**Beep Beep**

"Snake, this is Otacon, are you there?"

"I’m here."

Snake, there’s something you need to know."

"…"

"It’s important, Snake."

"I’m listening."

"I’m going to tell you, Snake, but first I need to tell you about something that happened to me last year in the supermarket."

"What does that have to do with my mission?"

"Well, nothing, but I need to fill my quota of absolutely useless dialogue before getting to the point of any codec transmission, Snake. You should know that by now."

"Right."

"Anyway, Snake, the following assessment of your latest mission, code named Metal Gear Solid 2, contains information that some people might not want to know about, if they plan to play the game. This information is known as a Spoiler, and if anyone doesn’t want to be exposed to spoilers, I’d advise them to stop reading this article. Now. Speaking of spoilers, Snake, I was digging around in my fridge last night and you wouldn’t believe what I found behind the mayonnaise… Snake, are you still listening? Snake? SNAAAAAAKE!?!?"

Okay, so the above is meant to illustrate two things really. One, Metal Gear Solid 2 (MGS2) contains some incredibly long-winded dialogue sessions, some of them clocking in at 10-15 minutes long. Second, this review will contain spoilers dealing with the plot of the game and if you wish to be surprised by these things, then really, stop reading. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Now then, I’ll just get this out of the way first – my biggest complaint with MGS2 is that the game is basically a much better looking version of the first game with some new characters and locations. There are so many similarities between the two games – similar weapons, items, bosses, situations… it’s almost as if game director Hideo Kojima ran out of ideas and decided to recycle from the first game. Remember that cool cyber ninja from MGS? He’s back, albeit with a twist. Remember that one part in MGS where you had to guide the Nikita Missile through the narrow corridor and take out a computer panel? Well, you get to do it again here. Remember that fight against the helicopter where you used the missile launcher to defeat it? Déjà vu! It’s a Harrier jump jet this time around, but a similar battle. Remember how the Darpa chief died in front of Snake, apparently of a heart attack, after giving him some information and a key card? A very similar situation occurs in MGS2. Speaking of key cards, remember all of those doors marked level 1 through 5, which you needed appropriate cards to get through? You get the picture. You’ll get nostalgic feelings for the original MGS throughout this game, because nearly every part of that game is recreated here.

Now that I’ve gotten what I feel is the biggest problem with MGS2 out in the open, I have to admit that there are some good things here – in fact, MGS2 is a good game, but it’s not the incredibly original and awe-inspiring game that the hype machines have had us all drooling over for years. Foremost, the game looks great. There’s so much detail in the environments, it’s obvious that the designers spent a lot of their time perfecting the look of the game. They did add a slew of new technique so that the game didn’t feel exactly like the original. The best of these additions is the ability to fire any of your weapons from the first person view. The ability to surprise guards and "hold them up," by aiming your gun at them from close range is also very cool. Actually, it’s the interaction between the guards and your character that’s been most greatly improved. Aside from being able to hold guards up, you can also knock them unconscious and then drag their bodies out of sight. You can shoot out their radios and prevent them from calling for help if they spot you. You can even shoot the little "?" that appears over their heads to disorient them for a few seconds, which doesn’t make any sense, but it’s kind of cool nonetheless. The much-improved enemy AI becomes apparent when you are spotted and the enemy radios for backup. The enemy will dispatch an attack unit to the area, and their search tactics are pretty amazing. Unlike the original game, in which it was usually possible to head around a corner or into a side room and wait out the alert period, in MGS2 the enemy soldiers will actually conduct a search as if they know an intruder is in the area. It’s still possible to get away, as long s no enemy spots your escape route. If you are spotted, however, they’ll uncover every box, search every locker and conduct move-and-cover routines until every nook and cranny of the area has been checked. This enemy behavior makes the game even tenser than before, since there are now severe penalties for being spotted. Even taking out enemies can result in repercussions, as the enemy control base will occasional radio for guards to check in, and if they don’t, a search team will be sent to the area, even if your presence hasn’t been detected at all. Since so much of the game is recycled from the first MGS, this new focus on improved enemy AI is refreshing.

Kojima went into hiding a year before the game’s release to finish it up in secrecy, and he did a great job of keeping a huge secret about this game under wraps. Everybody has played the neat demo packed with Zone of the Enders, where Solid Snake infiltrates a tanker during a heavy rainstorm and makes his way to a boss fight. Well, that’s where MGS2 starts, and there’s about another half-hour of gameplay on the ship afterward, and then the game jumps two years into the future and you’re put in control of a new character – a green Foxhound recruit code-named Raiden. Raiden plays just like Snake, but he’s a little more agile and a lot younger. He’s also a lot whinier, and will probably remind some gamers of Steve from Code: Veronica. He comes with some excessive baggage in the form of Rose, a girlfriend who feels the need to constantly call him during the mission on his codec communicator to nag him about their relationship. She also facilitates game saves, and you can’t ever just save the game and get on with things – Rose will sometimes initiate extremely long conversations after the save process is finished. Not to worry, though, Solid Snake is still around, and still a big part of the story, but you won’t be playing as him after the first couple hours (less if you mastered the demo) of the game, and for many this will come as a shock. Maybe this is Kojima’s way of acknowledging that so much about the game hasn’t changed from the original, so he’s changed the biggest part of the game – the hero. Even so, the change is merely cosmetic – Raiden plays just like Snake, albeit with a much less engaging personality.

Where MGS2 really excels, as in the first game, is in the sound and artistic design. The sound design is phenomenal, especially if you’ve got an optical digital audio cable and a 5.1 surround system to support the option. The positional audio serves to pull you into the game and make everything seem more urgent. The voice acting is top notch – whenever a new character is introduced throughout the game, a subtitle appears with the characters name and the name of the voice actor, and these people deserve the credit. The overly complex and often stumbling plot would have come off as laughable if not for the voice work of the primaries – they lend a sense of credibility to the convoluted storyline. As in the first game, the cutscenes are mostly well done. The scenes that use the game engine are beautiful, but Kojima once again felt the need to throw in a lot of filler cutscenes, including grainy video footage, hand drawn artwork, and even some repeated scenes from earlier in the game.

This brings me around to my second big problem with the game. There are too many cutscenes and codec dialogue episodes. Far, far too many. "Excessive" seems mild when describing these instances. It almost seems at times as if the game itself is fighting against you for control of your screen. Your allies will contact you to tell you exactly what to do in any situation, sometimes redundantly, and most of the cutscenes are drawn out affairs that involve multiple movies, codec dialogue, and flashbacks. There’s way too much story going on here, and much of it doesn’t have any bearing on the actual game. You’ll expect to see The X-Files Chris Carter getting a story credit as convoluted as the plot is. It got to a point where I was literally just wanting to play the game and I started skipping cutscenes during one exceptionally long intermission about halfway through the game. Granted, some of the cutscenes are cool, but many of them suffer from bad direction and plain run too long. Maybe using the directional microphone to listen in on an enemy conversation sounded like a cool idea on paper, but having to do it twice, in a short period, to eavesdrop on incredibly long-winded conversations, gets old… quickly.

There are some new ideas in this game, but not many. The sequences where you must swim underwater are handled well, although these are instances where the not-so-perfect MGS control will rear its head to cause frustration. Also, you’ll finally be able to swing around that cool ninja sword, something everyone’s been wanting to do since the VR Missions add-on to the original game. The way the sword is implemented into gameplay is cool, as well. Still, the rehashed old ideas far outweigh the fresh new ones, and you’ll really get the sense that you’ve played this game before if you’ve been through the original game. For this reason, MGS2 doesn’t have the same impact as the first game, and nothing here will make your jaw drop like seeing the ninja lop off Revolver Ocelot’s hand or wipe out an entire contingent of soldiers.

Replay value suffers – beat the game and you’ll be able to play through it again with a much harder level of difficulty and no radar. This option seems tailor-made for people who really enjoy suffering. You can also play through the game and try to collect all 100 enemy dog tags. Doing this will let you play through the game again with unlimited ammo, which, when you think about it, isn’t really necessary if you made it through the normal way once already. Maybe it’s useful if you really have to kill ALL of the pigeons on the roof of the Big Shell…

Anyway, if you liked the original MGS, you’ll like MGS2 – it’s more of the same. Not that it’s so bad; the game is good, just not great. It’s like slipping on a comfortable glove for fans. Don’t buy into the hype, though; this game is definitely not revolutionary, no matter what the magazines and websites tell you.