When I beat Metal Gear Solid 2, I was left in absolute awe. It felt like I was left speechless, though there was so much I wanted to talk about at the same time. It’s been about a year at this point since I played the first Metal Gear Solid, and I adored it, though of course some of its moments I feel are heavily flawed. My memory is a little rusty on the first game due to the gap of time, but it sort of came flooding back as I played through MGS2. And I still can’t believe just how much of a masterpiece this game really is.
I was a bit scared when first starting up MGS2. Particularly it was because the game went over almost every single mechanic that you can do. At first it felt like I was being overwhelmed by loads of information, however I didn’t have as much of a problem as I thought I would. The game and its level layouts really helped teach me everything I would need to know, to the point where I was able to naturally understand what to do. Though of course it felt wrong seeing the switch buttons be shown on screen.
A small note more than anything but I do wonder why you’re able to select one of the episodes before doing the full main story. For a first time run of the game, you should only be able to do Tanker-Plant, so I just wonder why the game allows you to choose either Tanker or Plant before beating the game for the first time.
Raiden as a character is one of the aspects of MGS2 I don’t want to go into full detail about. I often repeat this, and I wont stop repeating this, but I like to leave my reviews as spoiler-free as possible. Raiden is such an important character to the game’s story that so much of him is intrinsically tied to spoilers, leading me to be careful in what I say. But what I can say is that he’s an amazing character. The more I learned of him, and the further I came to understand him, I grew to love him as a character. I love how complex he is, though of course I can’t really explain here why that is the case, sorry about that. It does make me wonder why people back in like, late 2000s-early 2010s internet hated him. Did they not give Raiden a chance? It feels so clear and obvious to me how amazing Raiden is as a character that it makes me confused how people missed it and hated him instead.
There’s a lot of first person mode use in this game, far more than in MGS1 from what I remember. And I do think it’s better, and a lot more polished. It still has that little bit of an issue with aiming on a controller never feeling fully accurate, but I think that’s more the nature of aiming with a controller in general. It isn’t necessarily only an issue that MGS2 has. Yet again keep in mind, I did play the Switch version, so that could also have some involvement and explain why there may have been some issues. There’s never anything as bad as the first Sniper Wolf fight in MGS1, so thank god for that. There was a little bit of a learning curve for me particularly with first person aiming, since I’m not fully accustomed to it. Though when I was able to fully figure it out, it felt pretty good. One of my favorite guns in games is Sniper Rifles, I love being able to stealthily shoot from a far distance, not being noticed by enemies. In MGS2, because of first person aiming, even the regular SOCOM pistol has that effect that I love with Sniper Rifles, and it’s amazing because of it.
The bosses of MGS2 are also pretty good I’ll say. At worst, they’re just a tad bit annoying, but once you get the flow of those they’re pretty manageable and kind of fun because of it. Yet again it’s another showcase of how well written the character in this series are. The members of Dead Cell are expertly written, even though they get so little screentime compared to the likes of Raiden. They’re so memorable, and very few games are really able to do that.
And I do admit there are parts of the game that frustrated me. Certain sections were a bit difficult, oftentimes it was because there were a lot of insta-death moments. As I said before, the first person mode controls are a little finnicky as someone who usually plays first person games with Mouse and Keyboard. Some bosses can be a little annoying if not in the proper flow. I don’t know if the game intended for my interpretation of it, but it feels like all of these annoyances or frustrations are purposeful. There is meaning behind getting upset, there is meaning by struggling through it, to see it to its end, and it was absolutely worth it.
Much like Raiden himself, I’m not going to talk too much about the story here for the sake of avoiding spoiling anything. For one, I definitely still am unraveling the story in my head as I type this, and it’ll be a while before I fully grasp everything. There’s so many interconnecting webs and ideas that I haven’t fully comprehended, but I so want to. Even so, I absolutely adore this game’s story. It’s so masterfully crafted and every single moment it blew me away. It’s crazy to realize just how correct Kojima was in predicting certain aspects of the internet age and political ideology, though I won’t go too in-depth in what I mean by that here. And all of the story lead to an absolute masterpiece of an ending, one that I think will stick in my head for years to come.
I should’ve played this game such a long time ago. I had no idea that game was as perfect as it was, and it left me awestruck. Metal Gear Solid 2 is an absolute masterpiece by all degrees. Even though there are some parts that I admit are frustrating, the game feels like it’s able to turn that around and make it purposeful, and make that frustrations mean something more. I’ll be honest there’s a lot more I could say about Metal Gear Solid 2. There’s so much of the game’s story I want to discuss so much, but this isn’t the place for that, and I’m not the one that should tell you it. Of course, play the original Metal Gear Solid first, but please, please play Metal Gear Solid 2.
I was a bit scared when first starting up MGS2. Particularly it was because the game went over almost every single mechanic that you can do. At first it felt like I was being overwhelmed by loads of information, however I didn’t have as much of a problem as I thought I would. The game and its level layouts really helped teach me everything I would need to know, to the point where I was able to naturally understand what to do. Though of course it felt wrong seeing the switch buttons be shown on screen.
A small note more than anything but I do wonder why you’re able to select one of the episodes before doing the full main story. For a first time run of the game, you should only be able to do Tanker-Plant, so I just wonder why the game allows you to choose either Tanker or Plant before beating the game for the first time.
Raiden as a character is one of the aspects of MGS2 I don’t want to go into full detail about. I often repeat this, and I wont stop repeating this, but I like to leave my reviews as spoiler-free as possible. Raiden is such an important character to the game’s story that so much of him is intrinsically tied to spoilers, leading me to be careful in what I say. But what I can say is that he’s an amazing character. The more I learned of him, and the further I came to understand him, I grew to love him as a character. I love how complex he is, though of course I can’t really explain here why that is the case, sorry about that. It does make me wonder why people back in like, late 2000s-early 2010s internet hated him. Did they not give Raiden a chance? It feels so clear and obvious to me how amazing Raiden is as a character that it makes me confused how people missed it and hated him instead.
There’s a lot of first person mode use in this game, far more than in MGS1 from what I remember. And I do think it’s better, and a lot more polished. It still has that little bit of an issue with aiming on a controller never feeling fully accurate, but I think that’s more the nature of aiming with a controller in general. It isn’t necessarily only an issue that MGS2 has. Yet again keep in mind, I did play the Switch version, so that could also have some involvement and explain why there may have been some issues. There’s never anything as bad as the first Sniper Wolf fight in MGS1, so thank god for that. There was a little bit of a learning curve for me particularly with first person aiming, since I’m not fully accustomed to it. Though when I was able to fully figure it out, it felt pretty good. One of my favorite guns in games is Sniper Rifles, I love being able to stealthily shoot from a far distance, not being noticed by enemies. In MGS2, because of first person aiming, even the regular SOCOM pistol has that effect that I love with Sniper Rifles, and it’s amazing because of it.
The bosses of MGS2 are also pretty good I’ll say. At worst, they’re just a tad bit annoying, but once you get the flow of those they’re pretty manageable and kind of fun because of it. Yet again it’s another showcase of how well written the character in this series are. The members of Dead Cell are expertly written, even though they get so little screentime compared to the likes of Raiden. They’re so memorable, and very few games are really able to do that.
And I do admit there are parts of the game that frustrated me. Certain sections were a bit difficult, oftentimes it was because there were a lot of insta-death moments. As I said before, the first person mode controls are a little finnicky as someone who usually plays first person games with Mouse and Keyboard. Some bosses can be a little annoying if not in the proper flow. I don’t know if the game intended for my interpretation of it, but it feels like all of these annoyances or frustrations are purposeful. There is meaning behind getting upset, there is meaning by struggling through it, to see it to its end, and it was absolutely worth it.
Much like Raiden himself, I’m not going to talk too much about the story here for the sake of avoiding spoiling anything. For one, I definitely still am unraveling the story in my head as I type this, and it’ll be a while before I fully grasp everything. There’s so many interconnecting webs and ideas that I haven’t fully comprehended, but I so want to. Even so, I absolutely adore this game’s story. It’s so masterfully crafted and every single moment it blew me away. It’s crazy to realize just how correct Kojima was in predicting certain aspects of the internet age and political ideology, though I won’t go too in-depth in what I mean by that here. And all of the story lead to an absolute masterpiece of an ending, one that I think will stick in my head for years to come.
I should’ve played this game such a long time ago. I had no idea that game was as perfect as it was, and it left me awestruck. Metal Gear Solid 2 is an absolute masterpiece by all degrees. Even though there are some parts that I admit are frustrating, the game feels like it’s able to turn that around and make it purposeful, and make that frustrations mean something more. I’ll be honest there’s a lot more I could say about Metal Gear Solid 2. There’s so much of the game’s story I want to discuss so much, but this isn’t the place for that, and I’m not the one that should tell you it. Of course, play the original Metal Gear Solid first, but please, please play Metal Gear Solid 2.