Top 8 things you may have missed in the Metal Gear Solid series

Gamers are well aware of the notorious things that the Metal Gear Solid series does well. Still, Hideo Kojima has filled the entire franchise with awesome details that might go by unnoticed just like Solid Snake would.

Not anymore.

The original Metal Gear Solid is haunted by many ghosts

This one is a little hard to notice as it only shows up in second or further playthroughs of the original Metal Gear Solid.

When we go for MGS’ New Game+, we’ll get a digital camera from the get-go. Players can use this camera to snap pictures of cool-looking parts of the Shadow Moses military complex, but there’s a secret, darker, reason why the camera is there.

In true Japanese horror fashion, it’s there to capture ghosts. You’ll never notice it when you’re taking the pictures, but, when you go back to look at your gallery, chances are you’ll see the spooky ghost of one of the game’s many developers.

There’s a secret game inside Metal Gear Solid 3

If you save and reload your game while Snake is in the cell after getting captured by the bad guys, you’ll get back not to MGS3 per se, but to a game called Guy Savage. I’m gonna call it a minigame because it’s very short, but this doesn’t feel like just a minigame.

Guy Savage puts you in the shoes of a two-sword-wielding man who has to chop up a small army of enemies. The whole thing is wild because it looks and plays just like a demo for a real game, but Guy Savage doesn’t exist outside of Snake’s dream in MGS3. Can you imagine a team led by anyone other than Kojima making such a detailed experience and putting it in a place that most players will just miss?

I don’t think anyone would ever accuse MGS3 of suffering from a lack of features, but it’s nice to see Kojima will never stop going above and beyond.

Guards breathe realistically in Metal Gear Solid V

There are many ways to kill guards in Metal Gear Solid V. One of the cheapest and most callous options is to knock them out and drop their bodies face down atop a body of water. Wait for a short while and they will simply drown.

An even viler mode — though one that shows the game’s great attention to detail — is to order conscious enemy guards to lie down on a body of water. I’m just pointing out that this is something you can do — not something you should do.

Sneezing can be Snake’s greatest enemy in Metal Gear Solid 2

The Tanker at the beginning of Metal Gear Solid 2 provided one of the most impressive showcases of environmental video game design back in ’01. Don’t stay out to marvel at the beauty of the rainy Hudson River for too long, though, as this will cause Snake to catch a cold and start sneezing.

Snake’s new ailment might feel like a bit of harmless fun at first, but be careful. It’s only all fun and games until Snake’s random sneezes begin giving away his position to nearby guards.

You can get Snake to puke in Metal Gear Solid 3

Snake can suffer from a bunch of ailments in MGS3. No ailment of the future Big Boss is funnier than a quick vomiting bout — especially when it’s all the player’s fault.

If you open the game’s menu and decide to use the analog stick to spin Snake around, he will throw up on the floor as soon as you return to the game. Please spin your Snake responsibly.

You can have a lot of fun at the bar in Metal Gear Solid 2

You can completely ignore the bar area in the Tanker segment from MGS2, but that would be a grave mistake. I don’t mean that in the sense that booze rocks. I mean that this discrete area contains a multitude of showcases of some of the most interesting examples of attention to detail in the history of gaming.

You can realistically destroy glass bottles with your gun, see wine spilling toward the floor, and, most interesting of all, engage with an ice bucket. This unassuming bucket displays proper physics and even drops ice cubes that will melt just as if they were the real thing. The ice bucket/cubes serve no real purpose and only exist in the game in that tiny part of that one map.

It’s just wild to think that the developers put who knows how many hours into creating something so spectacular that only very few would notice.

The many ways to bring about The End’s end

You probably know by now that you can avoid fighting Cobra Unit’s The End entirely. You know you can snipe him in the head before his boss encounter starts, by setting your console’s clock ten days to the future, or simply by, well, sitting down for 10 days with your console on until he dies of old age. Those are all great, but did you know that The End owns a pet parrot that you can capture and use to find his location? That’s true!

Regardless of your strategy, remember never to save during the fight against this boss. Loading that file will trigger a cutscene where Snake falls asleep and gets taken to prison. This will result in the worst fate one can suffer in an MGS game — having to backtrack your way to your previous position.

I love every single detail of this battle, and I like that not even this was enough to satisfy Kojima. Did you know that he originally wanted the battle against The End to require at least two actual weeks of your time?

Metal Gear Solid 2 features realistic seagulls

The development team behind MGS2 paid more attention to making realistically diabolical seagulls than many games put into the creation of their human NPCs.

The seagulls in Metal Gear Solid 2 will poop on the eyes of players who dare to look up to enjoy the beautiful MGS2 skybox in first-person mode. Also, walking over their poop will cause you to slip and fall.

Your natural reaction might be to shoot them, but I recommend against it. Any attempt to get violent revengeance will result in the game itself straight-up refusing to save your progress. Whenever you spot a seagull in MGS2, think of it as the one enemy you don’t want to trifle with.

---