After 3 long, terrible, head splitting agonizing months, Merry Gear Solid 2 is finally released!
I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone involved — it’s been an absolute joy seeing so many talented people come together (out of the kindness of their hearts!) to help me put this together.
First off, a thousand thanks to Duncan Roberts… You know… Super Joe. Besides creating more than half the levels in the game, here’s a man who recorded a significant chunk of the hour worth of dialogue.
Also, thanks to Binbag McGraw, the musician I found for this project, who created the amazing soundtrack to the game (and so quickly too!). I’ve offered him some interim hosting. You can find his site here.
Helping out with the music, was Megan Johns, who recorded the hypnotic vocals to If You’re Nice. Former The Underside musician, J. Michael Brown also contributed live bass to the track. A personal friend of mine, Abra West contributed the vocals to Christmas Eve, and I think we can all pretty much agree she’s done a phenomenal job! A higher quality version of these tracks will be made available in the coming days in a special downloadable soundtrack.
And of course, a very special thanks to all of the new friends I’ve found on the VAA, Zeix (Chase McCaskill), Kamuro (Darcy Maguire), CidRunsFunny (Ariel Harman), and Calavera (Matt O’Connor), who helped put a voice to all of that terrible, terrible writing I came up with.
Anyways, the download link is here. Feel free to leave any comments about the game either on that page, or on this post’s comments section. AND HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY CHRISTMAS (yesterday).
December 26th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Today is a good day!
December 26th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
i hope you guys playtest this thing because after going through it four times today i can’t get myself to play the final version.
December 26th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
FINALLY
December 26th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Oooh, it’s out.
Have a Merry New Gear, everyone!
December 26th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
AWESOME Thanks !
December 26th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Yes! It’s finally out. Downloading now can’t wait to play it!
December 26th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
At last! I can’t wait to show my frends.
You’re phenomenal as a designer, Arth. Nice job!
December 26th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
i found a really silly bug and am reuploading the game at this very moment.
December 26th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Well done on completing this! Gotta say it plays pretty awesome. Merry Christmas =]
Also: Duncan is Super Joe? I never knew…
December 26th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
You know, fuck the game. I’m just excited that Duncan is confirmed as Super Joe.
Okay, I’m also excited about playing the game. But mostly the former.
December 26th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
…superb voice acting and the dialogues are simply hilarious!
music, sounds, graphic, gameplay, controls…
damn what a great game! definitely worth the wait!
awesome work.
December 26th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
[...] Merry Gear Solid 2 [...]
December 26th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Finally it’s out. Can’t wait to play it.
December 26th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Cheers Mr. Lee! The game is absolutely wonderful, great job on it.
December 26th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
Thanks for stopping by my channel on Justin.tv! I got a good amount of viewers watching Merry Gear Solid 2. The game was enjoyable!
I think you deserve a rest after all that hard work. Thanks again!
December 26th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
@timon1771 — yeah, no problem! it was a lot of fun seeing someone play the game, haha (^:
December 26th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Just finished the game with a Stag Beetle rating.
I had to go over the game slowly to catch all the references. Forget breaking the fourth wall, with the references such as game’s inner workings, Die Hard, and DeceasedCrab, you plowed through the orchestra level into the parking lot!
…but no Metal Gear Awesome shoutout? Oh well, we can have a future epic battle with these giant robots in Merr- nah! Like we need any more distractions from a fully playable Underside….
December 26th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
That was amazing. Nothing more can be said.
December 26th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
Finished with an Elephant rating. Successfully confusing =D But I only found two of the four cameo kids…
December 27th, 2009 at 12:46 am
Snow Bunny at 1:12.40, 16 alerts, 0 enemies knocked out in any way, 0 shots fired, 8 items collected. From what I can tell, Big Beard is 1:00.00, 0 alerts, 0 enemy KOs, 0 shots fired… AND that includes the 6 minutes of the end themes and post credit dialogue. I can beat this game without the Toast, so maybe the next without the Holid Eye?
One quibble with this game is the Mistletoe Launcher, what with the missile going full speed even after it turns. Is that a deliberate game design thing or a limitation of the game’s programming?
@Kamuro: Three cameo kids are in Galuade Gardens, the ladies’ restroom, and The Revolting Omelette… don’t know about the fourth.
December 27th, 2009 at 1:37 am
The puns… I am no where near the finish… AND IT HURTS LIKE A COLD DRINK SERVED ICEY! LIKE THE DEPTHS OF MILK DIRECTLY SERVED BY MERRY GEAR!
…
…
Also I managed to get snake to pop up weird when I restarted the game.
PROOF – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7C2e1eFlSY
I only before got to the next room.
December 27th, 2009 at 5:44 am
the game runs quite slow in some large places such as the rooftop at the very beginning, can anyone tell me what’s the problem?
December 27th, 2009 at 7:27 am
Spent two hours. Was a great ride. A really well made sequel.
The red goggles were unfortunately useless, but I guess it was because of sheer lack of time.
A great game, better than the first one.
December 27th, 2009 at 8:14 am
The Holid Eye can actually cut your playtime significantly.
December 27th, 2009 at 9:55 am
I request permission to hump your leg for how awesome this game is.
December 27th, 2009 at 11:01 am
finished the game in 3 hours, good job i must say!~
but the final part in *SNIPPITY SNAP* seems… a little rushed.
the idea of *SPOILER GEAR?!* was okay,but i think you should at least put some traps in that buliding:
such as pitfalls, infrared sensors(which can also make the thermal googles to be much more useful), or just surveillance camera.
the final part in that buliding is really dull…
December 27th, 2009 at 11:49 am
@kissdreams — that part of the game is empty because by the time you reach it, there are a lot of permutations as to the items that you have (since most of the items are skippable). that, and i didn’t have the willpower to add more guards because the game was already dragging on longer than i hoped it would.
December 27th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Back to the Underside now huh or do you have any other secret “projects”
December 27th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
might make a real small game for a real small competition because the prizes are so good and i’m confident i can win
December 27th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Actually, is the Holid Eye in any way neccessary? The only time I could think of to use it was at the part with the mannequins, that the game expects you to do with a different item anyways.
December 27th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
you can bypass having to go back to get the toast if you get the holid eye early on, but that’s about it
December 27th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Fun. Just finished my first speedrun in 23:42. I wonder if the creator could top that
?
December 27th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
another thing that bothers me:
what’s the “enemy in love” in the rank screen?
December 27th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
other suggestions:
you may add some music to the opening credit, it’s too quite and boring just waiting there to watch all that.
also, i think if you add the music《here comes tara》(i mean this: http://www.superfundungeonrun.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/tara_lowfi.mp3) to the first stage it’ll be just awesome.
December 28th, 2009 at 12:42 am
Also, do you ever think of adding some extra items after the player beat the game or get the highest rank? like “Stocking Stocking” or something~
Maybe that’s asking to much, but i really love this game!
December 28th, 2009 at 2:27 am
Jesus Christ, Arthur.
This is fuckin hilarious.
December 28th, 2009 at 8:22 am
Hey man! Congratulations for this excellent work!
I just wanted you to know that if you’re interested in releasing an Spanish-language version of the game (and the first one) for Latin America and Spain, you can contact me, and I will gladly do the subtitles translations!
December 28th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Just finished the game I was very pleased. I like the cool ways you beat the bosses. The only problem is the backtracking reminded me of megaman battle network and it was hard to walk down corridors because they were too narrow. But in all great game!
December 28th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
@kissdreams:
enemies in love is how many children you’ve downed with the missiletoe launcher
i think it’s better without music — i like that you can hear the kids talking while the camera’s panning. the snake reveal wouldn’t be quite as exciting if it weren’t for the silence.
the game was actually going to unlock the SOCOM after completing it with the “The Boss” ranking, but this was cut due to lack of time.
But I’m not planning on making future updates to this game besides to fix bugs.
December 28th, 2009 at 10:58 pm
I noticed something: The TADPOLE manniquins play the boy’s dialogue instead of the actual TADPOLEs’. I’m not sure if this is a bug or anything, just the concept of crossdressing boy not-manniquins amuses me. Also, I’m gonna try and re-record The Foreign Kid’s dialogue with my new mic, to make it clearer. I assume you can just replace the MP3s in the program files if they have the same name?
December 28th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
yep, i can put that as part of a new patch (if one comes up). i may, if i have time, end up adding the features that i was going to add but ended up not doing (i.e. an elevator to connect old parts of the game to the newer ones so that the backtracking isn’t so bad)
January 3rd, 2010 at 11:29 pm
@Mr. Pondunkian
I think adding that elevator would really help
The first backtracking was a b*tch, but it did remind of something Hideo would do 
The 2nd time for the electricity was a little much.
—–
So after beating the game….
Wow, simply wow. This is has to be one of the best indie PC games I have ever played.
The music, dialogue, controls, gameplay; it was nearly flawless! The first Merry Gear (nice references in the game btw) seems like a mere tech demo compared to this.
And as for my only tips for “fixing” the game:
- Snake gets blurry when two motion directions are combined (ie hitting up and right at the same time) = no biggie
- The text for the levels (above the inventory screen) is very hard to read in some levels, due to the white tiles (yet it’s a nice yellow/orange theme used elsewhere…)
-I kinda wanted to see the lyrics for the credit song, because while it was good, it was kinda hard to discern what the singer was saying
I am astonished on how much this game blew my expectations.
Now I’m only 1000 times excited to see how the Underside turns out.
Fantastic job as a whole team!
January 6th, 2010 at 12:07 am
[...] Categories: Reviews At a Glance: Genre(s): Stealth/Action Link: Announcement here. Download here. Difficulty: Medium Warnings: None really, unless you still believe in Santa in [...]
January 7th, 2010 at 12:15 am
nice games dude or maybe dudes?, you kick ass xD, i cant wait for the 3 part xD it will be awesome, find me in MGO xD BRIDGE is my name xD see ya and good luck, and happy holydays and a happy new year xD
January 12th, 2010 at 11:33 pm
The music was awesome, especially that grim war-torn remix of Sleigh Ride. XD
I think you spoofed mgs *too* well, though. The sob story villain speeches were aggravating to sit through, and ruined the ending. When it looked like Old Snake would SPOILER retire become Santa /SPOILER, that topped MGS4 for most satisfying ending ever. T_T
February 12th, 2010 at 6:15 am
In the Hideo Drive area, if you use the Holid eye, you can see yourself through the walls.
February 12th, 2010 at 4:20 pm
@sam — it’s infrared — you can also see the children through walls too, but the mechanic wasn’t utilized.
February 22nd, 2010 at 1:34 pm
Absolutely Brilliant Game, it was almost as if Kojima had made this.
I donated because of this game.
Thank you for those two hours.