Metal Gear Soiled

I google'd "Metal Gear Soiled" to make sure I wasn't being too trite and repetitious. Turns out people just accidentally type solid wrong, a lot. I could see soild or sloid, which are just a matter of sloppy typing, like teh. Soiled requires you to switch the i to the wrong side of the l and throw an extra letter in there.

A couple of days ago I went over to a friend's house for a big Smash Brothers Brawl fest. I got back late last night. In the intervening period I played an obscene amount of the game. We got all the unlockable characters and stages and a large portion of other unlockable content besides. One character is of particular interest to me. Last year we found out, whilst impatiently awaiting the next Smash Bros. installment, that it would, much to our consternation, include Solid Snake from the Metal Gear series. I personally dislike Metal Gear and thought that it was a woefully irrational decision to include him. I have been persuaded to believe differently since then.

I'll start by saying that I think Solid Snake is a proper Bad Ass (capitalization denotes official status as opposed to an amateur bad ass). He always seemed like a steady spec ops type character. A killer, resourceful, merciless, a tool of nations. It's not very original but it's cool. Konami has made a ton of cash off this stale characterization. I didn't feel that he belonged in a game where goofy characters like Donkey Kong and Pikachu ran around fighting. Luckily they've proved me wrong. While retaining an air of badassery Snake comes off as sort of comical in Brawl. I suppose it's mainly the inclusion of his cardboard box.

I was really hoping that they'd at least let him break Yoshi's neck, alas it was not meant to be. He does, however, kick some serious ass when he's not blowing up shit with rockets, grenades, mines, RPG-7s, or mortars. This guy is packing some real ordnance. I have come to accept him as a Smash Bros. character, one that I really wish I could manage. It turns out he's too hard for a simpleton like me to control. It seems like a great deal of people can't use him to good effect either. You see, when connected to the Nintendo Wi-fi you can choose to spectate instead of playing. You get connected to a random game to watch. Before it begins you are allowed to wager the coins you have collected within the game. You place a bet of any amount 100 coins or less on whichever player, or team if it's a team battle, you think will win. If you're right you win coins and occasionally a "Bonus Chance' which can be in-game items like stickers or trophies or just double or triple winnings. It's actually more fun than online play if you ask me. The Wi-fi games are heinously laggy and just less fun than playing with a bunch of friends. This brings me back to Snake, don't bet on him. Most people will let you down while playing with Snake. Although one time I bet 100 coins on him and won back 380, that was sweet, otherwise he just lost my money.

My only foray into Metal Gear Solid was a coworker loaning me Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Looks cool right? I struggled through a few hours of frustrating and confusing controls, cheesy anime-esque cut scenes and rigid, spastic combat before I gave up. I couldn't see the point. My natural inclination is not to sneak past a guy. My natural inclination is to run out there and fuck his shit up. Mario never tip-toes past a goomba! Did you ever try to elude a koopa? I guess the real progenitor of the stealth genre was Pac-Man. You had to sneak through the levels and avoid the guards at all cost. Then when you powered up and the time was right you would strike. I never really liked Pac-Man, I was too young. My first games were all NES titles. By then it wasn't "DO NOT TOUCH THE ENEMIES", it had become "STOMP OR SHOOT THE ENEMIES". Hideo Kojima must love Pac-Man. At one point in Snake Eater my character (whom I believed was Solid Snake) fell off a bridge into a raging river. He washed up on shore and the medical expert with whom he had radio contact talked him through the process of patching himself up. He had to apply some bandages and set some bones. It seemed cool, it's like when Bruce Willis had to pull all the glass out of his feet in Die Hard. It takes a pretty bad dude to pop his shattered bones back into place and then wrap 'em. The thing about it is that instead of a cool cutscene you have to actually perform these tasks. You listen to the rambling instruction, select the medical maneuver or item, select the part of your body to apply it to, repeatedly. In the end you're just playing with a child's toy shaped like a wounded special agent. What's the point? I couldn't just watch him follow medical advice and patch himself up? It couldn't be one of the seventy-billion cutscenes in the Metal Gear series?

Snake is so cool in Smash Bros. it makes me want to play Metal gear. If they'd made Roy or Marth that cool I would own all the Fire Emblem games. I did some reading last night and found out that Metal Gear Solid 4 had very coincidentally been released. I also found out that in Snake Eater I wasn't Solid Snake and it was a prequel. As if the plot wasn't already confusing enough I got started on a prequel. This was not the best way to start me on the series. Since I know that now I've decided to give the series another chance. One chance Hideo, you hear me dammit?!