Metal Gear Solid Noob Diaries #12: The Ladder

Welcome to the Metal Gear Noob Diaries. This is the recounting of my experience through the MGS series from MGS2: Sons of Liberty all the way to MGSV: Ground Zeroes. I’ll be updating every so often with new thoughts on sections of the games and taking a look back at memorable and enjoyable moments. I’ve never played the series before, so for the fans out there it could be an amusing tale of one noob’s journey, while those as green as myself could well learn a little about the mad world of MGS. Enjoy!

Ah man. Another fantastic session featuring two of my favourite bits of the game yet. Plus, some excellent gameplay sections and equally awesome cutscenes revolving around Snake and Eva.

So if you read my little complaint about the game being easy and knew that I wasn’t far from The End boss fight, then I’ve got some bad news for you: that battle was pretty easy too. It was definitely very fun, but I didn’t have any real issues with it. It took me about 20 minutes to complete, most of that time spent both hiding and looking for the old bugger. I didn’t die, although I did take a fair few hits from his dart sniper. My tactic was to out-snipe him by working out his location (usually based on the reflection of his scope) and shooting him before he got me. It worked well and made for a great boss fight that stands out as one of the best of the series so far.

The other awesome moment was very different in tone and delivery. While the fight with The End was tense and wholly encapsulating, The Ladder (as it’s known, it seems) was a calm, spaced-out section that simply requires the player to push up on the analogue stick as Snake climbs a ginormous ladder through a mountain. As in, a really, really big ladder that takes a few minutes of actual time to climb. It sounds super boring, I know, but as fans of the series will know, it’s a wonderfully abrupt change of pace from the tense stealth action that allows the player to calm and relax for a little while. A beautiful a cappella rendition of the game’s Bond-esque theme rings out during the climb - I could almost imagine Eva sitting at the top of the ladder belting out the song.

It was easily one of my favourite moments of the series so far. Which is incredible really, that something so simple could appeal to me so deeply.

The Ladder was followed by a really great gameplay section set across the top of a mountain range. It’s amazing just how far Kojima productions was able to push its game engine from Sons of Liberty to Snake Eater. The game looks SO much better than the second game, the few years in between the games obviously saw developers become a lot more comfortable with the PS2 hardware. It certainly took a lot longer on PS3...

 I ended today’s session on a great cutscene which saw Eva trying to seduce/actually falling in love with Snake. Yeah, I can’t tell what she’s up to. It was interesting to see Snake rebuke Eva, however, it looks as though he’s either been hurt in the past or is fully aware of Eva’s seduction. Will be cool to see that play out.

So now I’m heading to Groznyj Grad, an ‘impenetrable fortress’ where Volkin is holding Sokolov. It’s also where The Boss is hanging out, so no doubt that it’ll be the place of the big finale. Bring it on. I’m actually getting quite excited to see how everything fits in. Oh, and who the hell is The Sorrow?