Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty Review

A long time ago someone actually gave me a game for the NES with the claim, "This game is awful, you aren't supposed to shoot anyone!" After my obligatory 'Huh,' he explained that he had spent good money for a game whose major purpose was not to kill the enemy soldiers but somehow go around them without being seen. A major rantfest ensued and somehow during the confusion I made him agree that if this game sucked so badly he could get rid of it by giving it to me. I rushed home and started playing it. The game was very different, rather then being based on standard video game logic, it was firmly grounded in reality.

I'll just sit here... Maybe he won't see me.

Hold on, I must tie my shoe laces first.

Now, I know the next question is; what is standard video game logic? Here's an example. Bionic Commando (NES), one guy, metal arm, versus, you guessed it, an entire army! Just him! And get this, he attacks from the front! Alone! Ask any military man and they would say that old Bionic Commando was either an idiot, or had to use the Nuremberg Defense to justify his abject stupidity!

Friends, the game was special. An excellent opportunity presented itself and my gaming experience was altered. The game, if you haven't guessed it by now, was the original Metal Gear. Metal Gear is now a classic and the two theories of the game, sneaking past the bad dudes rather than taking them out, and the bipedal nuke tank are now inalterably a part of gaming's ongoing history.

Skip forward a few years and at least three games into the future and you have Konami's newest foray into the Metal Gear arena, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (henceforth known as MGS2). MGS2, released on the PS2, was to be a visual and cinematic tour de force (which means damn impressive in French), which not only was to be stunning but to have a better grasp of the fundamentals of sneaking than ever before. However, as always, I have some issues with MGS2. More on that later.

My theory in reviewing this game was like watching Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace. I will not compare it to its predecessors, I told myself. After all, I'm a professional reviewer now and have to keep a certain air of aloofness, even if they happened to be some of my favorite games.

To begin, this game is, graphically, one of the most amazing games I have ever played. The depth of field alone was amazing, getting a 2D surface to even give the appearance of 3D is hard enough, MGS2 made it look flawless. The level of intense realism is truly unique. The game designers left nothing to chance in making MGS2, even the slidelocks of the different guns sound different. It is obvious that the game engine used for MGS2 was a simple adaptation of the original, so if you could play Metal Gear Solid, then its offspring is easy to pick up. The sound quality was brilliant, and (though I may be committing sacrilege) I was pleased yet again at the quality of the voiceovers. To answer your next question, yes I also liked the voicing in the Metal Gear Solid as well. (Short Tangent: A friend of mine, who is a huge Japanophile, claimed that his only problem with the release of Metal Gear Solid Integral in Japan was that they kept only the American voicing. I pointed out, "You know, all the characters are supposed to be Americans right?" He had no response.)

Target in sight.

Nobody steps on a news paper in my town!!

The gameplay has evolved in several areas, and new choices are available to the eager sneaker. For starters, it is possible to complete MGS2 without killing a single human being, even bosses, and the first weapon available to you is not your trusty handgun, but a specially modified tranquilizer pistol. As more and more of the game unfolds you learn about how the plot has diverged from its predecessor, and so on until you complete the first phase of your operation. MGS2 has the resurgence of some popular characters, such as the eminent physicist Hal "Otacon" Emmerich, named after the anime convention of similar name, Liquid Snake, and the ever-popular Colonel Roy Campbell (kind of).

The game has two phases, the first of which being the 'Tanker' sequence, where you control our hero Solid Snake against the Charlie (bad dudes) which have infiltrated it. The sequence is rather short, taking only around one or two hours to complete at the most. After that is the now infamous cut to the 'Platform' sequence, far longer and much more involved then its predecessor. This divergence is where MGS2 takes a bad turn (in my book), from that point on you do not control Solid Snake but a new operative called Raiden. No offense to Konami, but what the hell were they thinking?? Replacing Solid Snake, what is up with that? Not that I greatly dislike Raiden, but no one can replace Snake.

Other modifications include better AI for the enemies. Many simple omissions that were part and parcel of MGS were fixed in MGS2. What kinds of simple omissions you ask? Well, in MGS2, it looks like the enemy army finally had the budget to get radios! The baddies will check in regularly to a central post, and they will get suspicious if you take out a comrade and he doesn't check in! The feel of the game is much more three dimensional than in MGS, where our communist muchachos have learned to look both up and down, and can now see you from a platform above and below. They also can snipe, shoot at different parts of the body, which now cause different amounts of damage, and they have learned to dodge, duck, cover, flank and trap, all of which make these guys much more annoying then in previous games, forcing you to use the infiltration method if you want to get through this game. The bosses in MGS2 were also well thought out, but vary greatly in terms of diffuculty level.

The gameplay factor is much lower for MGS2, however, many things were overlooked as necessary to gameplay. For one, you will have more difficulty using many of the new types of weapons and will end up using only one or two of the most useful in a normal situation. Finding things is a bit harder in MGS2; many of the items only appear after other flags have been tripped. So if you are one of those who like to 'perfect' your game, you will probably end up knowing the game map by heart. Konami also made some critical errors in the difficulty level, making some areas dreadfully easy while making others nearly impossible to figure out or the boss amazingly hard to beat. The engine was more problematic and though it has the feel of the original there are portions where you will die simply from the lack of the ability to correctly control your character. Shooting for example is not as brainless as it was in the past, the first person mode is by far the easiest way to control the aim.

All in all, I enjoyed playing MGS2, though not nearly as much as I thought I would. Overall the game had balanced out well, but I felt as if it wasn't the game it could have been and not the game that MGS was.