<div style='font: 10pt Arial; text-align: left; '>I couldn't stand not playing MGS2 anymore, so I rented a copy along with a PS2 for a few days and gave it whirl. I played through on normal mode and finished in about 13 or so game hours (not all at once!).
I don't understand why so many people are bitching about the final product. Well, I sorta do, but more on that later. MGS2 is a great game, probably the best console game I've played in years. Gameplay-wise, I couldn't have asked for a better sequel; it more or less corrects everything that was wrong with the first title, then adds tons of awesome extra stuff. Messing with the guards alone is about 10x more fun, and fighting alongside Snake near the end of the game is total <B>kickass.</b> It's probably possible to nitpick a few things, but I really don't see how anyone can seriously fault MGS2 from a gameplay perspective, like some did with the first title. You could sooner make a case against the Bible for not having enough about God in it.
And as far as I know, no one's tried to attack MGS2 from that direction alone. Rather, they all keep coming back to one thing: story, story, story. "The story is boring." "The dialogue sessions are too long." "Raiden's a pussy." "Rose is annoying." "The ending is stupid."
Yup. All the above are true, to a certain extent. The story does get pretty lame and nonsensical and self-indulgent for the last hour or so. The characters blab and blab and blab. Raiden, at least when compared to Snake, is a pretty big pussy. Rose is a whiny, stupid cunt of a girlfriend who'll go on forever about all her insecurities. And, yeah, the ending is nonsense.
Well... all right. From a cursory standpoint, these all seem like pretty big flaws. But let's go over them with a finer comb.
Yes, the story is poorly paced and a bit all over the place. Yes, it alternately drags and zooms by, and the last hour is a pathetic joke. <I>But you don't have to watch the story.</I> 99.9% of the time, you can either hit the triangle button to zoom past all the codec stuff (which is such a great idea, you have to wonder why no one else thought of it until now) or press X to skip any cutscene you don't want to see. Unlike Xenogears or any other RPG ever made, nothing is holding you captive to events onscreen. You don't have to repeatedly hit a button to skip text. You don't have to watch every long, drawn-out FMV sequence. You have a fast-forward button, and you can use it pretty much whenever you want.
Think about that for a second. Think about the level of control MGS2 gives you. Don't want to hear Raiden argue with Rose about their boring relationship? Hit triangle. Sick of being lectured to by Campbell-borg about what a selfish dick you are? Hit triangle. Tired of all the stock footage? Hit X, and, Poof! Back to the real game.
All of this makes MGS2's story a mostly non-intrusive affair: it's there if you want it, but if not, not. (The only exception is the final hour, where you're more or less forced to answer Campbell-borg's insane, ANNOYING codec calls in order to make it to the next area, and all that stupid mind-fuck nonsense when the playing screen shrinks to a tiny box while fighting alongside Snake in Arsenal Gear.)
It also makes playing as Raiden a relatively painless experience. Now, Raiden is not the Jar-Jar Binks kind of character some have taken to calling him. He's not nearly that bad. It is true, however, that he fails to measure up to the incomparable Solid Snake. He whines a lot, his hair is even more ridiculous than Snake's mullet, and he has incredibly poor taste in women. But when you don't listen to his conversations with Rose, and if you ignore the fact that his whole backstory is unceremoniously dumped on you in the game's final hour, you're left with a passable hero--a proxy, a figurehead, sure, but not an annoying one. And I know there's nothing you can do to avoid seeing him naked for about twenty minutes or so, but just be thankful that the developers weren't sadistic enough to make his ass jiggle like Tecmo did to every female characters' breasts in Dead or Alive.
MGS2's plot is ludicrous, sure. It shamelessly borrows from 1984, Brave New World, Evangelion, X-Files, The Matrix and about half a dozen more sources I can't think of right now. The whole idea of an organization like the Patriots, a shadow bureaucracy so massive, it runs both the government <I>and</I> a bunch of private institutions while operating in complete secrecy and efficiently--riiiiight--is mind-bogglingly stupid, and kinda ruins the memory of the first MGS by explaining it all away as some big experiment. Emma's death--which occurs about an hour after she's introduced--is a cheap and manipulative attempt to insert a little emotion into a largely sterile story, and is a bit depressing (a different--and inferior--emotion from sadness) considering that everything she did ended up being kind of futile anyway. Otacon's "revelation" is needless, bizarre, and ultimately a slap in the face to a character who actually winded up being a lot better than he was in the first MGS game. Solidus turned out to be kind of a wimp, what with all the talk about him being the best of both "solid" and "liquid" states. He even needed an exoskeleton in order to fight. Ocelot's double, triple, and quadruple crosses got old. Vamp was gay, both in the literal and stupid sense, and Fortune wasn't much better. Olga's okay, but she doesn't have much of a screen presence. And Liquid's only around for ten minutes.
So MGS2 has serious story problems. Well, so what? What story-based game doesn't? The first MGS had major plot problems, too, and while it might be more evenly paced and dramatically focused than its successor (taking place at it does in a single, well-defined location with clear and enumerated goals), at least MGS2 doesn't have its villains soliloquize about their tragic Kurdish childhoods while bleeding to death. That's saying something, at least.
(Side note: I'm a little amused at how some people are balking so at MGS2's plot, when not nearly as many did so to its predecessor. Maybe people are more picky about videogame plots these days, or they've let all the hype get to their head. Personally, I think it's just been awhile since they played the first MGS, and thus don't remember all the stupid moments from that game. I call this the Final Fantasy VI Effect, that is, building up and romanticizing a game you played years ago so high in your mind, you remember only the best parts and gloss over or forget all the dumb ones, in reference to what hardcore FF VI purists have been doing in reaction to every new FF game from VII on.)
My outlook on the role of story in videogames these past couple of years has evolved from a maximalist standpoint to a minimalist one. I credit it to years of playing RPGs that became more and more about telling overwrought tales of grandiose stupidity than anything else, gameplay and fun be damned. The more I realized that enjoying RPGs depended on liking their stories--none of which were very good--the more I wanted games to concentrate first on gameplay. It used to be the other way around. I once believed I could forgive any amount of mediocre gameplay, so long as the story was reasonably good. That was how I justified slogging through thirty hours of gameplay hell in games like Lunar: TSSS (which really didn't have all that great a story anyway) and Xenogears (which actually had a giant pink ball of fuzz on a fucking crucifix, for crying out loud). It got the point where I just couldn't do it anymore.
I can't reasonably claim that MGS2 keeps the story intrusion to a safe, minimal level. There are times, as I explained above, when all the dumbness and self-indulgence rears its ugly head and I can't ignore it. This is a Hideo Kojima game, after all, and he can't quite let you forget that fact. Not completely, anyway. But when the rest of the game is this good, when everything else comes together and clicks almost perfectly, I can forgive quite a bit. Let Kojima spew dialogue and shit philosophy by the truckload if he wants. Just so long as there's an option to skip most of it--and so long as he gives us plenty of Solid Snake being a badass (and he does give a bit of it in MGS2, mullet or no)--I'll take it like a man.
With a fucking wink and a smile.</div>
I don't understand why so many people are bitching about the final product. Well, I sorta do, but more on that later. MGS2 is a great game, probably the best console game I've played in years. Gameplay-wise, I couldn't have asked for a better sequel; it more or less corrects everything that was wrong with the first title, then adds tons of awesome extra stuff. Messing with the guards alone is about 10x more fun, and fighting alongside Snake near the end of the game is total <B>kickass.</b> It's probably possible to nitpick a few things, but I really don't see how anyone can seriously fault MGS2 from a gameplay perspective, like some did with the first title. You could sooner make a case against the Bible for not having enough about God in it.
And as far as I know, no one's tried to attack MGS2 from that direction alone. Rather, they all keep coming back to one thing: story, story, story. "The story is boring." "The dialogue sessions are too long." "Raiden's a pussy." "Rose is annoying." "The ending is stupid."
Yup. All the above are true, to a certain extent. The story does get pretty lame and nonsensical and self-indulgent for the last hour or so. The characters blab and blab and blab. Raiden, at least when compared to Snake, is a pretty big pussy. Rose is a whiny, stupid cunt of a girlfriend who'll go on forever about all her insecurities. And, yeah, the ending is nonsense.
Well... all right. From a cursory standpoint, these all seem like pretty big flaws. But let's go over them with a finer comb.
Yes, the story is poorly paced and a bit all over the place. Yes, it alternately drags and zooms by, and the last hour is a pathetic joke. <I>But you don't have to watch the story.</I> 99.9% of the time, you can either hit the triangle button to zoom past all the codec stuff (which is such a great idea, you have to wonder why no one else thought of it until now) or press X to skip any cutscene you don't want to see. Unlike Xenogears or any other RPG ever made, nothing is holding you captive to events onscreen. You don't have to repeatedly hit a button to skip text. You don't have to watch every long, drawn-out FMV sequence. You have a fast-forward button, and you can use it pretty much whenever you want.
Think about that for a second. Think about the level of control MGS2 gives you. Don't want to hear Raiden argue with Rose about their boring relationship? Hit triangle. Sick of being lectured to by Campbell-borg about what a selfish dick you are? Hit triangle. Tired of all the stock footage? Hit X, and, Poof! Back to the real game.
All of this makes MGS2's story a mostly non-intrusive affair: it's there if you want it, but if not, not. (The only exception is the final hour, where you're more or less forced to answer Campbell-borg's insane, ANNOYING codec calls in order to make it to the next area, and all that stupid mind-fuck nonsense when the playing screen shrinks to a tiny box while fighting alongside Snake in Arsenal Gear.)
It also makes playing as Raiden a relatively painless experience. Now, Raiden is not the Jar-Jar Binks kind of character some have taken to calling him. He's not nearly that bad. It is true, however, that he fails to measure up to the incomparable Solid Snake. He whines a lot, his hair is even more ridiculous than Snake's mullet, and he has incredibly poor taste in women. But when you don't listen to his conversations with Rose, and if you ignore the fact that his whole backstory is unceremoniously dumped on you in the game's final hour, you're left with a passable hero--a proxy, a figurehead, sure, but not an annoying one. And I know there's nothing you can do to avoid seeing him naked for about twenty minutes or so, but just be thankful that the developers weren't sadistic enough to make his ass jiggle like Tecmo did to every female characters' breasts in Dead or Alive.
MGS2's plot is ludicrous, sure. It shamelessly borrows from 1984, Brave New World, Evangelion, X-Files, The Matrix and about half a dozen more sources I can't think of right now. The whole idea of an organization like the Patriots, a shadow bureaucracy so massive, it runs both the government <I>and</I> a bunch of private institutions while operating in complete secrecy and efficiently--riiiiight--is mind-bogglingly stupid, and kinda ruins the memory of the first MGS by explaining it all away as some big experiment. Emma's death--which occurs about an hour after she's introduced--is a cheap and manipulative attempt to insert a little emotion into a largely sterile story, and is a bit depressing (a different--and inferior--emotion from sadness) considering that everything she did ended up being kind of futile anyway. Otacon's "revelation" is needless, bizarre, and ultimately a slap in the face to a character who actually winded up being a lot better than he was in the first MGS game. Solidus turned out to be kind of a wimp, what with all the talk about him being the best of both "solid" and "liquid" states. He even needed an exoskeleton in order to fight. Ocelot's double, triple, and quadruple crosses got old. Vamp was gay, both in the literal and stupid sense, and Fortune wasn't much better. Olga's okay, but she doesn't have much of a screen presence. And Liquid's only around for ten minutes.
So MGS2 has serious story problems. Well, so what? What story-based game doesn't? The first MGS had major plot problems, too, and while it might be more evenly paced and dramatically focused than its successor (taking place at it does in a single, well-defined location with clear and enumerated goals), at least MGS2 doesn't have its villains soliloquize about their tragic Kurdish childhoods while bleeding to death. That's saying something, at least.
(Side note: I'm a little amused at how some people are balking so at MGS2's plot, when not nearly as many did so to its predecessor. Maybe people are more picky about videogame plots these days, or they've let all the hype get to their head. Personally, I think it's just been awhile since they played the first MGS, and thus don't remember all the stupid moments from that game. I call this the Final Fantasy VI Effect, that is, building up and romanticizing a game you played years ago so high in your mind, you remember only the best parts and gloss over or forget all the dumb ones, in reference to what hardcore FF VI purists have been doing in reaction to every new FF game from VII on.)
My outlook on the role of story in videogames these past couple of years has evolved from a maximalist standpoint to a minimalist one. I credit it to years of playing RPGs that became more and more about telling overwrought tales of grandiose stupidity than anything else, gameplay and fun be damned. The more I realized that enjoying RPGs depended on liking their stories--none of which were very good--the more I wanted games to concentrate first on gameplay. It used to be the other way around. I once believed I could forgive any amount of mediocre gameplay, so long as the story was reasonably good. That was how I justified slogging through thirty hours of gameplay hell in games like Lunar: TSSS (which really didn't have all that great a story anyway) and Xenogears (which actually had a giant pink ball of fuzz on a fucking crucifix, for crying out loud). It got the point where I just couldn't do it anymore.
I can't reasonably claim that MGS2 keeps the story intrusion to a safe, minimal level. There are times, as I explained above, when all the dumbness and self-indulgence rears its ugly head and I can't ignore it. This is a Hideo Kojima game, after all, and he can't quite let you forget that fact. Not completely, anyway. But when the rest of the game is this good, when everything else comes together and clicks almost perfectly, I can forgive quite a bit. Let Kojima spew dialogue and shit philosophy by the truckload if he wants. Just so long as there's an option to skip most of it--and so long as he gives us plenty of Solid Snake being a badass (and he does give a bit of it in MGS2, mullet or no)--I'll take it like a man.
With a fucking wink and a smile.</div>
