By Sam Coles:
Do you ever play a game that makes you question the
nature of reality? Well that was my experience when I first finished Metal Gear
Solid 2 this game really messes with your mind near the later stages of the
game. When you start though it just seems to be a normal Metal Gear or as
normal the series can get, you can hardly call a series normal with characters
that are Soviet psychics.
Metal Gear Solid 2’s story is quite a hard story to
analyse and not because it’s confusing, but because there is a lot to consume
so I will do my best to try and explain it to you. Metal Gear Solid 2 starts
two years after the Shadow Moses incident; Snake and Otacon are now branded as
war criminals after the incident and now work on their own as a
non-governmental organisation which specialises in destroying Metal Gears.
They come across a new Metal Gear code named “Ray”
and it’s being stored on a US Marine Corps tanker, however they’re not the only
ones interested as Russian Spetsnaz soldiers start to storm the tanker killing
the crew guarding it. Revolver Ocelot is
accompanying the Russians but he is not stealing the Metal Gear for the
Russians but for the Patriots and it is later revealed that he has Liquid
Snake’s arm grafted on the one that the Gray Fox chopped off in the first game.
Snake is apparently killed on the tanker as Ocelot steals the Metal Gear and
destroys the tanker.
Two years after the tanker event the Big Shell was
created to help stop the pollution but it has now been taken over by a
terrorist group calling themselves Dead Cell who are led by George Sears the
former president of the US, but he is also the third clone of Big Boss with the
code name Solidus Snake. Raiden (who you play as for the rest of the game) soon meets up with a Navy Seal called Plisken
and yes he is exactly who you think he is Solid Snake. Snake is trying to stop
Solidus because he is claiming to be Solid Snake to cover up the incident but
that is blown wide open when Snake confronts Solidus.
The game gets darker and weirder with its plot as
you progress towards the latter half of the game; you eventually find out that
the Big Shell is a cover for a new type of Metal Gear called Arsenal Gear which
houses an army of Ray units. You’re eventually captured by Ocelot who strips
you of your equipment and clothes and Solidus tells you about your past. It
turns out that Raiden is not a rookie soldier after all he was born in Liberia
and his parents were killed by Solidus where he then adopts him and puts him
through the child soldier program where earns the nickname “Jack the Ripper”.
By the end of the game you realise that Raiden is
you, a fan boy of Snake who wanted to live up to his expectations and near the
end he starts rejecting your control hence why you get fake game over screens
and he sneezes against your will etc. He fights Solidus on top of a crashed
Arsenal Gear and then Snake tells that he is no one’s tool and then Raiden
proceeds to throw his dog tags away with your name on final releasing himself
from your control.
The plot of this game does get really deep but if I
were to analyse the entirety of the story I would be here all week because
Kojima predicted some scary stuff with digital information for the time and
this was back when the internet was still in its infancy.
Now I can finally talk about the gameplay after
that, so does it differ from the first game? Not that much no, but it tweaks and
adds new tactics and gadgets for you to experiment with. You now have the
ability to walk which should have been the standard in a stealth game with the
original, but it really helps especially when you’re walking over loud
surfaces. You can aim in first person which is good if you want to land critical
shots in the head as guards will react in different ways where you are aiming
or shooting at. There are pressure sensitive controls which are a god send because
you don’t waste a bullet if you start aiming like did in the first game. What
they did with this game is that they took the foundations of the first
instalment and tweaked everything.
The boss battles are still highly entertaining to
fight with people like Fatman an explosives expert who is off his head and
speeds around on roller skates while drinking a cocktail or Vamp the “Vampire”
like character who seems to be immune to death (Play MGS 4 to find out more).
They’re great fun with great personalities with different approaches of
defeating them.
The presentation is still pretty good and yes the
character models are bit off these days but for the time this was cutting edge.
The attention to detail in this game is insane especially the tanker prologue
with the rain effects as you see the rain drops hit the deck of the ship. Even
the detail with the environments where you can shoot anything and you’ll get a
reaction like broken bottles etc. The
animations with the characters in terms of dialogue is laughable, but during
cutscenes when they’re performing actions are great because Kojima used motion
capture in this game to simulate things like abseiling out of helicopters.
The only problem I have with this game the controls
feel dated and clunky especially when you try to hug a wall at specific camera
angles because Snake or Raiden will start walking different directions if you
don’t have the analogue stick pointed in the right direction. I can’t really
fault it that is what happens as technology ages.
Metal Gear Solid 2 makes you question what reality
is and defines videos games as art with its philosophical story with twists and
turns which scare and delight you. It’s cheap to pick up on PS2 but I would
recommend getting the HD collection as it comes with three great games and
looks nicer on a modern television.
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