Who's The Big Boss?: 3! - Episode 07

Perfect thumbnail to an end of a series

Paint me like one of your japanese animes.

Kablooey!

I am disappointed with how this was handled.

No reaction to the plot, no reaction to the mole, not even paying attention to how Outer Heaven itself was originally funded by the CIA to exert control over the region, by exploiting an ethnic minority as an excuse for sending in peacekeeping troops. That plan was known as Project Babel.

After four minutes of talking about wresting on a non-wrestling show, Alex was shit talking the plot, and the moment he pays attention realizes that it's more interesting than they've been giving it credit for.

This game is Metal Gear Solid, in its gameplay, story, structure, everything. Hating this game but loving MGS on PS1 is like loving System Shock 2 but hating Bioshock, or hating Super Mario Bros 2 but loving Doki Doki Panic. The DNA is identical.

The game is fine. To best sum up my feelings: "Don't yuck my yum".

If you want to learn about Barrel Dynamics, try Special Stage 10-3.

@kevlargorilla: Yeah I thought it especially sucked when they completely ignored the stunning revelation that McBride was the fifth black chamber member.

I mean if you're going to button through dialog and ignore it then at least dont pretend that you're reading it.

As it turns out Vinny was essential to this feature not going off the rails, I dont mind random wrestling chat but this was too much.

@kevlargorilla: Totally agree.

Also, shitting all over the story of a game while you button-mash through it is really annoying.

I guess technically he should play Snake's Revenge for the NES as well. It's a completely different game from the MSX Metal Gear 2, but sticks to the core gameplay of the series.

@kevlargorilla: Yeah, I don't want to sound like a jerk especially since I love the crew, but this playthrough really took a dive towards the end for the reasons you listed. I don't necessarily mind them not engaging with a game that's being played, but that's more suited to features like Blue Bombin' than a run of Metal Gear.

I tuned out in the end cuz they didn't seem interested. Love you guys, but if you're not interested, I'm not interested.

@kevlargorilla: I stopped watching this after the second episode or so because it was clear the way they were approaching this didn't really appeal to me.

I haven't played this game and can't comment on the story. If they weren't interested, that's fine. The problem is watching Dan play it poorly is not something I want to do. If they're gonna skim over the story AND gameplay, I personally think they should do something else.

Hopefully they play through a story heavy game they're interested in at some point in the future, as those always end up being my favorite features. I think the last thing they did that I was really into was the Life is Strange playthrough.

@easternheath: I think it ended up being one of those things where someone gets so sick of a part of a game, that they also sour on every other part of it.

Which is a shame, because this game does some really interesting things with its plot, near the end.

Yeah this playthrough was kinda a bummer, I wish they'd made the game the focus instead of talking about whatever. Glad I just had this on in the background while I was doing something else.

I hope some people give this game a chance themselves if they haven't played it yet, despite Dan's impression of it.

@danryckert Peace Walker co-op playthrough ... you know you want to.

Now we can move on to Metal Gear Solid VR Missions, Metal Gear 2: Snake's Revenge, Portable Ops, Acid 1&2, and then move right into the Syphon Filter, Winback, and Splinter Cell.

Have to agree with a lot of people in that this episode in particular was a bad watch. I tuned in live and didn’t make it to the end once the conversation turned to wrestling again and again. It’s not even that I thought the game plot was amazing or they were playing it wrong or something, it’s just that I really dislike wrestling and the way it can takeover conversations that Dan is involved in. Buttoning through the entire ending also seemed super-Dan and strangely irritating.

As someone said, if the crew is obviously not interested in what they’re doing then likewise I find myself bored watching. It’s why Jeff can stream Funky Barn for several hours and still make it entertaining, because at least on some level he’s always into the thing he’s playing.

Yeah I made it 48 minutes in but the constant wrestling talk and ignoring the story was finally too much for me, I wish I had tuned out 10 minutes earlier. Ahh well can't connect with everything the site puts up and this game/series wasn't really my jam anyways.

+1 on this being a disappointing watch, ignoring the ending was pretty lame.

Old soldiers become mercenaries with the quick and dirty to fulfill contract obligations.

Regardless of the approach, it was neat for me to see this curious game all the way through.

Boy, Pat sounds exactly like Garfield.

i've never felt a reason to complain across all the videos and features i've watched on this site because i generally have an idea of what i'm getting myself into, especially when it's another addition to an established series, which is actually why i think this video is awful

i was invested in watching the crew play through metal gear games and and in the case of mgs gbc, getting to see the story of a game i never had a chance to play

it was bad enough when the chatter went to wrestling and basically never left the subject, but the worst part was that dan started MASHING through the text so fast that trying to pause the video to read everything was basically pointless

i'm honestly really disappointed in how this ended

Gonna jump on the disappointment train here. They treated it like a choir to be there, and while I understand, Dan had problems with the game, it just made me feel like I was wasting my money on premium.

This felt like it was them saying, "Yeah here's your, Who's The Big Boss? Now get out of here!"

Maybe I'm being a bit harsh. I still enjoy Giant Bomb, but this was the first time I felt bad for doing so.

I love Pat and GBeast, and I don't mind the wrestle talk, but I find it irrationally irritating when folks button through story stuff without really paying attention to it. I get that the structure of the fight plus the unskippable cutscene crap is vastly aggravating, and they had to change plans to deal with a game they weren't enjoying, but it still bugs me a bit. Also, I can read as fast as Dan, but a lot of folks can't, and that seems like an accessibility issue Dan might want to think about and internalize. Oh well, looking forward to Pat's panel vids, always good stuff there.

@kevlargorilla: fun fact, I love System Shock 2 but feel like Bioshock is merely okay. Because I love System Shock 2, I was really disappointed by how streamlined and simplified Bioshock was and naturally wasn't impressed by the twist at all. I loved the setting of Bioshock, but as far as a true spiritual successor to SS2 goes, Prey (2017) is it. Does everything right that Bioshock did oh so wrong.

But I digress - I'm surprised seeing so many defending the story in this game. Nostalgia plays a big part I'm guessing, because even by MGS standards this was rambling, incoherent mess. Making it bigger and more wordy doesn't make a story better. I don't see how you can be surprised that they missed or ignored the big reveals, reveals are only interesting if they're part of a decent story. This game isn't it. In fact, I would say Ghost Babel is to real MGS, what Bioshock is to System Shock 2 ;)

Maybe you would have enjoyed the game more if you paid attention to it, lol, I've heard this is considered a pretty good Metal Gear. Regardless, you're not done yet. SNATCHER is still a Metal Gear game, with a character from Metal Gear showing up in the story. It's Metal Gear 3. You gotta play it, Dan.

Oh, don't look down on Tomokazu Fukushima, you all, he was only the co–writer of Metal Gear Solid One, Two and Three. One can go as far as to say that Hideo Kojima would not be what the industry regards him as without Fukushima's co–writing efforts.

Dan is, of course, known for paying a great deal of attention to stories in games.

can't blame dan. he went in with an open mind and super enthusiastic, but the plot didn't grab him in the slightest.

i think i'm vaguely sympathetic here cos the plot and the way the cutscenes were handled didn't grab my interest >>AT ALL<< either. coming as a fan of metal gear solid, this game seemed kind of boring. not to say the game was or is bad, but i imagine it had a lot more of a meaningful impact back when it was a fun spin off on the gameboy that you could play on a handheld back in the 90s than it does looking at it today immediately after/alongside having just played the original metal gear games. beast crew treated this game like it was a chore = maybe cos this game WAS a chore.

have to give dan mad props for sticking with it thru to the end. was a fun series regardless :-)

I read the comments before watching and?????? They followed everything on screen and only really missed the CIA part? The hell is wrong with you people, this was a really nice stream.

They should DEFINITELY play acid 2 though. One of my favourite games.

I agree with some of the posters here but we all knew how this was going to go though, right? They barely managed to pay attention to the MSX games before and those were Kojima games. So as soon as Dan made a point about how Kojima didn't write this and it's not canon, this was always going to happen.

I think Dan needs someone to reign him in, otherwise he gets into this feedback loop of hating something, getting frustrated, being unable to concentrate, doing poorly, then hating it more. In the past 2 episodes he was getting really frustrated really fast, not always because the game was being frustrating, but because he was expecting the game to be frustrating and getting mad before even really trying to engage with it's challenges.

Vinny was holding him back from getting too worked up in previous episodes, and without him around it just became a mess. To Dan's credit, he seems to acknowledge this, but falls right back into it anyway. Vinny's saintlike patience is necessary for any series with Dan in control to work, I think, otherwise things seem to go off the rails too easily.

I'm not sure whats wrong with me, but we definitely don't share the same opinion. But that's okay i won't hold it against you.

Yeah, I agree with most of you. This was just a bad series.

It's ok - not every feature will be a knock-out. Sure, 2018 had this and Star Spangled Garbage, but we also had 13 Deadly Sims, Mass Alex, Exquisite Corps, and Get In The Ring - more than enough out of GBEast alone to keep me happy. GBEast content is stellar 9/10 times with non-recurring features, too, and has been outshining GBWest from the start; let's let them know it's ok to have a lemon once in a while.

...but, they talked about the game and MGS a lot during this? Eh, whatever, I didn't really like the game either way, so it's all the same to me.

@boiter: yeah, that's a lot of how I feel.

I feel like the reaction we got from the crew was pretty legit. They even point out at the beginning that Dan was super excited for it, and Dan admits he's in a negative feedback loop of being bad and it frustrating him, causing him to lose even more focus. The only difference between this and a game they don't enjoy and talk about on the podcast is that this is a real time video feature, we're getting to see the rare example of them NOT enjoying something they're playing, it's gonna happen sometimes. Not every game is gonna be a banger.

My reaction to the game pretty much mirrors theirs, going from "maybe I should go play this first before watching the series" to "god damn this game pulls some jack moves, I'm glad I didn't get invested in it." Like, why does it show the missile launchers as targets you need to destroy in the Metal Gear fight, implying you need to destroy all three sets of targets to end the fight. Instead it's destroy the second tier first, the spam attacks on the first tier that never breaks.

Ultimately I did enjoy the series, cause like Alex said I know what I signed up for. ETA: Which I don't mean as a jab at the people who didn't enjoy it, I'm just agreeing with the sentiment.

PS: Since it got mentioned, I really enjoyed the old edutainment games that were played on Star Spangled Beasters and would love to see it make a return as like Edutainment Eduventures or Apple ][ Stories. Something between a Bombastica and a multi episode playdate type deal, without the focus on stuff that made people feel uncomfortable.

I tend to treat most of these longer features/videos like podcasts, where it's on in the background and I'm doing other shit while occasionally sitting down to watch it while i eat or take a break from doing the dishes or whatever. So, yeah. When the guys go off on tangents or aren't paying attention, it doesn't bother me. Dan wasn't going to care from the get-go because it's non canon.

I appreciated the reminiscing over Rising. I love that game and think about it a lot. It is indeed fucking rad.

@ultimaxe: I tend to do the same with some of their video series which is actually more enjoyable.

The blame for rushing through the game can't be laid at solely Dan's feet:

• There have been numerous times when the other folks in the room have urged Dan to stick to following a walkthrough to get through the game as soon as possible. (This began with Alex back in Marionette Owl's level, I believe.)
• There have been lengthy stretches where Vinny and Alex have had difficulty correlating the walkthrough's directions with Dan's actions on screen and location in the game, leading them, fairly or unfairly, to become increasingly frustrated and impatient with the game overall. (There are certain cases where having one person play and other parties try to steer them through by reading a walkthrough out loud just doesn't work and is actively detrimental due to the nature of the game, the nature of the walkthrough, or the readers' understanding of the walkthrough, and this seems to be one of them.)
• I brought this up last time, and I'll say it again here: I feel that the other folks in the room last episode kind of overreacted to Dan's frustration and jumped on him excessively over it, leading to a feedback loop re: pressure (tough boss fights -> frustration -> needling about Dan's response to game -> more pressure -> more frustration when things don't go well etc.) that I imagine made the experience increasingly unpleasant.
• Though, as discussed above, this is in part a side effect of the limited number of characters the GBA can display on screen at once, the game does have very long cutscenes that do not engender patience. The choice to replay these cutscenes every time you restart one of the end boss fights does not help matters, to put it mildly.

It ain't only Dan's fault, is what I'm sayin'.

I did enjoy this feature regardless of the above issues. This was an interesting and ambitious title to watch unfold.

@ultimaxe: Likewise I love the banter, but my problem, and I realize this is a personal issue for me, is that I absolutely hate wrestling. We all come here because we like videogames, and I'm cool with videogame talk even when it's about games I don't care all that much about because it's still in the vague realm of my interests.

I have absolutely zero interest in wrestling, and know nothing about it, and unfortunately am inadvertently learning more about it as time goes on because of how often it gets brought up on this website as of late (aka the past year or longer).

As someone that isn't into wrestling, and knows nothing about it, banter that goes along the lines of "oh yah like Razer Ramone did in Raw 96? Yah thats like a Vince move; He did a Big Show on him.." stuff like that is absolutely meaningless to me. I have no clue what they are talking about.

That is my major complaint. Also yah I realize that "hey plenty of other content you can be watching if you don't like this maannnn.." and true enough, I'm just voicing an opinion of why this was a frustrating watch for me.

GBeast retro features often enter into podcast territory 'cause the game just can't hold everyone's attention when there's movies and wrestling to discuss, but I think this is the first time I've seen everyone's focus shift so completely away from the game they're playing, including the person playing the game.

@humanity: I agree wholeheartedly on the wrestling topic, I just have no interest in it so don't watch GB's wrestling content but when it seeps so fully into another type of content I don't like it at all. They even start this episode off with a great bit about Pat being there to talk about wrestling but lo and behold instead they have to play this Metal Gear game that nobody likes but lets get to it. And they then forget completely about that joke and go full wrestling talk whilst ignoring the game itself. Not what I want and would prefer to avoid if advertised in advance. Now I may watch the FirePro QL that just went up as it is a video game but if the convo starts off into actual New Japan or WWE talk than I'm out.

What, you guys don't like wrestling talk? What the hell are you doing here on a wrestling website, then?

Well, I'm glad ya'll can finally stop playing this game you've clearly been hating for weeks. This third iteration of the feature was kind of a disappointment. If you're not paying attention to the plot of a Metal Gear game, then what's the point of playing it?

Alex's sheer joy laugh is really good, its even better when his is synchronized with your own.

Next time if you don't want to play a game and aren't even going to pay attention to it, maybe just skip it entirely. I tried to skim through to the story bits of this episode but Dan was mashing through those as fast as possible and no one was reading it anyways. So that was a waste of time too.

Has the comments ever been so overwhelmingly negative before? Wow.

Anyway, yeah, first stream I've ever walked out of due to feeling like my time could be better spent elsewhere.

May I point you towards the infamous Exquisite Corps episode 6? I am in that comment storm as well.

Lang vs Ryckert