(This is the 15th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (released on July 20, 1990 in Japan only - available in NA/EU through MGS3: Subsistence for PS2) is the first Metal Gear game I have actually played and beaten, even though I've played a bit of MGS1, 3 and dozens of hours of MGS 5. I've abandoned those for various reasons over the years, mostly due to being distracted by other games and/or finding them too difficult (tried to play without guides), but I do plan on going through the entire series over the next few years.
For today, I am happy to say that the second MSX Metal Gear game made by Hideo Kojima has been beaten. It took me roughly 7 hours and I did use a guide whenever I didn't know what to do, and in my opinion, you will have a hard time beating this game without one. The gameplay mechanics themselves will not be a problem, but there are multiple instances where (1) you need an item for a boss that is very easy to miss and (2) you need to backtrack to an area and it can be hard to make out where you need to go. During those backtracking parts, often you will probably figure it out if you just check every available door but I decided to take a look at the guide whenever it took me about 10 minutes of looking around without being able to figure out my next move.
Sometimes the answer to a puzzle can be pretty convoluted as well. In one part of the game, an area is locked off by lasers. A guard is at that spot as well. There is a little shack next to it, and later on you find a keycard that allows you to enter. A few children in there tell you that "the lasers are turned off at night": There is no traditional day & night system in this game, so you can't just wait for it to be night. No, instead you have to find an egg from a lab elsewhere, wait for it to hatch, which places an owl in your inventory, and then equip it, which a few seconds later alerts the guard that it "is night", so he turns off the lasers. You can get it eventually thanks to to the tips by the children, but sometimes it gets more complicated with fewer tips, at which point checking a guide is almost a must.
If you don't mind using guides a few times here and there, great, because the game is among the better ones you will get to play in 1990 and offers a fun way to spend a few afternoons. It improved on basically everything compared to the first Metal Gear game by Kojima. Plus, as I understand it, it's canon to the Metal Gear universe and much of what MG2 does is apparently repeated in some way or another in MGS1 and 2, both in gameplay and story.
More on the game in detail below.
STORYTELLING
The game starts with a lengthy cut scene that briefly summarizes the plot of the first game and the setting for this one. After conflict between large nations like Russia, the USA and China started to settle down, a new nuclear threat emerged in 1999, the year this game is set in (4 years after the previous one). The country is called "Zanzibar Land", which arms itself with nuclear weapons and stars invading nearby countries.
In addition to this, there is an ongoing oil crisis (the game's premise and its story themes are evidently still relevant today). A Czech biologist named Kio Marv invents "Oilix" a microbe that synthesizes petroleum, and Zanzibar Land kidnap him to gain military superiority through a combination of nuclear weapons and Oilix.
Solid Snake receives his mission by Foxhound, a special forces squad, to sneak into Zanzibar Land and rescue Kio Marv. Of course, there is a nuclear weapon called "Metal Gear" to worry about as well, as Zanzibarland are mass-producing Metal Gear units.
The beauty of this story is manifold, though you won't necessarily fall in love with the in-game plot itself. It works well, it includes plot twists and plenty of both sad and thoughtful moments. Considering that this is a video game from 1990 however, it won't blow your socks off at this day and age. What I really appreciated, however, was the attention to detail.
If you look at the manual of this game, it shows you a biography of each relevant character (did you know Snake speaks 6 languages?). It lists all basic information about Zanzibar Land (population: 40,000), it even explains what kind of training Foxhound aspirants need to go through, what gear they wear during missions and what Foxhound itself even is. The game then mentions some of this information during radio conversations, some optional, some mandatory.
The radio/codec in general is a great feature because it has a ton of immersive uses that are both helpful and engaging. Each character has their own frequency and you can ring them to partake in optional conversations, which don't always trigger depending on what situation Snake finds himself in. But when they do, you can ring Holly to learn more about Zanzibar Land and your environment. You can ring Roy Campbell, your commander, to get more information about your mission and some helpful tips. You can call Kazuhira Miller, who often does meta commentary on "not drinking too much soda when playing" or "not playing within 30 minutes of eating" (not very immersive, but humorous/actually interesting). You can also call Johan Jacobsen to get some tips whenever animals are involved. This system gets fleshed out in future entries but this game is a big step in the right direction in that regard.
Throughout the game, you will meet characters either to rescue them or to help them (or for them to help you) and each time you do, there is an engaging conversation that you can follow along. One such conversation that was pretty memorable happened between Snake and Gustava. While waiting, both literally sat down and just talked about Gustava's past, why she became involved with the STB and about the only man she ever fell in love with. I love this sort of stuff and it helps make the bigger moments in the game's story hit that much more.
Most impressive about the story in this game has got to be its meta commentary on war. It is barebones compared to what I know future games delve into, but there is still plenty of thoughtful stuff here about how soldiers are pawns of leaders who don't care about them, about how some children who are saved from battlefields are simply trained to be put back into the battlefield and about how some soldiers don't have a life worth living outside of the battlefield, so they may as well die on it. It gives the "evil" antagonists a "motivation" for their actions unlike what you will see in almost any other game, where the simple goal is to reign over the world, whereas here, it goes way beyond that.
I'm probably making the story out to be way more than it actually is, but I truly do find the attention to detail and the themes to be impressive features of this game and something that obviously stuck around big time in future iterations.
GAMEPLAY
Where to start? You play Solid Snake, a special ops soldier, and have to sneak into Zanzibar Land to find Dr. Kio Marv. When you start the game, your are equipped with your radio to contact a few individuals who will help you. You immediately get access to a handgun, some rations (healing items) and you obviously have your next-level sneaking abilities.
The game has a LIFE bar that increases each time you defeat a boss. Boss fights sometimes occur within minutes of each other, sometimes you don't fight one for over an hour. There are close to 10 in total and are pretty varied. You fight a chopper, a Running Man that just keeps running away whilst the room fills up with toxic gas, a Ninja that throws stars and teleports and of course a Metal Gear. They are pretty simple once you know what to do and are equipped for them. Often, you can simply tank their damage and just eat Rations while you fire back until they die.
To aid you with your mission, there is a RADAR for the first time in the series. It is a 3x3 screen that shows each adjacent screen and marks enemies and yourself as dots. It is pretty primitive, in that it doesn't actually show which direction the enemies are facing, so it often happened at first that I walked into a screen and immediately alerted the guards because they were staring into my direction. Later on I figured out to let the enemies walk the other direction first, at which point I obviously knew which way they were facing.
Guards in this game have a bigger field of view compared to the previous game (45°) and sometimes stand still and turn there gaze to the left or right. In addition, there are multiple different floors in this game, some that squeak when you walk over them, which alerts the guards and makes them look around. For moments like these, you can crawl, which doesn't make any noise. Plus, you can hide under stuff, either to move past enemies yourself or hide until they move past you.
There are some sections where a room is dark (you get Night Vision goggles), where a room fills with Toxic Gas (Gas Mask) or mines are on the floor (crawl over them to pick them up and/or use a Mine Detector). The situations you find yourself in are plentiful and there is a safe and easy solution to everything. The tough part is finding them sometimes.
The big gameplay loop you have here is in finding Key Cards, which help you unlock areas that previously were inaccessible. There are 9 Key Cards and after you find 3, you can find a Key Card that combines them all (Red Card, Blue Card, Green Card). There are plenty of areas with multiple doors which all require a different key card to unlock, which is kind of annoying. You open a door with Key Card 4, then have to use Key Card 2 for the next one and Key Card 6 for the other one.
Overall, the depth in gameplay is definitely above anything other than some RPGs of the time probably, and it's a lot of fun, even today.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
No voice acting. I liked the sound design, while I found the soundtrack to range from OK to very good. The quality of the soundtrack really shined whenever the game entered action or story heavy scenes, while some of the overworld themes were catchy as well. I really enjoyed the intro theme too.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
Metal Gear 2 certainly looks good for a 1990 game. It is much improved compared to Metal Gear in both use of colors and variety of locations. There is also more detail within locations, like the sewers, the "forest" area (not sure what the official name was), the swamps and then smaller locations like an infirmary, dining rooms etc.
ATMOSPHERE
I found this game to have fitting atmosphere throughout, but the game technically was obviously pretty limited in what it could do. It didn't help the setting that you spend like an hour on elevators it felt like, and I also found some things off putting and too game-y, like the fact that kids were just running around in random rooms waiting to give you tips on how to progress.
CONTENT
For a playthrough without the use of a guide, you are looking at a game that is about 10-15 hours long. If you use a guide here and there, you're looking at 6-8 hours, which for games of this time that are not RPGs or endless games is in my opinion the perfect length. Games at this time simply weren't feature rich or technically able enough to provide a lot of content that is limited in repetition.
I don't think I would necessarily have been to keen on spending ~$50 per game back in the day for this length, but the shorter length does a lot of good to the enjoyment of the game if we disregard that initial price tag.
There is a lot of fun stealth gameplay here that offers enough variety in how to approach things thanks to a multitude of stealth mechanics and weaponry. There is enough here that even a second playthrough may be worth it to you to approach some scenarios slightly differently. It's not like you can take different routes to get to the same destination - the game is pretty linear in that regard - but the moment to moment action can definitely easily be switched up a little bit.
There is some backtracking and as mentioned many times, you will likely need to use a guide here and there unless you're very patient, but Metal Gear 2 offers the best mix of quality and quantity of all 15 games I have played of 1990 up to this point.
Once you beat the game, there is a "boss rush" mode that unlocks as an additional mode.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
There are a few main areas (two different buildings, forest/swamp area, desert) and the game asks you to backtrack a lot, but each time you do, you are able to enter new areas that are unlocked by acquiring a key card. Buildings have multiple doors and floors that require different key cards (there are 9) and each time you enter a new area within an area, there is enough of a different stylistically that it doesn't really feel repetitive. Often there are new stealth challenges added as well, but it could have definitely been much more difficult in that regard.
You can obviously alert guards, but it isn't really that punishing, especially on Easy difficulty. You can simply go to the next screen and hide underneath something and the guards will disappear without being on "semi-alert" status or something like that like they do in future games.
The structure of this game is pretty much the same throughout, and it's a fun structure, so I don't have too much to say about that. You get your mission to go to Area X, on your way you find key items hidden in specific rooms, you sometimes gotta piece together which item you need to use at which point, and then you fight a boss to progress further. It all works well.
One thing I didn't like was how key items were sometimes hidden somewhere and totally missable. Some bosses for example can only be hurt with one specific weapon, like the chopper early on, so I didn't particularly enjoy showing up to that one unable to do any damage. Often, once you do find the item, defeating them is rather simple.
So yeah, overall pretty good stuff with that small complaint.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
Absolutely one of the more innovative games I've seen so far and it introduced many mechanics that were still in use when MGS1 released 8 years later. This game had everything you would want from a sequel. Bigger field of view for enemies makes stealth a bit more difficult, but the game offers a lot more "toys" for the player in terms of equipment, plus you can sneak and hide underneath stuff, and there is a lot more detail in the game's story telling.
REPLAYABILITY
There are two areas that will make this game slightly more replayable. There is a lot of equipment that I didn't use in my first playthrough. First, because I played it on easy (only available through MGS 3: Subsistence) and second, because there really are so many items and not all are necessary to be successful. There is a blanket for example that you can hide under, which I didn't use. Mice and cold medicine are other items that come to mind as one's I didn't require, to a point where I don't even know what cold medicine might be usable for. There are lots of other items like that which were in my inventory until the game was beaten.
The second area that allows for a little replayability are the radio conversations. There are dozens of optional conversations that you can try to find and I'm sure I didn't get to listen to all of them. It's nothing compared to what future games will offer, but considering the issue of memory limitations was pretty big at the time, it's impressive to see this much room put aside for optional conversations that offer (1) additional lore about the world and its inhabitants, (2) meta commentary and (3) humorous interactions.
Apart from this, you will experience everything in a singular playthrough.
PLAYABILITY
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL
So far, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake was definitely the best game I have played that released in 1990. Impressive amount of features with limited filler to pad play time, by far the most story telling and character development, limited frustration apart from not knowing where to go or what to do a few times and definitely a step in the right direction for video games. I think it's unlikely that I will manage to hold off from playing MGS1 all the way until I reach 1998, but I'll try, just to really build up that anticipation.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
Nothing here since it didn't release outside of Japan until 2005.
What the heck is a child doing here?!
Welp, the game got frozen at this point on my way back through the Swamp. Too bad cuz I like to finish games like Metal Gear and other action-adventures, but probly a good thing cuz the game was feeling quite tedious for me. I'm sure most people feel that way more about the first one, with its even more rudimentary mechanics, but I tend to love on "the first" of things. This just felt like a rehashed first Metal Gear, with a few great tunes and the usual great Metal Gear mechanics, but also some tedious treks that made restarting from my last save seem like not a good idea. (I would've had to go through the swamp twice yet again, all with the possibility of freezing again...)
