It’s so crazy to me that this game turns twenty in November.
Like, holy shit, I remember this game coming out like it was yesterday. I had to wait three solid months to play it because EB Games was really anal about M rated games, so I couldn’t get it until I was 17, which didn’t happen until February 2002. I remember all the game magazines in bookstores raving on and on about MGS2, all my high school buddies going on about it. All this shit feels like it was yesterday, but nope.
Goddamn, time flies, huh.
Some of you may recall from the MGSF days that I was always really down on MGS2. That was because I really disliked the story for a long time. I thought Raiden sucked, and that Big Shell was a really boring environment.
But over the years, my perception of MGS2 changed because my perception on gaming has changed a lot. See, to me, story doesn’t factor into how much I like or dislike any video game. A game can have a really good story but still suck, or have the most laughably bad story ever written, and be the best game I’ve ever played.
I started replaying MGS2 HD a lot and what I found, more than anything else, was that the game held up just as well today as it did almost twenty years ago. It was always a lil archaic, especially starting out, but those mechanics were also unique. And it wasn’t super hard to get a hold of. Once you did, the game ends up feeling really good in your hands all these years later.
See, it’s because MGS2 didn’t play like any other game released then or now that it still holds up. The mechanics have a precision to them you don’t get in most games. And the boss fights really put those mechanics to full use. Even a fight like Solidus keeps you constantly cartwheeling and having to navigate around his blindside to really rail into him. Like no other video game, even today, would have the fact that the boss has an eyepatch actually factor into the fight. But if you go where Solidus’ missing eye is, he’s powerless to your attacks. It was that along with the different mechanics that allow MGS2 to stand to the test of time.
I love Deus Ex infinitely more than I’ll ever love MGS2, but try playing it today and holy shit, gunplay is remarkably stiff. And JC jumps like an old man lazily humping the air itself.
A lot of what I didn’t like about MGS2 was still the case for me.
I still think Big Shell’s a very lackluster environment because its corridors lack consistent cover spots that make getting from A to B undetected more immediately accessible. And everything being so open makes it too easy to knock everyone out and jog from A to B. That’s true of every MGS game, but later games had more immediate cover to make zero tracing more accessible, and games like Peace Walker or Phantom Pain offered immediate reward incentive to zero trace with huge GMP bonuses.
But all of that is offset by Alt & VR Missions. Seriously, go back to MGS2 HD and replay the bonus missions. The level design in those missions alone put most MGS games to shame. The level 1 variety shootout where you’re going through waves of bad guys until you fight a giant boss monster, for example. That alone flexes MGS2’s gun mechanics in ways most boss fights can’t, creating truly exciting and smart shootouts. You gotta move fast, use the windows provided to lay out traps for incoming bad guys, and use cover wisely to evade gunfire and return with either precision headshots or spamming bullets into any asshole that’s momentarily out in the open.
If every gunfight was as good as the variety mission battles, you’d almost never wanna play stealthy again. But to that, you have levels that give you tons of cover that was missing in Big Shell, which makes bypassing guards so much more satisfying than killing or knocking 'em out. And best yet, most of them have a variety of paths from A to B. So if one path isn’t working out for you, you can try your luck with an alternate route instead, which works wonders torwards giving these missions replay value.
I still don’t like the writing, but for different reasons. As I’ve actively been writing and consuming creative writing techniques more and more (literally became a teacher for half a year), I started to recognize just how bloated and one sided so many cutscenes tend to be. I inherently can’t enjoy a scene if I’m sitting there thinking, “Fucking say something of value, Raiden!” Or “Okay, that sentence didn’t need to be there. That sentence added absolutely nothing. Jesus, you addressed him by name two times in a row,” etc.
But even if I don’t like the actual writing or think a lot of characters feel underdeveloped, what I appreciate about MGS2 is how depressingly timeless its themes are. We are very vulnerable to being led by the nose through false or misleading information if enough people circulate something. Look at Richard Gere. Dude was known for years as “gerbil butt” because some asshole spread a lie that he shoved gerbils up his ass, and enough people circulated that lie and sensationalized it to the point where it became “fact” for a lotta people. Same with modern day politics. Feed enough gullible assholes lies enough times, and it becomes reality for 'em because too few people look past the headlines of what they consume.
The graphics look their age on character models, and the truly awful audio mixing in the cutscenes (like having Hayter speaking at room volume over a helicopter, or mixing sharp cut transition SFX with soft spoken dialogue so you can barely hear what characters are saying when the camera cuts back to 'em). But by in large, the game still looks and sounds great. And everything has an immediate feedback to your inputs. There’s nothing clunky about MGS2 besides its shit set pieces, which the bonus and alt missions let you bypass completely.
In short, MGS2 turns 20 years old this year. But it plays better than most games releasing months from now will. And I think that’s a testament to truly excellent game design, which I’ve only grown to appreciate more and more, as the games of today start to feel a lil more miss than hit in that regard. I still think the writing is terrible, but I at least remember everything about the game, and I can’t even say that about stories I do actually like in games.
Incidentally, I get my second dose of Pfizer nanomachines on April 30th.
Coincidence?
I don’t think so.
