Metal Gear Solid 2

I remember playing the MGS2 demo when my dad got us a PS2, he banged on about how amazingly realistic this game looks. About a decade later, this realism turns out to be a very deliberate choice, the game being ambiguous about which parts of the plot are 'real' and which aren't. I purposely kept myself a little in the dark about the game but already knew that Raiden was the main character and Snake was only playable in a small portion of it. Oh, by the way, I spoil pretty much the entire game here.

It's almost impossible to talk about Metal Gear Solid 2 without mentioning the first one - this isn't so much a sequel as it is a direct response to the predecessor. I wanna start with this because after more than a decade I still think it's something worth discussing, just what is this game about exactly? The first MGS was an anti-war stealth action game with likeable characters and truly heartfelt moments surrounded by a load of camp. The game was silly and at times outright ridiculous (psycho mantis, grey Fox, Metal Gear Ray howling) but was also punctuated by real drama. Every boss fight would culminate in a truly heartfelt speech from your adversary and weirdly, in the end, all of them except for Liquid wished Snake well. I'd like to propose that after his learning about the NES Metal Gear games, it was Kojima's response to the knock offs of his previous games and thus the twin Snakes, a Solid one made by Kojima and a Liquid one, a knock off. At the end you learn that Solid has the recessive genes whereas Liquid got all the dominant ones. Kojima's Metal Gear games came out on the MSX and the American versions came out on the much stronger and more popular NES; Solid is genetically a lesser man (the MSX) but still proves to be better and stronger than Liquid (the NES). Note that Liquid doesn't die the first two times you kill him, it's this third game that's sure to stop knock offs. Now, MGS was incredibly well received and Solid Snake was universally loved by nerds worldwide. This prompted Kojima to do something petulant, risky and ultimately hilarious. MGS2 starts off with Snake, as you'd expect it but a couple hours in, Snake dies in an explosion. Enter: "Snake." It's actually written in speech marks and said with a sense of distant irony, although everything the colonel says in this game has a hint of distant irony (maybe I've just played the game for too long and should find something better to do with my time). This "Snake" is soon renamed as Raiden and revealed to be nothing like the old Solid Snake. Raiden's inadequacy begins at Snake already being a step ahead of him in this mission through him being unable to actually defeat any bosses and ends with Raiden barely holding it together mentally towards the end. Raiden also happens to be a massive fan of Snake's, much like you, nerd (ooh, double-meanings!). Much of the game unfolds in the same way Metal Gear 2 and Metal Gear Solid did: infiltration, codec calls, intrigue, codec calls, Cyborg Ninja, codec calls, boss fights, codec calls, love interest dies, codec calls. Eventually Raiden meets his surrogate battlefield dad in Solidus Snake who, as ocelot remarks, is a spitting image of Big Boss and they have themselves a fight to the death. The game itself makes it known that this entire scenario was created to closely resemble MGS1 and help Raiden become Snake. This is Kojima basically telling the nerds playing MGS2 that they're not Snake. Snake's always a step ahead of Raiden, Raiden's enemies are never truly beaten apart from Fatman, Raiden's entire support team is an AI based on real people and apparently even his girlfriend never existed. In fact, the colonel several times remarks that Snake isn't a part of this simulation which would suggest that the entire game is one long VR mission. So when Rose says that she's been to Raiden's room, she may have meant his files. There, she found nothing – Raiden has no identity whatsoever, he's entirely a clean slate, the random player element. Raiden is referred to as Jack the Ripper and is revealed to have been a child soldier. This too feeds the metanarrative since the player is likely to have played games from a young age and what are skilled gamers if not child soldiers? The game plays you as much as you play it and Kojima wants you to know it. At this stage, I feel like Snake serves as Kojima surrogate and Raiden represents the player. Raiden is conditioned to be a copy of Snake, the player plays out the character Kojima wrote for them. Only towards the very end of the game, does Raiden gain his own identity along with a ninja sword, something he could potentially best Snake at. I've looked this up and the game was hugely hated for this "post-modern mettababble" but any game that at 1am tells me I've been playing it too much gets kudos from me.

This second entry feels a lot more open than the original MGS. Not so much in level design, which is still rigid and linear, but in gameplay. There's a lot more the player can do in this iteration, we're given a tranquiliser gun, for example. This offers a non-lethal way of dealing with enemies which is a completely new angle. In fact, you could have a playthrough with a grand total of 2 casualties: Solidus Snake and Fatman (notwithstanding NPC on NPC crimes [NPCide?]). Another clever mechanic is the holding up – you can point your gun at a non-boss enemy, telling them to freeze and interrogate or mug them. Some soldiers drop dog tags when mugged and collecting enough grants you the stealth suit. Now, this is more interesting than just a mere collectible and unlockable. In the first Metal Gear Solid you unlock the stealth suit by finishing the game and the infinity bandana by finishing the game and also saving Meryl through button mashing. Consider that at the end of the game, Jack/Raiden/Nitwit throws his dog tags away, the ones with whatever name you've given him (Nitwit, obviously). This symbolises him no longer being controlled by the player who in turn is no longer controlled by Kojima through the linear design of the game. If the dog tags symbolise being under another's control, then by stealing them you are freeing the soldiers. Although the game is not at all fussed whether you kill them afterwards. First person aiming isn't shit, for a change. You can actually see down your gun's sights and aim quite accurately and headshots aren't too difficult. There's a whole bunch of nice little mechanics again (see, hand-dryer) and most of them are incredibly fun to discover. There are seagulls you can use for target practice, which you might feel inclined to do after slipping in their droppings. Raiden is able to walk across them but running lands him on his arse every single time. You can hang off ledges to hide but only for a limited time, subject to your grip gauge. This grip gauge can be improved by doing pull-ups, up to 3 levels. You can now hide in lockers and see out of them slightly, a mechanic which has survived in games like Alien: Isolation today. Some lockers even have quasi-erotic posters for Snake/Raiden's enjoyment. These lockers can also be used to store corpses of enemy soldiers or their unconscious bodies and many of them hold ammo and other items. You get a coolant to stop fires and you get my personal favourite – the directional microphone. This little badboy lets you snoop on those behind walls, like the voyeur Raiden totally is. You can overhear some amusing conversations and other... erm... sound effects. You're given a toolbox and a playground and this probably 10-hour game suddenly becomes 20 or 30 hours long. I wouldn't argue that MGS2 is a sandbox game, but I'd definitely argue that it's a playground game. Through all of its linearity, it lets you do things your way, mostly. You're forced into sniping again but this time you don't have to face off another sniper, instead you have to protect a tortoise. I jest, but E.E. makes for one of the most annoying NPCs I've encountered in a loooooooooong time. I would like to dedicate the following paragraph to why I hate her.

E.E. Gets introduced early on as Otacon's long lost ADOPTIVE sister and a brilliant scientist of some sort. She also happens to be the one who tips Otacon off about Metal Gear, suggesting she's involved in its construction, which she is, as is her terrible fate. Later, Raiden finally runs into her, cut off by water which she's terrified of because her dad drowned and Otacon ran away after that. It turns out E.E. had the hots for Otacon, but so did her mum. Now, this is a personal thing but, when you finally meet Emma, she looks A LOT like Otacon. I have two issues with that: firstly, she's meant to be his adoptive not genetic sister and, secondly, people who look alike being together is gross even without it being some sort of faux-semi-incest-type affair. Raiden finds her cute, though, for some goddamn inexplicable reason. So once you've met her, you have to swim with her on your back and make sure she doesn't drown, the little freeloader. As if that wasn't enough, she can't even walk on her own because reasons. Literally, the reason given if I remember correctly is that she's been injected with something that's stopping her legs from working. She hates bugs so you have to get rid of any bugs you might encounter on the way (with the coolant, mind you, not the shotgun). You have to clear a room of guards, then backtrack to drag her across it only for another guard to come out. Then comes the shit-stained biscuit. The girl that will obviously die horribly has to be protected while she slowly crosses a bridge filled with mine and enemies whom you've got to snipe. Nevermind that she can conveniently walk on her own again, she might as well not. The pace she moves at is comparable to that of a lazy slug. Her being annoying right near the end of the game is fine, the game deliberately sets out to annoy you, the problem here is that this entire section is just plain boring and drags on for too long. I'm sure Kojima wanted this section to highlight Emma's determination and perseverance but it's just so awfully sleep-inspiring. She then goes on to die anyway but not without getting all creepy about Otacon. And this is the first MGS trope I'm calling – ANYONE ROMANTICALLY INTERESTED IN OTACON WILL DIE. I'm sure Otacon represents a part of Kojima, maybe his personal face, and expresses his creator's feelings in this way but for Fox sake, Hideo.

The first review was about over-exposition and lack of substance, this second one is somewhat about that first one but it's also about the bizarre nature of reviews and how they colour our perceptions a certain way. Except it's not, but I hope you see what I'm getting at. The game sends a message, a muffled, distorted, somewhat nonsensical message. The fourth wall is made entirely of glass and even that glass is shattered at the end. Raiden runs around naked, he is reborn like Adam before him, he now knows shame so he covers his bollocks up until Snake comes to the rescue again and lets Raiden be himself – a useless side-kick. A key thing to look at here is subverting expectations. Snake says at the end that his legacy will be more than his genes, he wants to pass on ideas so that future generations can do better, so in a sense Kojima doesn't want MGS to be his legacy, he instead wants to inspire a new generation of game-makers to create something better as a response. MGS2 is like the second Death Star, purposely imperfect, seemingly unfinished. There are whole sections of the plant we can never visit, making the game world unfinished. The game glitches out at the end and gives the player a bunch of bizarre immersion-shattering messages, it's an unfinished narrative. The player is often reminded that they're playing a video game made by Hideo Kojima, a Hideo Game®. The game literally asked me if I have nothing better to do with my time and I'm not mad at that because I literally don't. So here's a thing I'd like to propose as an afterthought: maybe we take video games a little too seriously.

Metal Gear Solid 2 is: Metal Gear Solid on mushrooms/10

Patryk Krzywon