Snake? Snake?! SNAAAAAAAAAAKE!
That’s me doing an impression of one of those dickhead lads doing an impression of Snake’s Codec buddies shouting after him when he falls into a hole or off a cliff or into a bullet in any one of his uniformly excellent adventures. Though I actually sat down to finish my Ten Things about Metal Gear Solid 2, I reckon I’ll just start one about Snake Eater instead seeing as for whatever reason I can’t get online and I’m drafting this sucker in Word.
Snake Eater blah blah best blah ever. Let’s get a move on.
1: First thing that comes to mind is a moment when you’re battling with The Fury, one of the game’s emotion-based member’s of the Cobra Unit who zooms around wif his ickle jetpack shooting fwames everywhere. I think this hideous mocking stems from the difficulty I had beating him with tranquilizer darts when I could have shot up the place so much easier (I am a pacifist at heart). You know Snake gets a shotgun in this game? A SHOTGUN? LIKE THOSE PRICKS IN 2 THAT CAN KILL YOU WITH A SINGLE BLAST? WHO’S THA DADDY NOW?* Anywhat, The Fury is true to his name as he spouts off vague McGubbins like “my hatred will incineraaaaate you” and “I burn aflame with furious ANGER” but if you catch him with enough bullets early on he’ll drop all pretense and just scream “son of a BITCH!”, and seeing such a conceit-based character jettison all his airs and fineries to act like a normal pissed off guy amuses me to no end. SO THAT’S NUMBER ONE.
2: Major Zero (also known as Major Tom) reveals a major love for James Bond if you call him often enough. The stupidly named Para-Medic has a pathetic stab at conversing with Snake about monster movies every time he calls to save but as soon as he mentions 007 Zero jumps on the line and gets all overexcited, arguably showing emotion for the only time in the entire game, as he discusses his intention to develop a snake-shaped gun for our hero with which he can wrestle before getting a shot off. Of course, where’s Snake going to carry this snake-shooter? In a custom made attaché case. I couldn’t want to see this more.
3: Every time you eat something (“something” ranging from Instant Noodles to rats to twelve types of snake) Snake’ll offer a verbal opinion on how he finds the flavour. If it’s not so hot, he’ll exclaim “disgusting” (though my favourite ‘disgusting’ in all of videogames is that of Astaroth in Soulcalibur II**) and the best there is elicits an “I want some MORE”, but best of the bunch is easily the in-between “tasteeee”, which David Hayter delivers like a total sleazeball and which I mean to share with you now:
4: I fucking love the Cobra Unit. Lookit, in Metal Gear Solid 2 the bad guys consist of a lady with a rail gun and a deflector shield (she’s kinda an African American Death Star in that respect), a homosexual dancing vampire (who’s boffing Rail Gun Lady’s dead father), a blimp in a bomb suit who sips wine and travels exclusively by roller skate (sample battle cry? “My BOMBS!”) and an ex-president with two less robotic arms than than the best named fictional man ever, Doctor Octopus. Metal Gear Solid 3’s Cobra Unit comprises The Pain, a man who makes a tommy gun OUT OF BEES AND THEN SHOOTS BEES AT YOU, The Fear, who’s invisible and fights with a gun in the forest just like fucking Predator, The End, a narcoleptic 100-year old sniper who turns into some leaves when you kill him, The Fury, who I’ve mentioned before (“son of a BITCH!”), The Sorrow WHO’S A FUCKING GHOST and The Boss, who is probably my favourite female character in any game ever and deserves her own point later. Those guys – Made-Of-Bees-Man, Fucking Predator, Sleeping DEADLY, Roidrage and The Funky Phantom – are the best assembly of baddies since sliced bread (which in the gaming world you can take to mean Blaaarg, Reznor, Lemmy Koopa and the rest of the Super Mario World gang).
5: There’s so much less music in this game because the jungle and the mountainside provide a natural soundscape, but the theme that plays when you’re in evasion mode (ie: were stupid enough to get your camouflaged ass spotted in a fucking jungle) has such a groovy little guitar line and flute abuse that I kept getting discovered – ahem, on purpose… – just to hear it. God bless you, Noriko Hibino, unsung hero of the MGS series. Harry Gregson Who?
6: Right, I guess I don’t really love this (shoulder devil says otherwise) but there’s scene later in the game where the game’s Big Bad, Col. Volgin, gets his hands on you for an old fashioned torturing. Also his hands are electric and he carries bullets between his fingers. Somewhere along the way Snake loses an eye (PENIS! ALRIGHT? I SAID IT!), but before this even gets started Volgin and Snake participate the absolute most violent thing I have ever seen. It’s horrible. I struggle watching it (popcorn for shoulder devil) and it makes smacking him about in his wacky red PJs later on in the game all the more satisfying.
7: The Boss. Ahhh, I LOVE her. I love her, and her relationship with Snake and her dead ghost beau The Funky Ph…, um, The Sorrow. Fairly early on in the game it’s established that she and Snake (I nearly wrote ‘The Snake’ there, who the fuck am I, Mike Adamle?***) worked together for a good long while, developed the game’s combat system together and generally thunk right highly of each other. They were never love interests for one another but they clearly loved each other. Get that. A video game with characters of the opposite sex who don’t want to boff each other. That’s two boffs for the price of one, gang. Anyway, it’s really hammered home that this broad’s the bee’s knees and when she eventually betrays Snake and defects it’s all the more crushing. Also she rides a horse.Then she gets herself into a tricky situation and has to go along with the defection even though she didn’t really and dies a traitor and even Snake doesn’t find out until after he’s killed her that she was a hero and it’s just awesome altogether, and also because she’s Ocelot’s mum it’s like he and Snake are brothers. And , ooh ooh!, oh, I totally…
8: LOVE. OCELOT. By all means I should hate his snotty little American self, but I just totally buy him as this cocky young messer fumbling his way to legendary status by getting in Snake’s way, huffing and doing THIS all the time-
9: You get to climb a mountain.
10: Oh, it’s SUCH a good game. It looks goods, sounds good and plays good. It makes me laugh, it makes me angry, it makes me cry. It makes up for any criticisms of Sons Of Liberty and gives us cause to believe the 5th will follow the every-odd-numbered-MGS-is-better-than-the-last rule that I just invented. Man, I love it. I wish everyone would play it.
*Oimna daddy naaaaow
**Note the accurate titling here. It is NOT Soul Calibur 2 and never will be
**Super out of date obscure wrestling wreference there
RAMBLEAST 