A snake, a kitten and a pikachu walk into the jungle. One of them has no sense of orientation.

(This post covers the Virtuous Mission/prologue and the first few minutes of Snake Eater, as usual from the perspective of a blissfully un-spoiled Lym who reads too much into everything. Fun?)

For everyone interested in these game ramblings who hasn’t played the game: This third game is a prequel that takes place about forty years before the others in… 1964, I believe, and thus doesn’t feature many recurring characters from the rest of the series. It’s similar to the new Star Wars trilogy in that it will show us what happened to Anakin Skywalker Naked Snake that he became Darth Vader Big Boss, Solid Snake’s “evil mentor” and main villain of the original Metal Gear games that came before MGS1 and 2. For obvious-but-spoilery reasons mentioned before, our shiny new player character looks just like our Snake and talks like our Snake (same voice actor), but for some reason he doesn’t dress like our snake… which means, no skin-tight sneaking suit. We can, however, play dress-up with him and put him into different kind of clothes. Fun.

 

But why would the Colonel need all those scissors?

In which Lym thinks “This is all going a little too well, isn’t it?”, approximately half a minute before all hell breaks loose. Includes naked prettyboy protagonists, a fourth wall that is not so much broken as shattered to itty bitty pieces, may she rest in peace, and some amazingly disinterested bystanders. But hey, at least we managed to avoid drowning.

 

Yet more about MGS2.

Since last we heard me babble about this game, our pretty little protagonist has a) proven himself to be woefully genre-blind, b) fallen off of burning bridges, and this is unfortunately not a metaphor, c) been groped by the president of the United States (this is not a metaphor either) and d) been accused of having… a heart as empty as his… bedroom? I think that last one was a metaphor. Maybe.

 

Metal Gear Solid 2 ramblings, part 2

You know you’ve watched too much Criminal Minds if… you’re playing Metal Gear Solid 2, get to the part where you have to find bombs by the scent of cologne their creator always puts on his “works” and find yourself thinking “Oh look, the UNSUB has a signature!” (Of course it’s not really an UNSUB when we already know the guy’s identity, but…) Oh well, at least the characters started talking about signatures half a sentence after I thought of it, so I can’t really blame Criminal Minds after all. ^.~

And yes, I made sure to call *cough*”Pliskin”*cough* as soon as he woke up to ask him more about our resident Quirky Miniboss Squad. Watching Raiden was very amusing; he looked like he’d break out the crayons to draw a multi-coloured arrow diagram to keep track of everything – I know I wanted to.

Of course that also means that I’ve met Fortune and Vamp by now.

 

“But what do ripped jeans have to do with the natural order of things?”

Where I squee over silly banter (and am utterly predictable), try to introduce Otacon to Aino Minako, laugh too much at the sight of a sequel parodying Sequels and play MGS2 for the plot. No, really.

At least I’m not the only one who seems to be missing something. XD I’ve started playing Metal Gear Solid 2 and so far I’m absolutely loving it. Granted, the farthest I’ve played is the beginning of the plant infiltration, where I saved just after meeting the new save point person, but hey, at least I can give first impressions, right? But let’s start at the beginning, more precisely with what I knew before I even put the game into my PS2:

1.) Many people, my reading list not included, seem to say that MGS2 is their least favourite game of the series. We’ll see why in a second.
2.) After a prologue, there is a switch in main characters and we run around as a certain Raiden.
3.) The same “many people” mentioned above hate Raiden. With a passion. They seem to have gotten slightly better after MGS4, but that is not what I am concerned with right now.
4.) If there is one character that gets more hate than Raiden, it’s Raiden’s girlfriend Rose.

So in other words I didn’t really knew anything except for 2.) and opinions from a bunch of people I couldn’t care less about. Anyway, more detailed first impressions under the cut.

 

I might be missing some finer points of a metaphor here, but…

…why is there a walrus in Metal Gear Solid‘s ending? XD

No, don’t answer that one. I know it’s just part of the let’s-show-stock-footage-of-various-flora-and-fauna-during-the-credits sequence. Doesn’t mean that I can’t crack up over it. … Why are you looking at me like that? Between Alaska’s wildlife, a message delivered with all the subtlety of a brick to the face and the protagonist & antagonist’s apparent need to lose most of their clothes during the final showdown, are you really expecting me not to laugh? XD
Also, from what I’ve heard I better laugh while I still can and enjoy the Happy End as long as it lasts. Beware, there are sequels. And by “happy end” I mean the Bad Ending.

(The last time you’ve heard me talk about this game, I was running around in slightly panicky circles because someone thought it would be fun to decide the game’s ending with a mini game that you can only win if you can mash the x button very fast. Which I can’t. So I’ve been on the Bad Ending path ever since and I must say I rather like it. No, really, I could’ve bought this as the game’s real ending if I hadn’t known there was a “happy” ending too.)

Assorted spoilery thoughts in bullet point format under the cut.

 

My… Bookloggery?!

Off Topic Alert! My bookshelves are… well, they’re in a slightly better state than my backloggery when we look at the finished/unfinished ratio, but I could still use some additional motivation in the form of shiny statistics, so here’s my backloggery rip-off, super-simple html style! I-don’t-even-know-what-to-call-it-because-everything-will-sound-silly-at-this-point. For a look at my bookshelves in general, there’s link at the bottom. Whatever this is, it uses this site’s word count progress bars.

Currently Reading:

Carol Berg: Rai-Kirah 2: Revelations — 259/485 pages — still loving the characters, but can we go on with the plot now?
Robert Jordan: The Wheel of Time 1: The Eye of the World — 46/814 pages — reread; more enjoyable than I remember it being, but it’s still trashy

Unread: 31,25%

50 / 160

|

Read: 68,75%

110 / 160

|

my LibraryThing profile

 

Infinite Undiscovery – Touching… in the “people touching each other” sense

No, really – people sure touch each other a lot in this game, enough to make me notice it. Because I clearly don’t have enough games that I’m “currently” playing, I restarted Infinite Undiscovery earlier today and made it through the prison/forest escape at the very beginning, which is followed by a campfire scene. Now, there’s something I’ve noticed the first time around (I just wasn’t aware of the sheer volume) so I paid closer attention this time – and that’s how often the characters touch each other. Just to give you an idea: Within a seven-or-so minute cutscene, there are fourteen separate instances.

 

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attourney – Trials and Tribulations [Final Thoughts]

I’m not exactly sure when this post decided to turn into a 6.200 word monster, but it did. Whoops? Anyway…
Last game in the original trilogy, and I stayed up late again a few days ago just to finish it. By now, I should’ve learned that the last day of trial is always longer than I expect it to be, but nooo, I just had to start with the last part in the evening. ^^; And let me tell you – it was, once again, so worth it.
Everything I said about the characters being textbook cases of “How To Win Lym’s Heart” still holds true for the third game and… I’ll just spare you more introductory ramblings and just start with the game’s first case.
PW trilogy spoilers (obviously most in depth when it comes to T&T)

 

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All [Final Thoughts]

Guess who beat Phoenix Wright: Ace Attourney – Justice For All yesterday? (Or technically “today”. Stupid final case. Halfway through, it started being so intriguing and exciting and awesome that I stayed up until past midnight even though I hadn’t slept well the night before and was ready to go to bed at nine. *yawns*) It’s the second game (of four, so far) in the series and the third in Phoenix’s trilogy, and I ♥ these games so much. Why?

Because it’s a like shonen hero action manga with lawyers solving murder cases that are often hilarious, sometimes tragic and quite frequently both, all while running around in a world where everyone’s name is a pun (What, “Phoenix Wright” didn’t give that away?) and where you can get away with having no idea what you’re doing as long as you can yell “Objection!” with enough enthusiasm. There is also subtext that is about as subtle as my love for snarky narrators with their heart in the right place who think in brackets. Speaking of which… that would be Phoenix for you.
So yes, how could I not fall in love with this point&click-y goodness, even if it weren’t for the really awesome characters? Huh?

I originally wanted to introduce you to the series (and basically tell you not to stop after the first very predictable case, because it gets better) and the characters (hilarity included) and tell you why I love them so much and why I want to write fanfic, but so much of it would’ve included spoilers for at least the fourth (and canonically last) case of the first game, and so I decided against it for now. ^^; But let me assure you that Nick and Miles and Maya and Gumshoe (and everyone else) fall right into the “Characters that know how to catch a Lym’s heart” category. *hearts them* Seriously, it’s like they were written just for me. ^.^

PW:AA: Justice For All !spoilers!