MGScanlon: Game Time Comparions, Rankings, Stats +more!

@shindig: oh man Pokemon is a good one. I feel there is something about the collection that would appeal to Dan. Also yelling at "dumb animals". Other RPG ERs I'd like? Dan and Jeff play FFX. Dan and Vinny play Dragon Ball Something would be awesome too, but improbable for location reasons.

@hatking:hah, np! Thanks duder.

Your posting of the fastest times made me look up the speedrun for MGS V: GZ. That was insane!

@geraltitude Amazing job pulling all that data together. Huge props!

I have to say this series has been an incredible thing for me personally. It gave me a chance to share one of my favorite games series with my teenage kids in a fun way. I don't think they would have sat through me replaying them and I don't think they feasibly would have played through them by themselves but watching Drew and Dan was just entertaining as hell most of the time.

I will say that this series also pointed out quite a bit about what's changed about games in general and how Metal Gear made strides that a lot of other games still avoid or ignore especially in regards to environment. While I don't want to excuse things that don't hold up 100% over time, it's worth remembering the state of games when each of these games was released. I can't imagine all the files and art and prototypes of various systems and sequences that they threw away or iterated on over time to tell the stories they wanted to tell within the technology limitations of the time.

@geraltitude This is incredible!

Any thoughts on adding all the trophies Drew earned throughout the playthrough?

@maluvin: Thanks duder! That is a very fascinating post I think. Excuse me for prying into your life but I don't come from a cross-generation gaming family (re: dad does not play games) and am very curious about that. If you don't mind me asking what did your kids think about MGS during/after the series? What did they know about it before hand? Were you a fan from NES days or later on?

To your second point: very much agree. Sure, not everything holds up in the Metal Gear games, especially if you come at them super fresh, but there is so much in there that to this day is absent from modern games. One of the most interesting tidbits I've heard about boss design is that the battle with Laughing Octopus in MGS4 is based on the original boss fight design for Decoy Octopus. It was thrown out of the ps1 MGS because it was impossible to pull off. In the end it worked to make Decoy a very unique game villain, though funny enough it is far and away the best B+B squad fight in MGS4.

@fadedmfc: ahhh proooobably not? if only there was an easy way to do that without rewatching the whole series... but thinking about it now, if I was friends with Jason on PSN (or someone else was) I could look at his Trophy List and use the dates to figure out which ones Drew got! Not too bad.

@betaband: Yes it is! I'm no where nearthat skill level, but one thing I love about GZ is that it is so small and thus so much easier to memorize and try, try again. I'm hoping missions in TPP have easy restart options, because I really like going for the "perfect" run and experimenting myself.

@geraltitude: I've been a fan since the NES days. I remember seeing ads for the original game on the backs of comics at the time. The number of gadgets and weapons available in a single game was kind of a mind-blowing.

Prior to watching Dan and Drew's run the only thing my kids had seen was a little bit of me playing MGS4 when they were younger. My son was a bit too young at the time it was released so I wasn't comfortable with him seeing certain things but now it's no biggie. Think they watched me play a bit of MGS1 a bit too when it was released on PSN.

They absolutely loved watching this series. Think the whole thing made sense to them and was just as interesting as any modern game. One thing I found interesting was that they would catch on to certain game mechanics or sequences that were eluding Drew at times. They appreciated that it's hard to play and do commentary at the same time but would definitely have those moments where they'd laugh at the screen like when Drew kept having issues with Strut F during MGS2 or kept dying in the same place. It really makes me wonder about the controls of those games. I never had problems with them and felt like there was a nice progression over time but I'm curious what my kids think. While they certainly game I don't think particular habits or tropes have quite calcified for them quite yet so I'd like to watch them play some of these games and see what they thought did or didn't work.

MGS3 was also kind of interesting to watch with them. They found the Cold War history really interesting but also lacked some of the background to appreciate the homages to things like classic James Bond films. I also think the threat of nuclear war is something that impacts them in a different way (I grew up watching my dad work on B-52s everyday so it was something that I understood from an early age). Even without that background the story and setting certainly made sense to them and I think the themes about the absurdity of war taken from the perspective of soldiers is something that resonates with them.

Both are really looking forward to The Phantom Pain.

That was a really interesting detail about Decoy and Laughing Octopus you pointed out that I'd never heard before. I've come to appreciate that Kojima and his people seemed to have a real knack for crafting an interesting experience within the technical limitations of the hardware they were working with. I mean the whole sneaking premise grew out of the technical limitations of the MSX if I remember correctly. I also seem to recall that there's never more than four enemies in an area during MGS because that's all the PS1 could handle. I love hearing details like that because I was able to play those games blissfully unaware of those limitations because they did such a good job communicating a whole experience. It's something I think a lot of developers need to reflect on more now that there's more computing power available.

Thats what they would say