It's hard to talk about Metal Gear Solid 2 without treading ground video essayists on YouTube haven't already worn to the bedrock. By now every point of discussion has been mined, you know what the game is about and you've already made up your mind whether you want to play it or not. For some it's the black sheep of the Solid series, for others it's a high point that was eerily predictive of the current Internet era.
I suppose I fall into the later camp. Gameplay just feels great, there's some really fun parts of the Big Shell to sneak through, and screen-to-screen stealth-puzzle driven progression of the game feels just as intelligently designed as the original Metal Gear Solid. Granted, I see a lot of validity to the complaint that the Big Shell's nearly identical struts wears a bit thin, and it is at times a little disorienting when everything looks the same and you're told to go to Strut A or C or F or whatever. It's a definite weakness over the more defined landmarks of Shadow Moses, and the excellent Tanker chapter that opens MGS2 only highlights the Big Shell's shortcomings even more.
The incredible amount of detail keeps me invested, though. Shooting buckets of ice cause cubes to fly out, which you can then individually knock around or just watch melt in real time. Getting out of the rain in the Tanker chapter causes condensation to build up on the screen and spending too long in it will give Snake a cold. Urine splatters on Raiden's head with physics that beautiful recreate life. Now days if a glass doesn't shatter when you shoot it in a game people will bitch to death on Twitter about how lazy and unfit for continued existence the developers are. Back in 2001 though, Metal Gear Solid 2 showed how truly drastic the leap was between fifth and sixth gen hardware. Slipping on bird shit? That's only possible with the power of Emotion Engine, baby!
But of course what dominates most of the discussion around Metal Gear Solid 2 is its story, which deals heavily in themes of information control, particularly in the digital age. For much of the game it simply comes across as if Kojima just read 1984. It's a shallow, unchallenging take on censorship and culture control, that is until the very end of the game when Kojima begins to lay out exactly how this will all manifest in the digital age, where junk data reigns supreme. It's some pretty interesting stuff and also allows Kojima to do even more interesting things with how you play MGS2's climactic act, but it also results in some horrible pacing issues. Structurally speaking, MGS2's final two hours are hampered by excessively long codec calls interspersed between what is otherwise the story's more tense moments. Like, Solidus is right here and he brought two samurai swords so we can stab each other to death on top of the federal reserve building or whatever but hold up, AI Campbell needs to yack at me for 20 minutes.
Still, it is important to note that in 2001 a little over 50% of American households had an internet connection. The Internet was a far cry from its current incarnation, where much of our lives are tangled up in the world wide web. There was no Twitter, no YouTube, no Facebook to revolutionize the way we keep in touch with one another, let alone the way information is disseminated to the masses. And yet with each passing year MGS2 becomes more prescient. Maybe it's a time and place thing. I was pretty young when this came out and much of what Kojima was laying out in the last act went over my stupid little head, but it stuck with me, and I got to see the Internet shape itself into that very monster in real time. I wonder if someone born after the Web 2.0 explosion would really get as much out of it as I did.
And yeah, sure, Raiden is a real wet fart of a character. I mean the guy doesn't even have any posters in his room, what kind of sick freak doesn't have at least one poster? And Rosemary? Yeah, she's a cardboard cutout of a character, the sort of person who is so boring they would fall in love with the first guy to tell her she's wrong about what building was in King Kong. There's plenty of valid criticisms about the story! But I like it. I like getting to see Snake through the perspective of a rookie. I like the weirdo conspiracy to essentially mold Raiden into Snake's double. I don't even mind Raiden's lack of agency given how that factors into the overall narrative and central themes.
Really, I think I just like Metal Gear Solid 2.
I suppose I fall into the later camp. Gameplay just feels great, there's some really fun parts of the Big Shell to sneak through, and screen-to-screen stealth-puzzle driven progression of the game feels just as intelligently designed as the original Metal Gear Solid. Granted, I see a lot of validity to the complaint that the Big Shell's nearly identical struts wears a bit thin, and it is at times a little disorienting when everything looks the same and you're told to go to Strut A or C or F or whatever. It's a definite weakness over the more defined landmarks of Shadow Moses, and the excellent Tanker chapter that opens MGS2 only highlights the Big Shell's shortcomings even more.
The incredible amount of detail keeps me invested, though. Shooting buckets of ice cause cubes to fly out, which you can then individually knock around or just watch melt in real time. Getting out of the rain in the Tanker chapter causes condensation to build up on the screen and spending too long in it will give Snake a cold. Urine splatters on Raiden's head with physics that beautiful recreate life. Now days if a glass doesn't shatter when you shoot it in a game people will bitch to death on Twitter about how lazy and unfit for continued existence the developers are. Back in 2001 though, Metal Gear Solid 2 showed how truly drastic the leap was between fifth and sixth gen hardware. Slipping on bird shit? That's only possible with the power of Emotion Engine, baby!
But of course what dominates most of the discussion around Metal Gear Solid 2 is its story, which deals heavily in themes of information control, particularly in the digital age. For much of the game it simply comes across as if Kojima just read 1984. It's a shallow, unchallenging take on censorship and culture control, that is until the very end of the game when Kojima begins to lay out exactly how this will all manifest in the digital age, where junk data reigns supreme. It's some pretty interesting stuff and also allows Kojima to do even more interesting things with how you play MGS2's climactic act, but it also results in some horrible pacing issues. Structurally speaking, MGS2's final two hours are hampered by excessively long codec calls interspersed between what is otherwise the story's more tense moments. Like, Solidus is right here and he brought two samurai swords so we can stab each other to death on top of the federal reserve building or whatever but hold up, AI Campbell needs to yack at me for 20 minutes.
Still, it is important to note that in 2001 a little over 50% of American households had an internet connection. The Internet was a far cry from its current incarnation, where much of our lives are tangled up in the world wide web. There was no Twitter, no YouTube, no Facebook to revolutionize the way we keep in touch with one another, let alone the way information is disseminated to the masses. And yet with each passing year MGS2 becomes more prescient. Maybe it's a time and place thing. I was pretty young when this came out and much of what Kojima was laying out in the last act went over my stupid little head, but it stuck with me, and I got to see the Internet shape itself into that very monster in real time. I wonder if someone born after the Web 2.0 explosion would really get as much out of it as I did.
And yeah, sure, Raiden is a real wet fart of a character. I mean the guy doesn't even have any posters in his room, what kind of sick freak doesn't have at least one poster? And Rosemary? Yeah, she's a cardboard cutout of a character, the sort of person who is so boring they would fall in love with the first guy to tell her she's wrong about what building was in King Kong. There's plenty of valid criticisms about the story! But I like it. I like getting to see Snake through the perspective of a rookie. I like the weirdo conspiracy to essentially mold Raiden into Snake's double. I don't even mind Raiden's lack of agency given how that factors into the overall narrative and central themes.
Really, I think I just like Metal Gear Solid 2.