Metal Gear Solid 2
Konami – PS2 – 1 Player
I’ll just start by being courteous. There may be evil story spoilers in this article, though at the same times things that seem like evil story spoilers may just be exaggerations or even just made up to confuse you. With that said, It seems a recent trend in video games anymore is to simply rehash some old classic. 90% of games today are remakes or sequels to sequels. Sometimes a game comes along and tries something new and fresh though. A game with such neat innovative features the moment you play it you realize that one day this will be the stuff 2nr rate cash in remakes are made of. Then there are games like MGS2. Which go to great lengths to create “Perfectly Re-orchestrated” rehashes of their predecessors and make sure to point out in the plot itself that the game is nothing more then a cheap knockoff of it’s own brand name.
Actually there is a pretty nice point behind the game, “Anyone can be Solid Snake given the right circumstances”. It’s such an appropriate quote given the great lengths that Konami seems to have gone to in concealing the fact that you don’t really play as Solid Snake. Isn’t Konami really clever?
I mean how many people have really watched Escape From New York much less know the meaning of the word ‘Iroquois’. Anyway, other than all the blatant plot rip offs from it’s predecessor this is a really fun game. Its a bit short though I’d say. I mean I’ve played FFX for probably 120 hours counting both my save games (100 of those in one) and GTA3, Last I checked on my main save file, It was at about 120, but that was probably 80 or so hours ago. MGS2 just doesn’t have quite the same staying power I guess. Probably a good thing though, after a while I was really wondering when it would end.
Putting Seagulls to sleep is only fun for just so long you know.
The plot isn’t the only thing that makes this game similar to MGS1. For the most part if plays the same in game play. There are a few nice changes. The most subtle but possibly the hardest to get used to is that this game takes place mostly during the day. MGS1 was so dark it sometimes seems strange to be able to see for so far off to the horizon. The most useful change is the addition of first person aiming. Making shots to various parts of the body or even at certain things in the environment is a sinch with this new aiming system. Then there is the hang over the edge grip move. Which is pretty much just as useless as it sounds. Half the time the guards will see you hanging there and shoot you anyway, except instead of being in a position that allows you to act you are hanging there like a goon waiting for the bullets to hit your body.
But enough about gameplay. The gameplay is just repetetive boring filler for the even more boring hour long cut scenes. The meat of this game’s entertainment value is in the underlying comedy. I honestly think there is some huge massive parody going on here about video games. I can’t be sure though.
Anyway, first we have the lovely posters strewn pretty much everywhere in the game. You can’t stuff a dead body in a locker without finding a poster of some half naked Japanese chick hanging nearby. Or if you prefer you can always join the Russian Soldiers and look up internet porn.
Also the designers seemed to have decided Meryl was a little to butch and a bit old so they replaced her with a 12 year old girl who has no business being anywhere near this setting of this game.
Although, I’ll give her this, she is a hell of a lot more fun to fuck with than Meryl ever was. Or you can call snake pretty much anytime for lots of hilariously hokey information about the horrible twisted pasts of the villains. Let’s not forget the hours of fun you can spend listening to the CODEC near the end of the game. You people know what I’m talking about. Ohhh yeah, that’s some good stuff there. If all else fails you can see how many crazy or immature laughs you can get by fucking with the dog tags.
Oh right, Dog Tags. The game’s replay element. I suppose I’ll close with that point. Instead of just finishing the game repeatedly for bonuses like stealth and infinite ammo as per MGS1. You get to spend even MORE time holding up guards for Dog Tags. Now let me explain this a bit as before I played the game I had no idea what this entailed exactly. Basically, you walk up behind a guy enter FPS mode, and aim your gun at him. Then he stops and holds up his arms in terror. Then you circle around and jab your gun to his head (or crotch) and the guy will drop his dog tags for you to take. This is a really neat idea actually, and it’s a lot of fun…. the first several hundred times you do it.
By the time you start working on getting anything useful like Stealth, you’ll be so sick of hold ups you’ll want to toss the game in the trash and never play it again. The worst part is missing say, one guard in a certain dificulty and having to completely replay that mission to get ONE TAG. But for now I’m out of screen shots, so I’ll just say, this is indeed a pretty decent game, it was certainly hyped out the ass, so it should be at least worth a rental to even the most die hard MGS hater.
