Grind my Metal Gears

It's time to enter the era of Kojima's post-Konami breakup as we begin our journey through Death Stranding. We've got so much to talk about right out of the gate from characters with obvious names to proper nouns like DOOMs, and BBs, and Timefall, and Repatriates. Episode 62: *ASMR Voice* Hey DOOMers

We finished Ac!d 2 and boy are there some wild and fun twists and ideas at the end of this game. Things like dowsing rods, brain cloning, hypnotism, elementary school hackers, and more! Episode 61: A Clone of a Clone

Onward to Ac!d 2! A sequel which seemingly picks up on none of the threads from the first game, but does have a lot of quality of life improvements, so we're having a great time, and not at all distracted by the cartoonishly jiggling boobs. Episode 60: Metal Gear Raid Party

We've come to the end of Ac!d. Time to fight another Metal Gear and save the day, and finally learn all the insane (and inconsequential?) plot twists as the game races towards a conclusion. Surely all of this will go somewhere in Ac!d 2, right? Episode 59: Acting Cells Under Alice

We're soldiering on in our journey through Ac!d and it's time for some classic MGS stuff like backtracking for a PSG-1 and crossing some bridges. And also some non-MGS stuff like fighting a clown and playing a board game... Episode 58: King of Dream Town

It's time for some shocking revelations as we continue on with Metal Gear Ac!d. Is Solid Snake really who he says he is? What is ACUA? Is Pythagoras the name of the Metal Gear or not? All this and more! Make sure to stick around until the end as we do the important work of figuring out what instruments the MGS3 characters would play in a marching band. Episode 57: Metal Gear High School

We're returning to the world of handheld gaming with Metal Gear Ac!d. Does it hold up to Portable Ops, our beloved PSP only Metal Gear game? Either way, it's time for some deck building in this card-based, dubiously canon entry in the series. Episode 56: Active Command Intelligence Duel

We're finishing our run on the MSX with Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake! If the first Metal Gear was a blueprint for MGS, then this game is functionally an MGS game but in 2D. So many of the things we thought were novel about Metal Gear Solid are in this game. But is it good? Opinions may vary... Episode 55: [Fred Jones Voice] I think Kojima Sucks!

We're going back in time to 1987 to check out the very first Metal Gear game for the MSX. Despite the limitations of the MSX, so much of what we've come to know and love about the Metal Gear Solid series is already here from the very beginning, even if the story is pretty slight from what we're used to with later games. Episode 54: Getting a Nickname from Venom Snake

At the end of our MGS Novel journey, we read Project Itoh's Metal Gear Solid 4 novelization. Benson managed to capture the pulpy military sci-fi nature of the first two MGS games, while Itoh managed to beautifully capture the melodrama and emotional affect of MGS4. Despite one major misstep, we both LOVED this book, and as you can tell from the runtime, have a lot to say about it. Next time we...

Our journey through the literary world of MGS continues with Raymond Benson's MGS2 novelization! Unlike MGS1, this book is much more of a straight forward retelling of the game, but that doesn't stop us from going long discussing all our favorite parts of MGS2, and planning out our vision of a potential MGS2 remake. Konami, if you're reading this, we're available, hire us! Episode 52: Cuck-sultant

Last time we made the jump to the cinema, and now we're jumping into the world of literature with Raymond Benson as we talk about the official Metal Gear Solid novelization! You'd think we wouldn't have much to say, but you'd be wrong! We've got lots to say about what makes this novel a fun read and all the interesting adaptation choices Benson made. Episode 51: Stephen King's Metal Gear

We've gone to the movies to watch John Carpenter's 1981 classic, Escape from New York. We talk about all the ways in which this movie rules. We dissect and identify all the obvious and less obvious ways the movie influence the Metal Gear series. Episode 50: Tenga Egg Escape Pod

We perform our due diligence by playing through the two DLC missions for MGR. Both are pretty inoffensive outside of some bad platforming and some S-Rank Metal Gear style horniness, so there's not too much to dive into in terms of story or characters. Thankfully Danny assembled some very thought provoking questions to get us thinking through our feelings about the Metal Gear Solid series as a whol...

Now that we've officially finished all the main Metal Gear Solid games, it's time to make good on our promise to play through the infamously ridiculous Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. We talk through our varying feelings about the combat, level design, the memes, and how much the characters and storytelling live up to our expectations from the main series. Episode 48: Type A Kojima Woman

We've done it! We've finished the Metal Gear Solid games. Time to wrap things up as we say goodbye to Quiet (questioning why we were supposed to be ashamed of words and deeds in the first place in the process), learning the truth (that we totally already knew) about Venom Snake, and hearing for the first time in a long time from our ol' pal Zero. We may be finished with the Metal Gear Solid games,...

With the Skull Face taken care of, it's time to direct our attention towards Mother Base. Like finding out what sort of shady stuff Eli and the child soldiers are up to (and also thinking about what they could have been up to if the development team got more time to make this game), and learning about just how awful Huey Emmerich really is. Oh, and Master Miller's busy trying to break into the foo...

31 missions/episodes later, we've come to the end of Chapter 1 of The Phantom Pain. It's time to get to the bottom of what's happening with the virus with the help of a new (but also very old) ally, confront Skull Face via the back of a jeep, and put a stop to Sahelanthropus, but not so much of stop that we can't bring it home to Mother Base when we're done. Episode 45: Awkward Jeep Ride

So last time we rescued a bunch of child soldiers. Now, what MGS character do we know was a child soldier around this time. That's right! It's Eli. You know, Eli. Or perhaps you know him by his other name: The White Mamba. No? Well that's ok. No time to worry about him anyway because now everyone on Mother Base is dying of a mystery virus, so we should probably try to sort that out first. Episode...

Last time we saw the return of Huey and Paz. Now it's time for the return of another MGS icon: child soldiers. After we rescue some of those, it's off to a reunion with Skull Face which gets rudely interrupted by The Man on Fire and baby Psycho Mantis. Luckily, they've decided to fight us in an area conveniently filled with many water sources to douse him with. Episode 43: [Cowboy Voic...

With Quiet locked up on Mother Base, we can now do the thing we were trying to in the first place: extract Huey from Cipher's Afghanistan base. Maybe in all the time since Ground Zeroes he's chilled out a bit. Maybe he regrets his involvement in all of that. Or you know, maybe he sucks more than ever. Let's find out! All of that plus an unexpected (and undeserved) reunion with someone...

We've reached a very important moment in The Phantom Pain. Our journey to regretting our words and deeds starts here. That's right; it's time to recruit Quiet. But first we must face off in a sniper duel against her, listen to Mommy Miller and Daddy Ocelot argue over whether to keep her, and then watch as she snipes a jet out of the sky from a moving helicopter. Episode 41: Revolver Oc...

We're back at it with The Phantom Pain, and now that things are starting to pick up at Mother Base, it's time for some classic sneaking missions with Venom Snake culminating in a reunion with our old friend Skull Face, who's got a fun(?) new look, and a big ol' Metal Gear at his disposal. Also Snake and Ocelot decide to adopt. Episode 40: "Do it (Defecate)" now available

We've tasted the appetizer, and it's on to the main course as we begin The Phantom Pain. Nine years after Ground Zeroes, Snake is back, full of Venom, and ready to build up yet another offshore military base, but first we've gotta rescue an old friend with the help of our favorite cowboy-coded gunslinger. Episode 39: Booby Snake

We're moving on to MGSV, but before we can start on the main entree of The Phantom Pain, we have to play through the appetizer that is Ground Zeroes. Despite being a bit of a prologue and teaser for what's to come in The Phantom Pain, there is a lot to dig into with Ground Zeroes, bad and good. If you know anything about GZ, you know exactly what I mean. Enjoy this extra beefy episode as w...