

I'm running out of Steam. They're meta, they're meta and metal. Wow, meta gear solid. Okay. Meta fight. Oh, see, we brought it back to Blastermaster Zero. All right. Yeah, anyway, so this has been Retronauts, and I have been Jeremy Parrish.

And you can find Retronauts, the podcast, all over the internet on your favorite podcatchers. It's out there, and you can listen to it. But if you want to support the show and make great episodes happen on a regular basis through crowdfunding. We are on Patreon at patreon.com slash Retronauts. If you subscribe for $3 a month, you get every episode a week early with a higher bitrate quality and no advertisements, which is nice. And if you subscribe for $5 a month, you get all of that. Plus, every other week you get a patron exclusive episode that will never be released to the public, the general public. And also, every weekend, you get a column

and mini podcast by Diamond Fight, and you get Discord access, which is really a lot of stuff for two extra dollars. So I highly recommend it. Patreon.com slash Retronauts. Anyway, that's my pitch. Kat, what's your pitch? Where can we find you on the Internet? Yeah, my day job is over at IGN, where I co-host the Nintendo Voice Chat podcast. And in the evenings, I am the host of Axel Blug God, an RPG podcast, which I think is kind of a part of the Retronaut's extended universe. Kind of is, yeah.

A lot of respects. Nadia, Nadia's on there. I mean, I started it. Yeah. You did, yes. It's funny. I recently listened to the really good Final Fantasy 4 after years episode of Retronauts.

And in my brain, I thought it was acts of blood God, then I realized it wasn't. It's a good episode. It's very much of a piece, but... There's been a lot of crossover. Of course, we just lost Ria Kodama. Yes. And we made our Pantheon episode for Fantasy Star, which Shane was on free. It's on the free feed.

Go listen to that. And also, We did a tribute podcast. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for inviting me back for that. So a lot of good content on there. So go check it out. All right.

Shane, where can we find you? You can find me on Axe the Blood God, those two episodes. And for now, on the social network called Twitter under Shane Watch, what happens by the time this comes out. Yikes. Yeah, same here. At the moment, I'm on Twitter as GameSpite, but man, who knows? Who knows what's going to happen?

Who let the richest man in the world buy our platform for discourse? So when does the clock start ticking for Twitter to become retro? 2032? I don't know. I've been on it since like 2000. Bring back friendster. I don't know. So anyway, yeah, you can find me there as GameSpite.

But you can also find me publishing books and doing cool stuff at limited run games. Or just limited run games. Wait, press run is the press run is the print imprint that I am heading up. And we've published a few books already with more to come. I look for things to hit basically in a monthly basis beginning in March or so. There will be books for you every month, a book, for you to read. You can also find me here at Retronauts and on my YouTube channel, which is just called Jeremy Parrish, because I'm not very creative,

talking about old video games, even older than this one, actually, than the Metal Gear games. Actually, there's a Metal Gear retrospective up there at the moment. and I do have a copy of Metal Gear Solid or Metal Gear 2 for MSX that I will cover as a side story episode when we get to Snake's Revenge so I can talk about the two of the actual discets? Cartridge, yeah. Oh, it's cartridge, yeah. Yes, I do have that and it will be covered at some point. But in the meantime, we're going to keep talking about Metal Gear at least once a year on this podcast because it's a great series and I love it. If you keep talking about it, it might come back.

And we still got to do like a story analysis of it. That'll be a fun one. Anyway, thanks everyone for listening. Look forward to more podcasts every week because that's what we do. We make podcasts weekly. Yes, at Retronauts. Crime. It's the way I'm like to you. I'm still in a dream. I'm still in a dreamt snake eater