Metal Gear Scanlon: Part 11

I *really* hope Dan learns how to pronounce "chaff" before MGS2. It's getting older than the Sausalito/sous-vide thing

MGS2 !!! Gooooooooooooo Drew!!! GOOOO!!!

what an awesome series. classic GB series

my favorite series on this website, cant wait for MGS 2

Man, I had completely forgotten how terrible the Liquid fight is. Awesome setup, but such a disappointment mechanically. I had nothing but sympathy for you during these fights, Drew.

I'm really glad that all of my playthroughs of this game were on easy difficulty. Normal just looks unreasonably overtuned.

Dan mentioned that Drew already knew a big spoiler about a character in MGS2, does anyone know what that is?

#laserdick

The Rex fight was the only boss in the MGS series that I remember dying a Scanlon-esque amount of times on.

Such a great series Dan and Drew, can't wait for the next one!

Congratulations Drew and Dan. It's been wonderful to see Drew level up steadily throughout the game. I know it wasn't easy but I'm really glad to see him persevere over adversity.

I really hope this series continues at the nearest available opportunity =)

Watching the live chat slowly get more and more irritated about Drew not going back to get the ration before hopping in the Jeep was really entertaining.

METAL GEAR SCANLON 2 NEEDS TO HAPPEN

DONT MAKE THIS AN ANOTHER ENDURANCE RUN

Maybe it's the fact that Snake isn't the main character?

"How do you not love this game?"

It's quite easy, Drew. The story is hilariously stupid, but that doesn't make the game good; or the story itself good, for that matter.

EDIT: Also Metal Gear is anime.

DREEEWWWW STUNN GRENADESSSS OH GOD

@drewbert@danryckert@unastrike Thank you guys so much. That was an awesome feature :D. Looking forward to MGS2!

THREE FLIPPIN' HOURS.

Sometimes I wonder if Drew understands anything being said in the game or if hes just blind playing everything. Its like Dan said he either over-thinks or under-thinks every situation.

Octacon fully says the Radar dish needs to be destroyed. The lifebar is 90% full and Drew thinks that Liquid would open the cockpit? Like he thought the boss would take 2 stinger shots to defeat completely?!

Huh. So Kojima's just been super flippant about using female rape as a throwaway plot thing since the beginning, huh? Meryl saying they tortured her and did worse things to her, Ocelot saying he'll have his way with the girl first, etc. Sorta doesn't bode well for the rest of the series if you're, you know, not into cheap rape plots.

The most anime thing I have ever seen in my entire life.

Can't wait for them to do MGS3. I love that one so much.

Best GB series in a long time. Sooo happy that MGS2 will happen. That game is all sorts of stupid but plays a little better (though, if memory serves, just a little). I remember swearing violently during both the Rex and Liquid fights when I first played through. Just horribly unfair designs.

Nicely done, @drewbert. You have some truly wonderful "wtf" laughs in your future.

Yeah, time for another...THREE HOURS?!

I can't wait for the final codec conversation in MGS2. It is going to blow Drew's mind out of his fucking skull.

At 28.30 Drew accidentally figures out the strategy for the Rays at the end of MGS2 when he is fighting REX, wonder if he remembers that later

Good show guys! I look forward to whenever you move on to MGS 2.

The thing about the sequel is that while it gives you more options in battle, some things can still be a bit fiddly to pull off, such as popping out of cover to shoot. The enemies also notice you a bit outside of their vision cone and become suspicious. Overall it doesn't really become easier as a result of the changes and improvements they make.

Drew should definetly watch the alternate ending of this game since there is one particular detail about a character that you don't learn about otherwise. (That Cambell is actually Meryl's father)

"What! What's a pawn snake?!"

I can't wait to see Drew's reaction to the Super Baby Method.

As a biology major, I love hearing the "scientific" explanations for some of the stuff in this game. Their usage of altruism seemed pretty spot on, but everything broke down when Liquid talked about how they gave Snake all the dominant genes and left Liquid with the recessive ones.

He makes it sound like Big Boss was heterozygous for every gene, and when they cloned him they transplanted the dominant alleles into Snake and the recessive alleles into Liquid. Now I'm no geneticist, but wouldn't this be practically impossible to perform for the entire genome, nevermind the fact that Big Boss would have to be heterozygous for EVERY gene in his body. Would it not be much easier to just isolate dominant alleles from gametes and duplicate them in lab using some other method? Though I guess this would kind of ruin the whole crux of Liquid's character being the "throwaway" clone.

Anyways, I absolutely love this series because I first got into MGS starting with 3 and 4 but never played 1 and 2! Watching them play through 1 makes me realize how cool some parts of 4 must have been for veterans of the series. On to MGS2, I'm ready for the crazy!

@jacksukeru said:

Is that only in the ending? I've only been half paying attention to this series while I've been doing other things, so I might have picked it up through osmosis elsewhere and just assumed I heard it in a codec, but I'm pretty sure that's referenced repeatedly throughout the game.

Mr. President.

Bring on MGS2!

And have a nice vacation Drew you deserved it....goodbye Mr. President.

This was a great series. I actually didn't know first person view was viable in the last section of the game. Would've made things easier.

I takes him way longer than I thought to beat Metal Gear.

This was wonderful, this made me subscribe, and i want more!

Amen to that one.

@truthtellah said:

Thank you, Brothers! I cannot wait for MGS2.

So I didn't look at how long this was until Dan said he thought it would be over in 90 minutes cause I recalled spending at least three hours just on these final couple sequences. Glad to see I wasn't the only one. And, yea, story wise this ending rocks, but my God does the gameplay not even remotely hold up for anything past the Vulcan Raven fight.

As for the big boss gauntlet nature of the series, I would say MGS3 also feels like that, while 2 and 4 have more stuff in between the boss battles. I always say I would like this series much more if they cut out all the stealth stuff and just had you go from boss to boss.

Great finale, thanks guys!

Yea it took me ages to quite figure out the Rex fight. There's that specific line that's not too far and not too close that you have to constantly straddle to be able to dodge everything without grenades, I'm glad Drew sorta figured it out relatively quickly (and I never knew stun grenades worked in this fight).

But that fist fight.. I have nightmares of trying to complete this game on Extreme mode. Easily the most difficult game in the franchise.

Campbell only referred to her as her niece up until then,. I think the only other time they're ever explicit about it is in MGS4.

@glottery: You have no idea. MGS1 is a documentary on nuclear war compared to MGS2. Deadly Premonition looks at MGS2 and wonders what the fuck is going on.

I first loaded up MGS1 on Christmas Day. I got caught in the first elevator room and the alert noise scared me so badly that I didn't pick the game back up for about a year. Then I played through it in two sittings after school. I remember the last sequence that Drew just went through being absolutely agonizing for me. It took me about as long as it did Drew. But beating MGS1 is one of the most memorable gaming moments I have ever experienced. Thanks for doing this Drew, Dan, and Jason!

god i can't wait for metal gear scanlon 2. i beat that game for the first time just the other week and it's absolutely mind-blowing

Man, I cannot wait to see Drew's reaction to the postmodern acid trip anime insanity of MGS2.

This was brilliant. I love this series so much.

The way I beat Metal Gear Rex was much different than this. I literally just parked myself in the bottom left corner hugging the wall the pokes out a bit. Whenever he would stop firing for a second, I would pop out and then shoot Rex (used in both phases of the fight). I didn't take any damage doing it this way so not sure if it was a glitch in it or if I was actually being protected by the wall, but it worked for me.

Metal Gear Scanlon 2: Drews of Liberty

Despite the chat raging and spamming STUN GRENADES for an hour, this was incredibly fun to watch, haha. Thanks guys!

@cooljammer00: If you are sensitive (and I don't mean that disparagingly) to rape being treated with irreverence just turn back now. It's never depicted on screen, but it's frequently referenced. Kojima doesn't appear to even be aware of social justice, I mean that literally in interviews that ask him about it he seems confused about what is even being criticized let alone why or whether he disagrees. Rape is a thing that happens in war, torture is a thing that happens in war, and Metal Gear plays everything Kojima doesn't find cool enough to make an exception for straight. He isn't really misogynist so much as he seems to just operate outside any awareness of the context of what he's referencing means to people. It's the privilege concept in it's purest sense, he's unaware of why flippantly alluding to a character being raped is offensive to people.

And it's worth noting that most of these games were made during a time where most of the fans of these games were far too young to really even notice them. I was 8 when I first played this game, "much worse" just read as really really bad torture. Honestly awareness of social justice issues in games is incredibly recent, the only thing saving the ps1 generation from being full of "song of the south" type situations like this is that most games just didn't even deal with anything resembling real life scenarios.

So yeah, if you need a trigger warning, this is that warning. This series will continue to mention rape as a thing bad people did offscreen to an imprisoned female character occasionally.

@raven10: Well the complete opposite is happening with MGSV. Less cutscenes, longer gameplay sessions without boss battles and Big Boss talks a lot less (which is an intended thing no matter who is voicing him).

@deegee: im guessing its the raiden reveal thats been weitten about for years now. I cant wait for that other reveal in the tank chapter :D