Part 43: Episode XXXII: Metal Gear GANDER

Final Stretch


"Once a loser, always a loser, eh Snake? The last one standing is the winner. And that would be myself - not you, not Black Chamber and certainly not America. I used them all, you see - Parker, Black Chamber..."
*grumble* "Here we go again..."


"Weren't you sent to cover up Outer Heaven and Project Babel - or rather the truth about GLF and the U.S.? Just like that woman?"
"I think Outer Heaven is seven years past being able to be 'covered up'. And I still have no idea what this Babel thing people keep talking about is supposed to be. But..."
"GLF and the U.S.? What truth?"
"Ha, ha, ha. So you're nothing but a pawn too... just like Viper and his lot."
"There's a connection between GLF and the States, and Outer Heaven?"
"Fine. I will tell you all about it - if you win. "
"...Can I just go ahead and guess that the U.S. probably funded your little revolution and it backfired on them and save myself ten minutes of explanation...?"
"....."
"...No!"
*grumble*
"Winner takes it all, loser relinquishes all. That is the way of the world. And you will abide by it, Snake!"




"Take out its legs first of all! Hit it hard with mines and C4!"

I'm not sure where the hell Campbell got the intel on GANDER having cheaply made legs considering Jimmy blew up without telling us a damn thing about Metal Gear. But here we are. We are going to refrain from contacting the peanut gallery this time around since all of them literally go "Dude, YOU are the only one who has ever fought a giant robot before. You know more than me!" With that in mind, let's jump right into it...


Click to view Metal Gear GANDER Boss Battle (Part 1)


Metal Gear GANDER ~ Phase 1


Alright. Time to finally take on the titular giant robot of the game. Metal Gear GANDER has two phases to its fight. The first half is...pretty silly. Basically, Snake has to retreat down the extremely long road to Metal Gear's hangar while being chased by GANDER.




Despite the screen auto-scrolling downward at all times, Metal Gear takes the slooooooooowest steps forward imaginable. In fact, it pulls its foot extremely high in the air and shifts it around following Snake for a good 10-15 seconds before finally stomping down. I'd have to imagine this would look fucking ridiculous if we were able to see it dance around after Snake.


Anyhow, the objective here is to lead the shadow cast by GANDER's foot and plant a C4 where it is going to stomp. When it smashes down into the ground, we must detonate the C4 to damage the pursuing walking tank. And...that's pretty much all there is to it... Snake just needs to repeat that a half dozen times or so and Metal Gear's mobility is toast.


Speaking of toast, should Snake touch the top half of the auto-scrolling screen, Metal Gear will fry him with its flamethrower. Did anyone mention it's equipped with a flamethrower? Well, it's equipped with a flamethrower.


Anyway, a handful of explosives to giant robot footwear later and Metal Gear GANDER goes down for the count.




"You did it!?"
"No - not yet!"


Yes, Metal Gear is now a paraplegic giant robot. But that doesn't mean it's out of the fight.


Before Phase 2 of the battle begins, Snake apparently divines the weak points on the newly exposed Metal Gear. Those being the pair of turrets in the front of it.


A pair of circular pods on top of the thing.


And GANDER's giant robot backpack. Good to know. Though perhaps not so easy to actually take out.


Click here for Metal Gear GANDER Boss Battle (Part 2)


Metal Gear GANDER ~ Phase 2


Right then. Time for the proper boss battle against Metal Gear GANDER. It is easily the hardest boss in the entire game. And kind of a bullshit battle on top of that. Metal Gear has a shit load of attacks. The entire area in front of it can be swept by those twin turrets. So it's best not to idle down there for too long.


On top of that, it can also summon a pair of flying drones that will zoom about the area in sporadic patterns and fire at Snake for 10-20 seconds. These things are jerks since there's no way to destroy them. At best, we can throw a Chaff Grenade to disable the pair before they retreat. But that also knocks out the Nikita missiles which we need to attack and makes the gun turrets go crazy firing everywhere. So it's sort of not even worth it to bother with them other than dodging bullets.


So as far as actually attacking GANDER goes, it's a pretty tedious process. Those two turrets the game pointed out are not actually weak points. Indeed, they're totally invincible. They can still be attacked. But it won't effect Metal Gear's HP total.


Instead, the circular pod on top of the thing will get ornery from the turret abuse and open up to shoot out a spread shot in Snake's direction.


At this point, we have a small window to attack the exposed pod with either a carefully thrown (and easily missed/blown up in Snake's face) grenade or with a much easier to aim Nikita rocket. If we position Snake as far as he can go into the corner of the wreckage (where he is in the screenshot above) both the turret and the pod are both unable to hit him. So it's basically just a matter of firing a rocket into the turret and another one into the pod. Repeat six times.




Of course, there are TWO of the lousy pods to deal with. The other one requires identical tactics. So there's nothing much to talk about there.


Once the two pods on of GANDER are no more, then the real fun starts. Now the giant robot backpack on Metal Gear opens up and begins firing a huge assortment of missiles.




These rockets proceed to fire all over the damn place horizontally across the battlefield. Our best bet is to run into the open area in front of GANDER and dance around like crazy evading them all as best as possible. The missiles do show up on radar for a split second before coming into view. But good luck keeping track of those tiny dots before they're blasting straight into Snake's face.






The fun part here is that we now need to guide a Nikita missile into the rocket pack while the missiles are still firing. There's about a ten second lag time between missiles being launched and actually making it to where Snake is standing (who the hell knows how that works in a confined hangar.) And during that time there's an opening to lob rockets into their point of origin.


The tricky part of this phase is there is not nearly enough ammo to go around. So every couple of shots (we still need to fire rockets at the turrets to initiate the missile launching phase like we did with the spread-shot pods) we need to make Snake run over to a corner of the room to catch a newly spawned little cache of rockets. New ammo only spawns after the weapon has run dry. So this gets pretty old pretty quickly...


Once Metal Gear GANDER's health drops below 33%, it will cease rocket and turret fire and instead just begin spamming its crotch flamethrower all across the field. This exposes the final weak point of the battle.




To damage this last structurally unsound area, we need to have Snake chuck grenades at it. There really is no way to avoid much of the fire. So if Snake has sufficient health (read: above around 50%) then the best tactic is just to run up to the thing and toss grenades at it. Hopefully Metal Gear will explode before Snake burns to death. It's a pretty manly way to end a giant robot battle, in any case.




After a handful of grenades land in GANDER's grill, the nuclear equipped deathmobile goes up in flames and so ends the penultimate chapter of Metal Gear: Ghost Babel.

The one stage in the entire game I had to use a Ration and it gives me a Good rating... I don't get you, game...