Retroview - Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

Title: Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (MGS2)
Developer: Konami Computer Entertainment Japan
Designer: Hideo Kojima (producer, writer, director)
Platform: Playstation 2
Release Date: November 13, 2001
Genre: Stealth Action
(Source Info: Wikipedia)

Instead of doing a full blown review (since it's a little over 9 years now since its release) I thought I'd dissect the game a bit and see what I've learned (A great deal, that's for sure).  Up till now, I've been learning most about design from bad games that were bad because they were so apparent and easy to distinguish.  For good games, it's much more difficult to pinpoint the things about them that make it so enjoyable and popular.  If it were really that easy to find out, we wouldn't have so many bad games.  So I bought Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty last year, 2009, on spring break when a local game shop was shutting down and had a huge sale.  I bought it used for $2.50 and never had a chance to play it.  I don't even remember what I did last summer, but I must've been very busy not to have played many games.  Continuing the journey I set off from this summer till now in my mission to beat one game each week and try to learn something from it, I borrow Metal Gear Solid 3 and 4 from a friend but decided to my copy of MGS 2 first since I didn't know the actual details of the story.  That's right, I've never played an actual Metal Gear Solid game (what I mean is I played the Game Boy Color version a little and I've tried the NES originals, but not the "Solid" Series.  Everything I knew about Metal Gear Solid I learned from parodies, music, and gaming references.  After playing through MGS2, I realized the story was much deeper and convoluted than I have previously suspected.

Source: Youtube Channel mysfhonor

Story
I'm not even sure how to elaborate the story other than trying to simplify it to the max.  Metal Gear Solid 2's story reminded me a bit of V for Vendetta in how there's an all powerful government that controls every information, entertainment, thought and say of it people; however, it goes beyond the government and explains to the protagonists and the player in how an entity known as "The Patriots" having even more control than the U.S. President.  Throughout the story is a swirl of unsuspecting plot twists, betrayals of allies and enemies only finding that they are being betrayed themselves or have some other important agenda they plan on taking.  It's how the story is told that I find most fascinating.  A large portion of the story is told through conversations rather than full blown CG cinematics.  Along with the dialogue is flashbacks, some showing events from MGS1.  But most of the time, it's a conversation between two or more people on nanocommunications.  Even for people who haven't played the game yet, it should look familiar:

Source: Youtube Channel Tobes14

I rather not get too detail into the story since it'll take a lot of explaining and it would spoil a lot to those who haven't played the series yet.  I've always been busy and didn't have the chance to play the series, but I'm glad I am now.  But yes, the story is extensive and is very detailed in nature.  I spent nearly an hour at one point just listening to a conversation or watching a cinematic.  In the words of my friend, "it's like watching an interactive movie!"

Characters/Voice Acting
So the name "Snake" is usually the one associated with MGS games, but in MGS2, the majority of the game is about an agent called Jack, codename Raiden.  Most of the interactions between the characters are through dialogue, and so the voice acting is very important.  Whoever played the voice of Rose was incredible.  She wasn't voice acting for the character; she WAS the character.  All the annotations and emotions and tone of her speech sounded so sincere and so real.  Rose is like the medic/save character for Raiden and is also his girlfriend.  As the game progresses, both character's history, personality, and purpose is slowly revealed and tugs at the heart of players to become more attached to them.  There are many other characters that share this type of attachment, interaction and relation with one another.  Raiden's voice acting I found to be weird and kiddish in the beginning.  In the middle of the game, I just thought his voice acting was just weird.  By the end of the game though, he sounded very human.  What I mean is that his character's voice acting improved and also had the tone and attitude that reflects all of human life, namely the player holding the controller.  I'd go as far as to say that the story and progression of the character is life changing in the eyes of the player.  I know I'm being very vague here, but I don't want to spoil anything for you readers if you haven't played the game yet.  I guess what I learned about building an involving character is giving a history to present reasons for their being in the present, interactions with other characters to reveal attitude, ethics and personality, and that conversations by itself can be a very powerful method in creating the credibility of a character's knowledge and interest.

Graphics/Camera Angle
I didn't have a problem with the graphics despite it being from 9 years ago.  The angle of the camera was something I had to get used to.  The ability to see all around the character from a top-down view made puzzles and sneaking around easier, but it made combat more complicated.  Objects, enemies, and items were distinguishable, but secret areas and dark areas are more difficult to deal with.  I liked the cinematics and most of the art style they chose to work with when showing a flashback or such.  It had a mix between videogame CG, film noir, espionage, and reality which pulled the player in and out of story, gameplay, reference, and life itself.  There were times where they used real clips filmed around the United States.  This reminded me of my art classes in how I shouldn't limit myself to one style or think so narrow-minded whenever working on a project.

Gameplay
The gameplay felt like a progression to me as well as the story.  At first, I really couldn't grasp the controls and combat very well.  I started in normal but I kept get caught, shot at, I couldn't bring out my gun and I died consistently.  So after a few deaths, I decided to just play on Very Easy.  The game was way to simple to get through, except when I didn't understand a puzzle very well.  The idea of standing still in order to go into first-person and shoot made it difficult to determine my presence to the enemy and how to act whenever I couldn't see where my enemies were coming from.  I got more used to the controls, I got more items, and boss battles started to get more challenging.  That was something I really liked: Boss battles.  I've played other stealth games like Splinter Cell before, but it was more towards the realistic side.  Tenchu has a similar style in camera angle and boss battles, and it was something I enjoyed in MGS2.  The game could be a lot of killing, or you could go through very stealthfully, and I usually go for the ninja path because I have plenty of hack n slash games to fulfill my urge for action games.  It got really action packed when I (hmm not sure if I should tell everyone this...oh well) got my sword.  Yes, you get to use a sword in a stealth game.  By the end, it's more action orientated and ended up killing enemies using the sword.  I'm still trying to figure out everything that made the gameplay fun, but I wasn't bored with sneaking around and avoiding conflict nor did I think it was repetitive slashing away with the sword.  Could it be the frequent conversations in-between each scene?  Maybe it's the fact that it's free roam and the player wasn't restricted to a linear path.  I guess I can still try to figure it out as I continue to play through MGS3, 4, and 1.

Music
Harry Gregson-Williams is amazing.  I can't say I remember all the tunes from the game, but the music truly set the mood at the right moments and changed the atmosphere when there wasn't even a graphical reference to rely on (during codec conversations).  The main theme and others is, by many MGS players, described as "epic" (orchestration) by building a momentum that feels as if the player was about to go into a journey of struggles, meeting new people, and facing formidable conflicts (much like how the music for Lord of the Rings sounded like).  Electronic sounding themes made for an exciting tune when encountered with a boss battle.  Abrupt computer noises with bass filled drums drew a sense of urgency and danger.  My personal favorite is still the main theme.  It seems to create a sense of nostalgia, even if I've never played the game before.  The music is definitely an important aspect to the success of the MGS series.

Replay Value/Secrets
There are a LOT of easter eggs and ways of playing/replaying the game.  One of the specials came with a book that went up to 129 pages and then goes onto another book for 397 or something pages.  I read the 129 page one and felt like I had enough.  I'd probably play the game again on a harder difficulty, and I unlocked a level called insane.  I'm probably not going to play that difficulty seeing how I could barely handle normal.  There are dog tags that the player can collect throughout the game.  A digital camera is given to the player so that pictures in game can be taken and possibly printed out at a game shop (doesn't exist anymore).  The characters had many dialogues and it was enjoyable to listen through a lot of the conversations.  I already started on MGS3 last night, and I already see a mode where you get to capture monkeys like in the old Playstation game "Ape Escape".  A lot of the secrets may seem silly, but those added surprises and references made by the developers builds credibility among the players in how much detail and attention was put into the game.

Stats (from what I can remember):
Play Time: 10hr 57min
Saves: 30 (I save often)
Continues: 40 (I also die a lot)
Enemies Killed: 22
(and some other stuff I don't remember)

After finishing Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, I felt pumped and ready to play through the rest of the games of the series.  It tells an intriguing (though convoluted) story, has recurring/beloved characters in each installment, dynamic gameplay and attention to detail in as far as realism, sound, and appearance, a worthy soundtrack, and a strong line in the franchise that continues its legacy even now.  I'm excited about Metal Gear Solid: Rising, but I hope it comes out on PS3 as well as Xbox 360.

Oh yeah, earlier in the post, I said I learned much about the series through parodies as one of them.  This is one of the ones I was talking about:



Source: Youtube Channel to both egoraptor

His stuff are AWESOME...no pun intended.