[game] [Metal Gear Solid 2] Turn Off Your Computer Right Now!
Hooray, yet another entry in the stream of last-minute FSTs squeaking under the wire! So, let's go with my favorite Metal Gear Solid game: the second one, Sons of Liberty.
Before I played any of the Metal Gear games, I had the vague notion that they were these manly FPS war games where you went around shooting people - you know, kind of like Call of Duty or Medal of Honor or so on. I wasn't terribly interested until I got strong-armed into playing the series, and I was suddenly, violently hooked; the games had plot and humor and quite a bit of delicious philosowankery about nature vs. nurture and the nature of violence and WHAT IS A MAN and so on and so forth.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is a game that seems to inspire strong opinions either way. This X-Play clip seems to encapsulate the average fanboy's reaction to the game. (Revenge!) They bitched and moaned that they only got to play Solid Snake for about 1/8th of the game and were "forced" to play as sparkly blond rookie/ninja Raiden. Personally, I loved the game and actually am quite fond of poor Raiden (not because of the sneaking suit - come on, they're ALL wearing skintight suits.)
The game is ostensibly about rookie soldier Raiden, who is a member of the black ops group FOXHOUND that Solid Snake had belonged to. He's dropped onto a oil treatment plant in the Hudson River with orders to infiltrate the plant and rescue the US President, who had been taken hostage by a group of terrorists calling themselves the Sons of Liberty. The leader of the terrorists is thought to be Solid Snake, who was also responsible for sinking the oil tanker in the Hudson River in the first place. The terrorists are threatening to kill the President and/or set off a nuclear bomb if their demands aren't met. Raiden is accompanied on CODEC by Colonel Campbell, Snake's former CO, and Rosemary, Raiden's girlfriend who happens to be a data analyst.
Raiden, however, hasn't actually ever had a live mission before; this is his first time facing real enemies with real weapons. He's not too worried, though; he's trained extensively in VR and figures that after playing as Solid Snake so many times, he's probably as good as him by now! This is an example of the commentary hidden in the game; what Raiden trained with were the bonus VR missions for MGS1. Raiden's essentially the player - someone who has used video games to pretend to be a killer, who is so divorced from the reality of the violence he inflicts that the entire mission is like a game to him.
That's kind of how the whole game goes - while the game ostensibly seems to be about ninjas and bisexual vampires and bombs and the President and METAL GEAR and eating gunpowder and whiny girlfriends and tentacles, it actually gives you some interesting philosophical concepts to chew upon in a fairly postmodern structure and storyline - if you like that sort of thing. I can't even begin to touch on all the details of the convoluted plot; it really does make beautiful sense if you think about it for a while, and it has all sorts of amazing easter eggs, like the 25876538763 different meanings of Raiden's real name, "Jack."
You can also spend your time holding up soldiers and shaking them down for dogtags if that's more your style.
Anyways blah blah music.
(front by poisreverie, back by nemissa, both edited by nemissa >:3 )
TANKER CHAPTER
01. Holy Fuck - K.Rhythm Pt.2
SOLID SNAKE: Sneak, sneak, sneaky-sneak, let's take pictures of pinups and find out where the Marines are hiding their prototype anti-Gear Gear, METAL GEAR RAY! ...and I blew myself up again by shooting the C4 instead of the trigger. What the fuck, Russian mercenaries?
02. Tricky - My Evil Is Strong
Revolver Ocelot steals the RAY, but he has a funny little spell - because he's replaced the arm he lost in MGS1 with Liquid Snake's arm, essentially making him Jigoku Sensei Ocelot.
LIQUID: SUP GUYS! >:D
OCELOT and SNAKE: GO AWAY
GAMERS: ...what the fuck, demonic possession? In Metal Gear?
03. Goldfrapp - Lovely Head (Staré Mêsto Mix)
Ocelot sinks the tanker after killing all the Marines, Russian mercenaries, and presumably Snakes on board. One of the Russian mercenaries onboard is Olga Gurlukovich, who is the tough-as-nails soldier daughter of the Colonel Gurlukovich. The Colonel's last thoughts are for her safety. She's pretty masculine, so I guess that balances out Raiden being so pretty.
After this disaster, Solid Snake is either dead, an internationally-wanted eco-terrorist, or some combination of the two. Crap.
PLANT CHAPTER (sorry, that's how short the tanker chapter is!)
04. Interpol - Evil
RAIDEN: Awesome, I'm on my first solo mission! I wanted my codename to be 'Snake' but they insisted on 'Raiden.' D:
ROSE: Good luck, Jack! :D
RAIDEN: Rose, can you please remember to call me by my codename?
ROSE: Okay, Jack. :D By the way, do you remember what tomorrow is? Hint hint?
RAIDEN: .....(I'm trying to single-handedly overpower a terrorist group and she wants me to remember what tomorrow is?) April 30?...is it your birthday?
ROSE: NO, YOU JERK
RAIDEN: FUCK
MALE PLAYERS: WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT
ME: Oh god, I know women like this. D: I, I gotta hand it to him - somehow, Kojima has accurately replicated That One Couple that you always see arguing at parties!
KOJIMA: Actually, Rose is patterned after my wife. :D
ME: >_>
(This comic pretty much sums up my gaming experience.)
05. Alien Sex Fiend - On A Mission
COLONEL: Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the President?
RAIDEN: Sure!
COLONEL: Actually you're trying to prevent the terrorists from destroying the plant and spilling all the oil into the harbor.
RAIDEN: So...okay...I'm trying to stop the terrorists...from...
COLONEL: From killing all the hostages.
RAIDEN: So I should go after the President, right?
COLONEL: ACTUALLY, you are trying to stop the terrorists from detonating a nuclear bomb in retaliation for not getting their demands met!
RAIDEN: ...huh?
COLONEL: Actually, the detonation of the bomb was their aim after all, not the demands, so screw the hostages.
RAIDEN: I'm confused.
ROSE: JACK, WHAT DAY IS IT TOMORROW?
06. Orquesta del Plata - Montserrat
This would be the part where Raiden meets Vamp, and the player is left to wonder where super-speed vampires fit into this world. But he's not called Vamp because he's a vampire - no, he's called that because he's bisexual. The person who informs you of this random factoid is...
07. Eurythmics - Greetings From A Dead Man
...Iroquois Pliskin, Lieutenant Jr. Grade. Yeah, that's one cunning pseudonym there. (Google "iroquois" and "plissken" if it's not headslappingly obvious. If you ask him about it much later in the game, he'll tell you the history of Manhattan island. Freak.) Pliskin acts as your world-weary backup in your confused charge through the Plant.
08. Tomahawk - Aktion 13F14
Pliskin gives Raiden a lot of crap about being a "digital grunt for a digital age," who's never actually fought in a real battlefield where he could actually get hurt. Raiden seesaws between being insulted and impressed by Pliskin.
09. Raiden - Fallin'
(Don't hurt me D:) After fighting a bunch of superpowered terrorists, rescuing the hostages, defusing a bunch of bombs, getting groped by the President of the United States, and shooting down a Harrier jet with a shoulder-mounted missile-launcher, Raiden has to swim over to a partially-submerged section of the Plant in order to reach one of those teen genius programmers so that she can defuse the impending nuclear launch. Unsurprisingly, this 1337 haxx0r is Otacon's younger half-sister, Emma Emmerich (E.E.), who somehow shares the Emmerich weak bladder.
10. The Chemical Brothers - If You Kling To Me I'll Klong You
(the joke's still amusing enough, angrybabble)
Raiden has to rescue E.E., but she's both terrifed by water and supposedly unable to walk. So Raiden has to lead Emma by the hand, in a part of the game clearly aimed to appeal to female gamers. (I think)
11. Grizzly Bear - Deep Sea Diver
One of my favorite parts of the game is probably the sequence where you swim through the submerged corridors of the Plant with E.E. clinging to your back.
E.E: I'm scared of water! I'll drown!
RAIDEN: Look, Emma, just close your eyes and listen to my heartbeat. When you reach 100, open your eyes and we'll be there.
ME: BWAHAHAHAHAHA WHAT THE HELL DO THEY EXPECT ME TO FALL FOR SUCH SHAMELESS FANBAIT yes please
12. Bent - So Long Without You
Man, sucks to be Otacon. I mean, he's a engineer and otaku, of course he's not the greatest with girls....but his track record with women is really pretty disturbing. OUTSIDE OF YOUR OWN GENE POOL, OKAY, DUDE? This scene was pretty sad, though.
13. Babybird - Bad Old Man
Right around here, Raiden is tasered by Snake and the Cyborg Ninja (who in this game is Olga Gurlukovich...hee!) and wakes up buck naked and strapped to some kind of torture device. Turns out that the leader of the terrorists, Solid*us* Snake, is actually the ex-president of the United States, George Sears, and Raiden's adoptive father. Raiden had been suppressing this memory because, uh...because he wanted to have tentacles shoved down his throat and to have this long rambly argument with Rose that he doesn't like to share touchy-feely details about his life with her because he grew up as a child soldier eating hallucinogenic gunpowder in his food. No, seriously. It's pretty hilarious.
14. Skinny Puppy - Use Less
Raiden tries to contact his CO, but for some reason both the Colonel and the Rose are saying complete nonsense about how Raiden has to finish the simulation and are basically acting like glitchy AIs. Which, in fact, they were. All along.
(This is where a lot of people clutch their heads, start screaming, and stop playing the game. But I love it so much - the insane codec messages, the FISSION MAILED, the randomly-changing area names, the lack-of-a-map!)
15. SCHAFT - inFORMation
If I had to summarize the big argument at the end of the game, it'd go something like this.
COLONEL/ROSE/WHOEVER: Hi, we're the Patriots, otherwise known as the LA-LI-LU-LE-LO. We're a meme that resides in the United States government. Right now we're building the world's biggest and best SpamCatcher, ARSENAL GEAR!
RAIDEN: But why would you do that?
PATRIOTS: To filter out all the useless crap and gossip and nonsense in human history that would otherwise clog up the internets and be pointlessly preserved for all time. We like our internets clean!
RAIDEN: But sometimes you put my forum signup posts in the spamcatcher and I miss them! I kind of like having the free will to decide what's spam and what's not.
PATRIOTS: But isn't that a waste of your valuable time?
RAIDEN: ...but...
PATRIOTS: No longer will the people of the future have to wade through TomKat gossip and other cultural trash to find the useful parts of our civilization! You'll like it! Besides, it's not like you can stop us.
RAIDEN: ...other than that virus E.E. partially uploaded into you?
PATRIOTS: ...besides that.
16. Hotei Tomoyasu - Katana Groove
Raiden gains a blade and the right to be the next cyborg ninja in the MGS series! The problem is, they tend to have the lifespan of a lemming. D: Noes!
17. Death In June - She Said Destroy
Before the Patriots (and their #1 agent, Revolver Ocelot) can totally waste Raiden and Snake, they have to mow through the two toughest women in the series - Fortune, the woman who cannot die (no matter how much she wants to), and Olga Gurlukovich, the Cyborg Ninja (mk II).
18. Nine Inch Nails - Underneath the Skin
Also, Raiden has to defeat between 5 and 25 Metal Gear Rays. Augh, holy shit. The setting is gorgeous, though; it's a technological womb where the floor lights up in green hexagons wherever Raiden steps. (Hint: the RAYs are numbered R01E through R25E; to end the battle quick you just have to kill R05E. >_> Hmmmmmmmmmmm)
19. SOFT BALLET - Vietnam
Raiden basically has to continue living so that Olga's child will not die, and also so that he can decide what he wants to go into his spam filter HE wants to pass on to the next generation.
20. Thee Silver Mount Zion and Tra-la-la Band - Ring Them Bells (Freedom Has Come and Gone)
Raiden wins the battle against his foster-father, but it's a pretty hollow victory in the end; he agrees with some of Solidus's sentiments. Humanity has to decide for itself what it believes in and what it chooses to pass on; it can't look to an outside source to decide for them. So, what is Jack going to do? Go back to his girlfriend, who may or may not truly exist and may or may not be pregnant with his child? Follow his mentor Snake, who may or may not truly exist and who is chasing a megalomaniac with a giant mecha? Or start over by himself and figure out where he wants to go from here?
(By the way, April 30 is the anniversary of George Washington's inauguration as President at Federal Hall. DUH, WHY DIDN'T RAIDEN THINK OF THAT IMMEDIATELY??)
[[ ZIP (20 songs, 140 MB) ]] (sorry!)
I know that there's already been a MGS2 fst, but er, hey, this is the second, then! Any thoughts on the game? Or just comment if you download, I don't care. :D
Before I played any of the Metal Gear games, I had the vague notion that they were these manly FPS war games where you went around shooting people - you know, kind of like Call of Duty or Medal of Honor or so on. I wasn't terribly interested until I got strong-armed into playing the series, and I was suddenly, violently hooked; the games had plot and humor and quite a bit of delicious philosowankery about nature vs. nurture and the nature of violence and WHAT IS A MAN and so on and so forth.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is a game that seems to inspire strong opinions either way. This X-Play clip seems to encapsulate the average fanboy's reaction to the game. (Revenge!) They bitched and moaned that they only got to play Solid Snake for about 1/8th of the game and were "forced" to play as sparkly blond rookie/ninja Raiden. Personally, I loved the game and actually am quite fond of poor Raiden (not because of the sneaking suit - come on, they're ALL wearing skintight suits.)
The game is ostensibly about rookie soldier Raiden, who is a member of the black ops group FOXHOUND that Solid Snake had belonged to. He's dropped onto a oil treatment plant in the Hudson River with orders to infiltrate the plant and rescue the US President, who had been taken hostage by a group of terrorists calling themselves the Sons of Liberty. The leader of the terrorists is thought to be Solid Snake, who was also responsible for sinking the oil tanker in the Hudson River in the first place. The terrorists are threatening to kill the President and/or set off a nuclear bomb if their demands aren't met. Raiden is accompanied on CODEC by Colonel Campbell, Snake's former CO, and Rosemary, Raiden's girlfriend who happens to be a data analyst.
Raiden, however, hasn't actually ever had a live mission before; this is his first time facing real enemies with real weapons. He's not too worried, though; he's trained extensively in VR and figures that after playing as Solid Snake so many times, he's probably as good as him by now! This is an example of the commentary hidden in the game; what Raiden trained with were the bonus VR missions for MGS1. Raiden's essentially the player - someone who has used video games to pretend to be a killer, who is so divorced from the reality of the violence he inflicts that the entire mission is like a game to him.
That's kind of how the whole game goes - while the game ostensibly seems to be about ninjas and bisexual vampires and bombs and the President and METAL GEAR and eating gunpowder and whiny girlfriends and tentacles, it actually gives you some interesting philosophical concepts to chew upon in a fairly postmodern structure and storyline - if you like that sort of thing. I can't even begin to touch on all the details of the convoluted plot; it really does make beautiful sense if you think about it for a while, and it has all sorts of amazing easter eggs, like the 25876538763 different meanings of Raiden's real name, "Jack."
You can also spend your time holding up soldiers and shaking them down for dogtags if that's more your style.
Anyways blah blah music.
(front by poisreverie, back by nemissa, both edited by nemissa >:3 )
TANKER CHAPTER
01. Holy Fuck - K.Rhythm Pt.2
SOLID SNAKE: Sneak, sneak, sneaky-sneak, let's take pictures of pinups and find out where the Marines are hiding their prototype anti-Gear Gear, METAL GEAR RAY! ...and I blew myself up again by shooting the C4 instead of the trigger. What the fuck, Russian mercenaries?
02. Tricky - My Evil Is Strong
Revolver Ocelot steals the RAY, but he has a funny little spell - because he's replaced the arm he lost in MGS1 with Liquid Snake's arm, essentially making him Jigoku Sensei Ocelot.
LIQUID: SUP GUYS! >:D
OCELOT and SNAKE: GO AWAY
GAMERS: ...what the fuck, demonic possession? In Metal Gear?
03. Goldfrapp - Lovely Head (Staré Mêsto Mix)
Ocelot sinks the tanker after killing all the Marines, Russian mercenaries, and presumably Snakes on board. One of the Russian mercenaries onboard is Olga Gurlukovich, who is the tough-as-nails soldier daughter of the Colonel Gurlukovich. The Colonel's last thoughts are for her safety. She's pretty masculine, so I guess that balances out Raiden being so pretty.
After this disaster, Solid Snake is either dead, an internationally-wanted eco-terrorist, or some combination of the two. Crap.
PLANT CHAPTER (sorry, that's how short the tanker chapter is!)
04. Interpol - Evil
RAIDEN: Awesome, I'm on my first solo mission! I wanted my codename to be 'Snake' but they insisted on 'Raiden.' D:
ROSE: Good luck, Jack! :D
RAIDEN: Rose, can you please remember to call me by my codename?
ROSE: Okay, Jack. :D By the way, do you remember what tomorrow is? Hint hint?
RAIDEN: .....(I'm trying to single-handedly overpower a terrorist group and she wants me to remember what tomorrow is?) April 30?...is it your birthday?
ROSE: NO, YOU JERK
RAIDEN: FUCK
MALE PLAYERS: WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT
ME: Oh god, I know women like this. D: I, I gotta hand it to him - somehow, Kojima has accurately replicated That One Couple that you always see arguing at parties!
KOJIMA: Actually, Rose is patterned after my wife. :D
ME: >_>
(This comic pretty much sums up my gaming experience.)
05. Alien Sex Fiend - On A Mission
COLONEL: Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the President?
RAIDEN: Sure!
COLONEL: Actually you're trying to prevent the terrorists from destroying the plant and spilling all the oil into the harbor.
RAIDEN: So...okay...I'm trying to stop the terrorists...from...
COLONEL: From killing all the hostages.
RAIDEN: So I should go after the President, right?
COLONEL: ACTUALLY, you are trying to stop the terrorists from detonating a nuclear bomb in retaliation for not getting their demands met!
RAIDEN: ...huh?
COLONEL: Actually, the detonation of the bomb was their aim after all, not the demands, so screw the hostages.
RAIDEN: I'm confused.
ROSE: JACK, WHAT DAY IS IT TOMORROW?
06. Orquesta del Plata - Montserrat
This would be the part where Raiden meets Vamp, and the player is left to wonder where super-speed vampires fit into this world. But he's not called Vamp because he's a vampire - no, he's called that because he's bisexual. The person who informs you of this random factoid is...
07. Eurythmics - Greetings From A Dead Man
...Iroquois Pliskin, Lieutenant Jr. Grade. Yeah, that's one cunning pseudonym there. (Google "iroquois" and "plissken" if it's not headslappingly obvious. If you ask him about it much later in the game, he'll tell you the history of Manhattan island. Freak.) Pliskin acts as your world-weary backup in your confused charge through the Plant.
08. Tomahawk - Aktion 13F14
Pliskin gives Raiden a lot of crap about being a "digital grunt for a digital age," who's never actually fought in a real battlefield where he could actually get hurt. Raiden seesaws between being insulted and impressed by Pliskin.
09. Raiden - Fallin'
(Don't hurt me D:) After fighting a bunch of superpowered terrorists, rescuing the hostages, defusing a bunch of bombs, getting groped by the President of the United States, and shooting down a Harrier jet with a shoulder-mounted missile-launcher, Raiden has to swim over to a partially-submerged section of the Plant in order to reach one of those teen genius programmers so that she can defuse the impending nuclear launch. Unsurprisingly, this 1337 haxx0r is Otacon's younger half-sister, Emma Emmerich (E.E.), who somehow shares the Emmerich weak bladder.
10. The Chemical Brothers - If You Kling To Me I'll Klong You
(the joke's still amusing enough, angrybabble)
Raiden has to rescue E.E., but she's both terrifed by water and supposedly unable to walk. So Raiden has to lead Emma by the hand, in a part of the game clearly aimed to appeal to female gamers. (I think)
11. Grizzly Bear - Deep Sea Diver
One of my favorite parts of the game is probably the sequence where you swim through the submerged corridors of the Plant with E.E. clinging to your back.
E.E: I'm scared of water! I'll drown!
RAIDEN: Look, Emma, just close your eyes and listen to my heartbeat. When you reach 100, open your eyes and we'll be there.
ME: BWAHAHAHAHAHA WHAT THE HELL DO THEY EXPECT ME TO FALL FOR SUCH SHAMELESS FANBAIT yes please
12. Bent - So Long Without You
Man, sucks to be Otacon. I mean, he's a engineer and otaku, of course he's not the greatest with girls....but his track record with women is really pretty disturbing. OUTSIDE OF YOUR OWN GENE POOL, OKAY, DUDE? This scene was pretty sad, though.
13. Babybird - Bad Old Man
Right around here, Raiden is tasered by Snake and the Cyborg Ninja (who in this game is Olga Gurlukovich...hee!) and wakes up buck naked and strapped to some kind of torture device. Turns out that the leader of the terrorists, Solid*us* Snake, is actually the ex-president of the United States, George Sears, and Raiden's adoptive father. Raiden had been suppressing this memory because, uh...because he wanted to have tentacles shoved down his throat and to have this long rambly argument with Rose that he doesn't like to share touchy-feely details about his life with her because he grew up as a child soldier eating hallucinogenic gunpowder in his food. No, seriously. It's pretty hilarious.
14. Skinny Puppy - Use Less
Raiden tries to contact his CO, but for some reason both the Colonel and the Rose are saying complete nonsense about how Raiden has to finish the simulation and are basically acting like glitchy AIs. Which, in fact, they were. All along.
(This is where a lot of people clutch their heads, start screaming, and stop playing the game. But I love it so much - the insane codec messages, the FISSION MAILED, the randomly-changing area names, the lack-of-a-map!)
15. SCHAFT - inFORMation
If I had to summarize the big argument at the end of the game, it'd go something like this.
COLONEL/ROSE/WHOEVER: Hi, we're the Patriots, otherwise known as the LA-LI-LU-LE-LO. We're a meme that resides in the United States government. Right now we're building the world's biggest and best SpamCatcher, ARSENAL GEAR!
RAIDEN: But why would you do that?
PATRIOTS: To filter out all the useless crap and gossip and nonsense in human history that would otherwise clog up the internets and be pointlessly preserved for all time. We like our internets clean!
RAIDEN: But sometimes you put my forum signup posts in the spamcatcher and I miss them! I kind of like having the free will to decide what's spam and what's not.
PATRIOTS: But isn't that a waste of your valuable time?
RAIDEN: ...but...
PATRIOTS: No longer will the people of the future have to wade through TomKat gossip and other cultural trash to find the useful parts of our civilization! You'll like it! Besides, it's not like you can stop us.
RAIDEN: ...other than that virus E.E. partially uploaded into you?
PATRIOTS: ...besides that.
16. Hotei Tomoyasu - Katana Groove
Raiden gains a blade and the right to be the next cyborg ninja in the MGS series! The problem is, they tend to have the lifespan of a lemming. D: Noes!
17. Death In June - She Said Destroy
Before the Patriots (and their #1 agent, Revolver Ocelot) can totally waste Raiden and Snake, they have to mow through the two toughest women in the series - Fortune, the woman who cannot die (no matter how much she wants to), and Olga Gurlukovich, the Cyborg Ninja (mk II).
18. Nine Inch Nails - Underneath the Skin
Also, Raiden has to defeat between 5 and 25 Metal Gear Rays. Augh, holy shit. The setting is gorgeous, though; it's a technological womb where the floor lights up in green hexagons wherever Raiden steps. (Hint: the RAYs are numbered R01E through R25E; to end the battle quick you just have to kill R05E. >_> Hmmmmmmmmmmm)
19. SOFT BALLET - Vietnam
Raiden basically has to continue living so that Olga's child will not die, and also so that he can decide what he wants to go into his spam filter HE wants to pass on to the next generation.
20. Thee Silver Mount Zion and Tra-la-la Band - Ring Them Bells (Freedom Has Come and Gone)
Raiden wins the battle against his foster-father, but it's a pretty hollow victory in the end; he agrees with some of Solidus's sentiments. Humanity has to decide for itself what it believes in and what it chooses to pass on; it can't look to an outside source to decide for them. So, what is Jack going to do? Go back to his girlfriend, who may or may not truly exist and may or may not be pregnant with his child? Follow his mentor Snake, who may or may not truly exist and who is chasing a megalomaniac with a giant mecha? Or start over by himself and figure out where he wants to go from here?
(By the way, April 30 is the anniversary of George Washington's inauguration as President at Federal Hall. DUH, WHY DIDN'T RAIDEN THINK OF THAT IMMEDIATELY??)
[[ ZIP (20 songs, 140 MB) ]] (sorry!)
I know that there's already been a MGS2 fst, but er, hey, this is the second, then! Any thoughts on the game? Or just comment if you download, I don't care. :D