First time I've played this game in close to 10 years only to try and do the dogtag task which I never decided to do after my first and only playthough of this game. Since it had been so long, I wanted to see if my original thoughts were the same after all this time. I'm going to offer some insight since I was bored and I've always wanted to talk about how I felt about this game. Also apologies if there are any mistakes or errors as far as story goes (I haven't played through MGS4), I decided to do this on the fly.

MGS2 was the big reason I got a PS2 to begin with. Being such a fan of the first game, I was so excited when this was about to come out. I read up about nonstop, yet the story always seemed to end at the Tanker, no real mention of the Plant. Eventually, time came and I bought this game. First and foremost let me say, MGS1 set the bar far too high if it were to have any sequels and seeing as how the ending happened, a sequel was bound to happen.

After purchasing this game, I was super stoked for what I was about to embark on. I knew that Ocelot and Otacon were both returning, which was a huge relief for me since they're quite honestly 2 of the best characters in the series. And playing through the Tanker part of this game, it's really wasn't that bad. But the Tanker section was almost nothing more than a backstory to set up the rest of the game, which turned out to be nothing more than a rip off of the first game.

What shocked me most about this game, was how short it was. While the first game took me around 2 weeks to finish, I finished this game in just under 2 days with relative ease. I was pissed. Not only did this game seem to copy the first game, it seemed to offer less than the first one and create more questions, rather than answer them. And yes, I know they explained that this whole game was a "simulation" of Shadow Moses, but that isn't an excuse to me. If anything, it really showed how Hideo Kojima didn't know where to take the series.

Here's where they failed:

The Characters:

You: Everything about this game tricks you into believing you're going to be playing as Snake, which you do...for about 20 minutes. Then you're given the unfortunate task of playing as Raiden, who I seriously thought was the new Meryl when I looked at the manual. Of course, the sinking feeling soon kicks in once you encounter Snake in the game (which Kojima didn't even bother to surprise you with, since you see his back going up the elevator, no mystery at all). Everything about this guy from how he says his name to the way he slips around on bird shit, just pisses me off. He comes off like a mix of Luke Skywalker and that ditzy girl who dated in high school but wouldn't put out. He's not all too bad, I mean he moves pretty good and is more agile than Snake, but do we really need more sniveling whiney effeminate male heroes in these Japanese games? And the fact we see his ass later on...burn in hell...whoever programed that.

Your Codec team: You know what I really liked about MGS1? The fact that you had so much back up support via codec. Want some insight? Call Campbell. Need more? Call Master Miller? Need even more? Call Natasha. Or even Otacon (after you kill some dogs). Who do you have in this game? You get the Colonel and Snake...that's about it. Everyone else has cameo codec moments, but most people are used for about 10 minutes and then their role is done. And lets talk about Rosemary, what an annoying bitch! The thing I liked about Mei Ling was that she gave you insight in the choice of proverbs and such, since you and "Rosemary" are in a relationship, they essentially give you insight about nothing, just filler for plot convience.

People you encounter: It's really hard to compare this game to the original in this department simply because Snake acts as your backup, and boy does he kick ass. He's basically the saving factor in this entire game, and it's such a cocktease to not let you play as him in the Plant part. It would've been nice if did what Ape Escape 2 did, which allowed you to play as Spike after you completed the game as Jimmy, but I digress. Part of what bothered me playing this game as someone other than Snake was the fact that deep down, I never knew where they were going with Snake, nor did I know why he was really involved in this, I mean I know Liquid tricked him into coming but since everything was supposedly planned out for the Patriots, then why didn't Liquid just override their decision since he can control Ocelot anyways? Anyways for the rest of the people you encounter, I guess Peter Stillman is alright for what he does and the Coolant spray gameplay was pretty fun, but like awaking everyday to the idea of the sun rising, I knew deep down he was going to die. In fact every new character you meet that helps you ends up dying, why does Metal Gear Solid always do this? It's unfair to always set you up for failure since every rescue mission ends in failure. Also the idea of the President getting assassinated did disturb me, yes I know it's a game, but at the same time it's a delicate subject with me, since it's just crossing a boundry that didn't need to be there and didn't add to any drama to the game at all. The last person I'll touch on is Emma. Jesus Christ is she annoying...and she looks like Sarah Palin. Not only that, the escorting through the water is one of the more annoying things I recall in this series. Again, most of the character interactions are a complete ripoff of the first game, only not done nearly as well.

The Bosses:

I'm going to break everything down here simply because I feel that it's important to describe how I felt with this game compared to the first game. Numbers don't mean much to me, but the first game offered so much more with the bosses, you had 6 different bosses to fight against and 11 boss fights overall and 3 stages where you fought guards. The second game? 5 bosses, 6 1/2 boss fights and 1 stafe where you fight guards. And these fights aren't as defined as the first game, neither are the bosses themselves as characters.

Solidus Snake: Let me just cut this guy a break first off, he had very large shoes to fill after Liquid as far as a main antagonists go. Wait a minute? This is President George Sears from the first game? What the fuck? Again, something that seemed to be thrown together for the hell of it. This guy is just a snoozer, I mean I don't really recall what his motives were other than to get the Patriots names, but even then...snooze. Liquid on the other hand just revels in the fact that he's Snake's twin brother, and has clear motives, he wants to get Big Boss' DNA to repare his clone army and so forth. Solidus' motives are so complex and bizarre it just makes you not care about him at all. He doesn't do or say anything that is memorable, yet Liquid on the other hand spouts off little things that become so memorable. Also there's this stupid thing that they do with Solidus to make him out to be like Big Boss. "They took my eye!" Yawn. He's the only guy in the game that you fight more than once...unless you count Vamp.

Vamp: I hate this guy. I hate everything about him. Again, I suppose he's "doing his job" by making me not like him, but you don't even get the satisfaction of killing him at the end of this game. He's such a douchebag on so many levels. I remember when I shot at Fortune and the bullets swerved and hit him right in the fucking head, I burst out laughing. Of course, he wasn't dead, for some reason and he spends the rest of the game with a fucking bullet hole in his head. The whole walking on water thing wasn't that impressive, some dude beat him to that about 2000 years ago anyways. The only thing I can even really say about this guy is that I somewhat enjoyed the first battle I had with him, even though he was pretty easy. Again, I don't know what the hell he's really supposed to be, it's like they knew they couldn't top Psycho Mantis so they just decided to throw together a bunch of cliche characteristics of every supernatural CGI movie. And to top it off, he kills Emma. Not that I thought Emma was a great character or anything, but did she really need to die? Did Otacon REALLY need about 20 minutes worth of movies dedicated to how sad he was she died? Again, his presence is basically done at this point, so she could've easily lived. Goddamn is this game one downer after the next. I guess it's your call if you count shoot Vamp in the head again a boss battle.

Fortune: If there's one character I'm apathetic for, it's her. There's nothing going on here. Literally nothing. I don't know what to write about this bitch. She's sad because everyone she knows is dead and she wants to be dead too. She unfortunately can't die so she decides she's going to kill everyone else. Sounds good on paper, but the presentation...wow. Could they have fucked up more? Since almost the entire game is built around her being invincible, it's really hard to face her in battle. Her battle consists of her shooting at you while you run back and forth behind crates trying to not get hit, you do this for about 40 seconds then you're done. That's it...that's your big encounter with Fortune. You don't see her till the end of the game where Ocelot proves she doesn't have luck by shooting her, then attacking her with Metal Gear...oh wait she does have luck! Fucking stupid.

Fatman: Basically the only member of Dead Cell that seems to have any character at all. This yucko is a bomb expert, so setting up a battle around bombs was pretty enjoyable and everything, but at the same time, what was this guy trying to accomplish? I know he has his own motives beyond what Dead Cell was seeking. This guy is so looney, that he spends most of his time skating around planting bombs rather than fighting you. This guy has absolutely no common sense at all and I don't see what point he had in doing all this. You could've very well set up a battle the way the first game did with Ocelot, nice and simple with a big fucking bomb in the middle of the room.

Olga: The only practical boss battle in the entire game! And it's the first boss you fight...as Snake! I cannot stress enough the practical effort that we got from the bosses in MGS1, Wolf, Ocelot, Raven, even Liquid at the end of the game, it was a practical gun fight. No fancy shit, no real gimmicks, just 2 people with guns shooting at eachother. War. This game gave us a fat guy who is bomb crazy, a slut you can't fight, a bloodsucker who can't die and a leader who has tentacles. Why is it that this game basically gave up after the Tanker part of the game? It's like Kojima spent all his time on the Tanker and spent a few minutes on the Plant. The fight you have with Olga is simple, yet effective. There's nothing really wrong here.

Ocelot: Oh wait...you don't fight Ocelot. And at every single point in the game he seems to have the upper hand, isn't that convenient? Speaking of hand, he has his hand back. Oh that's Liquid? Why does he have Liquid's hand? Wait, who's he working for again? Oh and he gets away at the end. Yeah...what a waste.

Story:

As I said before, almost all the interesting stuff in the game happens on the Tanker. And that's 20 minutes of gameplay, tops. If you decide to play through this entire game again, you'll probably skip the lengthy videos. I mean it seems like they put more effort into the story than the gameplay. And don't get me wrong, the gameplay is great, there's just not enough of it, the story just is too dominating. And that's what bothers me most, you could play through MGS1 without paying TOO close attention to what the story was, I mean sure it was a complex story, but it's sequel seems to take this one step further. Almost all the characters in one way or another are attached in one way or the other. Rosemary is the girlfriend of Raiden is the son of Solidus who is the brother to Snake who is helped by Otacon who's sister is Emma, who's mother he fucked and Emma ends up liking him. Wait what? Too much information! And let's focus on the Patriots for a second here. Again, I have not (nor will I likely) play through the 4th installment of Metal Gear Solid. But this idea of the Patriots is so insanely stupid, in that they're supposed to be all powerful and retain order in all that's going on in the world. So they basically set this entire threat of Dead Cell up for absolutely no real reason. I mean what was the point in all of this? Ocelot really gains nothing from this, as he seems to be the brawn behind the Patriots, as Solidus and everyone else seems to be as confused to what's going on as I am. Nothing from the first game was really resolved and a sense of disgust came over me the first time I saw the credits roll.

Overall:

I mean was this game an absolute loss? No...I mean it wasn't horrible, but much like Indiana Jones 4, you expect so much more out of something, even if it doesn't live up to expectations. The length that you play at can very well be finished in a couple of hours if you're really good and I'm sure the reason for the dogtag shit is to only extend the idea you're getting more gameplay by collecting them all. But do I really want to play through THIS again? And I mean I hate to blame it all on the idea of playing as Raiden, but there were other factors at hand. I mean the first game still kind of felt like a game to an extent, I never really felt bad at any point playing, the story was good, the characters were good, you enjoyed yourself. This game seemed to be built on drama, just wanting to make it at any point. It's missing the wit that the first game had and just seems too fucking depressing for an action game. I mean it takes itself a little too seriously as far as plot devices, yet things like the bosses are so over the top, it seems to clash. After I finished this game for the first time, I sort of lost interest in the Metal Gear series, I was just so disapointed. I waited well over a year to get MGS3, which turned out to be an awesome game which has a lot of replayability to it. I even started MGS4, but after playing a few hours it really reminded me of MGS2, so I put it down. No need to make myself any more depressed.

Cameron wrote:

I don't understand the complaints about the storyline; it was complicated, yes, but it definitely made sense at all times

The problem little plot points to really make you care. After playing the first game, I realized that you need to watch all the cut scenes for fear that you might miss something that is crucial to the story. Simple enough. But this game took it to a whole new level, by adding so much information, it was over indulgent and made me care about less of what was going on. And I once again question WHY the Patriots tried to resimulate Shadow Moses, what was the gain of that? Like I mentioned before, I really think Kojima probably didn't know where to go with the story, which was why he even decided to go with Raiden so that he could in a sense retell MGS1, only crappier and filled with people you don't give a shit about.

And I would never play this game again if I flat out thought it was a bad game, it's not. But I'm filled with so much apathy when I do play, I mean the Plant mission just makes me constantly wonder why I'm playing this? It's not visually exciting, not even at the time it came out, did this even compare to the first game. The only reason I even decided to stick with playing MGS2 the first time, was because I wanted to see what happened to Snake, or if I would be able to play as him again. And while Raiden was alright to play as, from a character standpoint he absolutely sucks. I mean everything he says just reeks of terrible. "Did you say nerd?" How does he get nerd from node? Without mentioning MGS4, tell me one good reason why I should give a shit about this fuck? Little things like that make me hate him, I mean I'm playing up to the guy in the last game who was gruff, tough, didn't think twice about killing, talked down to pretty much everyone...all that, and now THIS is the guy who follows him up? He's a Final Fantasy character! Do we really need more of those? Couldn't this story have played out just as well, with the idea of you controlling Snake instead of Raiden? I probably would've gotten more emotionally involved with the Raiden character, if I wasn't the one who was stuck playing as him.

And I mean, if this was a movie for example...a sequel to the first movie, it would suck. Because like I said before, you have absolutely no real interactions with Ocelot, and every time he's on screen, he's in charge, or Liquid is. You don't even get the pleasure of fighting him once and he gets away with everything, and I would've been fine with him escaping again, but I once again question the idea of putting him in the game if they decide to do nothing with him other than really being the guy who explains what's really going on. His role was less significant than Decoy Octopuss' role was in MGS1.

And yes, Aresonal was bullshit. See what I mean with plotpoints that go nowhere? This game was full of them. You cut out the Arsenal BS, the Otacon backstory, the President's story, etc. etc. and you could've still had a great game. The fact that they decided to go ahead with all this nonsense and NOT give you a real sequel to MGS1 seemed like too much of a "fuck you" to not point out.

Btw..yes the box art was awesome.