played this to cure my mgs4 woes. to cleanse my mind. to calm myself and play a game that makes sense
so .. that was foolish
i dont know what this game did to my brain but when i tell you those sewer rats genuinely honestly almost brought me to tears and made me uninstall... but then look at me now, weeks later, all i can do is look back fondly on all the crazy shit this game threw at me and how proud i am for beating it. this game transcends.... game. it is an experience that will imprint on your mind, your very soul.. your dark soul.... sorry
my character was called neon lennedy. he dressed like a tree stump and hit his enemies with a giant fiery spider's leg. i love him. i hope hes doin ok.
it kinda falls off in the second half but at that point i was addicted. and im currently trying to play dark souls 2 so i cant complain. the most important thing about playing this game is that doing so made my friends smile :)

reader, you do not know the pain i went through to play this game. my ps3 stopped working, i tried to repair it, bricked it. i bought another second hand one on fb marketplace, but to get it i had to walk for about 45 mins in the rain in the middle of the night to an area in my city where an infamous mass shooting took place. i picked it up, didnt get shot, excitedly listened to mgs2 soundtrack while i walked. i imagined i was a member of a secret anti-metal gear group on a clandestine virtuous mission of my own, to pick up a mysterious package which may contain knowledge of some new metal gear... the roadmen that passed me by were the faceless, nameless soldiers of whatever military organisation was the enemy of the day. i was ready to take them down, kill them if i had to. they are people too, i know this. but as soldiers we take the risk of death as an everyday hazard. we are all fighting for something, we all believe in something. i will remember them, once it is done. but i will not hesitate.
anyway i got the package back to base... i mean, my flat. bro sold me a broken ps3
at this point i was at my wits end, even my parents were invested in my quest to just fucking play this god damn game. they helped me out with some money to buy a refurbed ps3 and AT LAST! AT LONG LAST! A WORKING PLAYSTATION!!
i excitedly set it all up, put in another game to check that it worked... it did!!!!! THIS IS HAPPENING BABY
my friends trickled into the livestream, boy were we going to have the time of our lives watching the finale, the end to the story of solid snake and otacon. the moment we had all been waiting for..!

this game is pants. i wasted loads of time and money on it too so im gonna be more bitter about this fact, but it is a load of pants. the ONLY things i liked about it are below:
- guinea pigs
- liquid fist fight obviously went hard
- laughed a lot with my friends at all the awful shit things this game does

dont invest in nanobots

THATS RIGHT BABY!!! I DID ALL THREE IN ONE MONTH!! I CAUGHT FLU AND SMASHED THIS OUT WHILE I WAS OFF WORK!!! wHAT A THRIIIIILLL
alright enough of that.. this one had me Doubtful in the beginning. i dont love some of the level design in this and it was difficult to adjust to the new setting and mechanics, like the camouflage and catching animals. plus, i dont think that the codec characters are as good as they have been in previous games. but these things didnt stop me from enjoying the game too much (and in hindsight, i should be grateful for the codec conversations i did get. this is about mgs4. we'll get to that)
by the time i had finished the game i knew it was going to be imprinted on my brain in the same way the other two are, i was so happy with how it all culminated. this is a super cinematic game and is just as ambitious as the first two in that sense. i know its a matter of preference but i love this aspect of it. i also really liked the music, although now only a couple of tracks truly stand out. like that one... oh what's it called.. you know! that one... ahh its like... snake.. snacker? i don't know
baby twink ocelot is something i did not know i needed in my life but i absolutely did. hes my favourite iteration of ocelot (so far..?) but it took some time for him to grow on me. same with eva, who i ended up REALLY liking by the end. because she is a nice girl who wants to kiss me (snake (me)). big boss have two hands
yeah anyways thats it. not as much depth gameplay wise but packed with lore and story and Themes™. i love it's stylisation as a Bond type story, complete with a Bond theme and intro and a Bond girl (ocelot)
smashin game. good chicken, i play this game.. not for honour.... but for youuuuu

my friend good chicken asked me to play just this one game at some point in 2024 as part of a yearly tradition where we force each other to play one game per year, decided before jan 1st. well i jumped the gun slightly and started this one early, then finished it 5 days into the year because i couldnt put it down
this game rly pushes the boundaries of what i thought the ps1 was capable of, and those things are still impressive today. yes the game has a few problems but i think its easy to judge as somebody who could have only played this decades after its release. the only thing i really want to fault it for is the meryl plot which isnt dreadful by any means, i just think the romance between her and snake doesn't feel earned. as for the rest of the plot it stands very well on its own but does a lot to set up its themes and ask questions that we might get answers to in later games. or, not answers... just more specific and increasingly outrageous questions i guess. its all part of the fun.
im someone who loves janky gameplay and having to learn a game's language so this was a thrill for me (this is a cheeky little joke that we will understand a couple games down the line)
this marked the start of my metal gear era, my otasune obsession, my actual real snake sickness. i will never forget it.
liquid snake, i did like your sunglasses. god bless x