Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001)

something that made playing this game for the first time more fun was that i had recently revisited metal gear solid and more recently played the first half of mgs v along with death stranding one and two. basically, i am thoroughly kojima-pilled, but i think that knowing what his deal is is sort of essential for actually enjoying these games because the first time i tried mgs2 i just got annoyed and bounced off it because i thought the controls were weird.

this time at least, i met it on its own terms, which felt good, but i think it does speak to a weakness in his games (much like souls games) where you sort of have to be on board with what's on offer before you can actually make the most of what's happening. sticking with it ended up being a real delight, down to the extremely cheesy bosses and the absurd story.

a few comments:

• the boss music, "yell dead cell", just a really lovely, ridiculous, jungley breakbeat track that feels extremely of its time.
• kojima loves new york and he especially loves john woo. i thought maybe the woo doves would be entirely tongue in cheek because of the way bird poop ends up playing a mechanical role in the navigation around big shell. imagine my surprise that he saved their appearance for the last possible moment.
• the forced camera angles here and the first person toggle is so weirdly endoaring, it's not great, but it's not terrible and i think it's gotta be intentional, because nearly every stage likes to play around with how much you can see or don't see and it seems to indicate something in play testing where they must have realized that players weren't varying it enough.
• the idea of the offshore rig and the way that it hides intent behind its mundane facade and empowers these quasi-legal entities is really interesting, i'm not at all surprised that he would return to this in peacewalker and in mgs v.
• the gender politics of the game are less rough than they could be but ee's character is just mind boggling.
• at least two of the bosses, i ended up defeating with cqc and not with a weapon, which i have to imagine was intentional???
• the explosive search stuff was goofy and fun.

i think overall a fun game and i think would be more fun at around 80% its size, some of the big shell moments felt like they dragged a bit, but not enough to detract from the game.

I am at the final boss and I am finding it so hard.

Gonna keep trying, I will beat this one.

It’s kinda nutso how relevant the plot of this game is to our modern age of social media and AI. Truly above and beyond MGS1, which was more like a a rote action movie in comparison. I love what is being said in MGS2, it’s almost prophetic.

It’s also fascinating that it had roughly the same plot as Bioshock, in terms of the protagonist, but I don’t think I’ve heard anyone ever say that Bioshock was using MGS2’s plot idea. It’s because MGS2 is so bizarre that no one even realized, I think.

Okay thanks to everyone’s encouragement I pushed past the bombs! I actually thought the fight with the roller blading guy (god Kojima is weird in the best possible way) was really fun, and it’s so well designed how they set you up for success by having you (probably, if you’re a clever enough player) collect all the claymores before the fight so you can use them against him. I am feeling the excitement again!

For whatever reason I'm having a harder time moving through this one than MGS1. I'm at the part where I have to go through the facility defusing bombs. It's not not-fun, but it's also not really that fun I guess? I feel like the first one just kinda drove forward relentlessly with action and intrigue. I feel a lot more, not aimless, but like there's more filler, and for some reason feel like the stealth gameplay is more punishing compared to the first one, which might explain why I feel like it's longer. It's taking me longer to do things because I'm failing a lot more.

I dunno, I think I need to get over this hump and hopefully it will engage with me.

Finished story and reached credits on Easy

Final thoughts:

Overall, the game feels... incohesive? Don't get me wrong, the game still has many highs. It starts out really strong with "Metal Gear Theme" that originated from this game, which is one of the best video game themes I've ever heard of. The first 20% feels excellent like a great and logical follow-up to Metal Gear Solid, especially that I found it funny how Otacon was constantly butchering the Save dialog!

... But then the rest of the game? I'm just not as invested, unfortunately. Raiden feels like a weaker protagonist, and I found Rose's constant relationship talks throughout the game just... annoying. The new offshore Rig setting only feels like a less interesting Shadow Moses Island, especially the bosses, while interesting on their own right, have archetypes that feel so similar to the previous game too (even though this was entirely intentional due to plot reasons).

I also feel this there's just too much convoluted information in this game compared to the previous entry for me to comprehend. Even though long cutscenes are to be expected for a Metal Gear Solid game, I found the ones in this game to be too long and pace-breaking. I won't lie that the themes brought up are interesting and is somehow even more true in the present day, with confirmation bias growing even strong due to internet posts and social media! Also, it's fun to see the origins of "Fission Mailed".

At least the controls are also much less clunky in this game compared to MGS 1, even though it's still rough by modern standards.

While I'm not completely satisfied with how all overall the place this game felt to me at times, it still brought up interesting ideas that didn't make me regret playing this one. In the end, I feel MGS 2 is more of a love or hate title depending on your experience.