Metal Gear Scanlon: Part 05

Dan's shriek just before Drew dying against Mantis is awesome!

I'm also a bit surprised to notice that the dialogue really hasn't aged well. It's clumsily written and downright cheesy in a lot of places. I don't care though. Back in '98 this was the best game I had ever played by miles, and I still love it.

EDIT: And Psycho Mantis' death is still as good as I remembered it.

Holy shit Psycho Mantis' dying words are depressing as shit.

Drew is staggeringly bad at controlling Snake. He can't quite get the mechanics down for some reason. It's fascinating and frustrating in equal measure.

ohmygodyes. This is the episode we've all been waiting for!

I do want to commend Drew for dodging basically everything in the last few minutes of the Mantis fight. He didn't even need his last ration.

@drewbert@danryckert Just so you know, the FAMAS does significantly less damage per hit than the SOCOM, especially since most enemies do that flashing/invulnerable thing after they get hit once. In fact, in a lot of cases, the FAMAS does less damage than even your hand to hand punch+kick combo, and since the shooting is so frustrating, you're better off just punching/kicking.

This is infuriating.

God dammit stop running away from him.

That being said, the next boss in genuinely bad and it's still the only thing I have trouble with in this game.

I think Meryl is also the only guard who uses the ladies' room.

I beat Psycho Mantis only by ducking under his chairs, crawling under it and punch him in the face, his second teleport phase was a pain though without thermal goggles. I usually try to shoot in the direction of the shadowbolt and I ran tiny circles in the middle of the room so I could see where he would pop up so I could dodge it easily.

This is before watching: I almost teared up when I saw this had been posted. I have any number of beers, a sauna and a laptop showing Metal Gear Scanlon. Perfect friday.

Seriously worst Metal Gear Solid player ever....

I think I used the D-Pad because I found myself accidentally running up and sticking to walls a lot more with the analog stick.

I'M GOING TO BE A BOSS

Psycho Mantis' death has always been the "Metal Gear Starts Here" moment for me.

@ejmerry: I doubt I would do much better if I only played it one hour per week while I was being filmed.

I found out pretty late you could switch and I was used to the D-pad by then so stuck with that.

"MEET THE NEW BOX!"

"...just the same as the old box."

Slightly drunk, but that killed me.

I think a lot of us had the same experience. I had grown up only playing Nintendo games until my neighbor lent me his Playstation for a summer, and I couldn't believe a game like Metal Gear Solid could exist. I completed it twice in quick succession and ended up buying a Playstation for myself pretty soon after. There are a couple bits where it doesn't quite hold up, but for the most part this game is still amazing.

It definitely highlights one of my main problems with MGS4 and MGS3 to a lesser extent, most of the villains in those games were characterized as merely targets to kill rather than human beings. MGS1 (and 2) handled that so much better; I can actually sympathize with every character here, villain or otherwise.

Fortune Cookies with Snake

Poor illiterate Psycho Mantis : (

You've got a rookie's butt Meryl.

Very true. I've never thought about it like that. The first few hours of MGS1 are great, but this is the point that things start to become amazing.

He needs LV4 card to pick them up, and by the time he got the card, it is very unnatural to run all the way back to the main building.

Did Drew accidentally by mere luck manage to smash the 2 stone busts on his last successful boss run?

• Shooting the bandages off one of the Mantis busts will make Mantis unable to read the player's mind if they happen to not be using another controller port. This actually simply destroys the statue's head, and only works if Campbell has already suggested it; he will do this if the player have already called him enough times for him to tell them to "use the controller port" but died afterwards without switching ports.

Clicked play to see the video length. YES! We win! Movie length videos are great.

Still watching, here's a thing. Going in and out to fill up on rations and stuff is part of the game, not exploiting. Remember, this game is FULLY aware that it is a game, everything you CAN do here is intended. Exploiting save games is absolutely a big part of the game. I seem to remember this being the case in the NES game as well?

Also, Drew and Dan, I just love this so much. SO MUCH.

PS: You will do a Metal Gear Scanlon 2. The community will pester you until you do.. You've brought this upon yourselves, really.

The controller moving blew my 20 year old brain to smitherines at the time as well. That was a "Fuck yes video games!!" moment for me. This game, man... This fucking game is so good.

How has he not worked out invincibility frames on bosses yet? Stop emptying entire FAMAS magazines into bosses. Jesus Christ.

Drew you gotta backtrack and find those thermal googles dude! Or maybe someone can mail him a pair for the next Giant Bomb mailbag...

I'm sure someone's mentioned this by now, but if, while in the box, you're blocking the path of a guards patrol route, they will always kick it over.

I KNEW DAN WOULD TELL DREW TO STARE AT HER BUTT AT SOME POINT DURING THIS PLAYTHOUGH!

Shoulda put money on it, but maybe that would have been too obvious.

I dont think I was ever this bad at MGS even when I was 11 but my word, this is hilarious.

Yep!

It also sets up a pattern that never really lets up in the series, which is making Bosses sympathetic, usually right before they die. I was really stunned by the Psycho Mantis battle as a kid. It was weird enough hearing Meryl say "Make love to me" when I was 10 but Mantis' dad and his last/first act of kindness at the end was waaaaay too much to take in. It's incredible how victimized Mantis comes off.

And like Drew realized, it's where the "Spy Movie" starts to unravel, and MGS becomes both darker and weirder, and the characterization of Snake as a monster begins. Snake proves what Mantis says when he ignores Meryl's pleas for affection. Pretty wild stuff for 1998!

I still very strongly remember fighting this battle for the first time when I was younger.

At night.

By myself.

With a howling storm outside.

Lit by the glow of my CRT.

Fucking yes.

Same, the analog controls just weren't tight enough for my liking to keep using here.

Yeah, anyone who tries to mock Drew's gameplay can fuck the fuck off. I'm real sorry your expert knowledge didn't transfer through osmosis. This is the way most people experienced this game first time through (minus Ryckert commentary). Trial and error. People who think they finished all the bosses on the first try during their first playthrough have some memory issues to deal with.

Dan you weren't alone in revering this title for it's seemingly-deep nature. Let's face it, for anyone that was way into games, there wasn't anything like Metal Gear Solid out as far as narrative goes. It was captivating. I was about 13 or 14 when I played it originally and I remember so much from the series. When I played through this area of the game I remember thinking just how brilliant the whole thing was... not just in terms of the narrative but also the solution to Psycho Mantis. I remember just how cool I thought that was... The way they did it (at least back then) was so awesome. Totally blew my mind! It seems ridiculous now, but when you orient yourself to the timeline of games and what was going on then, this game was groundbreaking and totally insane.

They really need to have Drew play more often. Drew still really does not understand the controls or that he NEEDS to be looking in first person more often. He keeps blindly walking into guards that are SO easily avoided or dispatched silently.

@kaffekask: Yes. I recently replayed MGS on my vita (never finished it when it was released) and without a FAQ there is no way I would have had the patience to get through some of the stuff toward the end, never mind playing the game in front of thousands of people.

How do you mean? Is there a mini cutscene where Snake is instantly killed or something?

I would like a Meet The New Box t-shirt.

Running and shooting would have helped in that hard part in the Mantis fight. Learning how to do that WITHOUT continuously shooting is key. Basically tap the square button then hold X and then as you are running around you can tap square to quickly shoot a bullet at a time while running (or hold it to shoot a bunch). This stops Snake from planting his feet to shoot which takes forever.

"Was that a lady walk?" - Drew after seeing a guard take a piss in the men's toilet.

Drew is usually very solid at the games he plays and I'm struggling to understand why this is giving him so much trouble. My biggest point of contention for this video is how much ammo he wastes by shooting Mantis during his invulnerability frames (when his character model is blinking immediately after being hit). This is a well-worn concept seen in thousands of games, so I'm not sure why Drew repeated this simple mistake so consistently.

Other than that, this series remains great and I hope the negativity doesn't discourage Drew and Dan from continuing.

I am really enjoying this series. I've always been peripherally interested in MGS, but other than MGS3 Subsitence, I just can't get into them mechanically. This has been a good way to finally get in on all this nonsense. Also, I'm learning oh so much about Dan...

I mean, Drew is certainly doing better at this game than I did so I don't know why people are giving him such a hard time. I am disappointed he already knew about the controller switching, but it's pretty hard to hide something like that from a game reviewer 10+ years after.

Also, the Hideo trick is a lot less confusing now that TVs don't display like that anymore. I'm not sure, but I think I got pretty close to resetting the game and I don't even think I was playing on a Sony TV.

lotta funny stuff in this session

Aah! This is a great video feature, but Drew trying the same failing strategy over and over and over, and obstinately refusing to use the correct strategy (shooting Mantis before he throws) even after he proves it works is maddening!

Keep up the great work guys!

I'm with you, @danryckert! When I played this game as a kid videogames were my main form of entertainment. I hadn't read many books or seen any classic, character-driven movies, so the plot and character development on this (and Blood Omen) blew me away.

WHY DREW WHY