How Metal Gear Solid and a Twitch Stream Helped Me Through the COVID Lockdown
2020 was a strange year for many, many reasons. The COVID-19 pandemic changed the world, requiring many to stay in their homes, stay away from their loved ones, and work from home.
For us, lockdown was fine, for the most part. We had enough space in our house at the time to not get under each other's feet, and thanks to the great weather that the UK had for most of 2020, we would usually have our daily walks at the nearest field, or work in the garden. However, when that was all said and done, we would take part in virtual quizzes or watch-alongs. But for me, there was another aspect that helped — a name that, by the time July came around in 2020, my then-partner was sick of:
Richie Morgan. Richie bloody Morgan.
I came across Richie, a freelance videographer, via Owen O'Donnell's YouTube channel, The Infinite Review. One of O'Donnell's early videos was The Beast From The East, which showcased Richie's death multiple times due to the blizzard of January 2018, but also showcased his undying love for the movie, Ali G Indahouse.
After discovering a group he was part of that still creates several podcasts and YouTube channels, I had Gavin Spence on PAL KEYS in 2019, followed by Richie a few months later.
We kept in touch and, once Lockdown happened, Richie said he was going to stream on Twitch. This began with Metal Gear Solid, a masterpiece of a game, created by Hideo Kojima and his team at Konami, which spearheaded the stealth-action games for the original PlayStation console and beyond. What followed was countless hours of watching Richie mistake rooms for elevators, forget how to open doors, try to find a shotgun, and try to use ketchup.
Five years on since Lockdown, I've been rewatching the streams and was reminded of why Metal Gear streams were a big help during that year.
"I had done a bit of streaming before and really enjoyed it," Morgan tells me. "I streamed Dark Souls very slowly over the course of two years and it was a tremendous source of joy, but also I’m terrible at seeing games through, so it held me to account and I saw it through. I wanted to do more streaming, but being a self-employed videographer my life was a bit too chaotic to fit it in. When lockdown happened I suddenly had the time, it was either that or become an alcoholic."
His streams were usually held during the evenings, around 6PM, and lasted for several hours. Some would be longer than others due to needing to win a boss fight, but Richie would usually stream until around 9PM.
Having the username 'PAL KEYS', which would match my podcast, I'd make sure to watch Richie infiltrate Shadow Moses, but also take part in the chat, which would often include 120 others watching Richie.
But, why MGS? "I chose MGS because it was something I never thought I’d get round to and it’s so loved, I also love the PS1, so I really wanted to revisit one of the biggies I’d missed out on the first time round," Morgan explains. "I love the cinematic edge mixed with those old polygons, the overly dramatic voice acting balanced with the absolutely mental storyline, I think living through the rise of po-faced military shooters, it’s so refreshing that this espionage thriller is so bonkers, it takes real advantage of being a video game."
The chat was and is another highlight of Richie's streams, as it's a mix of his friends and fans from previous videos and podcast appearances, so there's a lot of 'joshing' that's never meant to be offensive, regardless of whether it sounds like that at times. The best example of this is the Torture Sequence. Halfway through the game, Snake is taken prisoner, and in between trying to break out of this prison, players have to repeatedly press the Circle button to keep Snake alive as thousands of volts are being put through his body.
"When you get stuck in a game and can’t see the solution, it’s awful, but when you have a chat box full of people watching you, that stream pressure is very real! I can’t even watch that clip, I still feel embarrassed!"
It's the period of Richie trying to figure out, then fail, then be let out of the jail, eventually by Ninja that's made more hilarious by what's said in the chat, such as:
'Richie, you've embarrassed yourself in front of Gray Fox.'
'Meryl has died of old age'
'GET UNDER THE BED'
"Ocelot! These lights are blinking in the kitchen, knock it off!"
"Liquid, he's drained all the power. The launch is canceled"
And that's just a small slice of the chat and Richie's streams during 2020 and 2021.
"All of my biggest highlights come from the chat. They were so supportive but absolutely happy to take the piss. Going through radio frequencies someone told me to try 420.69 and my head was so in the game I was like “thanks” and tried it. But everyone was so invested!" Morgan recalls. "What’s nice is being able to laugh when you did something stupid, which seems weird, but getting a big well meaning laugh from everyone felt good and the cheers when I succeeded felt amazing! The whole last act of the game couldn’t have been done without them."
Richie would go on to play the rest of the numbered entries in the Metal Gear series, ending with MGS 4 — I've even got a screenshot of that final moment, found at the end. But what makes the streams so watchable, even five years on, isn't Richie's complete panic that makes him forget how to play the game — it's this innocence that we've all been guilty of, especially for the games of that time. Back then, our minds were blown that we had to use the second controller port in the PlayStation console in order to beat Psycho Mantis, a boss the player faces midway through the game.
The Clips section is also a great way to watch byte-sized moments of Richie's streams during this time. But that's not to say his stream of MGS 1 was the only memorable one. I recall the first day we could finally go to KFC via drive-thru. As we were waiting to be served, I had the stream playing on my iPhone as Richie was trying to find the bombs around Big Shell in MGS 2.
I made sure to watch the rest of his streams, but once 2022 came around, restrictions were mostly lifted, and many of us, Richie included, had gotten back to normality, and the streams naturally faded away.
Although he played many more games after Metal Gear, such as the Resident Evil series and a collection of Net Yaroze games, those early streams playing Solid Snake made Lockdown far easier to bear. Even he attests to that.
"Oh I know exactly how much it helped me during lockdown, it would have been extremely different without it," Morgan explains. "Most of my work required me to be in rooms with people, I had just worked a 2-week festival and suddenly my life just stopped dead, when you’ve got nothing to do your mind just opens up to a lot of anxiety. I created a routine, I started streaming at 9AM to get me out of bed and start my day. But it gave me new people to interact with! It allowed me to fall in love with video games properly again, something I wasn’t quite as connected with, when I finished MGS 2 to an audience of 120, the adrenaline, I couldn’t sleep!"
This stream, and many others from Richie, mattered to many people during 2020 — myself included. You genuinely looked forward to watching it, as there was a sense of being part of a community, even for a short amount of time. It was fun, it was tense, it was frustrating, but always in a good way. Richie's inoffensive naivety to the games made every stream entertaining, and it's a big part of why I think I found Lockdown much more manageable, as well as helping my mental health when it mattered.
"I got so much lovely feedback and felt so appreciated. It was a very isolated time for all of us and as silly time as the streams were, they mean more to me than I can express."
If you've recently discovered these streams, they're all still available to watch on Richie's Twitch profile. If you have a few hours spare, fire one up and enjoy.
I hope, if time allows, he can do other streams that feature Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes on GameCube, or even the upcoming remake of MGS3, called Delta. But for now, you can rewatch his battle with Metal Gear REX in all its glory, and discover why 'Well done on the Metal' resonates, all these years later.
Thanks for reading.
