Can I Get a Fuck Yeah?

It's a shame my wife hates watching me play video games, because she's my good luck charm. Yesterday, as she sat on the couch, too ill with a stomach bug to resist, I played through the last three motorcycle frog sequences, and then the rest of the game.

And at the end of it, after waiting through the closing credit sequence (Konami, for the love of God, this is my third time seeing it, please lemme skip it) and the Ocelot blabbity-blab, my rating screen came up stamped "Kerotan" (Japanese for "frog.") I turned to Edi and yelled, "Wooo! I did it! Fuck, yeah!"

I'd gotten the Stealth Camo.

Edi looked at me hopefully. "So that means you're through, right?"

I looked at her, and tried to fake a placating smile. "Kinda?"

Ten minutes after she left the room, I fired it up.

The Stealth Camo is a funny thing since it's an item, like the thermal goggles, that you keep in your stuff inventory, as opposed to with your camo. I thought this was a little odd, but it makes some sense in terms of how the game handles it. You're invisible while you've got it equipped, but bumping into someone immediately unequips it, making you vulnerable. It also forces you to make some strategic choices--if I want to equip the thermal goggles (which allows me to pick important targets or objects out of the landscape), I have to make sure I'm in a secure position first.

But, on the other hand, having the Stealth Camo as an object means that you can use any special camos you've taken from beating the bosses in endurance mode or health mode or whatever the hell it's called (it's when you take out the boss with a non-legal weapon like the mk22). So, for example, I can use the Moss camo with the stealth camo equipped and regain my endurance as long as I'm in sunlight. Better, if I wear the spirit camo I picked up from the Sorrow, nobody can hear my footsteps and I can run around with greater impunity. Yesterday, I made it from the first screen to the boss fight with Ocelot in about twenty minutes, which is obscenely fast. If I snipe The End early on in the game, I can see myself clearing the halfway point (the boss fight with him) in, I dunno, 45 minutes?

Yes, part of me is thinking of playing it through one more time as a speed-run, to see if I can get a super high ranking. I'd say "God help me," but, really, God help Edi, in that scenario.