You can read other Name Game posts here.

I was planning to write about some different games, but then Caves of Qud happened. And then I kept playing it even after I posted about it. I was going to write more about it but then realized that I already wrote everything I wanted to write in either my first post or my more recent post, so that’s out.

Instead, I have to write about a game I haven’t played. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain released recently, and apparently it’s pretty great. Unfortunately, I’m crazy and can’t play any game without playing all the previous entries in the series first, even when it’s not necessary and probably a dumb idea. It also may be impossible in the case of Metal Gear Solid since I don’t own any consoles. I’ve only ever seen other people play parts of the Metal Gear Solid games, so I’d have to start from the beginning, which would take a long time even if I can find ways to play them all on my PC.

In the meantime, however, I can provide a a few naming suggestions. Read on.

The Phantom Pain is actually a really good subtitle, so I’m not going to mess with that. Instead I’m going to look at a few of the code names used in the series. First of all, Metal Gear is, as far as I can tell, a code name for some sort of super weapon that may also be a giant robot. That’s cool, but in 2015, “metal” isn’t really that impressive as materials go. The military might consider updating the code names for their secret superweapons a bit. Here are some ideas:

Ceramic Gear
Tungsten Carbide Gear
Single Crystal Gear
Carbon Fiber Gear
Superconducting Gear
Aerogel Gear
Metal-Organic Framework Gear
Graphene Gear
Chalcogenide Gear
Quantum Confined Gear
Lattice-matched Heterojunction Gear
Porous Polymer Gear
Piezoelectric Gear

I’ve also heard rumors that The Phantom Pain may be the last game in the series to be directed by Hideo Kojima. If others try to continue the series later, they’re going to need some new Snake variants. Hideo has already used Solid Snake, Liquid Snake, and the weirder Solidus Snake. But don’t worry, I’ve got some more states of matter for you:

Gaseous Snake
Plasma Snake
Colloidal Snake
Supercritical Snake
Quantum Hall Snake
Electron-Degenerate Snake
Jahn-Teller Metal Snake
Superfluid Snake
Bose-Einstein Condensate Snake
Disordered Hyperuniform Snake
Quantum Spin Liquid Snake
Quark-Gluon Plasma Snake

Those names should be enough for almost half of Metal Gear Solid VI.