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Forget about the nukes, what about the caribou?!

I know this site has seen more than its fair share of Metal Gear-related stuff not so long ago, but finally getting my hands on The Twin Snakes, after all the hype, was quite a momentous experience. If I was somewhat apprehensive about Assassin’s Creed in the combat department, the feeling was at least doubled concerning the Metal Gear series. In hindsight of the first game, I can say that most of my fears were confirmed, but they were also, to a great extent, compensated.

I picked Twin Snakes on Joshie’s special recommendation, as he said that the controls would be more user-friendly than in the original…Well, if that was user-friendly, then I don’t even want to imagine what the PSX version was like. Seriously, it took me about 5 resets to get through the first area of the game, simply because of the clunkiness of the controls. First of all, the radar is tiny, and in situations where there’s a walkway guarded by a surveillance camera above you, for example, it’s practically IMPOSSIBLE to see the camera’s field of vision from below. Things like that really make sneaking around a chore. As does the preternatural hearing prowess of the soldiers, when coupled with metallic floors and the *wonderful* precision of the Gamecube joystick. Secondly, who the hell came up with the button combinations? I swear, you have to take notes in order to be able to hold someone up. It doesn’t help that, being a completionist, I simply *had* to go dog tag hunting. Another one on the dodgy manoeuver list was the “jump-out shot”: don’t think I’ve ever managed to do one. And lastly, a massive “screw you” goes out to Vulcan Raven (for both the fights involving him) and to Liquid’s fisticuff techniques (“Ima hitchu!...NOT!”).

But the compensation for the sketchiness of the controls and battle mechanics comes in the form of the storyline and characters. I’ve yet to discover whether this is a trait shared by all MGS games, but I can definitely say that the single defining characteristic of The Twin Snakes is its ability to be deadly serious and completely ridiculous at the same time. People may tell you that the game is epic. I’ll tell you that this is exactly why it’s epic.

Examples abound. Take Snake himself, for example. Yes, he’s a badass who can take out an entire military facility and a nuke-laden tank all on his own (multiple times). But then, he comes up with the following gems:

Campbell: “We have to destroy Metal Gear.”
Snake: “Metal Gear?”

Anderson: “There’s a PAL code.”
Snake: “PAL code?”

Otacon: “You can call me Otacon.”
Snake: “Otacon?”

And so on. I swear that Naomi’s little pre-mission nano-cocktail—which, among other things, was supposed to improve Snake’s mental abilities—had reverse effects. However, on a different note, I was surprised at his readiness to hit on just about anything with a pair of boobs. I always figured he’d be more of the “outta my way, woman” kind, not the “hey babe, how you doin’?” one, and certainly not the “zomg, getcha hands offa my ladeh!” one. I didn’t expect him to become such a sucker for Meryl. And I certainly didn’t expect the astounding display of terminal cheesiness that was the ‘proper’ ending of the game (“the caribou are beautiful in the spring, Meryl”). Heck, it almost felt out-of-character to me, even after having had the whole game to get used to him.

Two other beautiful examples can be found in the fights against Revolver Ocelot and Psycho Mantis. The first one, a cowboy-styled maniac gun virtuoso who has just tortured a poor guy within an inch of his life and rigged him with explosives, introduces himself by going: “Revolver…*twirls his gun*…*twirls it some more*…*flips it over his shoulder*…*twirls it for about 3 more minutes* …Ocelot”. The other, a creepy, emaciated, mind-reading, telekinetic freak who completely shatters the disturbing aura that’s been building up around him by going “you seem to like The Legend of Zelda”, breaking the 4th wall and smattering the entire fight with references to the game’s developers, such as the infamous Hideo Blackout.

Some more examples include Meryl’s 180° turn from “I wanna be a soldier! And I’m not interested in men!” to “War is bad! Snake, let’s go get it on instead!” within about 30 minutes, or the over-the-top theatricality of the second confrontation with Sniper Wolf. And to continue the list, we have multiple allegiance-reversals throughout the game, voice acting that is legendarily bad at times (I’m looking at you, Liquid…not that Snake himself is much less guilty of it), poor Otacon, Johnny Sasaki, the ghost pictures, and the whole *cue Jack Black in Tribute* “it was destinyyyy!” feel of the final boss fight. To end with a flourish, some questions that will never have an answer: why is Sniper Wolf the only one with an accent, when the other 3 members of Foxhound you meet are all Russian? Also, why does she look like a natural blonde when she’s supposedly a Kurd? And what the hell is “shalashaska”? Cuz it certainly ain’t in any Russian I know.

Regardless of what may appear as outright bashing, I’d say that playing Twin Snakes was something of an equivalent to watching a good ol’ Bond film, complete with Russian/Brit villains and a good ol’ nuclear plot: so much to make fun of, but so thoroughly entertaining at the same time. I’ll certainly be continuing with the series, and all my failings at action games be damned.

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