Cinematech Episode 292: “Sex, Lies and Videogames”
A reference to the movie called sex, lies, and videotape. This ep is so named probably because it has several games rated Mature 17 + by the ESRB.
Timecode: 0:05: The enigmatic trailer for a first-person PC game called You Are Empty, developed by Mandel ArtPlains and Digital Spray Studios. I never knew anything about this game until I got to TV Tropes years later and discovered on the Video Games page. The trailer ends with a flash of some poor soul who was mutated into a monster. The game was actually published by Atari in North America in 2007. Oof.
There are up-and-coming game development communities all over the world, like in Africa, but judging from the reputation of YAE and Postal 3, Russian devs have a bit of a ways to go.
For some reason, Postal 3 was farmed out to a Russian developer called Akella, who published the other Postal games in Russia, and was released to some of the worst reviews of the seventh generation of video games. The developer of the first two Postal games, Running With Scissors, dissed the game by calling it “Russian Postal” on their website. Like YAE, P3 earned a place on our Horrible video games subpage.
Cinematech Episode 298: “Quantum Gear”
The ep's title is a Shout-Out to the sci-fi show Quantum Leap, and references one of the ep's main features: the “Snake Eraser” shorts from the Updated Re-release of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. In these shorts, Raiden travels back in time, Terminator-style, and tries to erase Big Boss from the timeline, which will, in turn, prevent Solid Snake from being born and enable Raiden to star in the next Metal Gear Solid game. Ironic, considering how much they bro it up in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and that Raiden later got to star in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.
In the first short, Raiden, Bishie Sparkle and all, gets kicked in the face by Big Boss, who dropped into the jungle via parachute. Then, Roy Campbell tells Raiden that he created a time paradox and that he can't go changing the future like that. Wait, so Campbell is helping Raiden in this scenario?
In the second short, Raiden is dropped right in the middle of the younger Ocelot's fight with EVA on her motorcycle. Unfortunately for Raiden, EVA does a wheelie off of his face, which causes him to land on top of Ocelot and plant an accidental kiss on him. Raiden dry heaves while Campbell chastises him further about changing the future. I'm detecting a pattern.
In the third short, Raiden catches sight of Big Boss in the prison complex, but can't get out of his cell. Unfortunately for him, the game's Big Bad, the Depraved Bisexual Volgin, unlocks the cell and confuses him with one of his lovers, Ivan, who looks just like Raiden (one of the main game's in-jokes at Raiden's expense). Volgin grabs Raiden's crotch because... well, he knows every inch of Ivan's body, but is apparently undeterred by this identical stranger lack of familiarity with him. He takes off his coat and ratchets up the creepy real quick:
- Volgin: What a beautiful body you have... Like a newborn baby.
The game cuts away as Raiden gets beaten by Volgin, who, as we later learn from EVA and the scars that she suffered from his abuse while under disguise, is a sadist. It's all Played for Laughs.
This scene actually gives me a Wild Mass Guessing about Volgin's sadism: He likes to inflict pain and scars upon people because he is scarred himself. Maybe he derived a sick pleasure from healing from his scars.
In the fourth short, Raiden drops into the game's climactic boss fight between Big Boss and his mentor, The Boss, who is just getting ready to show and explain the disfiguring scar running down her whole torso that she endured giving herself a C-section to give birth to her child on the beaches of Normandy during D-Day (again, The Boss is one of the biggest Bad Asses ever). Raiden stumbles forward and catches himself ogling her cleavage. She promptly floors him with a slap, and Snake gasps. All Campbell has to say this time is, “Time paradox!”
In the fifth short, Raiden is plopped into a barrel that Volgin is beating up. Volgin sends it careening into a stack of barrels, and Raiden falls out of the barrel in mid-air, only to land on his feet with the barrel over his head. He flees from a confused Volgin as Campbell once again says, “Time paradox!”
11:41: We interrupt this MGS fangasm to bring you a montage of games based on one of the most popular comic books of all time: X-Men. The games range from:
- Konami's four-player arcade game, infamous for some Engrishy dialog
- The well-received, four-player, action RPG X-Men Legends
- X-Men: Next Dimension, a 3D fighting game
- X2: Wolverine's Revenge, a solo brawler game starring Wolverine with Mark Hamill providing his voice. The game garnered some complaints for its difficulty here on TV Tropes. Curiously, the game was released as a tie-in to the X2 movie and featured Hugh Jackman's likeness as Wolverine from the movies on the box, but the game was strictly a cel-shaded affair with Wolverine looking more like he does in the main Marvel comics universe.
- Capcom's X-Men vs. Street Fighter
- The legendarily terrible X-Men overhead action game for the NES
- An X-Men sidescroller also for the NES
12:57: Footage from the intro and some of the gameplay from Utopia City, an FPS for the PC by Parallax Arts. The narrator has quite a stiff delivery. The story, which takes place in an unspecified future year of the 21st centruy, kind of sounds like someone smoked a lot of The Matrix.
- ”Everything was going fine, until this experiment got out of hand. We dreamt about transferring the mind... of the people... into a virtual environment. And this was the beginning of the end. We are dying out. One can make just one call to join the global list.”
The game was released to poor ratings.
15:03: The fifth “Snake Eraser” short, in which Raiden does get to knock Big Boss out of one of his starring roles... in the original game's grueling torture sequence at the hands of Volgin. In the original scene, Volgin discovered that Big Boss was, indeed, not Ivan and beat him mercilessly.
15:53: The sixth “Snake Eraser” short where Raiden drops in on Big Boss and EVA's climactic escape from Volgin in the Shagohod, the prototype Metal Gear. Raiden is nearly run over by Volgin, until Big Boss shoots the Shagohod with a rocket. A soft instrumental version of the Metal Gear Solid theme begins to play as Big Boss checks to see if this mysterious guy who came out of nowhere is OK.
- Snake: You all right?Raiden: Um... Sorry.
Snake hands him a Single Action Army revolver, smirks, and tells him to be careful. EVA pulls over on her motorcycle and Snake leaves with her. Raiden aims the gun at Snake, but relents.
- Raiden: The legendary... Big Boss...
Then, he is promptly run over by several of Volgin's soldiers and the still-intact Shagohod as Volgin screams, “It's not over yet!” Well, it was kind of sweet for a few seconds there.
19:00: Clips from Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. This predecessor to Metal Gear Solid and the original Metal Gear were included on a bonus disc in Subsistence. Solid Snake drops through a shaft into a room, only to have Raiden appear behind him! Raiden pursues Solid, only to be promptly shot by an enemy soldier.
Then, they show Raiden interfering with the boss fight between Solid Snake and the aged Big Boss. Raiden's character portrait is of his high-quality PS2 polygonal model, which clashes with the illustrated character portrait of Big Boss, and he even has voice acting!
- Big Boss: Don't interfere. He's mine!Raiden: Big Boss... I KNEW I should have killed you!
Raiden is blasted back to his future once again, but the ep ends with a joke clip of him in his underwear holding a gun while fruitlessly trying to flee the Shagohod. It runs him over.
These “Snake Eraser” shorts were kinda funny, if a bit mean towards Raiden (has he FINALLY been redeemed for Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty yet?). I still find these funny, so they could make a good emotional antidote for the upcoming Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. My feels are already shuddering from the trailers for that one. Fallen Hero, indeed...
Linkies
- Chip Cheezum featuring Slowbeef: "Colonel, I didn't manage to avoid drowning!"
Trigger warning: Features Dark Syde Phil. slowbeef's impression of him is pretty entertaining, though.
- Gamespot's entertainingly snarky review of YAE.
- All Snake Eraser clips in one video.
