1-Mar-2002 It's here. Pull a comfy chair right up to the biggest TV in the house
Snake's dead! No, Snake's alive! Wait, Snake's the enemy. But I'm Snake? Oh, now I'm somebody else. Now I'm the enemy and Snake's the hero. Snake's on my side. Snake's on their side. Who's who? Help me! Arrgghh!
Did you really expect the most anticipated videogame of the millennium to have a straightforward plot? Actually, everything about this game is pretty unconventional. You could argue against this qualifying as a videogame at all: MGS2 is what happens when videogames and movies meet, and you spend almost as much time watching as you do playing. The cutscenes here show off PS2's much underestimated graphical grunt, imagining up a twist-laden espionage thriller in which you are the star. If you want to hate it because the experience is delivered 100% in the gameplay, fine. The review ends here for you – just go and buy Mario Advance 2.
stealthy equals healthy By now you should know what Metal Gear games are about. You're a lone agent, going up against enemy forces that outnumber you dramatically. A gung-ho attitude will earn you a quick death, and the only way to progress is to avoid drawing attention to yourself. The venue for your sneakage is a giant offshore oil decontamination facility called Big Shell. You play not as Solid Snake, but an equally able operative called Raiden. Head for our 'What Happened To Snake?' boxout if this is a big newsflash to you.
No other game gives you such a genuine sense of dread that you're going to be discovered. You're hiding inside a locker as a guard team investigates the bloody mess you left in the corridor. A heartbeat throbs through the pad, quickening as the door slides open and an armed guard enters. He's trying the lockers. He's just closed the neighbouring locker and is reaching for yours when a command comes over the radio, "Return to your positions". A lucky escape.
You've got to be careful not to get caught. Hide every dead body, don't leave footprints, and make sure you're shadow's not giving you away as you stand with your back pressed to the wall in a doorway ready to spin out and strike. Of course, practically every weapon makes a noise too, so you'll be using the silenced tranquilliser gun a lot. Aim in a cool first-person mode, and place the red IR bead on a distant soldier's head. Squeeze the trigger, and it's nighty night Mr Guard. An enemy removed the stealthy way.
Well, not quite. Every soldier reports back to his commanding officers by radio, and doped soldiers are the most talkative fellas in the army. Either find the radio on his body and destroy it, or get the hell out of there before they send in an assault team to investigate. The same level of detail applies to interactions with the environments. Shoot magazines on a rack and they tear, upturned sugar pots spill cubes everywhere, fire extinguishers spray foam, leaves fall off plants. And that's just in one room.
It almost goes without saying that this is the finest looking PS2 game yet. The cutscenes look amazing, and they're all drawn in PS2 graphics. You can zoom in and out of them if it helps you believe it. Sonically it's impressive too. The score in the movie sections belts out in Dolby Digital. When we said Metal Gear 2 was a mixture of movie and game, we meant the overall production as well as the plot.
revealing raiden No game has told a story as twisty and involving as this one. The Final Fantasy games may take you on an emotional rollercoaster ride, but it hurts your brain to keep up with the twists MGS2 throws up in every Codec message and widescreen movie section. From one minute to the next you've got different ideas about who the enemy is, and what you're really doing there.
This works because you haven't got a clue who Raiden really is. His identity is revealed as you play. It couldn't be nearly as involving with Snake in the lead role, because you already know what he's all about. It's also a buzz to watch Snake drop in and out of the story as an observer, and the excitement levels soar when he's around. You need to sit through the game at least twice to have a full handle on the plot, and it's going to prove incomprehensible to younger players. It can be a pain in the arse reading through the longer Codec messages to see what's happening next, and the desire to get back to the amazing gameplay will make you impatient even during the best movie sequences. It's unavoidable with a game this close to being a movie, so you've got to savour it. And there's a ton of brilliant gameplay wrapped up in these cinema-rivalling visuals.
The central premise of playing hide and seek with intelligent guards is more exciting than in the PSone game. Being able to aim shots from a first-person view sucks you even deeper into the action, to the point where the musical burst that signals you've been spotted has you jumping out of your skin. Of course, there's more to the game than sneaking. Otherwise you wouldn't need the Nikita missile launcher, the AKS-74u machine gun, the rocket launcher or the sniper rifle. Nope, all you'd need would be a nice quiet pair of shoes. But often you face situations you can't tiptoe around, and have to meet head-on with heavy artillery. Every boss battle requires a different strategy and you'll be glad of a 14-weapon armoury when confronted by a Harrier Jump Jet or a squad of three Metal Gear robots.
snake 'n' vac The boss battles aren't as ingenious as the Psycho Mantis encounter of the last game, but you'll have a lot of fun trying to work out the ways to kill a mad bomber in an explosion-proof jacket, and a lady with a hand cannon who apparently can't be hit by bullets. Elsewhere, you have to provide sniper cover fire as a delicate female scuttles across a thin bridge besieged by flying sentry droids. Luckily you can call on Solid Snake's help for that part. Just because Snake's not the main character, doesn't mean he's not around. In fact, some of the biggest buzzes in playing come when one of gaming's most legendary characters drops by to give you a hand. There are also comeback performances from Otacon, Gray Fox and Revolver Ocelot to please fans of Metal Gear Solid.
The biggest gripe with the original game was its length. Skilled players could get through in eight hours or so, and a similar situation applies here. First time through, you're looking at a 12-15 hour stretch on Normal difficulty. You'll play again to see all the cool bits and make sure you've grasped every nuance of the plot. But it's the Dog Tag game that will have you playing more. Every guard in the game has a set of tags with his name on, and you unlock special secrets the more you get. With a different set of tags for each level and guards hunting in packs, getting the tags is a completely different gameplay experience – more like a conventional videogame, you could say.
But MGS2 is no conventional videogame. It looks amazing, and is as engaging and exciting as any game yet on PS2. We'll confess to being a little disappointed at the ending, and the plot could be more straightforward, but it's still an essential play.
Dean Scott
// Overview
Verdict
The most cinematic game ever, and thrilling to play. God gave you eyes and fingers for this.
Look at the screens on these pages. Judging by that hair, it looks like Solid Snake's taken his love of '80s rock bands just a bit too far. Except that's not Solid Snake. After you complete the Tanker episode that featured in the MGS2 demo bundled with Zone of the Enders, the game proper begins with a new star. Of course, he goes out with a bang...
Finish off the lovely Olga, and get down to the new bits
The bowels of the ship are heaving with soldiers, so be careful
Take shots of the new Metal Gear and send them to Otacon
// Tranq Darts And Porn Mags
As you've probably gathered by now, Metal Gear Solid 2 is essentially all about sneaking around to the best of your stealthy ability. The smaller the number of times you get yourself spotted, the less you get streams of life-taking hot lead aimed at your head and body. And if you find you really can't time you runs to swerve past those guards, you're just going to have to take them out of the equation in some other way, aren't you...
Have a look where the guard walks. Pay close attention, then spin out when his back's turned
Carefully sneak up behind him and line up that tranquilliser gun on the guard's head
One shot later, and the guard's in dreamland. Hide the body and run
No way past in this corridor, so we've dropped a girlie mag in his path
He'll sit there till he has to move
Just a simple matter of sliding along the way and past our porn-hungry friend
// Europe's Hot Deal
We'd hoped that the extra time spent on Europe's MGS2 might mean new missions. We do get stuff not included in the Japanese and US releases, but it's not an extension of the main story. As well as an Extreme difficulty setting, there's a casting theatre option and a mode that lets you fight all the bosses consecutively with either Snake or Raiden. Cool!
You can mess around with character models in the PAL game
Kojima spills the beans in an interview on the bonus DVD
More guards, and getting seen once means game over. That's Extreme
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