Part 19: Snake's Revenge Part Seven: End of Revenge

Snake's Revenge Part Seven: End of Revenge


Ladies, gentlemen, welcome to the ritzy part of the castle. This is the second of three areas that I think of as being the "endgame" of Snake's revenge. To contrast, the endgame of Metal Gear takes place in the building 3 basement, which is something like ten rooms long.



This area has us two exciting enemy types, and they know where Snake is every time: suicide bombers (in the first screen), who either hurt you or don't, and statues that shoot R/C missiles (in the second screen), who will hurt you. The best strategy for both is just to run past them.


In one room, there's a suicide bomber POW. There's a short delay between entering the room and their text box popping up, giving you enough time to run away from them. This makes them explode harmlessly. This seems like a stupid waste of manpower, but I haven't won the award for most merciless man eight years in a row, so what do I know?


A room like this showed up in the last update. It's still an awful room that has no reason to exist.



We've seen these rooms before, and it's kind of nice that the castle is connected up internally as opposed to being two discrete areas.


There are items scattered throughout the area to restock, but there's nothing new and the boss is on the top floor, so the elevator is our destination.


Suddenly, Nick calls and tells us nothing!


Soon after, we find another keycard and what looks like a dead POW.


spy.

This dead POW is actually a near-dead Nick. Snake arrives just in the nick of time and is told about Jennifer being a spy. I don't think this would make any real difference, since all Jennifer ever told us was "go forward". Maybe she was lying, though, and there's going to be a big twist coming up because of this?

 NOPE! 


Lead him out, then attack. Uh...

Surprise, the bad guy of Snake's Revenge is Big Boss (again). He's on some kind of life support, though, and you have to lead him away before you can attack? Shouldn't just being taken off life support kill him, though? Hell, what kind of threat can somebody on life support even pose? Critical condition isn't any kind of condition to be in when you're trying to take over the world, Big Boss.


Nick dies after dumping that mess on you. He also turns to stone immediately upon his death.


Past Nick's room, Snake finds...a thing. To me, this doesn't look like anything.


And it definitely doesn't look like a smoke bomb, which the game tells me it is.


First, the word you're looking for is not "warning". Second, at least half of our commando squad is dead (I still don't know what was up with John on the train. Was that just an impostor to lure Snake in? Was the real John Turner ever a part of the squad?) and only Chopper Pilot is still around to help us. Third, if marking an attack site is imperative to your mission, don't make the marker procure-on-site! For fuck's sake, FOX-HOUND!


Moving on, this is an elevator to the third floor, where Big Boss is supposed to be. Unless Jennifer was lying to us, because she actually was a spy.


There's nothing going on here, I just wanted to show how phoned in the design of this room is.


In the next room, though, Snake finds a robot (read: gun with legs) that shoots missiles at him. These things take multiple R/C missiles to kill, so they're not worth it.




There are rooms here that open with keycards 3, 4, and 5. In Metal Gear, keycards blocked your access to certain parts of the buildings, which shepherds Snake forward while allowing the game to take place in only three buildings. Snake's Revenge is so linear, though, that all keycards do is slow you down. I wouldn't be surprised if you could skip one in the jungle base and make the game unwinnable on the ship, either.



Behind those doors is Big Boss, who is apparently a cyborg now? And he's pretty angry about it, too. It's like it was Big Boss who wanted revenge the whole time, but instead of calling the game Big Boss's Revenge, they called it Snake's Revenge because of reasons.

I can't read the line about making Big Boss a cyborg as saying anything other than that Snake is a cybernetics expert. This game really is a fucking mess.

This is Big Boss's theme:


And this is the video of the fight against Big Boss.


In a nice callback to the boss fights of Metal Gear, the way to beat Big Boss is to hide behind cover and steer remote missiles into his face. A fairly realistic approach to fighting an old-ass man on life support, I guess. That cyborg bit is just fucking nonsense, though. I don't know what the hell that is.



After a few missiles to the teeth, Big Boss explodes into a giant damn robot. This is what he meant about being a cyborg.

It's still fucking nonsense, though.


penetrate.

Fuck you, Big Bot, your weak point is your feet. I know this because some random guard knew it and felt like telling somebody else about it and your inner sanctum doesn't have any countermeasures against a portable microphone.

As far as the boss goes, you run a few rooms back, slap on your bulletproof vest and just run right in there to plant mines on Big Boss, eating rations whenever your health is low. You can see this in action in the video, but trust me, it's a pretty stupid fight design. Not as bad as the tank, but also not as good as any of the bosses from Metal Gear.



Once Big Boss is dead (again. Maybe.) Metal Gear 2 is declared "operable". That is, able to be used. Which I was assuming it was the entire time. Not much of a threat if it doesn't work, is it?


This section of the game is timed, just like the end of Metal Gear was. Unlike that, though, this section of the game is also fairly long. There's still another area to go through, in fact. The time limit is generous, though, so you should finish with plenty of time left on the clock (I think I finished with something like half the time left).


Back through Big Boss's room, does anything in here look like it might be a life support system? Was that misinformation fed to Snake through Nick, or just random nonsense?


plant from this door.

This is Jennifer. No comment is made on whether or not she's a spy.


Right after you talk to her, she takes this pose. I think she's supposed to be waving to Snake, but for the life of me, I cannot see anything but a Nazi salute.



Right outside of the castle, you have to ride a gondola to get to the next area. Thankfully, there's no sidescroller, but seriously, what was wrong with just having a regular walkway or something, guys?


to blow up the wall to enter. The spot is marked by a flare. You must not fail.

Ah, Chopper Pilot! Calling with last minute advice only tangentially related to things that actually happened! Jennifer's instructions were "use the door" and the flare he mentions is really the "smoke bomb". You use it in front of the door, and voila!


There are some explosions and the door goes away.


New York, Tokyo and Moscow!

Inside is another modern-style military facility, plus an announcement of Metal Gear's targets. Probably just in case an enemy agent breaks in and needs to be reminded of the stakes of the thing.



The secret lab isn't very long, but there are a few branching paths that lead to dead ends, which could screw you over if you don't know where to go.


At the end of the hallways is Metal Gear 2! This is another crappy "boss fight", just to top things off. You see that little red-outlined path through the black in the screen? Well, you have to fire R/C missiles and steer them through that passage (a ventilation duct, maybe?) and into Metal Gear's glowing yellow "eye" area. The game is pretty specific about where you need to hit (not that the player would know this), and hitting other areas does nothing, nor is there a visual clue that you did something wrong (there is when you do something right, though). Plus, there are little shutters that open and close in the way of your missile, so it's a timing puzzle too!

Metal Gear 2's boss music:


The final boss fight, against Metal Gear 2, in action!


Shoot it enough times and Metal Gear shuts down but doesn't explode or anything. Oh well, close enough to destroyed, right? And that's the end of gameplay.

The ending theme:



I think this is supposed to link the events of the game to the establishment of World Peace Day. The more I read it, though, the more I'm convinced that they're saying "and the next day was the International Day of Peace!" With Snake's Revenge, you can never tell.


The ending is similar to the opening. Even the game doesn't know what happened to John.


Nick was promoted three times. Like Snake's promotions, this had no effect on his title or his standing in the chain of command. Nobody would ever know, though, because FOX-HOUND works super top secret black ops and those records can't ever be made public.


To cap it all off, the credits!

And that's Snake's Revenge! It sucked!

Thanks for reading, everyone.