Metal Gear Solid 2, The Game You Have To Play!

Written By Style Rodriguez

Here is the moment we have all been waiting for. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty is here and this game kicks all sorts of videogame butt. Storyline, amazing, graphics the best, control exactly the way you want it. Plus, there's more. Replay value of course, and that is if you're trying to unlock everything.

All right you now know this is a great game and you must have it but from this moment forward this review is a spoiler, so if you don't want to have the game ruined stop reading this review and go to your local videogame retailer and buy this game. If you played the demo that was packed in with Zone Of Elders then you must have been one of the people losing sleep waiting for the release of this title. As aforementioned, the demo is exactly the way the beginning of the game is with the difference of being able to access different areas of the tanker ship, and you don't get the USP until after your fight with Olga Gurlukvich. After the fight with Olga you have to get down to the lower levels of the tanker so you can get pictures of the Metal Gear Ray so the evidence can be brought forward. Of course things don't always go as planned. Revolver Ocelot reveals himself as being a traitor to the Russian army that took over the tanker and steals the Metal Gear Ray for himself it seems. During the fight between the Marines and Revolver, the tanker takes too much damage and begins to sink. Within all the mess it looks as if Snake does not make it out.

Two years have passed and there is a facility called the shell that is off the coast of New York. The shell was built to clean up the mess because of the tanker incident two years ago. As this chapter of the game opens you believe that your playing with Snake again only it is a different mission. Wrong! You're playing with some blonde haired beach boy whose code name is change from Snake to Raiden as his face is revealed to you. Before you make this conclusion the game has you straining for answers because, the shell is taken over by a terrorist group called the Sons Of Liberty, and their leader is Solid Snake. This then doesn't make any sense because then they tell you that Snake actually died in the Tanker incident. All this makes for an interesting plot but the game doesn't go to any of the places you think it would.

First off the game play is great, but once you hear that Snake is a Terrorist and you realize that you're playing with some guy (that's how I felt) you feel disappointed. Then as you hear more of what's going on at the shell, the game makes you believe that you might begin to play as Snake later. Wrong again! What you do learn is that something doesn't seem right. As in the first Metal Gear for the PS One, the Colonel is the person that is feeding you your intelligence. The person that is doing information searches and is the person you call for game saves is Raiden's girlfriend, her name is Rose. Rose after a while (not a long one either) starts getting annoying because she keeps asking Raiden all these personal questions while he is trying to save the President. This is your objective at the moment.

I have to admit this was an amazing move by Hideo Kojima by making the main hero a different character. It works out ok but not really my cup of tea. You next meet your first of the Sons of Liberty named Vamp, some black guy that looks like something out of Buffy The Vampire slayer. But he is my favorite of the group. During the battle that you walk into, a would be Navy Seal comes in and saves you from Vamp. Vamp then turns his attention on this solider and you then save his butt. This is when Vamp takes off and you go into a cut-scene with this solider who calls himself Lieutenant J.T Pliskin, who looks a lot like Snake. Later you find out he is. During the game, before you find out that he is Snake, Pliskin is backing you up on a different area of the Shell. Your main objective in the game is to save the President that is being held hostage, but your objective becomes interrupted by a mad bomber that is called Fatman. This is where I believe the game could have totally been great and I could have been more accepting of Raiden. Fatman has put a bunch of C-4 explosives around the Shell inside and out. You, as Raiden, have to disarm the bombs in Shell one while Pliskin has to disarm the ones in Shell two. Here is why I say I could have been more accepting of Raiden. After I was done disarming the bombs with Raiden I could have then played out the half of Pliskin and so forth with the rest of the game as other objectives came into play. Simply after I was done with Raiden's objective, if I would then be able to play with Pliskin and complete his objective. I feel this would have given the game much more gamplay depth then the game had.

All right now let's talk about the storyline, this one is a little odd. After a while I thought that I was in the middle of an X-files case. Of course a game like Metal Gear needs the typical oppression and the conspiracies, but after a while the conspiracies became the power of the world that is controlled by 12 men that are known as the patriots and after that we then find out that they are aliens. At least that is what the reference leads us to believe. The way the game ends let's you see the opening for the next chapter in the Metal Gear saga. One thing that did seem strange was that this game was not all about the new Metal Gear Ray, but a form of the new gear known as the Assault Gear, which the patriots use to gather information so that they could control the world.

Ok final thought time. I sound a little too negative but really I'm not. I totally enjoyed playing the new Metal Gear, as a matter of fact I enjoyed seeing Raiden turn from the new rookie who could help save the world to the solider that pulled it off. One aspect that Hideo Kojima did very well with was in introducing our new hero and seeing his improvements along the way. Does this mean that there will be a new Metal Gear or that Raiden will be the hero in the next one? We'll have to wait and see. Bottom line Metal Gear Solid is still Game Of The Year in my book and is one that you should enjoy too. Hope I didn't kill the game story too much if you read this review all the way through. Enjoy you gaming experience because I did.