Mods can go ahead and move this wherever they want, just wanted to throw it on the Battles Forum so hopefully a few people can see it.
Solid Snake, the original video game badass. The Legendary Hero who defeated Big Boss and brought down Outer Heaven. The man who makes the impossible possible, and has saved the world more times than Ocelot has fantasized about him. He's no hero. Never was, never will be. Just an old killer, hired to do some wetwork... who routinely risks his life to help others and goes out of his way to always do the right thing, all in the name of a better future. No, wait, that's not how it goes...
In any case, a friend of mine once said something to me. "Snake gets no respect on Comic Vine. You'd think trading blows with Cyborgs and tanking a hall of radiation would warrent him beating Punisher or Robin, but I guess not."
I've been thinking, and... he was right. And that's why I'm here today, to break down and analyze every single one of Snake's traits that pertain to combat, every specialty and ability he has in his arsenal, and hopefully, convince you that he CAN beat Robin.
We'll start with the basis of most everything; physical stats. In this section, things like strength, speed, and durability will be analyzed, and brought to light.
Part 1. Physical Stats:
STRENGTH - Now, before I go into this, I should mention that Snake isn't peak human like most would assume. In the same vain as Black Panther and Captain America, he's 100% superhuman, thanks to all those soldier genes he's apparently abundant in. It's thanks to that, that he can accomplish feats of strength and endurance, that no normal man could ever hope to stand. Case in point, absorbing the recoil of a tank turret into his arms.
The Colonel deadpans that the Rail Gun packs the force of a Tank Turret, so for Snake to wield it like a rifle, especially in his old age, he must possess superhuman strength. That's several tons of force and the soldier doesn't even bat an eye.
Miscellaneous: Another thing worth note in the above video, besides just the fact that Snake is even capable of using such a weapon, we have to remember who he's using it against. An army of giant mechs equipped with Machine Guns and snare wires, all set to self destruct in seconds of their showing up. So we have Snake weaving through Automatic Gunfire while lugging around a giant Rail Gun, dodging snares and other attacks whilst holding off the army and not letting a single one explode, all in his old age. A nice speed feat in the middle of that strength feat, plus accuracy, considering since the Rail Gun needs to charge before firing, Snake literally can't afford to miss a single shot.
That's the big strength feat of Snake's, but it's hardly his only one. Metal Gear REX is stated to be anywhere from 40-80 feet tall. From ground level, Snake can catch a full grown woman (Meryl) as she jumps from the top. That's nearly 200 pounds, multiplied by the distance of the fall; Snake shouldn't of kept his arms. In actuality though, he barely grunted.
The soldier is more than capable of hurting the Cyborg Ninja with his bare hands, and when he and Meryl get pinned underneath a military jeep, he's strong enough to lift it off them. He purposely got himself captured in MG1, and to escape, literally punched his way out of his cell.
Solid Snake is pretty much a multitonner by all that, definitely a match for guys like Black Panther and Captain America. He's the second strongest human in the entire Metal Gear Solid Universe. Ocelot can jump 40 feet in the air, Meryl can fire a Deagle onehanded and outmuscle a 7 foot tall giant, and the Boss lugged around a 630 pound Davy Crockett miles through the jungle one handed. That puts her at a total bench weight of 1,200 pounds; even Steve Rogers has only been shown to do 1,100.
None of these guys can compare to Snake though, the most Ocelot can hope for is being Snake's equal, but even then that's arguable.
SPEED/REFLEXES - This is the area where David really excels. His daddy outmatches him in strength (worth noting that the MGS4 Novel goes so far as to call Big Boss's strength "monstrous" compared to Snake's) but when it comes to reaction time Solid Snake is truly metahuman. Even in his old age, his reaction time is hypersonic.
3:20 before aquiring the Rail Gun for himself, Snake had to earn it in a fight against Crying Wolf. That's a mach 20 projectile that Snake can see, and react too. 20 times faster than the speed of sound, that's how fast Snake's brain and body work. Again, in his old age. We've never seen his upper limits in his prime, but in MGS2, he had an offscreen fight with Fortune while Raiden destroyed 23 Metal Gear RAYS, Fortune being equipped with that same Rail Gun as seen above. Lady luck has an impenetrable forcefield making her literally unbeatable, but Snake gave it all he had and managed to survive for hours, never letting even a single supersonic projectile touch him until he was captured.
The Fortune incident aside, Snake was never challenged very much in his prime when it came to dodging. He's easily avoiding gunfire from Meryl, Revolver Ocelot, and Olga. He barrel rolled out the way of Vamp's throwing knives, a feat that even Cyborg Raiden deadpanned he couldn't replicate. Perhaps most impressively is when he dodged an M1 Tank Shell after it was fired, effortlessly clearing the blast radius before destroying the machine with only a handful of grenades.
Just a mere sampling of Shalashaska's gun skill, effortlessly annihilating groups of soldiers before anyone can even react. Ocelot is perfectly adept at ricocheting bullets, some people have called him one of the best trick shots in all of fiction. Quote, "I understand the bullets you see. I make them go where I want."
For Solid Snake to have a drawn out gun duel with him and dodge every single shot fired, well...
Liquid Snake is an unrivaled pilot, having taken down two F-16 Fighter Jets at the same time in a snowstorm, with a helicopter. But for all his skill, his brother easily dodges every shot he fires whilst repelling on a rope down a tower, and avoiding steam pipes at the same time.
As Campbell said, "If anyone can do it, I know it's you."
ENDURANCE - Now here is where David, and by extension all the Snake's really shine. The soldier has tanked things unimaginable by most other people. Studies indicate that the largest height a human can fall into water from without breaking bone is 90 feet.
Arsenal Gear is, at a minimum, 300 feet tall. Within the first minute of that cutscene, Snake dives head first into the water below, outswims a giant robot, places a tracker on his brother, swims miles back to shore, and runs all the way to Federal Hall, all in the time it took Raiden to beat Solidus. And he's not even out of breath.
Snake has unlimited stamina, I can name on one hand the amount of times he's ever seen breathing hard. In a series which has over 20 hours worth of cutscenes in total, that's pretty good. He literally just shrugs off a bullet to his shoulder halfway through MGS1, and several extensive torture sessions from Revolver Ocelot do not impede him in anyway.
His pain tolerance is astounding. The subtitle to MGS4 should of been "Solid Snake gets wrecked over and over again."
In Act 1, he's subjected to extreme nanomachine interference and suffers an extreme siezure. Hundreds of soldiers went through the same thing, and only a handful survived, Snake being one of them. Quote,
His chest felt like it was being crushed. Blinking, breathing, every act of simply staying alive brought an avalanche of pain cascading upon him. He felt like his thoughts and awareness, and everything that made up his consciousness, were completely shut off from himself. He had only made it a single step foward, and from there, he could no longer move.
Snake struggled to retain his consciousness. He fought against the crumbling world with everything he had. At the edges of his awareness, the other soldiers shared in the agony. They were all around him, some convulsing on the ground, others frothing at the mouth, a few shitting themselves uncontrollably, and on and on.
Snake looked for Meryl's squad. Ed, Jonathan, and Meryl had collapsed with their hands clutched at their heads. Only Akiba seemed unaffected, helplessly watching his comrades suffer.
Snake gritted his teeth. "It's not over yet. I can't fall here. Not yet." He told himself. "I cannot leave my fate, mr curse, to Meryl and Sunny's generation. After I finish what I must, then I will happily die. But not now. I still must fight."
From there, Snake fights his way through the crowd of soldiers and confronts Liquid, before finally succumbing after his brother escapes in a chopper, long after everyone else around him had fallen.
He goes through these seizures routinely throughout the story, often right before a big fight. Later on he takes no damage from a head on motorcycle crash at full speed, being inside Drebin's van as it skids and flips across the road, and of course, walks off the beating Liquid gives him.
5:40
A single slash from the stun knife is enough to completely finish off your average PMC Soldier. Snake gets stabbed by the knife three times, receiving a full shock each time. A few minutes later he takes a nap in a pit of fire and comes out pretty OK.
Fighting his way through an army of Gekko, Snake takes on his brother in an epic REX vs RAY showdown. Both robots come out completely destroyed, and Snake, having gone through the entire battle with an open cockpit, somehow not only survives, but is still deadset on going after Liquid, despite being completely wrecked (just watch the entire second video if you care enough)
FINALLY, after having gone through absolute hell, Snake makes a final stand against Liquid, and storms Outer Haven. Sneaking past dozens of elite FROGS, Snake fails to even notice as he chips his own tooth from biting down so hard. He tanks a 5 story fall and is still fresh enough to fight an army, and then to top it all off, the Microwave Room.
Mei Ling said that the microwaves being emitted in that hall would vaporize any normal man instantly upon contact.
Snake spent nearly 5 minutes in there.
And he's literally having another siezure the entire time.
And STILL, he's fine enough to defend the Mk. III from a horde of Dwarf Gekko, then defeat Liquid Ocelot in a hand to hand battle that lasted until sunset.
If that's not heart I don't know what is.
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Part 2. Skills.
Marksmanship - Here's where things get interesting. As a man who's spent many-a-playthrough just gazing on at Snake's epicness, I believe the soldier to be a highly underrated marksman.
Being a good shot, it's actually more simple then some think. You either got it or you don't, practice can help but it won't turn a grunt into a pro. Master Miller said it best when he told Snake, "The only things you need to be a good sniper, are the senses you were born with."
David lucked out in this regard, as all the Snake's did. If it weren't for that pesky "different universe thing", I might say they're all on their way to developing radar sense. The sharpness of their senses is astounding.
Big Boss has the best showings in this regard, understandable considering his games are jungle survival based.
Two dudes are having a conversation from farther than the eye can see; Big Boss hears every word. Elitest of elite CIA Ops are lying in the jungle with personalized camo awaiting an ambush; Big Boss spots and avoids every single one of them. An entire sniper unit is sent to kill him; Big Boss takes all 25 out with an Assault Rifle.
Naked Snake is incredibly observant, noticing Ocelot attempt to eject a bullet by hand despite his vision being obscured, and knowing that the Russian is out of ammo despite not even seeing him in combat. In a deep sleep, John immediately wakes upon sensing the enemy approach, and he's instantly back in combat mode. Big Boss plays hide n' seek with an invisible super soldier in the jungle and wins, not to mention he hunted the End down through miles of jungle, held him up, and stole his clothes just for fun.
Solidus Snake too, can pinpoint RAY's location just by sound and land a shot perfectly inside a it's mouth from 100 yards without even looking.
Of course there's Liquid Snake, who just has a casual conversation with his brother while inside an airborn helicopter.
And to top it all off, we have the main man himself Solid Snake seeing bullets midair Cap'Murica style and detecting four invisible Genome's, then killing with just H2H strikes before any of them can even react.
Despite having little to no hunting experience, Snake easily tracked Naomi Hunter through the wilderness after a pep talk from Raiden.
All this evens out to unbelievable accuracy. Take Sniper Wolf. A high order FOXHOUND member, in a unit populated by superhumans and psychics of all kinds, Wolf literally got by on pure sniping skill. Her shooting ability was enough to warrent her joining the most elite unit in the entire United States Military, normally reserved for superhuman combatants. She, like, literally had superhuman accuracy. But when up against Solid Snake, she went down - twice.
Each encounter, Wolf had a distinct advantage in knowing exactly where Snake is, whereas Snake would have to find her. She even managed to get a shot off on the soldier, which of course, he ignored.
Their second fight is just a straight up incredible showing for Snake, wearing a solid black suit against pure white snow, he's not exactly concealed. Wolf meanwhile, was perfectly camouflaged with her white outfit. Odds certainly aren't in the soldier's favor, but somehow, someway, through sheer combat skill and superhuman senses, he found her, and killed her.
Throughout his entire career, there has only been one man to ever make Solid Snake miss: Gray Fox.
He's the only exception. Olga Gurlukovich had superhuman perception, to defend Raiden from a hailstorm of gunfire by cutting every bullet up midair. She can easily dodge bullets, she actually did far more in deflecting them from a dozen enemies simultaneously. All her speed and skill however, was no match for Solid Snake.
After dodging a bullet from her, Snake goes on to defeat her in a gunfight, despite only being equipped with a Suppressor Pistol.
To top the gunfights off, we have Vamp, who was Spider-Man level speed and above. For reference, Human Raiden was deflecting bullets the first time he ever held a sword. That's something Spider-Man has never done; he actually got shot when he attempted to catch a bullet.
So, for Vamp to outmaneuver robotically enhanced Cyborg Raiden, his speed must be simply unbelievable. Directly, Vamp himself can vanish from thin air by traveling faster than humans can even see. He swims like a dolphin through 0 buoyancy water, and even runs straight up a vertical wall.
He's supernaturally agile and can read muscles. All that, and Snake still put a bullet in his head.
I'd love to see Punisher try and tag Vamp.
To put it bluntly, Solid Snake has decimated entire armies with his AK. He, quite literally, can't afford to ever miss even a single shot. To top it all off, the soldier has even predicted trajectory, seeing a bullet fly midair, then headshot the shooter without looking. That takes skill.
Intelligence - Snake's intelligence and tactical thinking are another thing not nearly brought up enough. The man has a 180 IQ and is fluent in six languages, after all. Then when it comes to improv, there is no other, Solid Snake is king. When your job revolves around going into global military hotspots and procuring all gear on sight, you learn to make the most of everything that's offered to you. When you empty a Handgun Clip, don't be so hasty to throw it away. It might come in handy later as a distraction.
If I told you that the item immediately to your left will be your only weapon against a horde of genetically enhanced super soldiers, you'll probably just give up now.
Snake wouldn't. He'll take that playboy, or that cardboard box, and turn it into the most lethal weapon any secret agent has ever held.
Another thing worth mentioning; Naked Snake, Liquid Snake, and Solidus Snake are ALL unbelievably strategic prep geniuses geniuses that have each brought the Government to it's knees on several occasions. Solid Snake is the good guy so he's never done that, but considering he has the exact same genes as all three of them, it's not to much to say he's capable of it.
Hand to Hand - Mastering a martial arts style is impressive. Mastering several is more. But actually creating your own? That's something else entirely. And though it's true Solid Snake isn't the one to create CQC, his clone-daddy did, and that's close enough.
If there's something besides sneaking that David excells at, it's CQC. He easily decimates eight trained Paradise Lost Army Soldiers in the cutscene above, tactically disarming and one-shotting each one after the other.
Snake has plenty of cannon fodder feats, but no one cares about those. Not like they matter anyway, considering the level Snake's real enemies are on.
^ Defeats Liquid Snake despite already suffering from severe fatigue and previous injury (Liquid is superhuman and was literally genetically engineered to be Snake's superior. He was inside REX's cockpit as it exploded and came out with scratches. Stinger Missiles did no damage to him, and a 500 hundred foot fall inside an exploding helicopter was walked off)
^ Defeats the Cyborg Ninja. Gray Fox was easily class 100+, and moved so fast he seemed to teleport. He was deflecting Machine Gun bullets while still going through puberty, and 40 years later he's only gotten better. FOXHOUND is equivocal to the League of Assassins, and throughout the agencies entire history, he was the only agent to ever earn the codename Fox, so he can easily give someone like Ra's al Ghul a run for his money on pure skill.
^ Vamp's regen made guns useless, so Snake's solution was to throw the M4 down and bring up his dukes. This is the aftermath of Solid Snake going CC with a bullet-fast, immortal multitonner vampire. Vamp himself was skilled enough to defeat Cyborg Raiden in a knife fight without his healing factor, despite Raiden being 100 times more powerful than Vamp, nearly as fast, and highly skilled in his own right. So the fact that Snake's CQC was enough to overcome both Vamp's unbelievable combat prowess, as well as his large stat edge, makes this one of the greatest H2H feats in all of fiction.
As you can see, the soldier is more than capable of contending with people well out of his street level class. I don't see someone like Batman or Daredevil fairing well against Frank Jaeger.
100 tonner robots and supernatural vampires aside, Solid Snake's best feat is without a doubt, killing Big Boss.
Twice.
Now, see, the hard thing about making a respect thread for someone like Snake, is that I have to explain everyyything. If I said "Batman is super skilled, he beat Lady Shiva" then that's enough. You all know how good Shiva is, I can just end it at that.
However, if I said "Snake is super skilled, he beat Big Boss" that doesn't mean anything, because Big Boss needs a respect thread himself! So just allow me to run down feats for the original Snake real quick.
Big Boss, AKA Naked Snake, is the original Snake. In his prime, he's done straight up amazing things. Colonel Volgin was strong enough to put his fist straight through the Shagohad's armor, something multiple RPGs couldn't even "put a dent in." Additionally, he was a professional boxer and has recieved tip-top military training, not to mention he possesses super powerful lightning powers.
Big Boss managed to survive a brutal torture session at his hands, and not even a day later came back and defeated him in H2H combat. Volgin ate bullets and tanked rockets but Jack had him coughing up blood.
Null was a young Gray Fox, not as powerful as the Cyborg Ninja but still effortlessly cutting Machine Gun bullets up midair. He was the sole survivor of extensive gene therapy experiments that made him "the perfect soldier", and even as a child he killed dozens of men at a time with only a knife. Big Boss, quite literally stomped him.
Gene was part of various military experiments that granted him superhuman powers. In addition to being one of the greatest combatants in the military, he had speed enough to avoid gunfire from a high powered Gatling Gun while appearing to stand still, and blitzed a precog faster than the speed of thought.
Speed was his main thing, but all other physical stats were supposed to match it. Didn't stop Big Boss from casually dominating him.
Finally, we have the lady herself, the Boss. She was Jack's mentor, and his ultimate adversary. I can't even begin to describe how awesome the Boss is, just play the game. Point is, Naked Snake killed her.
And that is a brief (brief) rundown of Big Boss's rapsheet. To this day, beating him as a rookie is Solid Snake's best feat.
And then we have one final showdown to go through, the big one, I know you've all been waiting for this: Old Snake vs Liquid Ocelot.
Throughout this entire conflict, Snake is still feeling the effects of multiple stab wounds, burns, broken bones, bruises, a couple gunshots, and everything else he went through during the game. This literally happened 5 minutes after Snake went through the microwave room, so I doubt he's at 100%. Ocelot meanwhile, is just fine and dandy, having spent the entire game just chilling out, maxing and relaxing all cool and shooting some B-Ball outside the school while a couple of his guys, they were up to no good, took over the planet.
Ocelot learned CQC just by watching Big Boss do it. By the end of MGS3 he's good enough to stalemate the soldier in H2H combat, and 50 years later against Old Snake, he's only gotten better.
Ocelot's incredible physical strength, speed, and endurance, not to mention his unrivaled intelligence and the fact that he was 100% during his fight with Old Snake, makes the fact that David somehow beat him downright incredible.
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Stealth - Coming down to the wire. It's finally time for the big one, the entire basis of Snake's life, his #1 specialty and the thing he is truly known for: stealth.
Snake's intense training and decades of experience are all well and good, but the true reason he excels, is just through pure, natural talent. He spent an entire game making fools of the Genetically Enhanced Genome Super Soldier Army, the army which Colonel Campbell stated was more dangerous then the entire nuclear stockpile on Shadow Moses Island. Snake is skilled enough to quite literally just vanish from sight, as you can see in the below.
The Paradise Lost Army is an especially elite - and paranoid - group of rebel soldiers. Old Snake easily tailed one member across the city and back to their main base, then, as you can see at the 40 second mark, once again displays his stealth skills by vanishing from thin air.
Gurlukovich's Army was the most elite mercenary group in the business, but Snake found eluding them so unbelievably easy, we had to play that game as Raiden because otherwise it wouldn't of been fun.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qitnWMOthNg
Snake can even get the drop on Raiden, NOT EASY. Watch the whole video; don't ask me how but apparently, Snake's stealth knowledge has reached levels so high that he can literally appear and disappear at will.
Quote from the MGS4 Novel,
Snake went prone upon the gravel, and his camouflage shifted to blend in. Slowly, he crawled through the open streets like an inchworm. The area outside the base provided no cover, but Snake, utilizing Native American tracking techniques, gave the soldiers nothing to see and nothing to hear.
Of course the OctoCamo was a major factor in his success, but Snake's sense of connection with the world around him was even more crucial. He was part of his surroundings, a part of the world. By closely matching himself in with that baseline, he could be more stealthy then what might seem possible.
Crawling through the vents and undoing screws with his bare hands, no one sees Snake unless he wants them to. Check out 2:50 for further proof; Snake is clearly standing right in front of the Darpa Chief listening to his story, then as the guard shows up, the camera pans to reveal he managed to once again elude detection.
Perhaps Snake's most impressive stealth feat is getting the drop on Big Boss himself in MG2. Big Boss, like I said, is skilled enough to play hide n' seek with the Fear in the jungle. The Fear was an invisible super soldier; Big Boss eluded him, tracked him down, and surprised him.
So we have him vanishing from thin air on multiple occasions, magically appearing in front of Raiden, and sneaking up on Big Boss, who in turn snuck up on invisible people.
Solid Snake has access to an invisosuit, but there's literally no point in him wearing it because his skill is so great, that he's already better than invisible. Nuff' said.
