Metal Gear Solid 2 turns 20 years old.

B.A._Baracus · 15-11-2021 4:00pm #1

While it didn't release in Europe until March 2002, it was released November 13th 2001 in North America.

What a truly amazing game. Graphics and controls were brilliant, story was great. A game that accordingly sold thousands of ps2's before the game even came out (this was before gta3 was to be a system seller)

I always remember going down to game Friday morning at 9am day of its release and completing it shortly before 12:50am Sunday morning. Always remember that for some reason.

Of course the game is not without its faults. Alot complained about its long cutscenes - which is not totally accurate. Cutscenes were good and they were in game engine. It was the lonnnnng codec calls which became annoying. Of course it was easier to develop them than motion captioning and animating cutscenes. Kojima did fallback to codec calls too much. But give me them than mgs5's radio tapes!

So what's your thoughts on mgs2?

Retr0gamer · 15-11-2021 4:39pm

I'm going to be the contrarian.

Level design is pretty boring and the backtracking is really annoying once you get to big shell. The enemy AI is incredible and still impresses but kind of interferes with the enjoyment of the game. It's obviously rushed. The AI is too tough and aggressive when you are learning the game and isn't fun when you get caught until you learn how to abuse the AI but that doesn't happen until the late game. A lot of time is spent waiting out timers that take way too log. MGS3 improved on this greatly.

Boss battles are great for the most part but some are disappointing, although never MGS4 bad.

Music is incredible but Harry Gregson Williams takes credit for all the tracks when the vast majority of the music was composed of Konami's exceptional sound team.

And while I have to agree that the themes of the game were very forward thinking and relevant today it doesn't excuse the god awful writing. Cutscenes are dumb, the codecs are too long. Many plot points are laughable, from the whole haunted arm thing, otacon's crying scene and the explosive expert coming out with the truth are some of the standout laughably bad sections.

Still, it's an interesting game with enough interesting ideas to make it well worth playing.

RedXIV · 15-11-2021 4:56pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118170263#Comment_118170263

It's the last line thats important there, it is definitely a game worth playing if you haven't played it before. Perhaps less urgent than it was 20 years ago to play, but back then, the level of immersion in some areas were amazing. I remember dying after slipping on bird sh1te and having enemies catch up with me as a result.

And I remember thinking the very last bit of detective work when facing fatman was clever too. It brought up a number of clever utilisations of game design but there's absolutely no denying that Kojima is smoking mad stuff when he does up dialogue and plot stuff

I did have the main theme as a ringtone for the guts of 3 years though, cracking intro music.

awec · 15-11-2021 5:19pm

I know that back in the day I did enjoy this game, but I remember almost all of the Metal Gear Solid playthrough and plot, and remember almost none of MGS2. Which tells me something.

johnny_ultimate · 15-11-2021 5:23pm

The opening tanker sequence is still an incredible bit of design - played through it recently and the rainy atmosphere is still distinct and captivating. It remains the ultimate game demo as far as I'm concerned. That said, the bit where you have to try to march through the rooms full of soldiers during a ludicrously overlong and contrived speech plays out is still the wrong-side of silly :P

I do think it was the rare game to utilise cutting edge cinematic graphics for gameplay purposes. Things like shooting off the tarp during the first boss fight, or switching to first person to interrogate a grunt by targeting... It was one of those key graphical watershed moments in early 2000s, but there was more to it than just surface-level fidelity. A lot of it's still very impressive today, especially with a few mods to bring the PC version up to modern standards.

Also hilarious to think of a six-month gap before it showed up in PAL regions - especially for a game with arguably the ultimate sneaky marketing trick!

Retr0gamer · 15-11-2021 5:27pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118170507#Comment_118170507

To be fair, the MGS games were always delayed to a silly degree coming to Europe but Konami also did proper 50Hz versions unlike pretty much everyone.

Penn · 15-11-2021 7:48pm

The Codec-nicity of so many of the cutscenes definitely hampered more than it helped. While it was obviously done so as to cut down on animating cutscenes, it meant Kojima was less restricted in his writing and so the dialogue went on way too long and things were really over-explained.

This is still probably the best analysis of MGS2, including most of the design decisions made for the game. I recently learned the guy who wrote it actually went on to work with Kojima on MGS4, doing some localisation work iirc.

https://www.deltaheadtranslation.com/MGS2/

I've more respect for the game so many years later, though it still can't beat MGS3. But nothing can take away from the fact it was an incredible game and so far ahead of pretty much everything else at the time.

Metal Gear Solid 2 turns 20 years old.

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