Metal Gear (Series)

[KentaRawr!]

I've played these games entirely too much.

The first one I played was MGS2, but at the time I didn't entirely understand the story. I couldn't find a copy of MGS1, so I played Twin Snakes first. I actually prefer a few aspects of Twin Snakes, and I think it's primarily because I played it first. Anywho, after playing Twin Snakes I went on to MGS3, and since I had the Subsistence version I played MG1 and MG2 after that. I still haven't beaten the original version of MGS1, sadly. I beat Portable Ops., but in some ways I really disliked it. I played Peace Walker on the PS3 and totally loved it, except I never did unlock the true ending. I ended up looking that up online, sadly. Quite tellingly, I nearly forgot to put MGS4 in this paragraph! I played it. It was neato.

I'm partway through Ghost Babel now, and I think it works well as an alternate sequel to MG1, but I find a lot of the dialogue really strange. The writing comes off as ignorant, I guess. I dislike that they made up a fictional African country with a sufficiently strange-sounding name that they could reliably pass it off as believable to the players (even though MG2 did the same thing.) Then there's Slasher Hawk claiming that the aboriginal name of a boomerang is a "Wilgi." And one other thing I found really strange is that Snake refers to Delta Force as being the "best of the best," and then tells its only survivor to hang back because he can take care of it. It seemed like Jenner (aforementioned survivor) was being used as a Meryl substitute, even though one can infer that she's not a "rookie," which was a big part of who Meryl was. Then there's Jenner's huge lack of confidence in herself, which seems weird if, again, she's the only survivor of the "best of the best." Blurmp.

Anywho,

I actually really like that MG1 and MG2 were packaged with MGS3 specifically, and I think it's somewhat telling that even in the newer collections, you have to go through MGS3 to get to them. I feel like MGS3 was a call-back to those games, at least in a couple of little ways. The NES version of MG1 had your character explore the jungle, for example. Plus, how all of the bosses exploded, and didn't really have very extensive backstories besides The Boss & Sorrow. And the floating guards from that one river in MGS3 make me think of the floating guards on the roof of Outer Heaven.

Regarding Mei Ling's accent though, I think it's worth mentioning that in her brief cameo in MGS2, and in MGS4, she speaks with the same accent she had in Twin Snakes. I think it makes more sense for her given that she grew up in the U.S., and knowing that her voice actress is faking a Chinese accent in MGS1 makes it sound somewhat corny to me.