The Life and Death of Johnny the Guard

Written by: Adam "ManKorn" Korenman, CC2K Video Games Editor

There are very few people who truly love their job. Television would have us believe that there are literally millions of happy, dancing worker-bees out there, joyfully sauntering to the office with a smile on their lips and a song in their heart. For most of us, work is a soul-crushing grind for eight hours a day. We spend our time dreaming of the weekend, or counting down the minutes until we can burst out the door to freedom, the cries of our employers as faint as a buzzing fly. 

Video Game guards fall into the latter category, but they take it a step further. They are not just bored at their jobs, but are possibly the worst candidates to have hired out of the entire gene pool. And nowhere is this more apparent than with our good friend Johnny, the bungling security guard from Metal Gear Solid.

The Patrol

You know what? I get it. Patrols suck. 

For those of you who don’t know, I am a member of the National Guard. This means I have some experience when it comes to standing around and guarding a building for endless amounts of time. My record, so far is, three days in a building with only four rooms.

Being all we could be 

When it comes to guarding these types of places from undesirables, like secret agents or spies or the homeless, the best method is to create a patrol. A group of soldiers, or even just one, walk in a pattern around a location in order to cover all possible entrances. If the person planning this route has done their homework, the routes will overlap at certain points. 

In Johnny’s case, his route is a rounded square around a few crates. 

Those crates. Those are crates, right? Either crates or Swiss Pastry Shoppes. 

Freaking 90’s Graphics

Now, a smart soldier would vary his routine, never taking the same exact path twice in order to prevent against ambush or sabotage. In Johnny’s case, he is as predictable as the comment section on YouTube.

Holocaust puns? You stay classy, Internet

This isn’t rocket surgery, Johnny. You walk around, making sure nothing crazy happens in your 10X20 kingdom. But, for some reason, you just can’t figure your shit out. And, over the course of the game, this is going to get you into trouble. And by trouble, I mean dead. I by dead, I mean you are going to flicker out of existence. Where’s your god now?