Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance

It's been well over a decade since I played the first Metal Gear Solid, and with my recent purchase of a PS2 I knew I had to catch up with the series I stopped playing oh so long ago. The first game left quite an impression on young me- the top-down shooting gameplay, the emphasis on stealth, and the hilariously overwrought plot were things I had never really seen before in video games, and all combined to make one of the most fun gaming experiences that PSOne had to offer. All of these aspects and more returned in Metal Gear Solid 2, which despite some flaws was certainly a worthy sequel and held up gameplay wise in the near decade since it has come out. MGS2 finds Snake teaming up with Otacon again two years after Shadow Moses, seeking to expose a new Metal Gear project on a military-owned oil tanker. Tons of shit goes down on the boat, and the whole thing was an excellent introduction. After the explosive conclusion to the intro, I was given control of a new character, also going by "Snake," who eventually comes to be known as Raiden. Raiden's a likable enough protagonist- not the hardcore manly-man that Snake is, but fully capable of getting the job done and more fun to use in hand-to-hand combat. The problem here is that Raiden's introduction was one of the slower parts of the series thus far- you're on an offshore facility teaming up with the original Snake sniffing out bombs. It sounds interesting, but it was the only time in either of the first two games that I felt like I was doing the same thing over and over again with the plot not going anywhere. Thankfully when that's done the ridiculous MGS plot kicks into overdrive- if you thought the heavy-handedness of the nuclear proliferation message from the first one was bad, just wait until you see the half-hour cutscenes on rogue AI and censorship Metal Gear Solid 2 has. The thing is, in most games a plot like this would be worthy of mocking, but to me it's part of Metal Gear Solid's charm. At least I thought that until the end, where I think I had about 15 minutes of gameplay in a chunk of 2 hours. How long can you go on about conspiracy theories before it stops being funny and over-the-top and starts getting really boring? Anyway, the non-cutscene parts of this game are really fun- stealthing around, avoiding cameras, hiding in boxes, great boss fights. I just wish the game hadn't devolved into a bad parody of itself by the end, losing all the charm it's wacky plot started out with. Oh well. I'm now halfway through the "main series," though there's plenty of spinoff games here as well. Will I play the rest of them? Depends on if I get a PSP, and even if that did happen it wouldn't be for a while. But MGS3 can be purchased and played easily, so I'm sure I'll get to that soon enough.