Envelheceu muito bem! Em comparação com MGS a jogabilidade evoluiu mas se manteve fiel a proposta, o salgo gráfico é impressionante e proporciona momentos memoráveis, todavia deixa a desejar no quesito cutscenes, por vezes fica evidente a opção por não animar certas cenas e apelam para o Codec, o que torna tudo expositivo demais e por vezes cansativo de acompanhar, haja vista a densidade dos diálogos, os quais são densos e exploram os limites éticos de uma sociedade que estava se consolidando como digital.

Os personagens possuem um trabalho primoroso no que diz respeito a motivações e background, e as interações entre os protagonistas se verticalizam levando em consideração que existe ali quase que um mentor e um aprendiz.

A reta final do jogo é memorável, o plot é ainda mais relevante hoje do que em sua época e trata de questões as quais somos cotidianamente postos frente a frente, tais como os efeitos negativos que podem decorrer do uso de IAs, a manipulação de informações no meio digital visando impor uma narrativa que corrobore determinadas ações de determinados grupos e até mesmo levanta a questão do livre arbítrio frente a um mundo onde corporações governamentais ou não ditam anseios sociais.

Definitivamente está entre meus jogos favoritos e seus defeitos se tornam irrisórios diante de tanto que tem pra oferecer.

“Life isn’t just about passing on your genes. We can leave behind much more than just DNA. Through speech, music, literature, and movies… what we’ve seen, heard, felt… anger, joy, and sorrow… these are the things I will pass on. That’s what I live for.”

It was throughout a majority for my playthrough of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty that my stance remained on it being quite good, some interesting things going on, but just couldn’t quite live up to what made me love the first Metal Gear Solid for what it accomplished for the medium. It felt more of the same, really. The gameplay is exactly the same, there’s definitely some obvious smoothing the edges technical improvements one would expect when seeing this jump into the PS2. It may not bring too much that’s substantially new to the stealth combat mix but it definitely doubles down on what made the gameplay already tick very hard. The first game now feels more like a breeze to stealth your way around in a cardboard box because this gave me more trouble with the aggressive alert patrols and trying to avoid-direct combat while making my way around the map. The bosses are still fun, besides two saved near the end, I was a bit disappointed there wasn't really a Psycho Mantis or Cyborg Ninja (except for the Cyborg Ninja that does show) boss to fight. The plot, if you were to oversimplify it, is kind of a retread, with certain moments and bosses directly paralleling what you already saw back in MGS1. There’s one obvious difference through all of this, of course, which is made apparent through the tanker level level prologue. We start off immediately playing as the Solid Snake we all love from the days of the PS1, everything gameplay-wise feeling right at home like nothing’s really changed other than graphics having more polygon counts, and being what we expect from a sequel to the first Metal Gear Solid…until a bait-and-switch happens. We don’t play as Solid Snake, at least for not too long. This character we’re likely excited to get back into the shoes of while card-boarding around is sidelined completely in favor of this new rando protagonist who just…isn’t Solid Snake. Raiden isn’t really “cool”, in the traditional sense, he’s just a goofy inexperienced dork. There’s more bits of substance to him you get to find out later through the codecs and how he responds to things that endears him pretty easily but he didn’t click with me all the way until the last stretch where Kojima’s vision behind this game has finally been understood.

The best way to approach a game like Metal Gear Solid, to understand the choices made with it as a sequel, is to put it like this: Metal Gear Solid is tight, introspective, humanely sincere yet straightforwardly mature and serious to the end --- like Solid Snake. Metal Gear Solid 2 is bombastic, expressionist, serious underpinnings yet there’s light in the end -- just like Raiden.

Solid Snake has taken a total backseat here but it makes sense. He’s already learned to grow beyond just a military grunt serving higher powers at play by gaining a new reason to live. What we’re seeing now is him doing that, operating independently as this legend helping to stop a global conspiracy endangering the future he wants to preserve. He’s leaving the charge to the next generation stealth action hero, Raiden, who is part of this future. The next Solid Snake, for the next generation console -- the PS2. It’s not Solid Snake’s game, it’s Raiden’s game. This meta gets completely unleashed in the endgame. Where the intentional parallels and retreading starts building this entire meta-narrative about sequels around an emotionally engaging story about what freedom, liberty, and legacy means in the 21st century where conspiracy runs wildly and digital communication has a hold on the masses. The lines between what’s fiction or what’s reality is blurred for the individual, and might as well be what dooms humanity if we don’t read what’s between the lines. This is especially prophetic in the current year of 2023 where social media has grown to make people terminally online and how AI is unfortunately becoming more prevalent with its dire implications for human expression and art.

I debated quite a bit with myself about which of the first two MGS games I’ve played now that I like more. I think they’re both super creative games with ambitions that stem from the console generations they’re made in. I prefer the tight pace of MGS1, especially how it balances out story and gameplay, but that’s because it had a more simpler narrative to tell while MGS2 is an unconventional sequel using the foundation laid before it to become more ambitious with so much more to say. Without a doubt, this now has my favorite video game ending for how much Raiden will try to change, tying into the meaning behind Snake’s ending monologue, while making me kick back and reflect on the rhetorical questions I was being asked about the world I live in. That’s a unique quality I don’t believe I can get too much from revisiting MGS1 any time in the future. I guess that’s why this spoke to me as being more “DeadCore”and now stands as being one of my absolute favorite video games of all time unless Metal Gear Solid 3 proves to be competing for that too.

Perfect video game. Teaches players about the Meme and the Sons of Liberty, a perfect introduction to parapolitical thought. The SOL are military, government, and (most importantly) business leaders who set the agenda for the world. That agenda is drilling oil. It's no coincidence this game takes place on an oil tanker and and oil drilling station. The meme is the cultural programming that occurs when the government controls all media flow (take 2023, for example). Your beliefs are not your own: they are programmed by the people in charge, the Sons of Liberty.

Despite making you play as Riden, this game rocks. I played this on PS2, Gamecube, and PS3 and I'd boot it again on any system.

Confesso que fiquei com pé atrás em relação ao Raiden, mas o personagem é incrível, sua interação com o Snake é super divertida (me lembra o Nero e Dante, de o menos experiente olhar o outro com respeito, mas ainda havendo um clima descontraído entre os dois). E principalmente, seu maior destaque sendo seu lado textual, sua representação para a história, servindo como a maior idealização de um humano, e tudo que se desenvolve nisso, a maneira que ele age, desconfia, mente, tudo é muito bem escrito. A utilização do Snake na história é muito inteligente também, já que ele quase não é jogável, mas a maneira que o personagem está próximo dele, o Kojima utiliza bem dos conhecimentos do próprio jogador para gerar desconfiança e teorias.
Novamente, o Kojima vai tomando mais e mais atitudes criativas com uma exploração interessante, no 1 se você ligasse para tais personagens você apenas tinha umas falas de humor ou descontraídas sobre assuntos, mas no 2 é super interessante como é parte da progressão a comunicação frequente com os personagens, como o Snake vai contando mais sobre ele com o tempo, as desconfianças com o coronel do Raiden, e principalmente os diálogos com a Rose, descobrindo mais e mais sobre o Raiden e aquela relação. É engraçado que nesse jogo ele tomou mais liberdade para detalhes mínimos, piadas super escondidas, como apontar o microfone para o lado contrário na cutscene, ou a reação do Otacon para as fotos tiradas, e eu valorizo bastante esse tipo de coisa.
Sua gameplay se torna ainda mais sólida, o que é irônico porque esse jogo tem MUITO menos boss battles que o primeiro, acho que pela capacidade do console ter aumentado e o Kojima finalmente conseguir fazer o que queria em relação ao stealth, assim dando mais foco a tal (e que novamente, funciona bem, usado de base, e seus desafios situacionais são todos bem executados).
Já era do meu conhecimento que esse jogo tratava uma certa metalinguagem, mas puta merda... O Kojima em 2001 tava tratando temas com base na tecnologia que viriam a ser preocupações 15 anos depois, todo o debate sobre Fake News e a utilização da internet contra a evolução humana, na manipulação de informações, aquilo é surreal, a ultima conversa do Codec é um dos melhores diálogos que eu já vi na ficção sem exagero nenhum... E claro, a narrativa continua sendo conduzida com maestria, pensa em um cara bom para realizar plot twists.