In 1998/99 I was living in Nottingham, England. My girlfriend at the time had moved up there to go to Uni, and I’d gone along for the ride. I spent a lot of my time playing PlayStation, and in particular Metal Gear Solid. I also spent a lot of time going to this dodgy club called The Lenton, and buying bags of dodgy skunk off some dodgy Rastafarians.
Actually, that’s not fair. The Rastas were cool guys, and their weed was really good. So good in fact that it must have blinded me to the fact that the end of Metal Gear Solid is a ridiculously sloppy love fest that bears no resemblance to the hardcore action game that precedes it. After defeating the last of the baddies, Snake and his love interest Meryl are directed to a snowmobile and prepare to drive off into the sunset past a couple of moose.
As they walk to the vehicle there’s an uplifting voiceover about choosing life, living life, and, once again, choosing life. Meryl then finds a sweaty old bandana on the snowmobile. “Let’s keep it as a souvenir!” Snake cries chirpily, as if this stinky old headband will somehow remind them of this experience. Remind them in a good way, of course. Nothing says terrorist nuclear threat, death, murder, betrayal, loss, and fratricide better than taking home some random’s second-hand headwear.
Snake then utters the line that's the title of this post, and off they drive, past the moose (or as Snake points out, the Caribou) and the game ends. Fuck me, I must have been really stoned to have witnessed that and not remembered!
At the end of the credits you’re given a rundown of your performance and a rating in the form of an animal. Here, for your amusement, is my dismal performance rating:
Look at that. Shameful. It tells the story of an impatient playthrough. I looked up the animal rankings, and there are twelve for each difficulty level. 'Hyena' is ranked tenth out of the twelve for ‘Normal’ difficulty. Oh dear, how embarrassing.
I’ll try not to rush when I play MGS 2: Sons of Liberty. Hopefully as I play through each of the Metal Gear games I’ll get better. I actually realised last night that 10% of my Pile of Shame are Metal Gear Games! Not sure if that means anything, I just noticed it and thought it was interesting.
I actually didn’t mean to finish Metal Gear last night. I’d intended to complete Battlefield 3, but I played for about twenty minutes and then this happened:
Make of that what you will. It was an interesting glitch. They wouldn’t advance, there were no enemies to fight, and if I ventured too far I was told to get back to the battle. I tried shooting these guys, stabbing them, and chucking grenades at them, but nothing got them to move. I reloaded the game from the previous checkpoint in the hope that the issue would resolve itself, and there was improvement. This time only three of them decided to occupy the same point in space and time:
Look at these idiots.
I guess I’ll load it up from the beginning of that mission next time to see if that helps, but it was so infuriating that I didn’t want to continue with it, so that’s why I loaded up Metal Gear instead.
So now that’s finished I need to decide what to play next! I’m a bit over shooting stuff. I think I need a new setting. One of the things that makes my pile grow is that I start a game, and then the next one is released before I even get a chance to finish it. By then it feels like I’m really far behind the curve, so it’s hard to get the motivation to finish what I already know is an ‘out-dated’ game. So for that reason, seeing as the next iteration of this franchise is coming out in November, I think I may choose…
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations
Am I ready for another adventure with Ezio? Fuck, I don’t know. I thought the first Assassin’s Creed was great but flawed. The second was fantastic; it was the only game I got 1000 achievement points on. I played all the way through the third one, Brotherhood, but felt that by then it was getting pretty stale.
Then we went on a trip to Italy and every place that we visited I kept looking at the architecture and thinking “Assassin’s Creed!!” It really got my juices going for another bout of rooftop clambering and sneaky shanking shenanigans.
Then I fired this one up when I got back from my trip and it was the same old shit. I completed the prologue bit and got to Constantinople, the main setting of the game, looked around a bit and thought “You know what; I can’t be bothered with renovating more banks, tailor shops, and stables.” It seems that with each instalment there’s less sneaking and assassinating. Instead there’s just a ton of loud weapons and multiple minions to do your bidding while you Sim City the place for the ungrateful locals.
I think I’ll just get this one done in a no nonsense fashion by doing as few side missions as possible.
