Metal Gear Scanlon: 2 - Part 05

drew vs control scheme, its impossible to go back and play these games because the control scheme is terrible, wtf were they thinking...

Colonel: 'Drew, go to strut B.'

Don't worry @drewbert, I too had lots of trouble with Strut-F when I first started playing MGS2. Just take things slow. I wouldn't mind if things were a little slowed down, that's the point of the game after all.

Seriously?

Strut F is the hardest room.

For the reporting guard on the top floor: tranquilize him and stash him in the locker in the room on the top floor, bottom right of the map. Guards in lockers don't wake up. They'll come after him, but they won't be able to find him and reporting won't come up again as long as you don't leave the room.

"maybe we will try not to wait as long between episodes so i don't forget how to play"

FUCK YES

you guys rock. more mgscanlon e'ryday

This was possibly the funniest episode in the series yet, I hope Drew can improve, but I don't mind laughing at his failures!

Don't worry Drew about your gameplay. Trust me when i say it's hilarious. Keep playing your style.

I played the game for the first time about two moths ago, and I also had a huge amount of problems with strut F. I hate strut F so, so much.

Great stuff! Poor Drew... being unintentionally funny is the best AND the worst.

Drew, if a guard sees you, rush him and either punch or flip into him to interrupt his call, it's easier than trying to get a shot on him. Also try more hold ups, just run up behind a dude and aim.

Trust me drew, it is a lot of fun to watch someone be frustrated :D

You gotta make these more frequent for Drew's sake, otherwise he'll never get sed to the controls.

Also as others have said it is VERY entertaining to watch someone frustrated.

This video is a perfect representation of what playing Metal Gear Solid 2 is actually like.

The systems and controls were clunky in 2002, and they haven't exactly gotten better with age.

Watching Drew play is great, though!

If it's any consolation Drew, I also started playing the series recently and struggled with the controls big time at the beginning. Decreasing the gap between the off days is a good idea, gotta get dat muscle memory goin'.

Drew fightinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!.

Drew of course its fun to watch you get frustrated. Have you forgotten about breaking brad?

They need to abandon this series or start playing it more regularity. These are the worst games to play in small bits. I say this in the sense of Drew enjoying the game. I love watching these but he is never going to enjoy playing these games if he plays them every 5 or so days.

We need another camera that is showing Jason! It seems Jason remembers a ton of the game and I'd love to see his reactions to what is happening during the stream. Keep at it Drew, you are way better than I am at MGS.

Yeah, I really feel for Drew having to play like an hour every 3-5 days. It's going to be really hard for him to get experienced enough with the controls to have fun with the game. Also, given how complex the plot gets, I fear that he will just get totally lost in it on this sort of schedule. This game on many levels isn't that accessible.

I just beat this game for the first time this week and loved it! I made just as many mistakes as Drew in the first 5-6 hours, and that was without taking 5 day breaks and having Dan Ryckert in the room, laughing at my misfortune. Great series guys, glad to hear the episodes will be coming more frequently.

If Drew and Dan had the time, it would be way easier and way more enjoyable (for Drew) if they record this like they did the endurance runs. Just have them sit down 1 day a week and bangout a few episodes at a time, then the non intuitive controls wouldn't be as much of an issue.

Either that or Send him to Sergeant Oestreicher's bootcamp and have him play 10 to 15 mins of VR mission to re-learn the controls.

anyway thanx for another episode guys, I kind of feel for Drew cause he seems to be having a hard time and not a lot of fun with these games.

New t-shirt:

Guard with exclamation point flipping over an Orange Box with Snake Scanlon underneath with the quote "I hate everything."

Alternate design - same thing on the front, but the quote is part of a codec transmission between Dan and a dejected Drew on the back.

Go!

So I played through MGS 2 & 3 for the first time very recently(after Metal Gear Scanlon 1 was done), and I didn't really get used to the controls. Even at the end of the 3rd game I was battling with them and like Drew I still had to take a moment to think about what buttons to press before I'd press them. People that say the controls get better as the series moves along I think are overstating it a bit, I mean they're not wrong, but it's not enough for the people who have such a hard time with them.

Also Drew, it doesn't matter how you play the game. If it's somebody on the GB staff playing any game, we will watch, so don't worry about it.

Saving this son of a bagel for later!

What if Drew hammered out some of the Raiden VR Missions off-camera? That way he could get comfortable with the controls and mechanics without getting spoiled on story. I know a part of the idea of this video series is first time reaction to everything, but I sucked at mgs 2 the first time I played it and I would have never improved if I only played for 1 hour every week. Now I am the best MGS 2 player in the world, all because I practiced a lot!

More videos like this would get tiring pretty quick.

Yeah, I think Drew's biggest problem is just the frequency they're playing the game at. I doubt there's anything they can really do about that, though.

With how UPF's been lately (minus the Halloween show), I'd be totally okay with them turning it into "the gang watches Drew play MGS for two hours" for a while, but I know that would never happen.

didgeridoos are analog dubstep.

Man this is like watching someone play a competitive match in a fighting game who has almost has never played before.

I believe in you Drew.

I got a good lol from Drew's "I hate everything"

These videos keep reminding me about why I loved the story of MGS2, but not the game play.

The MGS series was bad until 4, there I said it.

This series seems to have taken on a Jeff Greene level of skill.

@drewbert: Don't worry about how interesting the videos are or trying to produce the show in your head. Let @danryckert do that, he's the co-pilot just sitting there watching, let him think about all that. If you're less worried and you play it more often you'll figure things out just fine.

Strut F was always a motherfucker and henceforth in my mind will forever be called Strut MF. I remember hating that room and I haven't played MGS2 since it came out.

I think people in general are being overly apologetic about the gameplay here, its frustrating and annoying that they constantly create difficult situations but the tools you have and their controls don't really match the design. I spent most of this game trying to be stealthy and smart, and still failing most of the time at that. It ended up with me just trying to figure out where the game breaks a bit and doing that thing. I beat it once and I don't think I will ever be bothered to do it again because of that.

I think the issues Drew is having are just typical, I had them too... I think a lot of people do they just play it for a long time and figure out each little exploit and nuance and decide to forget that stuff because they like the series or it holds nostalgia for them.

Poor Drew. His way of trying to make sure it stays interesting is the very thing that causes there to be so much hiding.

Drew: See a guard > get behind him > take him out. xx

Dan, tell me about the best way to use porn.

@kid_gloves: I completely agree, fans of the series will endlessly push all the negatives to the side simply because they've played the games enough to know how to get around things.

It's especially difficult now because the old MGS games are just completely against the things we know from all modern stealth games, like crouching to stealth, you can't walk while crouched in MGS1-3! No no, in MGS stealth equates to entering a room, putting a dart in everyone you see and moving on, which, let's be honest, that's kind of just stupid gameplay. And the fact that you have to rely so heavily on the radar sucks, all because of the camera angle and in MGS they specifically make it harder by making you find the nodes just to use the radar at all.

But yeah, I've played all of the MGS games thus far, some of them more than once and I still cannot play them without consistently getting caught at some point even when I'm trying my damnedest to remain hidden, I really really look forward to seeing what Drew thinks about MGS4, I really hope we make it that far too, because 4 is awesome Drew!!!

I just don't understand why Drew insists on going through the struts anti-clockwise.

@xel: arguably, Strut F is easiest approached from Strut A, entering on the ground floor from Strut A gets you much closer to the Node than entering the 1st floor from Strut E and the Claymores

On another note, I'm finding it most enjoyable to play just ahead of Drew and Dan to have the freshest memory of the point in the game they're at

I'd be wise to make Metal Gear Scanlon 3 a Very Easy Mode playthrough, not as a shot at Drew it's just that, that game is harder than the other 4.

Number 1 method that is being overlooked: Finding a hiding spot once alert is raised. In a locker, crawlspace, lean up against a wall and slide behind something, hang off an edge, hide somewhere!

Absolutely love the series, I just wish it would come around more often :)

Also, holding up guards is what MGS2 is all about.

can't wait for Drews European extreme no tranq run of mgs3 ;)

When they said Raidens got a box, Aerosmith is the FIRST thing that popped into my head. Jesus, am I Dan Rykert? Is this some kind of Being John Malkovich situation?

So many things from the beginning of the game that Drew is ignoring!

• Explore all of the room!
• Move sleeping guards into lockers!

It's probably somewhere in the middle. It is not the simplest control scheme out there and you do run into issues like wanting to press against a wall and running around it instead (or vice-versa) which more modern games have got better at dealing with.

But to say the game is only easy if you figure out nuances and exploits... I really don't think it's that severe either. The situations just take patience and care to solve - there's nothing unreasonable about the game that you have to exploit to be successful. I'm a big fan of MGS2 but I've only ever fully played it through the once so it's not like I'm looking at it from the perspective of someone who knows all the systems inside-out.

The unfortunate thing for drew is the amount of time away from the game between episodes, and the fact he's probably acutely aware its being filmed and is probably reluctant to just practice the things he struggles with over and over.

The only time the game really fucked him over was with the flooring panel that he fell through - apart from that he kept triggering alarms by running blindly into rooms. The controls are not modern but it's not difficult to enter first person and take in your surroundings and look at what the guards are doing for a minute or so before going in. It's not like you can walk through a door and instantly be seen by a guard through no fault of your own or anything unfair like that.

For me I think the main part where the game falls apart is in the Boss fights - it's where the game basically changes to an all out shooter, and that's where the aiming system really becomes annoying. But apart from that I think the systems are relatively straightforward - they're just different to pretty much every game out there.

It's weird to see mgs played without any neck snapping. I feel like that's how I took out the vast majority of enemies and both Dan and Drew talk as though stealth kills just don't exist.

@drugged: It isn't the controls, they can just be wonky and imprecise, its the design. It constantly throws you into situations where stealth is the only option, you do smart things and are fucked by chance, you hide in a vent to wait it out for 5 minutes or you die and try it again. That is not fun, it wasn't fun when the game came out. What I am saying is the game gives you a tool set that is interesting then dumps you into situations where that tool set is crap and you end up relying on things that aren't fun to eek your way through it. For example being caught, you have so many rations and all this gun ammo but that never really matters outside of boss fights because being caught by the guards with no vent to hide in is pretty much just lets die and try again. It is sending mixed signals like you have the tools to survive and escape but there really is no escape outside exploiting the AI. The game totally fucked him over tons of times to this point, because every time he got caught he had no recourse unless he already knew where to go to escape.... something you would not know unless you had played through those sections before.

For example I had a lot of problems with strut F also, but i found the room in the lower floor bottom left, and I spent a good half an hour popping in and out of that room alerting guards trying to get back up to drop down to the bomb, then hiding in the vents to make them go away. It is immense amounts of trial and error, and while more realistic than the first game it ends up being far more frustrating than the first game since they powered up the enemies and their tactics so much but only gave you some new slow ways to combat them that generally lead to them finding you anyways.

This is getting hard to watch. Drew hasn't learned anything in 15 hours of playing the MGS games (in 4 weeks). I get there was 5 days off but he still remember everything from Halo on his Childs play stream. I feel like Drew has some memory issues.

Go into an area. Deal with the guards (tranc or snap them). Then do the work in the area.

If you do make it to MGS3 please play Substance version with the new camera support.

@drewbert Some tips that might help?

* Take it slowly, never rush into a room if you don't know how many people are in there.

* Guards who are asleep will stay asleep if you put them in lockers.

* Always look at your radar when you have it and remember they can't see much further than the visual cone, even if they do see anything past that it will usually be a '?' rather than '!' and you can simply run away.

* Always make a b line to the node if you don't have radar!

* Peek around corners whenever possible.

* A quick glance in first person every now and then won't hurt, you don't need to use it just when shooting.

and finally, stay mobile. You can usually run pretty close up behind guards without alerting them as long as you don't run over any grates or anything.

Hope that helps in some way, I'm loving the series though, keep up the good work!