Review #2

As I finished the game on my PS2 emulator and seeing the credits roll, All I could really think was "what the hell just happened." But don't get me wrong, I mean this is in a good way.

Metal Gear Solid 2 has been described as one of if not the most profound game, which is definitely deserved from my point of view. As someone that's spent a lot of my life in the cesspool that is the internet...I still see some of the things this game talks about at the final codec call to this day, which is incredibly impressive for a 2001 game. With the invention of AI programs like ChatGPT it only feels like this "junk data" as the game says is only going to become more and more of a problem for the foreseeable future. Sure, the AI might not be prone to ideologies and ideas that make us, the more "immature" species change the "truth" just a tiny bit to fit our side. But AI can often have grammar mistakes to outright getting important details wrong. Not only this but it was correct about it building an algorithm to suit our "tastes". But I find it to be the exact opposite because it's been confirmed that platforms like Facebook actually push "rage bait" onto us to engage more with the platform...arguing with strangers to give those controlling the algorithm more money and power in the process. I'd say Raiden was kind of right about this feeling like a nightmare we can't wake up from. While in my previous review, I did shit on people for "doomposting" but it's genuinely understandable for being a bit scared because with the way things are going, the internet is only getting more and more unsearchable and unusable, the bot accounts on Twitter, YouTube or any Social Media platform you can really think of seems to be getting worse as time goes by. flooding discussion with oddly horrifying comments/replies trying their best to act human. In some cases they're able to reply to each other. It's just so wrong and odd to see, I'm not sure why I find it as creepy as I do. So far, this has mostly been about the internet but I'd say this fits really well with the main theme of the game, being "memes" yes, you've definitely heard this word being thrown around a lot in discussions about metal gear solid 2. But I feel like the internet is a new way to find out about different ideas, cultures and history. Of course, this is great seeing as pretty much at least half of the world population has access to a device that can access the internet...on paper though, the AI I've discussed about is the NEW problem I'd say, some of the problems I've talked about can more than definitely be done by a human being, altering information just enough to enforce their agenda or even outright spread misinformation...now, books and news papers or just any form of old media was obviously suspectable to this but those had professionals checking over if the information was correct...but, what makes someone a "professional"? What makes another human more worthy of another? Humans are inherently biased...I think what this game is trying to say that finding the absolutely unbiased truth is pretty much impossible. Which is obviously a horrifying thing to think about...or actually kind of beautiful in a way, Snake's speech reflects a different side of coin to the GW. Sure, there might practically be no "unbiased truths" but we can all have our own "memes" to pass onto the future, that's what I and I'm sure many others are doing with these reviews. To share with others how we felt with a specific piece of media, culture, history or anything really. Our world is definitely in a flawed state right now and definitely will be for as long as it exists but I have faith that things will get better, even if they're unrealistic beliefs.

I'm sorry I didn't really go over much about the gameplay or the actual plot, I will say that the gameplay is a huge improvement over the first game but I still found myself a little frustrated with some parts like the swimming and the freezing bombs being a bit too long for my liking. But tranquilizers and hanging were really fun to play around with even if I wish hanging was encouraged to be used more by the player. The characters are stellar of course, it's metal gear. Raiden is such a perfect protagonist for this game, having no "personality" and his own ideas until the ending to me feels like growing up together with Raiden, Raiden was immature at the start of the game but most people who played this game back in the day probably HATED this dude for not being Snake. But he grows alongside you and you two have sort of a "friendship" and develop as more it goes on. This definitely might sound ridiculous but it's how I feel. There's also something really cool about both the player and Raiden knowing something one doesn't, Raiden with his suppressed trauma and the player knowing that Snake is obviously Pliskin, Campbell acting odd and out of character as well. I don't think I've seen many other games do this besides maybe Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations?

This will be my last part of the review but the most personal as well...get ready for quite the sob story, feel free to stop reading if you don't want to haha. But the scene where Emma dies and Otacon is mourning broke my heart...the part where he said he did his mother made me laugh a bit more than it should've lmao but I felt awful for otacon, seeing as Sniper Wolf. Another person he cared about died as well...the voice actors did a phenomenal job. Raiden, Snake and Otacon are an amazing trio and wish we got more of the game with all three of them together. But I didn't really begin to cry until the scene where the parrot starts talking to Otacon. Saying "Hal, I miss you..." It's clear that Ema has been talking to the parrot and repeating it so much to the point where even the parrot could repeat it on it's own. Then Hal breaking down into tears before the part that made me have a mental breakdown, which was his speech about finding love. Now this is going to be really personal but I've pretty much have always been alone for most of my life, being the weird kid no one really cared about. With my grandfather passing away not long before I played this..."you and I, we always wanted to be loved." Yep...again, that hit way too damn close to home and began to cry like a damn baby. I don't think I've ever really felt so "seen" until now...which I can't thank this game enough for. Thanks, Kojima.

Much like creating a backloggd account, the Metal Gear franchise is something a lot of people have told me to try out for a very long time, but I just haven't gotten into it till now. To be honest, I really didn't have much interest in the series prior to a couple months ago. I randomly decided to buy a copy of MGS 1 on ebay, but even then I only played the game for a couple hours before I stopped. It wasn't till about a week prior to writing this review that I decided to actually play the game properly, and I was pleasantly surprised with just how much I liked the game. It was to the point where I pretty much immediately ordered a copy of MGS 2 as soon as I finished it. For the most part though, it matched my expectations to a tee. Aside from the anti-eugenics messages towards the end of the game, Metal Gear Solid was exactly what I thought it would be based on my limited knowledge of the series: a stealth game with political messages at the core of the story.

Metal Gear Solid 2, however, was nothing like what I expected it to be.

To be completely transparent, that's not a bad thing at all. But it’s almost like MGS 2’s entire mission statement is to subvert the players' expectations. I wasn't even alive for the great trailer bait and switch that they pulled off for this game, but the switch to Raiden still got me. I don't really think I'm fully equipped to do a full on plot analysis of this game– there's quite honestly just too much shit here. MGS 2 takes so many twists and turns that I never in a million years would have expected. I’ll give my thoughts on key aspects of it anyway though. Raiden is a genius protagonist. From almost the moment you meet him it's easy to tell he's meant to represent the player in a lot of ways. He played the same VR missions that you did in MGS1 as his training, and even (presumably) played through MGS 1 just as you did. This fact makes the huge twist at the end even more powerful. It’s hard to tell if the patriots are talking to Raiden or the player themself. Their rant about believing half truths, accepting “their fiction”-- it’s all the more chilling when it feels like they’re staring right at you and talking right into your ear. In a way, it's not that Raiden is supposed to represent the player, Raiden is the player. Like I said, I don't mean to do some huge overall analysis of the games themes here, but it's hard not to wonder if the Patriots S3 plan is Metal Gear Solid 2 itself. By literally playing this game and the first before it, did we fall in line with their plan? Are we the ones meant to be molded into Solid Snake? It's definitely some interesting food for thought. Speaking of the patriots themselves, it’s hard to put into words how exactly I feel about them. Being clearly inspired by Seele from Evangelion, I think they do a MUCH better job of the whole “secret society who controls everything” thing. They feel really threatening, and it's hard to tell just how much they have control over. Like, clearly it's a lot of shit, but it makes you wonder if they planned out everything ever in the history of the world after the United States was born. Which is another question, how long have they even existed for? I'm sure this is something answered later on in the series but for now it just serves to make them even more imposing. A lot of people today say that MGS 2 is still extremely relevant today with its theming. I couldn't agree more, and The Patriots are a lot of why that is to me. The GW AI, when laid out flat and simple, is just a means for the patriots to control any information they don't want people to see on a global scale. Basically large scale internet fascism, and the plain-and-simple way is the way that the characters in the game tend to describe it. But the patriots explanation of it– and their reasoning for it– almost makes you think that they have a point. The massive amounts of garbage information out there and the rapid and easy spread of it, is harmful to the human race. I mean, how many times have your parents believed in some stupid shit they read on facebook? In a way, The Patriots are right. The “half truths” we tend to believe due to all this garbage information does nothing but divide us and create problems. The Patriots want the player to believe that maybe they’re on your side. Maybe they really do have humanity’s best interest in mind… Which is exactly how they get you. You see it all the time in modern capitalist society, but billion dollar corporations get away with so much because they make the consumers believe that they’re your friends. Not that the patriots are on the same scale as just a mere corporation, but it's the same general idea. Something else that makes The Patriots interesting to me is that you are literally forced to comply with their orders. They’re clearly a bad thing for humanity, but you have to follow their orders in the end because Solidus wants you dead anyway. Speaking of Solidus, I find it hard to say what he was trying to do was even truly bad. Like, yeah, obviously blowing up a hydrogen bomb to create a huge EMP blast is sorta bad, and his motivations for doing so were somewhat selfish, but I can’t say I disagree with him wanting to be free from the patriots. The method to his madness wasn’t good, but the man had the right idea. It’s that sort of morally gray quality to solidus that made me like him as a villain more than I thought I would. Overall, the themes of MGS 2 are extremely thought provoking and relevant to this day. I didn't even really scratch the surface of what this game is trying to say, I just hit the parts most interesting to me.

I do have SOME gripes with the story though. First off, Emma’s death is really strange to me. Was I supposed to feel bad? Because I didn't. Emma is kind of a shit person, to be honest. You’re telling me that she WILLINGLY made the fucking Fascism AI (i've decided to call GW that) just so that her brother would notice her? Yeah, fuck off with that. And dont get me started on the weird, vaguely incest-y subtext there too. At least in the first game when Otacon accidentally made the next terrible blight on humanity with REX, it was by accident and he was being manipulated by others. Emma did this for a purely selfish reason that isn't even worth it in the first place. I guess you’re supposed to feel kind of bad for Otacon, but I still had my jaw dropped from the whole “my dad killed himself because I slept with my step mom” part. And the other thing that I have a problem with is… Rose. Rose is a manipulative bitch. She needed to take a break from the mission and get checked for borderline personality disorder or something because holy FUCK this girl would not stop. The intense amount of cognitive dissonance it must take to think that it is appropriate to complain to your boyfriend that he never cuddles with you after you fuck while you’re IN THE MIDDLE OF A MISSION THAT COULD DETERMINE THE FATE OF HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS MAYBE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE is INSANE. I think sometimes their relationship is cute, but for 90% of the game i wished i could break through my crt and personally tell Jack to break up with her on the fucking spot. Rose either needs to start smoking hella more weed or to get some serious psychiatric help.

As far as gameplay goes, I don't have as much to say about it as I do the story. It plays almost the exact same as the first game, just with some tweeks. First person mode is super nice, and I really liked the addition of the M9. I didn't really like that you had to go to a node to be able to use the radar everytime you went somewhere new, though. I guess it’s more challenging, but it's honestly more frustrating than anything. I also feel like sometimes the way that it was impossible to defeat enemies once they spotted you was a little annoying. Although, it definitely made the moment where you get the sword at the end and get to slice through all those enemies way more triumphant. The sword was so fucking cool, i wish you got more time with it earlier on even if it would break the game in half completely. I also really liked the big shell as a location. You end up almost memorizing the place in your head by the end and honestly it's just a really well designed place. It’s easy to understand on the surface yet complex enough for it to be a good location for the entire game to take place in. There's so many cool little details packed into this game, and i didnt even get to find all of them. There's probably an endless list of just the tiniest details in this game that exist to make the game feel more alive that most people probably wont ever notice, which just goes to show how much of a good job those things did at helping with immersion. Also, I'm baffled to know this game only came out a month after the ps2’s launch. Visually, this game is kind of stunning. I know i'm just biased towards the way ps2 games look in general, but seriously i think this game looks fucking amazing graphically.

I think that's about everything I have to say about this game. A lot of this was just organized rambling, but I hoped you enjoyed it anyway. Metal Gear Solid 2 is a masterpiece. Play it imo its peak

Ladies and Gentlemen, we found the new banger 5 star game.

Gameplay is a massive improvement from the first game. Hanging is a really fun mechanic and the first person view mode is a life saver for me since I didn't really like the aiming in the first game. The soundtrack is just as badass as the first game, the Power Room theme is one of my favorite songs in all of gaming just because of how relaxing yet cool it is.

Obviously we can't talk about mgs2 without it's themes of misinformation in the digital age...for something made in fucking 2001, it gets a lot right...hell, we still see some of these issues to this day on the internet. Though I honestly do not like the...how do I say this. Sort of doomposting this final codex call has caused? Of course, these are still actual issues but the game tells you that despite all of that, you can choose what you want to believe in. What we want to pass down through literature, movies, video games or any form of media...is up to us. I think Snake's speech just sort of made me look at the world in a somewhat different way...I can't thank the game enough for that.


Also, god damn man... Otacon's speech when his sister died really broke my heart and actual had me crying for quite a bit..."both you and I...we were always alone...always...we only wanted love...we were waiting for somebody who would love us..."

That shit hit a bit too close to home. ;_;


Thanks again, Video Kojimer.