YMMV / Metal Gear: Ghost Babel

• Awesome Music: Lots of fitting and catchy tunes, including some remixes from the MSX2 games and Metal Gear Solid.
• Cult Classic: With everyone focusing their attention towards the pre-release hype of Metal Gear Solid 2 at the time, most weren't even aware that another Metal Gear sequel was being released, let alone the fact that it was on the Game Boy Color. Despite this, Ghost Babel is widely considered to be one of the best games in the Metal Gear series.
• Game-Breaker: Unlike Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, when Snake enters a building or the back of a truck, every enemy on the radar automatically resets to their first position once you exit, so when you need a Mook out of your way and you're near a door or a truck, you can enter them and all enemies on screen will reset to their first positions.
• Harsher in Hindsight: As of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, there's a slim chance that in this universe it was still Venom Snake and not Big Boss who died in Outer Heaven. It's likely that while Solid Snake is piddling around in Galuade and going to war against the manipulative parts of the U.S. government, Big Boss is still out there, building his own Outer Heaven.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: And speaking of Phantom Pain, No. 4, your Mission Control for the VR missions, at one point muses that Project Babel could be considered the phantom of big boss, a phrase which comes up in a significant way in the former game. Oddly enough, 4 doesn't use the term 'ghost' despite the fact that it would be more fitting.
• Magnificent Bastard: General Augustine Eguabon is a charming and polite leader of the Gindra Liberation Front, who uses Metal Gear GANDER to threaten the U.S. into withdrawing their forces from Gindra and declare it independent. In reality, he was a field controller of Project Babel, sent to Gindra by United States Army Chief of Staff John Parker to help establish the U.S. as the sole superpower in Africa, by creating a climate of hostility to discourage organized alliance, which would lead to the arrival of U.S.-dominated peacekeeping troops for an indefinite stay, who then could exercise control over the entire region. However, Augustine grew to care for people of Gindra and decided to betray Parker by actually following his promises and deliver Gindra independence, hiring and manipulating Black Chamber to help him wipe out a Delta Force team which was sent to assassinate him. As Solid Snake tries to stop him, Augustine continues to prove that he always has a backup plan, rendering all of Snake's victories hollow. When Solid Snake manages to defeat him, Augustine honorably follows his promise to reveal the truth to Snake, even giving him data which proves everything he said before dying.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Marionette Owl's dolls. They are made out of various body parts of his victims. According to him, Snake's clavicle and femur bones would be good to use. After he's defeated, he reveals to Snake that when he was 12, he found the remains of a friend of his named Laura dismembered, disemboweled, and spread into a field. The event gradually turned him insane and he re-lived the moment of discovery every night in his dreams. Finally, before he dies, Owl realizes he's going to hell:
  Marionette Owl: No! NO! PLEASE! You can't-!
  • Pyro Bison. His lovingly detailed talk of how he loves to watch people burn as all their sins appear in the hissing flesh and bubbling fat is one thing. But then after you defeat him, his own fire consumes him and he screams out, not in pain, but because it is utter bliss to him!
• Older Than They Think: The canonical sequels of the original Metal Gear Solid offered up more details as to the "truth" of Outer Heaven, most notably detailing Big Boss' own involvement with the Patriots/Cipher as a founding member gone rogue; the explanation became increasingly convoluted with each game, however, as more and more layers were added to the saga. Ghost Babel, by contrast, offers a much more simple explanation, detailing that Big Boss was a CIA asset used in Outer Heaven to create disruption and a need for American intervention outside the United States, who then went rogue with incredibly dangerous technology. Surprisingly, the canonical sequels show that Big Boss and his own mentor, The Boss, had a similarly strained relationship with the CIA.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Ghost Babel was rated E, the only Metal Gear game to have received less than a T rating during the lifetime of ESRB. The only visible sign of this rating is switching Snake's ubiquitous cigarettes to a "fogger" gadget. Aside from that, this is very much a Metal Gear game with its gamut of Dark and Troubled Past and Ax-Crazy antagonists. To list a few:
  • The backstory for the entire setting of the game includes ethnic cleansing.
  • Weasel tells the story of how he (likely) killed his own brother, which resulted in his mother committing suicide and his father attacking him with a knife, which in turn landed the father in a wheelchair due to a case of excessive self-defense.
  • Marionette Owl is a serial killer who builds life-sized dolls out of his victims, tells how he found his female friend murdered and dismembered as a child, describes exactly what parts he's going to tear from Snake's body and goes to hell as Snake watches.
  • Pyro Bison gleefully describes how he enjoys watching people burn, and kills himself by self-immolation while in the throes of orgasmic joy.
  • Snake and Colonel Campbell discuss liquor preparation in the prologue and there are numerous instances in which Christ and the Lord's name are taken in vain.