Metal Gear Solid Noob Diaries #31: Crying Wolf

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!

It was a brief session today, but a really cool one none the less. Gentle allusions are obviously not good enough anymore, so the whole play session took place on Shadow Moses island; the setting of Metal Gear Solid. The intro cutscene is wonderfully foreboding and dramatic; clearly returning to the island where the series began is a big deal to both Snake and Otacon. It comes with a lot of memories - mostly bad ones. This leads into a weird, but cool, gameplay section that essentially mimics the PS1 game, providing a brief segment of the early stages of the original MGS. A moment that makes me wish I’d played the original after all - although I think that would’ve been a bit too much MGS for my health.

With that over, Snake drops into a modern reimagining of the Shadow Moses facility. It’s a beautiful snowy setting, with fast winds whipping the snow across the screen and into Snake’s face. The game then provides a neat modern version of the retro level from earlier, with cool little cuts of audio from the first game playing in the background. The Shadow Moses facility itself is wonderfully familiar - even as someone who didn’t play Metal Gear Solid. The cold, metallic corridors are classic MGS, and it’s good to be back.

There was an amusing little bit of fourth-wall breaking in which I was tasked with remembering a five digit code. I obviously forgot the number, at which point Snake lost psyche and got a gentle berating from Otacon. Anyway, the section in Shadow Moses was incredibly gameplay-heavy. The cutscenes were generally pretty short (aside from a cool scene in Otacon’s original office) and the gameplay was consistently good, making it more reminiscent of MGS2 or 3. A bunch of fights with Geckos provided most of the combat, including a great segment in which my only job was to distract one of the machines, as opposed to killing it.

The pièce de résistance of the segment was an excellent boss battle with Crying Wolf - although I dare say I could have easily played about in the Shadow Moses facility a fair bit more. The boss battle itself was fairly standard, but the winter blizzard and inclusion of very, very many Frogs made it a lot more interesting. Actually finding her proved to be the biggest challenge, but we did have a few cool sniper-battle moments. The whole thing was clearly a re-hash of the Wolf boss battle from the original MGS, but I’d say it stands on its own as the second best boss fight of MGS4 so far.

If you’re wondering, Crying Wolf has another horrible backstory that involves her killing babies and having an imaginary wolf alongside her. Just as ludicrously horrid as the last two.

Three down, one to go.