Part 40: Metal Gear 2 Part Twenty-One: Incredibly Stupid Zanzibar Bullshit

Metal Gear 2 Part Twenty-One: Incredibly Stupid Zanzibar Bullshit


So, before we killed him, Petrovich told us that Natasha gave us the key to Marv's locker.


A quick check in our inventory shows no keys, but that we were given Natasha's brooch. Also, that it smells like her. It's, uh, it's a little weird that Snake committed to memory the scent of a woman he knew for maybe an hour, mainly hanging around in a sewer.

But that's beside the point. We've used the brooch before. You remember how the brooch works?


If you don't, just step outside and Cambpell calls to remind you:

: That brooch is probably made of form-memorizing hybrid metal. Try changing the temperature of the brooch. ...Over.

The brooch is made of shape memory alloy. It changes shape depending on its temperature. We've been to a room that was hotter than normal, and a room that was colder.

Way back in the

Mother
Fucking
Zanzibar Building.

The first fucking building in the game. The player has to run all the way back to the first fucking building in the game.

Fuck it, let's get a move on.


Up to the surface! The building we were in is only five screens, counting the elevator, but every building is too big when you have to run all the way back across the game.



Gotta turn off the laser gate to get out of here.





Then it's all the way across to just outside Predator's arena so that we can hitch a ride on the truck to the tower building.



Since I'm a decent person, though, I'll spare you most of the trip back through the desert and the jungle and up to the fourth floor.


Then, once you get to the fourth floor, you have to dodge the guards and head through the mess hall into the freezer.


Then you get to stand in the freezer and fuckin' wait until the brooch turns into a key.

By the way, none of the items found on the way to the sauna are necessary to beat the game - you can get this far without heating the key and realising it opens the cassette locker, and never come back to the freezer because hey, there's a hall you haven't followed before.


As long as you don't do that, though, you're good to go.



On my way out, I grab this. Green ID replaces cards 7-9. I don't know why they divided it like this as opposed to having the red replace 1-3, blue replace 1-6, and green replace 1-9, but oh well.

Also, I've still got an owl in my inventory.


This game is better experienced vicariously, because you don't have to go through the invisible swamp maze, fight the lame bosses, or run through all the screens before here. You just get to see me hop on this conveyor belt.


Then I pop into this door, which I haven't gone through before.


And hey! Another conveyor belt. The trucks to and from the Tower Building get you across the gap now that Snake's tossed the hang glider. I have to wonder, though, how they get across now that the bridge is out.






The return trip might be short for you, reading this LP, but for the player it's interminably long and boring. Backtracking like this sucks.


You know how we still have that owl because Snake is some kind of weird hoarder?



Yeah, you have to do this dumb shit over again on the way back. Whatever, I don't even care how dumb this is after I ran across the entire map.


Back to the basement!



And, here we are again. Right back where we started the update, but with a cold key on hand.


Just equip that...


...Open the locker...


...And...

Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me.




You see that little hole in the back of the locker? You have to crawl in there. Thankfully, this isn't a passage to Hell or Double Hell or whatever, and the cartridge is right there.

Unfortunately, the locker is full of rats.

You know who knows how to deal with rats? Yozef. This is because he is an animal expert.

I'm going to warn you, before I call Yozef, that what he says is incredibly stupid.

Completely idiotic.

You ready?







You sure you're ready?







Don't say I didn't warn you.

So I call Yozef.


Motherfucker tells me this.


Deadly Poisonous Zanzibar Hamsters.

This one isn't even the fan translator's fault. That's what it's officially translated as. A goddamned poison hamster.

Never has Snake's horrified/baffled radio facial expression made more sense than right now.

Christ.

: I think they are deadly poisonous Zanzibar hamsters... ...Genetically engineered from rat and hamster DNA.

And then it's not even just a hamster, it's some kind of designer hybrid! They probably put them together in the same lab as they kept the snake and owl in. I don't even know. Whatever. Yozef's still got more to say.

: Both rats and hamsters belong to the class of Rodentia. They're shy and never get out of their hideout to human sight. ...Favorite diet is cheese. You can lure them out if you have cheese... Gotta go...the pizza-man is here. ...Over.

Didn't you order your pizza back when we first talked to you, right after the first time we chatted with Petrovich? Either that's terrible delivery service or Yozef just ordered a second pizza for the day.

Or maybe he really meant "pizza-man", like Pizza the Hut from Spaceballs. I wouldn't put it past this game.


Yozef's pizza dilemmas aside, though, we do just happen to have cheese handy in our B2 rations. I mentioned at the start of the game that every type of ration had a secondary use, and they were all stupid, so there you go.


I also equip my gun because there is no way I'm letting those furry little assholes live.


So you equip the rations, and the...hamsters...come out one at a time, straight at Snake.



And they are, indeed, deadly poisonous. Like, if they touch you, you're dead in one hit.

The devil in Hell. Just...watch me kill them, I have nothing else to say about them.


After...that...you can crawl around in the crawlspace freely, and pick up the cartridge.


Like so.


There's nothing in the manual about the cartridge, and not because it's important to the plot. There's a much bigger spoiler in there. I guess it's supposed to be a surprise or something?

Like everything else in this game, though, it is dumb as hell. It just happens to be overshadowed by that hamster crap.

Anyway, now Snake has the OILIX plans. We still have Grey Fox and Metal Gear to deal with, and Marv may be dead, but at least we got one mission objective fulfilled. Outside the locker...


Petrovich decides he wants to talk some more! Come on, man, you're dead! Fuck right off and rot quietly!

: He'll use that Metal Gear deliberately.

How else would you use Metal Gear? It's not like you're going to stub your toe and accidentally use the walking nuke tank to launch a bunch of nukes.

: M-my daughter Ellen...

Uh, what about her?

: How to destroy it...

How to destroy your daughter Ellen? What's going on?

: A way to destroy Metal Gear?

You might think that Snake is doing that "repeat it back to them" thing here, but I think that he's actually just confused, too.

: I couldn't cross the wall between East and West in my mind. But she's different. For Ellen, who I left in the East.
: Start making sense! How do you destroy Metal Gear?!

Thank you, Snake.

: The legs...are lightly-armored. Destroy them with grenades. No other way...to legs...grenades.

Weren't you supposed to have upgraded Metal Gear? Because that's kind of the exact same problem it had in Outer Heaven, and I'm pretty sure that Snake would have mentioned that in his post-mission reports or something.


Finally, Petrovich shuts up and dies for good. Sort of. He comes back in MGS4, but nobody ever reacts to hearing him mentioned.


Then, bam! Trapdoor right under Snake's feet!




And then Snake falls three stories straight down, headfirst, and dies. The end, thanks for reading.