Now we want to head back down to the first floor and to the spiral's central elevator. It takes us up to Floor 30.
Upon stepping out of the elevator, we sense that we've walked into a trap. The voice of an unseen figure confirms that our observation is correct. The voice belongs to the Red Blaster, who enters the scene--crawling along the top of the northern wall, as though he were Spider-Man--and identifies himself as the one who set the trap. "You're not going anywhere," he says. "My grenades will see to it that your death is slow... and painful."
As soon as the dialogue exchange comes to an end, he begins to bombard us with grenades. We can dodge them by moving about the passages of the two-screened battle arena. Stretching between most of these passages are obstructive wires, through which we can break by pressing up against them for three seconds; though, we can't linger in place for too long, since Red Blaster is constantly gravitating toward our current position. On the screen to the left, we have to watch out for those suddenly-springing pit traps, which kill us instantly.
It's a good idea to clear away as many wires as you can before engaging Red Blaster. We can do so by giving him a taste of his own medicine--by throwing grenades at him. Since he's always in motion, there's an element of timing involved; essentially you have to lead your tosses. You'll have an easy time of it if you stick to the room on the right and quickly alternate between between the two parallel vertical pathways. If your movements are fluid, and you don't hesitate before tossing, he won't be able to touch you. 22 grenades will do him in.
When the Red Blaster has fallen, the door in the southwest will open up on its own. It leads us outside, onto a stairwell, climbing which carries us up to the the top floor. Though, there doesn't appear to be an accessible roof. Holly calls us and says that there's a door blocking the way to the roof; it's right in front of us, she says, though it's painted shut, so we need to bomb our way through it. A single plastic explosive will do the trick.
And there, on the roof, we find the carrier pigeon, from which we're meant to receive Marv's message. The only problem is that we're not able to catch the pigeon no matter our angle of approach or how much force we use; it just keeps flying away, onto the adjacent screens. There's no obvious solution, so we have no choice but to contact Johan Jacobsen, the animal expert; our new friend explains to us that the bird in question is a "wood pigeon," a species that is very sensitive to noise and flees when something gets too close. However, they're notorious gluttons and will stick around if they pick up the scent of grain products--like beans or potatoes, which we can use as bait. Well, it just so happens that B2 rations contain potatoes! If we equip one and approach the pigeon while it's grounded, it'll allow us to grab hold of it and take possession of the paper that contains the doctor's message.
The message says "Help! WIS OhIO." Taken as it is, the message doesn't seem to mean anything. Though, it doesn't take us (or "those of us who have been playing games for 30-plus years") long to realize that we're probably reading it upside down (not that we needed him to, but Miller implies as much, noting that the lower-case h points to it being a "digital number"). So if we turn it upside down and disregard the end letters, we get "14051," which is obviously a transceiver code. Inputting it allows us to call Dr. Marv.
Unfortunately, though, Marv only speaks Czech and Slovakian, so we can't understand a word he's saying. So we call Madnar, hoping that he can translate; but alas--he only knows Russian and English. He recommends that we contact Gustava, the STB agent who's been protecting him; apparently she'll be able to understand Marv. And it helps that he trusts her. She's not carrying a transceiver, so we'll have to physically track her down. Madnar says that she stole an enemy uniform and has been using it to blend in. Therein is our clue: She's the only woman in a fortress where there aren't supposed to be any; so we might be able to locate here if we set up an ambush in a place "that only a woman would go," like, say, "a ladies' restroom."
We're given no indication as to where these restrooms might me. About all we can do is look for them in the one place we haven't yet fully explored: Floor 4 of the southern base. So we exit the tower through its main door, which we can open with the recently acquired card 4, and head back to the Zanzibar building's fourth floor. Along the way, we want to stop at Floor 3, the lab, and re-explore the chemical area; using our newest card, we can access rooms that house gas grenades, which fill rooms with poisonous gas after exploding, and night-vision goggles, which allow us to see in the dark. In the area to the south of the elevator room, we can pick up some some remote-controlled missiles and a few mouse roboots--computer-mouse shaped robots that seek out sensors and traps and fool enemies (their inclusion does much to tell us about the state of the computer market at the time and how excited Kojima and his pals were about the era's technological advancements).
Now we want to travel up to Floor 4 and loop around to the cafeteria in the south. One of the newly accessed rooms is pitch-black and features a seemingly impenetrable barrier, but when we employ the use of our new new night-vision goggles, we find that there's a navigable tunnel on the barrier's right side; we can crawl through it. Upon exiting, we want to stick close to the barrier's far-side wall, since the center portion of the room's bottom half is rigged with pit traps. Snake crawls so slowly that there isn't enough time to safely retreat after triggering a pit trap. And forget trying to stand up and run--it'll already be too late. Note that the game will allow you to walk over a triggered pit trap but only if it's done in one fluid motion (don't hesitate, basically).
The three rooms in following are packed with "mannequin soldiers," which the enemy uses as either training dummies or decoys--perhaps Big Boss and his minions set them up all around the complex's perimeter to create the illusion that their numbers are much greater than suspected. As we enter the first of these rooms and observe the neatly arranged mannequins, we're overcome by feelings of unease; all appears to be calm, yes, but we can't help but suspect that there may be a living presence lurking here. A few seconds of inspection reveal nothing of the sort, though we sense that this this is all part of the setup--that the game expects us to now let our guard down. And we're correct: In the rooms ahead, there are real soldiers mixed in. We'll learn as much if we charge in and heedlessly rush toward the room's exit.
You can try to guess as to which ones are fake, though it's easier to let loose some of our mouse robots, to which real soldiers will respond ("Only a rat!) and thus out themselves. (Though, if we want to be cheap about it, we can take advantage of the radar system's occasionally laggy processing, which loads active elements a half-second after everything else, and procure some foreknowledge of their spawn points.)
Just up ahead is the cafeteria. The restrooms are on right side. We can enter the men's room and obtain a bucket, which is a variant of the box, though it makes noise when you shift about (it's useless, really--just plain ol' inventory-filler). The ladies' room, however, is locked. What we have to do is hide behind the plants and wait for Gustava, who's posing as one of the patrolling soldiers, to wander over and access the ladies' room; she'll do so after completing a scripted event wherein she feigns entering the men's room, to avoid arousing suspicion, and then sneakily enters the ladies' room. If during this period she spots us, an alert phase will be triggered, and she'll behave like a normal soldier--attack us without mercy. Should this happen, we'll have to reset the rooms' activity by exiting and reentering the cafeteria and then try again. The objective is to wait until Gustava enter the ladies' room and then follow her in.
I'm still impressed by how inventive this game is. There are so many great ideas in play. And they're all so well-implemented. I'd be doing the game a disservice if I didn't keep mentioning this.
The soldier is indeed Gustava Heffner. Snake recognizes her and inquires as to whether or not they've met before, though she interprets this as a silly pick-up attempt and dismisses the question. Then he remembers: She's a former Ice Princess who took the gold at the Calgary Olympics. She claims ignorance and quickly changes the subject. Gustava is only interested in finding Dr. Marv, and she requests that she and Snake work together to meet that goal. When Snake informs her that Marv is still alive, she uses his transceiver to contact the linguistically alien doctor; they communicate using Czech, and Gustava learns that Marv is being held in a prison located north of the tower building, just beyond a "large crevice." She knows of a shortcut to the area in question--an old sewer (Basement 3) found beneath the southern base. And it just so happens that the elevator leading down to it is right here--in the ladies' room, of all places.
So we take the elevator down to the sewer and head north. The path to our destination isn't that long--a mere four or five screens, depending upon our chosen route--but our traversal is made complicated by the presence of large automated sweepers (think "giant floor buffers"), that speedily roll about and clog up the sewer's passageways. If we make contact with one of them, we'll die instantly; avoiding them may require hiding out in conveniently placed crevices and crannies.
The elevator in the southwest takes us directly up to Dr. Madnar's holding chamber (so we won't be needing to blow up that wall in the jungle building). They exchange some pleasantries, but soon Madnar puts a halt to the conversation and suggests that they hurry to find Marv. Before they leave, Gustava gives Snake card 5, which she swiped from one of the guards; it allows the group to pass through the door on the sewer's east side. As they rush through the rooms beyond, Madnar becomes fatigued and requests that they stop and rest. He heads to the previous room to "take care of business" (read: "cut out the middle man and use the sewer as his bathroom").
While he's away, Snake and Gustava converse. They cover a few different subjects: (a) Gustava's background and how she and her mother were haunted by the events of World War II; (b) Snake's relationship status; and (c) how she left the ice after falling in love with a man named Frank Hunter, who she describes as handsome, well-mannered and intelligent but always afraid. She couldn't join Frank in the West because the government denied her bid for asylum. As a result, her family lost the right to compete, and they were branded as refuseniks; her only escape was to join the STB. Her and Frank's "Berlin Wall" was too high to climb, so they had to part.
Their conversation is cut short by the returning Madnar. His urging forces them to refocus on the current objective. So they gather themselves and continue heading north.
They enter the elevator at the sewer's end and travel up to tower's northern exterior. From there they head northwest. Clairvoyant types will want to equip the mine detector, since certain sections of this area are covered in mines; the rest of us learn this the hard way. When we get to a bridge, another cut-scene prompts: They determine that the bridge is too unstable to hold all three, so they should cross it one at a time. Madnar decides to go first, noting that he's an old man who no one will miss if something goes wrong. When he reaches the other side, he affirms that it's safe for Snake and Gustava to follow. Gustava goes next; though, when she reaches the bridge's midpoint, it's suddenly taken out by a missile, which was launched from the north; it sends her flying back and leaves her badly injured. As Snake consoles her, she laments her failure to mend the gap between East and West and no longer has the will to go on. "Just my luck," she says. "Just when I'd met someone wonderful again..."
Before breathing her last breath, she hands Snake card 6 and her brooch, which can apparently aid him in some way. She dies before she can tell him how to use it. "...Frank...," she softly communicates before submitting to death.
Madnar is taken away, and moments later a Metal Gear enters the scene from the north. Its commander is Gray Fox, whose transceiver profile is clearly modeled after Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger's character in Platoon). Barnes--err, I mean Gray Fox--states that the bridge is now closed and Madnar is coming with him. Just for old time's sake, Fox does Snake a "favor" and decides to let him live, provided he makes haste in leaving Zanzibar. "Go home! Now!" Fox says before exiting. But Snake has no intention of doing so.
But now we need to find some other way to cross the bridge. Holly contacts us with a solution: She speaks of a balcony on the tower's 20th floor; the enemy uses it for training. If we could get a hold of a hang glider, we can jump from the balcony and sail over the bridge, to the other side. She says that there's a hang glider on the first floor of the southern base.
So we have to travel all the way back to the Zanzibar building. Before heading off, though, we should head to the right and search the trucks, which were previously blocked off by unlockable gate; now that it's open, inexplicably, we can grab a bunch of items. Also, once we're back at the Zanzibar building's first floor, we should first head to the north and pick up the blue card, which is compatible with and replaces cards 4, 5 and 6.
The hang glider is located in the room found directly above our initial entry point. Card 6 will allow us to access this room. Now we need to return to the tower. Before then, though, we should run some tasks: First we should head down to Basement 1 and open the remaining doors. Behind them we'll find the body armor, which reduces the amount of damage we take; an oxygen tank, which doubles the length of our C02 meter whenever we're swimming underwater (not entirely useful, since swimming is never a required activity); and a one-time-use camouflage item--a specially designed sheet that blends in with any flat surface and provides us cover when we crawl underneath it.
Next we want to head up to Floor 4 and mode east, to the barracks; here we'll see soldiers sleeping in a number of beds that have been spread across three screens. The rooms' wooden floor is a squeaky, and an on-rails camera travels along their left wall, so we have to tread lightly; mainly, we to have crawl our way through this area and use the beds as cover--hide underneath them, if necessary. In the area's northeast portion, we'll find some cold medicine, using which we can sure any cold we catch while swimming in the sewer's freezing water. While we're here, we can also visit the sauna, though there doesn't appear to be anything of value here (when we learn more about a certain inventory item, we can come back here and grab something cool). Though, soon an *ahem* unclad fellow (whose naughty bits are censored) will enter the sauna, presumably seeking some rest and relaxation. If he sees us, it'll trigger an alert; we can take cover by crawling underneath the benches.
Once we're back at the tower's first floor, we have to head up to the roof using the spiral's first elevator. Our destination is the 20th floor. Though, as the elevator approaches the 19th floor, is movement unexpectedly comes to a halt, and we're suddenly contacted by Gray Fox. He's ticked that Snake didn't take his advice to leave and go home; he's so upset, in fact, that he terminates their friendship. "The elevator is going to be your tomb," he says, because it's a trap. The sound Snake hears is that of an assassination team, whose members are currently working their way to his location (using an undiscovered elevator, it seems); Fox tells him that they specialize in battling within confined spaces. They break through the ceiling and surround Snake, each positioning himself along one of the elevator's four sides. They introduce themselves as the "Four Horsemen" and claim to take orders directly from the president (they're speaking of Big Boss, I presume, and not the U.S. president).
So we're fighting four enemies at once, though it's not a scramble. A Horsemen member will jump down only if there's more than a half-a-screen distance between he and Snake; otherwise, he'll remained perched on the elevator wall. Using this knowledge, we can control who we're facing. The only place place we don't want to be is dead center, which is a trigger point for all four Horsemen; it's important to keep the action under control, because the Horsemen run about hyperactively and are hard to target. Mainly, you want to equip the submachine gun, stand just beyond the elevator's center point, and spray whichever Horseman jumps down. Or if you prefer, you can throw caution to the wind and simply tank the fight--run around recklessly, fire bullets in all directions, and turn the fight into a sloppy free-for-all; if you have enough rations, you can probably get away with doing this.
An individual Horseman can be taken out with sixteen bullets (I can't imagine that grenades or remote-controlled missiles can be used reliable in this confined space). We have to eliminate all four to win the fight. By defeating them, we earn card 7.
Unfortunately, thereafter, the elevator collapses, and we wind up back on Floor 1. As its wire has been cut, we can no longer use this elevator. Instead, we use the northern elevator to travel up to Floor 10. We can advance from here by blowing our way through the wall to our right. The room beyond exits onto another outdoor stairwell. The moment we step onto it, we're spotted by a group of stationed soldiers and enter a forced alter phase. It's part of a scripted event, so there's nothing we can do to end it; our only option is to ignore the soldiers and rush forward. In the ensuing sequence, we determinedly but sloooooowly circle our way up and around ten floors' worth of stairs while under pressure. If our movement is fluid, the soldiers won't be able to touch us. Though, we'll want to continue to hug the walls, since certain sections of the stairwell are rigged with pit traps. Also, there are sections of stairs that are obstructed by wiring, breaking through which slows us down a bit, yes, but not so much that the soldiers will be able to catch us. Just stay in motion and you'll be OK.
Once we reach the 20th floor, we reenter the tower (the alert ceases, thankfully). Now we head north, to the veranda, which was "made for parachute jumps," a child soldier informs us. When we step onto the veranda, our number one fan contacts us and says that we can only jump when the wind blows north; usually it blows south, but there are small windows of time when it blows north. There are no obvious indication as to which direction the wind is currently blowing, so we have to get creative. Specifically, we have to throw gas grenades (making sure to equip the gas mask beforehand) and observe which direction their emitted fumes are traveling. Well, kind of. Since the game can't display what's obviously invisible, the fumes' movement pattern is instead communicated to us via arrows that point in whichever direction the wind is currently blowing. When we see an arrow pointing north, it's time to jump.
There's one holdup, though: Snake is a little nervous about making this jump, so we have to calm him down a bit. The only way to do so is to equip the cigarettes and let him take a few puffs. A ringing sound will notify us that Snake has calmed his nerves and is ready to jump. When he's good and ready, we equip the hang glider and dive off the platform. (How we were supposed to know to do any of this without looking at a guide, I have no idea. Maybe it mentions Snake's fear in the game's manual? Or maybe there's a transceiver call I missed?) This triggers a cut-scene wherein Snake hang glides across the tower's exterior and over the destroyed bridge while a heroic-sounding tune plays. The short tune does a good job of lifting our spirits; it tells us that we should be excited, for we're very close to completing our mission!
Following a 50-second flight, we touch down on the other side of the bridge. From here, we can head in either of two directions--left or right. Traveling to the right, toward the enemy's northern base, proves pointless, since its entrance is blocked off by an impenetrable laser barrier; and as of this moment, we have no means of breaching it. So we head back to the left, to the grain field.
While traveling to it, we have to make sure not to enter the truck near its entrance. Doing so will result in our being transported all the way back to the tower's storage room; if this happens, we'll have to locate one of the two other transport trucks (one is the northeast portion of the tower's first floor, and the other is south of the swamp) if we want to get back where we were. But don't go thinkin' that we can use these trucks to access the grain-field much earlier in the game; no--they're restricted from doing so until after the hang-glider cut-scene has played out. This grain-field truck will be useful to us later on, when we can utilize it as a means of fast-travel, but entering it at this particular juncture will only serve to waste a lot of time.
So we enter the grain field, whose level of growth is such that we stand waist-deep in it. Seconds later, we're met by a masked soldier who introduces himself as Jungle Evil, the "undisputed master of jungle ambush." Then, of course, he challenges us to guerrilla-style battle.
Jungle Evil's is a consistent pattern: He crawls beneath the grain, pop up in a random location, and fires a stream of bullets in our direction. We can approach this battle a few different ways. We can play it tactically--mimic Jungle Evil's strategy and try to sneak up on him from behind (which is tough to do, considering that (a) he'll leave this first screen if we don't stay visible--and thereafter repeatedly shift between it and the three others--and (b) tracking our movements while crawling is a matter of relying on our small, sometimes-indefinable radar for visual aid). We can confine ourselves to a single screen, remain centered, wait for him to pop up, and then play a game of attack-and-run (using either the submachine gun or grenades). We can hide behind the machines, which obstruct Jungle Evil's bullets, and toss grenades at him--lead them so that they strike him when he's passing directly along the opposite side. Or we can simply tank it--equip those rations and stay right on top of him.
Our prize for defeating him is card 8. We can use it to access the building found directly to the north. It's an animal-breeding center (it's described as such by the child soldiers who occupy the house near the northern base's entrance; we can enter it using card 8). When we explore its interior, we find that there are two eggs--one on either side of the lab; each is protected by a laser-sensor system. If any of the lasers detect us, an alert phase will trigger and poison gas will fill the room; should this happen, we'll have to leave and reenter the building to reset its activity.
We can collect both eggs, though we won't know what they contain until they hatch (they'll only do this when they're placed in our inventory). The one on right will hatch within two minutes and produce a snake, whose presence prompts another one of those classic Metal Gear-style out-of-the-box mechanics: The snake will begin to undulate about your inventory screen and, if you don't act quickly to discard it, eat up all of our rations. If you call Johan Jacobsen, he'll inform you that the only way to get rid of the snake is to push the spacebar (Button II, if you're using a controller) when it passes over the cracked egg. Those playing Solid Snake for the first time are bound to lose all of their rations, which will probably number about eight or nine at this point in the game. And they ain't gonna be happy about it, let me tell you.
Oh, those silly Japanese developers with their mischievous spirit. Always torturing us so. But still--I have to admit that it's a pretty clever mechanic. I don't remember any other game doing anything like it.
Only the aforementioned clairvoyant types will know enough to avoid picking up the egg to the right. Everyone else will learn the hard way that only the left egg proves fruitful. It'll hatch five minutes later and produce an owl (a "Zanzibar wood owl," to be exact); it replaces the cracked egg and remains a static inventory item. Though, we're not sure what its function is or how it's supposed to help us advance. Once again, there's no obvious path forward.
About all we know is what one of the child soldiers told us: The northern base's guards turn off the power, and thus the laser barrier, when night falls. Jacobsen adds that because the Zanzibar night owl hoots right after sunset, the people of Zanzibar use it to tell time. Then he just spells it out for us by saying that people rely so much on this owl breed that they'll think it's nighttime even one of its type hoots during the day. So what we have to do is stand at the northern base's entrance, equip the owl, and wait for it to hoot; this will fool the guard into thinking that it's nighttime, and consequently he'll switch off the power and unwittingly allow us entry. Note that this won't work if you're in an alert phase.
The northern base is an enemy camp comprised of five buildings, all of which are accessed via the interconnected decks that encompass them. We can hide from the patrolling enemies by crawling beneath the decks. Where we want to be is the north-of-center building; to get there, we have to travel through the long and narrow northwestern building and deftly work around one of those automated sweeping machines. The deck beyond leads us to our target location.
The building in question contains an elevator that carries us down to the base's basement. Upon exiting the elevator, Snake is contacted by our number one fan, who tells him that he's got company: Night Fright, the last-surviving member of the "Whispers"--a "legendary guerrilla unit." He wears a state-of-the-art camouflage suit that renders him practically invisible. Also, the gun he uses is completely silent. Apparently, no one has ever seen his face. The fan's advice is for Snake to use his ears. Campbell suggests that he listen for Night Fright's steps, which will give away his location; they'll make different sounds depending upon the type of surface he's currently walking across. Sounds resonate across multiple screens, so we can determine his location even when he's moving about on the adjacent screens, since each features a uniquely styled surface that emits a unique-sounding noise.
Once we know the screen on which he's moving, we can pinpoint his exact location by gauging the where the muzzle flashes are currently forming. If we fire at approximately that location, and do so quickly, we'll likely score a hit. There's enough stunlock to where we can trap him in place if we spray him with submachine gun bullets. Otherwise, we can lay down a bunch of mines--maybe form a perimeter and hang back in a corner--and attempt to lure him into them.
When Night Fright has been defeated, the door in northeast will open and grant us access to the prison area. Though, we can't safely travel through the initial passageway because areas of the floor are covered in pools of sulfuric acid, walking onto which kills us instantly. There are three such pools, and they completely clog up the room's navigable spaces. Miller informs us that we can neutralize them with caustic soda--something like chocolate, whose sugar element will combine with the acid to produce carbon and a rubbery substance called "C12H2201," which is essentially table sugar. Luckily, B1 rations contain chocolate (if you're short on B1s, you can find two of them at the camp). We can neutralize an acid pool simply by walking into it when a B1 ration is set to our equipment slot. We have to do this three times.
But wouldn't you know it: We lack the card key necessary to open the prison door. And we're given no indication as to how we're supposed to open up, and none of our contacts have anything to say about the matter. However, if we leave and reenter this room, our number one fan will call and note that Jungle Evil was in charge of handling cards 8 and 9; he must have dropped the latter during our battle. So we have to head all the way back to the grain field and search for it; and since it's obscured by the grain, we essentially have to walk along every tile in view, across all four screens, until we just so happen upon it. Eventually we find card 9 on the upper-right screen, near the right wall (it won't appear here until Snake's number one fan calls him and speaks of its location, so don't bother trying to pick it up early).
From this point on, Solid Snake is mostly about backtracking and continuously traveling between the three enemy bases. It's a really slow portion of the game--partly padding, I'd say. Though, it does entail one particularly clever sequence, which I'll discuss in a bit.
When we enter the prison, we find Madnar and Marv together. Though, Marv appears to be in poor condition; he's laying on the bed, lifelessly. Madnar delivers some bad news: Marv has passed away. "His heart couldn't take it anymore," Madnar tells us. Upon inspecting Marv's body, Snake notices that there's a bruise on his neck. Madnar completely sidesteps the issue and says that Snake shouldn't worry about it; all that matters is that the plans for Oilix are safe. Marv was a careful man, after all. He was a game enthusiast, so he hid some microfilm in the circuit board of one of his MSX game cartridges. "MSX...," Snake responds in recognition. "That's the world's best-selling brand of computer, isn't it?"
We're reaching new heights of shamelessness here, folks.
That's Kojima for you.
Madnar says that the cartridge is hidden inside the nearby locker, but he doesn't know where the key is. Marv wouldn't tell him.
Suddenly Snake is contacted by Holly, who tells Snake that he's in danger. She thought that there was something strange about Madner, so she had the agency look into his recent activity. She learned that things went poorly for him after he was rescued from Outer Heaven: His radical theories were rejected in the West, and as a result he was branded a madman and shut out from the scientific community. As time went on, he was forgotten. Ultimately he grew vengeful. Zanzibar Land took advantage of the situation and talked him into becoming a double agent who would feed technological secrets from East and West to Zanzibar Land. In following, he provided them every detail of Marv's itinerary; this was the basis for Marv's abduction. Quite simply, Madnar was after Oilix for his own gain.
Madnar overhears their conversation and admits to taking these actions. He didn't care that he had to give up everything, including his country; all he desired was to complete Metal Gear--the culmination of his life's work in robotology! He killed Marv because the good doctor wouldn't share the secrets of Oilix. Also, it was he who had Gustava killed back on the bridge; while he was pretending to relieve himself, he contacted Gray Fox and informed him of the infiltrators. He knows that Gustava gave Snake the key to the locker, and he wants it now. Before Snake can respond, Madnar comes up from behind and puts him in a chokehold (using some type of wire, I guess).
This is the setup for a rather unconventional boss battle.
As Madnar chokes away, our health starts to drain. No matter how much we move about or struggle, we can't shake him off. And since we can't turn to face him, we can't pump bullets into him. There's only one available option: We have to fire off remote-controlled missiles and direct them so that they curve around and strike Madnar in the back. Our health drains quickly, so we have to be swift and accurate; also, we have to make sure not to step backwards into the missile explosions, since they damage us, too. It doesn't help that Snake's frequent exclamations ("I can't breathe!"), which are communicated via speech windows, continue to interrupt or cancel out our directional input, leading to many instances where missiles go astray and crash into walls.
Madnar will fall after being struck by 11 missiles.
And now our sole focus is the locker. We have to find a way to open it. When we exit the prison, Campbell contacts us and says that Gustava's brooch seems to be made out of a "memory alloy," and we may be able to alter its shape by introducing it to extreme temperatures. The implication is that the brooch and the locker key are one in the same, and we have to turn one into the other. Well, there's only place we know where there are hot and cold climates: the southern base's fourth floor, which is home to both a freezer and a sauna. The game intends for us to guess between them--potentially make four exceptionally long trips between the northern and southern bases (if your first guess is incorrect).
I mean, I certainly did. Though, the trip that entailed heating up the brooch was fortunately cut short when I realized that a heated brooch quickly reverts back to its normal form. Rather, its only purpose is to open the barrack's top-right locker--Gustava's locker, which contains a cassette tape; it plays Zanzibar's anthem and forces soldiers to stand at attention until it concludes (in the same way I discussed earlier). The only hint that we could do this came from one of the child soldiers in the sewer, who mentioned that Gustava always uses the top-right locker after exiting the sauna. Really, that's not a good way to hide the fact that you're a woman. How did the kid stumble onto this fact? And why didn't anyone else know?
So we have to freeze the brooch. Thereafter, we have to hurry back to the northern base, since the frozen brooch only remains in locker-key form for a couple of minutes. There is an optimal route: We should travel down the ladies' room elevator, cut through the sewer, enter the tower from its northern entrance, head to the room on the first floor's northeast portion, and hop into the truck. This will take you to the other side of the bridge. Before initiating this sequence, though, you should visit the southern base's northern part and pick up the green card, which is compatible with and replaces cards 7, 8 and 9.
Upon returning to the prison, we equip the brooch and unlock the locker. Rather than locker space, there's a whole room inside of it. Well, two technically. The other one, an underground crawl space, lies just beyond; to access it, we have to crawl through the crevice in the northern wall. Marv's MSX cartridge is within the crawl space, but we can't safely retrieve it, because a bunch of poisonous rats are swarming around it. If we make contact with any of them, we'll die instantly. We can't use weapons while we're in crawling mode, so it appears that there's no obvious way to clear them out. So we call Jacobsen for advice; he tells us that we can lure them out with cheese. And hey--B3 rations just happen to contain cheese!
In order to lure them out, we have to go back to the previous room and equip a B3 ration. After a few seconds have passed--after the scent has reached them--the rats will begin to file out of the crawl space; as they emerge from the crevice, we can take them out one by one (you can also plant mines along the crevice and try to kill 'em en masse, though one or two of them may slip through). Keep in mind that you won't be able to lure out the rats if your rations are still frozen (as a result of your hanging around the freezer).
Now you can reenter the crawl space and grab the cartridge. As we move to exit the prison, the still-conscious Madnar says that "he" will never let us escape. "He" will use Metal Gear. His life nearing its end, Madnar says that he has one last gift for his daughter Ellen: He wants us to know how we can destroy Metal Gear. The armor is thinnest on the legs, he says; we can damage them with grenades. The moment Madnar completes his thought, a trap door suddenly opens beneath Snake and drops him into an underground space.
We're greeted by the voice of Gray Fox, who claims that the old man is delusional. "There's no way to destroy this Metal Gear!" he shouts. He then invites Snake to travel through the door to the north. Before doing so, we want to first check out the eastern and southern rooms, wherein we can pick up rations, grenades and ammo.
So we enter the room to the north, and soon we're met by the Gray Fox-commanded Metal Gear, which stomps its way onto the scene. "I'll show you what fear really is," he says before promptly initiating a battle.
Metal Gear's is a simple two-step pattern: It walks forward, onto the bottom of the screen, and fires six successive shots from its lower turret; all six shots are fired directly toward Snake. Then it backsteps to the screen's top portion and subsequently fires off two remote-controlled missiles from its shoulder-mounted launchers; they travel straight down before being steered toward Snake. Winning the battle is a matter of continuously maneuvering about the room's unoccupied side lanes in an effort to dodge Metal Gear's fire, which is surprisingly easy to do, and finding time in between to toss grenades at its legs. Direct contact with Metal Gear spells instant death--a chief threat considering that Metal Gear takes about 45% of the room. Twenty grenade hits will destroy it.
Fox is able to escape the exploding Metal Gear and come out unscathed, but the resulting blasts set Snake on fire. Before Snake can fully grasp the situation, Fox steals the cartridge from him and runs off.
Soon we realize that our current condition is causing our health to drain. And we find that we're lacking for any type of recourse. Though, Campbell alerts us to the fact that our weapons and items are on fire, and this is what is causing us to burn. He tells us to throw all of them away by moving the cursor beside them and hitting the spacebar (Button II for controller-users). We have to do this for each and every item--multiple times for those that stack. The longer we take to dump them, the more our health drains. And we're wrong to assume that prompting an inventory screen will pause the action, as it does normally; no--in this scenario, our health continues to drain even here.
After we toss all of our items, we head own and to the left. Fox is waiting for us here. "Where am I?" Snake wonders as he looks around. Fox enlightens him by responding that it's "the perfect ring for our final battle," for which he's long been waiting. Snake, sensing that his old friend isn't quite right in the head, promises to beat some sense into him.
This battle is just a plain ol' fistfight. Fox runs about the room, kind of aimlessly, and throws punches whenever he and Snake's paths intersect. We can play it aggressively--chase after him and generally hound him--or we can be patient--plant ourselves in a particular spot and start throwing punches when he moves to within proximity. If we choose the latter tactic, there's a better chance that we can get him caught in a cycle wherein he circles around the same set of tiles and consequently sets himself up for another cycle-triggering punch. If you decide to chase him, you'll instead want to get close, throw a punch, and then step away before he has a chance to counter. But be aware that there's a hidden danger: If you travel over to the room's edges, you'll be damaged by the mines that are lining them (Fox is immune to them).
During the fight, we're contacted by George Kasler, a former military adviser to FOXHOUND. He provides us some background on Gray Fox: His real name is "Frank Jaeger." He's a former member of FOXHOUND and the last man to hold the title of Fox in the Big Boss era. He was decorated five times. He was renowned for being a cold-blooded hunter who never let his prey escape; everyone looked up to him. Ten years prior, he was involved with a woman from the Eastern bloc. He tried to get her to come over the fence, but such a scenario never manifested. The West wouldn't accept her, and this caused Frank to develop a hatred for politicos. The woman's name was of course "Gustava Heffner."
We then resume the battle, wherein we have to punch Fox 40 times to KO him.
After Fox is immobilized, he and Snake converse: "Looks like it's finally time for me to give up the title of 'Fox,'" the fallen hunter says. He explains that he and Snake are not alike; his situation is "more complicated." Before he joined the unit, Big Boss saved his life--twice. The first time was when he was a half-white man living in Vietnam--a period during which people like him were sent to forced labor camps. The second time was in Mozambique, where he was being tortured as RENAMO soldier; his ears and nose were severed. He joined Big Boss' army not to repay a debt but because he needs the battlefield. Big Boss gives both he and the other war children a place to fight; conflict is in their blood, after all. He was born on the battlefield and wishes to die there. Quite simply, it's not possible for him to live a normal life; he can't make people happy--especially not a woman. He knows that he was fated to die in battle.
"Rest easy, Fox," Snake responds, consoling his friend. "I swear I won't turn out like you." Fox's hope is that Snake holds to that promise.
Fox then reveals that he was the "number one fan" who helped guide Snake during the mission. It was his way of repaying Snake, who was victim of his selfishness. Snake promises the fading Fox that he won't be alone on the other side. "Gustava is waiting for you," he comforts. Fox thanks him and then, well, explodes. He leaves behind the stolen cartridge.
Suddenly we hear a voice say "Over here, Snake!" Then the door on the left opens automatically, inviting us to travel through it. Seeking the voice's source, we hurry across a transitional room and arrive at a large chamber. There we find Big Boss, who we're surprised to see alive.
Snake tells him that he came here to rid himself of the nightmares. In response, Big Boss delivers a long diatribe (via the transceiver screen, wherein we can see that he's clearly modeled after Sean Connery): Snake's is a wasted effort, he argues. The nightmares never go away. Once you've been on the battlefield--tasted the exhilaration and the tension--it all becomes a part of you. Then you seek bigger thrills. All you crave is war. That's the gift he's given Snake and all of the war orphans, who he's certain will make fine soldiers in the next war. That's his wicked modus operandi: foment a cycle wherein you start a war, fan its flames, and create victims; then you save the victims, train them, feed them, and send them back onto the battlefield! He believes that it's a logical system for people like them, whose purpose is to engage in endless conflict. On the battlefield, they're valuable commodities, but back home they're nothing but dead weight. Like it or not, they're doomed to remain locked in combat.
Snake responds that he has only one fight left: to free himself from Big Boss' grip and rid himself of the nightmares. He vows to defeat Big Boss.
Big Boss doesn't see how Snake can achieve victory as things currently stand. He has no weapons, after all. Snake, though, swears that he'll never give up. "Always believe that you will succeed," he says, "even when the odds are against you."
Basically, we have to improvise. First we have to gather whatever items we can; lucky for us, there are a bunch of them laying around. We'll pick them up as we scavenge the nine-screen battle arena. Most easily attainable are three rations, which we'll find on the corner screens corner screens. Though, where we absolutely need to go is the left room in arena's the center-north portion; its door is the only one that doesn't require unlocking. Inside we find card 6. Thus begins a sequence wherein we use a newly obtained key card to access the next in a series of locked rooms, all of which contain the next item in a chain. The two most important items are a lighter and a spray can containing lacquer; when we set them to our weapon and equipment slots, respectively, we can use them conjointly to create an improvised flamethrower.
Big Boss will be pursuing us the whole time. If ever we're on the same screen, he'll begin rapidly firing at us (his bullets move two-times faster than those fired by other enemies). Also, parts of the surface are covered by acid pools, one of which is blocking a door; we'll have to use newly obtained B1 rations to neutralize it.
Once we've equipped the lighter and the spray can, we'll have the weapon we need to take down Big Boss. All we have to do now is lure him over to whichever screen offers us the most desirable tactical positioning (I prefer the bottom-left screen) and begin scorching him. We'll need to find and retain cover, because it's extremely difficult to engage Big Boss in a wide-open space; in such a scenario, it's impossible to dodge his bullets. Instead, we want to hide behind a row or column of metal crates, through which his bullets can't travel. The flames spewed by our flamethrower, however, can travel through the crates, and we want to use this to our great advantage. Our strategy is to (a) influence his movement so that he continues to walk in a straight line, back and forth, along the crates' far side and (b) spew flames at him whenever he reaches a center position. You'll want to avoid attacking him from a corner position, since doing so will likely result in his arcing around the crates and spraying you with bullets as the considerably long flamethrower animation plays out; you're forced to remain in place during this animation.
We have to hit him 20 times.
As the final blow is delivered, Big Boss is set ablaze. The engulfed madman stumbles around a bit--trying to hang on to precious life--before ultimately succumbing. He collapses and subsequently burns away.
When we exit through the now-unlocked door in the north, an "enemy soldier" sneaks up on us and tells us to freeze. It turns out to be Holly, who managed to survive. She hands us a gun that she stole from an actual enemy soldier. After they're done engaging in some playful banter, Snake contacts his chopper pilot, Charlie, and confirms that the cartridge is secured; also, he and Holly are heading toward the rendezvous point right now.
As he and Holly rush toward the base's exit, they're spotted by three guards who instantly trigger an alert phase. This initiates an escape sequence. Our challenge now is to quickly exit the base and cut through the jungle while enemy soldiers endlessly pursue us. We can afford to stop and fire upon the soldiers, since we're given unlimited ammo, but there's no point in doing so; it's better to simply run--stay ahead of the soldiers.
We reach the rendezvous point to find that Charlie hasn't arrived yet. So we have no choice but to actively engage the never-ending stream of enemy soldiers. After we kill about 13 of them, a cut-scene plays: It seems to be over for Snake and Holly. They're surrounded and out of ammo. There's nothing they can do to prevent what's about to happen to them. But suddenly something happens: Gunfire rains down and eliminates all of the soldiers. It came from the chopper, Holly notes!
The game's final scene begins with Snake and Holly conversing with Charlie via transceiver. He jokes that he was late because he didn't want to disturb the two "lovebirds." That's about all he adds to the scene.
Snake then turns to Holly. "Think we'll be home in time for Christmas?" he asks, jokingly. Even better, she thinks, "We'll be home in time for dinner, Snake." He's happy to hear that, since he's grown absolutely sick of rations!
In the closing animation, we see the chopper taking to their air and flying off into the sunset. Thereafter, the movie-like closing credits begin to play.
But wait--there's also a post-credits scene (which also became a standard series convention). The whole of it is communicated via a text box: Campbell asks Snake if he's thought about returning to the unit. "The nightmares have stopped," he says, his response a form of declination. "I'm a free man now."
"That's too bad," Campbell replies. He then wonders if the cartridge Snake retrieved is actually holding Marv's plans. Snake is certain that it does; he "proves" it by popping it into his MSX and loading it up. Holly is confused, though; she sees nothing--only the system's boot-up screen. She sees nothing, that is, until Snake tells her to focus on the text ("VRAM:01K"), at which point all becomes clear: It's Dr. Marv's signature in reverse (a sure "Oh, of course!" moment for MSX players and another example of Kojima and crew cleverly creating an intrinsic, everlasting relationship between one of their games and its original host system)! This was Dr. Marv's last performance.
Campbell then speaks of Marv's entanglement in pointless political games and how it cost him his life. "But the game he says will save us all," she replies, "right, Snake?"
There's no answer. While Campbell and Holly were conversing, Snake sneakily exited the scene. That's a fitting final note for a Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.
We close with a cast listing.
Enduring Thoughts
Wow, man--what a game! Normally I try to avoid using the word epic to describe a gaming experience, since tossing out such an adjective feels like a quick and lazy substitute for actually providing thoughtful characterization, but here's an instance where its use is totally warranted and oh-so-appropriate. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake is an epic video game--in just about every way.
Even though I was already familiar with the game, having watched other people play through it, I never felt that any of its surprises had been ruined for me. I was, at all times, overcome with the sense that there was something excitingly new about the action that was playing out on my screen--about the sights and sounds that were enveloping me. To experience Solid Snake for myself was to see it through a new set of eyes. I could inspect every inch of it, as if it were my first time doing so, and marvel over its technical advancements and the manner in which it expressed its ideas.
It's amazing what Kojima and his team were able to achieve on the MSX hardware. It's almost as if Solid Snake is actively defying the system's actual capabilities--that it's willing itself to be something more. For certain, it's at the top of the list if we're discussing the most ambitious 8-bit games ever made.
Solid Snake is every bit the grand production its creators intended it to be: It evolves the original Metal Gear's formula in such a monumental fashion that the mold is helplessly blown to pieces. It feels historic from start to finish. It's cinematic in a way that makes other 8-bit action-adventure games green with envy. And it provides players a visually stunning world, amazingly evocative tunes, and unforgettable characters, all of which stick with you and forevermore contribute texture to the wonderfully nostalgic mental images that form whenever you think about Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. Really, there are so many other compliments I can throw its way, but I have to refrain, lest I'd be here for days.
It's fun to revisit Metal Gear 2 and examine it through the lens of the Metal Gear Solid series--to take note of the many ways in which it influenced and helped shape its successors--of how it established a winning template with its heavy emphasis on immersion, storytelling and film-industry-level production. It's not surprising to me that Metal Gear Solid is basically a remake of it. Kojima and crew needed to be. I mean, the vast majority of the gaming populace missed out on Metal Gear 2--the team's groundbreaking masterwork--since it was exclusive to the MSX and came out in 1990, so it was necessary that their new game embody its spirit--reproduce its essential elements. Otherwise all of those great ideas would have gone to waste and Metal Gear 2 wouldn't have gotten the recognition it so richly deserves.
Now, I can't deny that Metal Gear 2's action is hampered a bit by some annoying flaws and questionable design decisions. It inexplicably retains the original's cumbersome pause-and-swap key-card mechanic. There's a ridiculous amount of slow, tedious backtracking, particularly toward the end, where you spend an hour-plus walking back and forth between the game's two furthest points (that they intended for the backtracking to be irksome doesn't make it any less of a flaw). The frequent loading screens, while necessary, hinder the game's flow and eat up a ton of time. And a whole lot of slowdown is introduced whenever you're moving about a space in which there's a considerable amount of action occurring on its 6-9 encompassing screens; while it's impressive that the game can keep track of so much activity, it's not always able to do so competently.
And yet I feel safe in telling you that none of these issues are so detrimental to the experience that they'll leave any kind of negative imprint. No, sir--they simply can't drag this game down. They couldn't if they tried; Metal Gear 2's sheer power is such that it renders them completely insignificant. Believe me: In the end, you won't even remember that you spent a half hour chasing around a pigeon.
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake turned out to be everything I thought it was. It lived up to my every expectation.
Playing it for myself was well worth it; I consider the experience to be an essential piece of my gaming history. And I'm sure that everyone else who plays it will feel the same. Hell--even if you're not a fan of stealth games, it's still worth your time to check out Metal Gear 2, even if it's just for twenty minutes or so. Don't miss the chance to experience a lovingly crafted, highly innovative action game that's filled with interesting visuals, fantastic musical compositions, and a whole lot of cool moments.
Don't miss the chance to experience 8-bit gaming at its peak.
Snake wouldn't like that. I mean, look at him.
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