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Metal Gear Solid Players Are Freaking Out Over New Glitch

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Screenshot: Konami

Over the weekend, Twitch streamer Boba was streaming herself playing Metal Gear Solid for the first time ever, and after being attacked by some guards, she turned to fight them. At that moment, she accidentally ended up getting pushed backward through a locked door, discovering a new glitch that could save a ton of time and that has MGS speedrunners going wild with the time-saving possibilities.

In Metal Gear Solid, you eventually reach a section where you need to go up and down some communication towers, fighting a helicopter, climbing a bunch of stairs, and even rappelling down a rope. It’s a lot. During this section, Boba was running from guards and reached a locked door, so she turned around to fight the swarm of angry armed goons. As she did so, she was shot multiple times, getting pushed back enough that Snake’s model clipped through the door and seemingly activated a trigger, letting Boba skip the stairs and enter the outside area early. She celebrated with a song.

In an interview with YouTuber Drakon Astron, Boba explained that she didn’t think much of it at the time. “I thought it was something that probably someone had done before, on accident.”

However, this was a big moment. Nobody had ever seen or documented this bug before and it seemed to let Boba skip a good chunk of gameplay. Quickly, as footage of the bug spread across Twitter and Reddit, the collective Metal Gear Solid speedrunning community lost their shit. It was estimated by some that if this glitch could be replicated reliably, it could save upwards of two or three minutes. And, within a matter of hours, folks had started replicating the bug, which some are calling the “Boba Skip,” though Boba herself wishes for it to be called “Kevin.”

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Now, after replicating the bug, players have begun heavily theory-crafting and investigating how this bug works, what it means for the game, and if it’s viable elsewhere. Players in the MGS speedrunning Discord server are testing out other locked doors and inaccessible areas of the game where this “Boba/Kevin Skip” might be used to save even more time. If some of these areas become skippable using this glitch, it’s possible that Boba not only found a neat trick that saves a few minutes, but a brand new strategy that could completely change how folks run Metal Gear Solid on both PC and console.

Not bad for someone who isn’t obsessively speedrunning the game every day and in fact had never played Metal Gear Solid before. According to Boba, one speedrunner said they loved that she found the bug because instead of a longtime speedrunner, it was someone just having a good time with MGS.

“The best part is it’s not some, like, nerd that’s been speedrunning Metal Gear for like a hundred years,” the speedrunner told her. “It’s just me having fun playing a video game and accidentally discovering this crazy thing.”



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Breath Of The Wild “street view” lets you explore Zelda

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Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild Street View
Screenshot: Breath Of The Wild Street View

Want more Hyrule but can’t wait for Breath Of The Wild 2? You’re in luck. Now you can explore Link’s infamous stomping grounds without a Switch.

Last week, a computer science student who uses the YouTube handle Nassim’s Software released a three-dimensional viewer of various Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild locations, like Google Maps Street View. For the most part, the website works as you’d expect. Click a spot on the map and be treated to a first-person, 360-degree look of that area in Hyrule. If you’ve ever used Street View, using Nassim’s site will be a breeze. More importantly, you can take in some of the absolutely gorgeous sights that Nintendo’s designers achieved with the game.

Not every area of Hyrule is available on the site, though. Still, if you’ve ever wanted to take a closer look at Hyrule Field, the Great Plateau, or the Zodobon Highlands, you’ll be able to zoom around to your heart’s content. Nassim also made the site open for submissions, so you can also go through the tedious creation of a Google Maps Street View version of the Castle Town Ruins.

The steps to create the map are not particularly easy, as you might imagine. First, the student downloaded a Wii U Emulator called Cemu, allowing them to play the game without a U.I., i.e., no Link. Then they took a series of screenshots and dumped them into a photo stitcher, which created a seemingly rotational image.

In the accompanying YouTube video, Nassim says that they decided to do this project when they “thought it would be really nice to be able to contemplate video game maps as some of them are really breathtaking.” It sounds like Nassim wanted to take in the work of game designers without certain game elements getting in the way. If that’s the case, they picked a great game for their trial run.

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Take a stroll around Hyrule here.

[via VICE]

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Technology

The Pokémon Company’s life-size bicycle model from Gen 1 games

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The Pokémon bicycle doesn’t cost a million bucks in the real world.
Image: The Pokémon Company

To celebrate reaching a million Twitter followers, The Pokémon Company has now recreated the sweet bicycle from the first generation games, Red and Blue, and their remakes. Someone will actually get this thing!

In-game, the bicycle is priced at a cool one million Pokémon dollars. It wasn’t possible for players to earn enough cashola to buy one, because it costs a dollar more than could be earned in-game. The two-wheeler could, however, be obtained with a Bike Voucher.

The Pokémon bicycle looks sharp from the side.
Image: The Pokémon Company

Don’t you just love this fantastic design? I certainly do.

Fittingly, this life-sized reproduction won’t be for sale, but rather given away. To win, hopefuls need to follow @poke_times and use the hashtag ポケモンの100万円じてんしゃ (“Pokémon’s million yen [sic] bicycle”). While anyone can do that, the rules state that the prize will only be shipped domestically in Japan. Sorry, international fans: unless you have a place in Japan, you’re outta luck!

The bicycle is finished with an array of neat touches and accents, such as Poké Ball wheel tread, etchings of Pokémon like Pikachu and Snorlax between the spokes, and Poké Balls stamped on the handles.

Check out the official photos below:

Don’t tread on this bicycle.
Image: The Pokémon Company

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A Poké Ball is stamped into the side of the handle.
Image: The Pokémon Company

A wild Squirtle appears!
Image: The Pokémon Company

The bicycle even plays the badass Bicycle Theme. If you’re not familiar, have a listen!

How excellent is this? The only thing that’s missing is a bicycle chain. That’s right, as the official page points out, it’s not possible to actually ride this bike. The dual kickstand holds the bicycle in place so it can’t tip over or move.

Instead, this is a full-scale model, which would certainly make it quite the conversation piece. It’s an iconic video game bike that’s also appeared in the Pokémon anime. So, the winner can soak in all the bicycle glory without being able to experience the joy of riding it, blasting the theme down the street. Now that would be worth a million.



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Technology

Mass Effect Legendary Edition Players Make The Same Choices

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Screenshot: BioWare

Mass Effect is contingent on choice—or at least the illusion of it. Turns out, in playing (or replaying) Mass Effect Legendary Edition, a lot of you who played the remastered trilogy made pretty much the same decisions. That’s according to an infographic BioWare posted on Twitter today.

Spoilers follow for the Mass Effect trilogy, which is about a decade old by now.

The data isn’t perfect. It doesn’t account for whether or not these stats are from first-time players or from those who’ve run the trilogy a dozen times. It doesn’t even clarify whether or not the dataset is aggregated from multiple playthroughs of Legendary Edition that any given account may have undertaken. The figures are nonetheless revealing, and further affirm the notion that most people who play Mass Effect end up making similar choices.

For example, in the first Mass Effect, 94 percent of you navigated conversation options so Wrex, the krogan, survived that Virmire mission. A further 93 percent of players saved the Rachni queen. Politicians could only dream of these figures.

Mass Effect 2 followed similar lines. While addressing Tali’s treason charge, 96 percent of you successfully convinced the quarian admiralty board to pardon her. Garrus, no surprise here, is broadly the most beloved companion. The even-keeled turian was the most likely party member to survive Mass Effect 2’s climactic suicide mission. (Guess I’m an outlier.) He was also the most-used squadmate in the first Mass Effect.

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In Mass Effect 3, a whopping 96 percent of you cured the genophage—the biological weapon that restricts krogan birthrates, condemning their society. But BioWare didn’t share any stats regarding the notorious ending choice of Mass Effect 3.

Read More: Almost Nobody Played A Bad Guy In Mass Effect

So, how do today’s stats stack up against history? In 2013, BioWare released a comprehensive infographic detailing player behavior in Mass Effect 3 for those who rolled the credits. It doesn’t offer an exact corollary to today’s stats, of course, but still sheds light on some fascinating shifts.

During Mass Effect 3’s original run, the number of Shepards who sabotaged the genophage was twice as high: 8 percent. Liara was the most-used squad member, suggesting Garrus has grown in popularity over the years. Back in 2013, 82 percent of players played as male Shepard, compared to 68 percent for Legendary Edition. In 2013, during the showdown between the geth and the quarians, 37 percent of players sided with the geth, while 27 percent saved the quarians. Those figures plummeted to 11 percent and 8 percent, respectively. (Yes, 80 percent of you negotiated peace.)

But the more things change, the more they stay the same. Despite years of trial and error proving that Vanguard is obviously the best class, both now and then, about 40 percent of you decided to save the Milky Way as a Soldier. You know there are plenty of third-person shooters without badass space magic, yeah?

 



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Technology

Smash Player Scores Mad Disrespectful Steve Minecraft Kill

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Last night, a Super Smash Bros. Ultimate competitor styled on his opponent so hard that the entire venue lost their minds.

Mega Smash Mondays is a weekly Super Smash Bros. event held in La Mirada, California that, after moving online due to the covid-19 pandemic, recently returned to in-person competition. Whether that’s a smart move remains to be seen, what with rising infection numbers and concerns over new variants, although I guess you’re never going to get a moment like this over netplay.

But I digress. A few rounds into the 256-player tournament, local competitors RockMan and Marvelous Marco found themselves tied up heading into the third and final round of their set.

RockMan, using Steve Minecraft rather than his namesake, took a commanding lead thanks to his smart building strategies. Marvelous Marco was on the ropes as the match came to a close, giving RockMan just enough time to not just eliminate his opponent for good with a well-timed Smash attack, but construct a giant “F” on the battlefield beforehand.

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Naturally, everyone went nuts.

Using the letter “F” to denote someone’s failure or humiliation has been popular in gaming culture since the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in 2014. While a critical and financial success, the first-person shooter was also widely lambasted for its unintentionally hilarious “Press F to Pay Respects” prompt, which boiled down a poignant scene to a simple quick-time event.

Since then, the meme has expanded to dropping an “F” in the comments of a video or live stream chat when something embarrassing happens, sometimes at the request of the uploader or streamer themselves as a show of solidarity. Leave it to the internet to turn a single letter into a meme with layers and layers of meaning.

Shortly after this amazing display of disrespectful block-building prowess, RockMan himself would be eliminated from Mega Smash Mondays, tying for a respectable 17th in the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate bracket. That said, he should definitely win some sort of consolation prize for providing one of the craziest moments of the night.

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Technology

Skyward Sword On Switch Axes Wii Annoyances

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In a new “Quality of Life” video released today, Nintendo revealed that some of the most notoriously annoying design choices found in the original version of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword are being fixed in the Switch’s upcoming Skyward Sword HD.

Originally released in 2011 on the Wii, Skyward Sword has a reputation among fans for often wasting time and annoying players with tutorial messages hours and hours into the game.

For example, after finding any item for the first time, the game would explain what that item was. This is useful, but only once. However, every time you booted up the game or reloaded a save it would show these tutorial messages again, even after you had picked up that item a dozen or more times before. It was frustrating! Thankfully, this annoying design choice has been changed in Skyward Sword HD. After you find an item, you won’t be told what it is ever again. Perfect!

This is just one of many changes to help improve the game and fix things that players have complained about for the past decade. Other important quality-of-life improvements include the ability to skip cutscenes, fast-forward through dialogue, and reduce how often the legendarily annoying spirit Fi pops up to “help” you.

That last one is a big deal, as many players have shared their frustrations about how much Fi, your magical sword, yells at you about things. Some considered Fi even more annoying than the famously talky Navi from Ocarina of Time. (Being compared to Navi is a good indicator that people don’t like you very much.) Now, instead of yelling at you about a chest or a puzzle, Fi will glow blue and you can decide to listen or just ignore the glorified dragonfly.

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Read More: Modding Breakthrough Allows Skyward Sword To Be Recreated In Breath Of The Wild

Another nice improvement shown off in the trailer was the enhanced framerate, making the game look smoother and more responsive. You also will be able to use motion controls, like in the Wii original, or new controls that use the standard buttons and analog sticks. This is a super important change, and not just because you no longer have to use finicky waggle controls: It helps with accessibility, allowing people to play Skyward Sword even if they can’t physically use motion controls.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD is out for Switch on July 16. Alongside these new quality-of-life changes, the game will support new Amiibo figures, including one that will unlock the ability to use fast travel. Tying this huge QoL upgrade to a $25 piece of plastic sounds like a new very annoying design choice which, hopefully, next decade’s ultra 8K port will see about fixing.

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Technology

Super Rush has finally fixed golf

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Mario Golf: Super Rush
Screenshot: YouTube

Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off our weekly open thread for the discussion of gaming plans and recent gaming glories, but of course, the real action is down in the comments, where we invite you to answer our eternal question: What Are You Playing This Weekend?

Golf isn’t necessarily a bad game, as evidenced by the fact that it’s been a popular hobby all around the world for generations. But it is a stupid game, one that is only redeemed through the use of golf carts, or by stripping away all of the boring stuff where nothing happens and replacing it with windmills and waterfalls and pirates. Until now! Last week, Nintendo released Mario Golf: Super Rush, the latest entry in its ongoing series of Super Mario-themed sports games, and the developers at Camelot seem to have finally fixed mankind’s most boring sport.

This is all thanks to a couple of twists to the regular golf formula: One is that Super Rush allows you and your co-golfers to all play at the same time, playing together in split-screen without needing to patiently wait your turn, or quietly sitting back while your opponents take putt after putt after putt. The other innovation, and one that truly deserves to be integrated into “real” golf, is called Speed Golf. In that mode, it’s all about who gets to the hole first, and also you have to physically run to your ball rather than being automatically transported to it like in most other golf video games. You can even push your opponents out of the way or try to beat them to special powerups while running, and each character has special abilities that can known opponents or their balls out of the way, giving everything that Mario Kart-style edge of constantly being a second away from complete disaster.

It all could probably stand to be just a little wackier—even though the overtly Mario Kart-y battle mode is too hectic and complex to be anything but a chaotic mess—but the game in general is a testament to how good Nintendo can be at injecting some Mario personality into these sports games. This is still recognizably golf, even with some of the wackier options turned on, it’s just a superior version of golf that makes every other version of golf look… you know, stupid.

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Also, Super Rush introduces a fun new line of Mushroom Kingdom fashion, with most of the characters putting on garish golf outfits for their time hitting the links. Bowser has a terrible red and black Guy Fieri number, Peach has a nice golf skirt, and even Toad gets in on the fun by putting a little golfer hat on top of his regular mushroom hat. Oh, wait, Nintendo said it’s actually part of his head and not a hat a few years ago, so his Mario Golf: Super Rush hat is probably just a canonical in-universe confirmation of that fact, which is less funny than it being a hat on a hat. (That one’s for you screenwriters out there.)

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Technology

Dragon Age Fans Are Good At Living Off BioWare’s News Crumbs

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I own this piece of art, it serves as a daily reminder to one day crack the Egg.
Image: BioWare

Life as a Dragon Age fan is hard sometimes, but necessary. Today on Twitter, BioWare wrote that it won’t be showing off anything from Dragon Age or Mass Effect during the EA Play event later this month.

This is good, truly. (She says through gritted teeth, tears in her eyes.) I want this game to be good, and being good means coming out when it’s damn well ready. I don’t want to put any pressure on the dev team, and I certainly don’t want them to crunch in order to show off some minor bit or bob for a marketing showcase.

It’s been six years since Dragon Age: Inquisition—a game that, while critically successful, was plagued with harmful crunch brought on by decisions made late in the game’s development. Earlier in development, for whatever Inquisition’s successor would become, BioWare didn’t want to go through that crunch experience again. But in the rise (and later fall) of EA’s commitment to “live service games, damn the consequences,” Dragon Age 4 was rebooted and rebooted again—going from a narrative focused game, to a live service game, then back to a single player game.

Suffice it to say, in light of all these whiplash changes, Dragon Age 4 is probably not yet ready to be shown to the world. And that’s okay! It does hurt knowing I won’t get a glimpse of the next tortured templar I’m fated to romance or the qunari lady I’m going to wife up in a subsequent playthrough. But I, like all Dragon Age fans, have gotten really good at subsisting on very little information.

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I am so excited to play around in the Tevinter Imperium
Image: BioWare

A Game Awards trailer in 2018 gave us our first glimpse of Dread Wolf Solas with a red lyrium idol that may be the key to his nefarious plans. During Gamescom 2020, BioWare released a short, four-minute video that said nothing about Dragon Age 4 but did include enough concept art of Solas and the setting to give fans hints about what’s to come. For Dragon Age Day on December 4, 2020, BioWare published four short stories that provide valuable context to the world and how it’s changing since the events of Inquisition. Also in 2020, BioWare yet again released a trailer during the Game Awards, still not showing much—but it confirmed the game’s setting, the Tevinter Imperium, and brought back fan favorite Varric Tethras as the trailer’s narrator.

Between the glint of light off a chunk of red lyrium to a piece of concept art in which a character that looks suspiciously like Dorian Pavus swims in the background, BioWare has been drip-feeding fans information for years now. Ever, of course, do we hunger, but from the bits of information we do have, I know enough to keep me fed till the next crumb of content comes, whenever that may be.

I am coming for you, you bastard Egg, and I’ll wait as long as it takes.

 

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Technology

Animal Crossing Build-A-Bear Go On Sale This Morning, Could Be A Clusterfluff [Update]

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Image: Build-A-Bear

Build-A-Bear’s eagerly-anticipated line of official Animal Crossing: New Horizons plushies go on sale this morning at 11 am Eastern. In order to handle what’s sure to be massive demand, Build-A-Bear has set up a virtual queue for customers to gather in to await their chance to purchase items that haven’t even been revealed yet. Nothing could go wrong with this plan. Update: It’s just Tom Nook and Isabelle. Boo.

Here’s how the Build-A-Bear virtual waiting room works. Customers can start queuing at 10:30 am on the Build-A-Bear website. In the queue, they will be randomly assigned a place in line. Once a customer’s turn comes up they’ll have a limited amount of time to purchase items from the Animal Crossing: New Horizons collection. Once purchased, customers are free to go to eBay and put whatever they’ve just purchased up for sale for at least double the price.

There are a few problems with such a system. For one, as we’ve seen with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S sales since the new consoles launched in November, bots and scalpers love automated queuing systems, regularly dominating sales of hard-to-find items.

Second, Build-A-Bear isn’t even revealing characters and items until 10:30 am Eastern. For all fans know they could be gearing up to queue for Barold the neckbeard bear or Candi, the mouse whose eyes look like boils and eyebrows look like eyes. I’m sure they’ll have Isabelle or whatever (we’ll update once the collection is revealed), but what if?

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If you’re really into Animal Crossing: New Horizons and want something to cuddle, your best option, aside from becoming very good friends with my spouse, is to wait until the summer, when the Build-A-Bear collection hits stores. You’ll have a better chance of getting what you want, plus you’ll get to see someone in a Build-A-Bear polo fill them with fluff. It’s the miracle of life, and afterwards you can go to the food court for some pretzel dogs. Everybody wins.

Update 10:30 am: It’s just Isabelle and Tom Nook. Why keep it a secret if it’s just the two most obvious? Who knows.

Image: Build-A-Bear

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Technology

On The Run Is Good Crash

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Gonna tell my kids this was Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash.”
Screenshot: King.com

Crash Bandicoot: On The Run, out today for iOS and Android, is a game in which Crash Bandicoot runs through narrow corridors breaking boxes and collecting Wumpa Fruit, just like every other Crash Bandicoot game. As mobile spin-offs go, it’s pretty on the nose.

Looking at the landscape screenshots developer King.com of Candy Crush fame provided for the game’s launch despite my phone only playing it in portrait mode, one could easily mistake On The Run for a Crash console joint. The game looks great. Crash does his signature spin move to bash enemies and break things. The difference is this game is a three-lane auto-runner, so you don’t have to tell Crash or his sister Coco to go forward. They just do it.

Crash Bandicoot: On The Run is not, however, an endless runner. Crash and Coco run through finite levels to take out a boss at the end, generally by dodging the obstacles they throw while getting close enough to douse them with various crafted concoctions. Clearing four sub-bosses allows the bandicoot siblings to take on a mildly tougher boss, after which a new set of baddies unlocks.

He’s so happy.
Screenshot: King.com

The free-to-play catch in Crash Bandicoot: On The Run is that battling bosses requires the aforementioned concoctions be crafted. Crafting takes materials, which are harvested through special gathering levels. Once materials are gathered you can craft the potions and whatnot needed to fight bosses, but there’s a timer (boo) that can be sped-up with in-game currency. You can gather all you want, but to progress through the game you’ll need to craft the random things. In-game currency can also be used to purchase skins, buy potion reagents, or buy extra tickets to participate in the game’s asynchronous multiplayer, which pits you against a pair of AI-controlled opponents to see who survives the longest.

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Missions, groups, and microtransactions.
Screenshot: King.com / Kotaku

There’s a lot of mobile free-to-play fluff going on, but Crash Bandicoot: On The Run balances all of that nonsense with a sense of fun and silliness that’s signature Crash. Once I’m deeper into the game I can imagine those timers getting pretty damn annoying, but for now it’s nice to have that wacky bandicoot in my pocket.

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