Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

aka: Hejin Zhuangbei 2, MGS2, Metal Gear Solid III
Moby ID: 5211
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Description official descriptions

In 2007, two years after the Shadow Moses incident, Solid Snake - now working for a freelance organization known as Philanthropy - infiltrates the oil tanker U.S.S. Discovery, investigating the development of a new Metal Gear-type weapon. A confrontation with a Russian military group as well as an old acquaintance from Snake's past adventure leads to a massive detonation, after which Snake is presumed dead.

Fast-forward to the year 2009: the player takes control of Raiden, a rookie agent operating under the order of the Colonel, apparently a member of a reformed Foxhound unit. His initial assignment is to infiltrate the offshore clean-up facility Big Shell and rescue the President of the United States of America, who was kidnapped by members of a terrorist organization known as Sons of Liberty. However, the matters become increasingly complicated as almost everyone Raiden communicates with appears to have a hidden agenda, and it is hard to tell a friend from foe...

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is the sequel to the espionage action game Metal Gear Solid. Much of the gameplay remains the same, as the game's protagonist has to sneak past guards, outsmart them using various gadgets, and defeat the tricky boss enemies. There are a host of weapons to be picked up throughout the game, some old, such as the FAMAS and Socom, and some new, such as the AK-47. Martial arts combos can be used to disable guards. It is possible to crawl through small spaces, peek around corners, and perform acrobatic leaps to get away. The protagonist can also hang from railings, effectively hiding from guard, or stick his gun in a guard's back, surprising him. The cardboard box is also back, and can once again be used for hiding.

Gadgets such as sneak suit, mine detector, thermal goggles, and others can be found along the way.. The radar from the original game is still there and alerts the player to guards' positions and also shows their field of view. If an alarm is sounded the radar is disabled while the hero has to escape. In some situations, it is necessary to enable the radar before it becomes possible to use it.

Like its predecessor, the game is heavy on codec conversations and cutscenes. All the cutscenes in the game use the in-game 3D engine; the characters' movements are motion captured animations.

Spellings

  • εˆι‡‘θ£…ε€‡2 - Chinese spelling (simplified)

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Credits (PlayStation 2 version)

270 People (215 developers, 55 thanks) · View all

EVP Sales, Marketing, Operations
VP Marketing
Product Manager/Director of Marketing
Associate Product Manager
Senior Manager Creative Services
Director of Public Relations
Senior Public Relations Specialist
Director of Marketing Communications
Consumer Services
Sr. VP Product Development
Director of Production
US Localization Producer
QA Manager
Lead Tester
QA Liaison
Testers
Packaging & Manual Design
  • Department X
Special Thanks
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 94% (based on 71 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 163 ratings with 12 reviews)

Most in-depth game EVER!!!!

The Good
First off the graphics are amazing, I have never seen graphics like these on a PS2 game ever, besides GT3 of course. The story is truly amazing, it feels like you are a action hero in a movie. There are a number of weapons at your disposal, I preferred the AKS-74U. Also the environment around you seemed so lifelike you could touch it - lets say if you shoot the wall, it would leave a mark on the wall. The blood in the game looks very life-like also. My suggestions to anyone who plans on buying the game, or someone who already has the game is to watch all the cutscenes, it makes the game even more exciting.

The Bad
The thing that I didn't like about the game was, when you would run behind the guard he wouldn't hear a thing. That made the game a little easy. And also you would play as Snake for a short period of time. Than later on it would switch over to Raiden. I didn't dislike Raiden, but Solid Snake is the man, and it's so much fun to play as him, instead of Raiden.

The Bottom Line
An action packed rollercoaster ride, packed with brutal boss fights, an emotional story line, ruthless enemies, and one of the coolest action hero's of all time SOLID SNAKE !

PlayStation 2 · by Muhammad Khan (2) · 2004

A great game that OD'd on storyline

The Good
- Wide selection of weapons and items; grouping option in the menu made things easier to find

  • Stellar graphics and locales

  • Controls are great, although it seemed hard to target enemies in first person mode

  • Fantastic sniper section

    The Bad
    - More reliant on shooting and killing instead of stealth; much more of an action platformer than Metal Gear Solid 1

  • Story is so complex and thick you can cut it with a knife; they're trying to make so many points it's hard to keep track of

  • Some of the cutscenes, especially the final two at the end, are WAAAYYY too long

  • Raiden looks a bit too anime for a game such as this

  • The final boss, Solidus Snake, looks like a Doctor Octopus ripoff, except with only two mechanical arms, he'd be Doctor Bipus!



The Bottom Line
Essentially, you play two characters in this Stealth/Action classic series, Solid Snake and Raiden. Snake fights through a prelude part of the game on an ocean tanker, while Raiden is used the bulk of the game on an ocean-based complex outside of New York City. Your job is to rescue the President from this complex, who has been taken hostage by terrorists. After many boss battles, challenges and plot twists, Raiden comes across Arsenal Gear; dozens of Metal Gear-type killing machines. I'm not going to get into the nitty-gritty of the story, but ultimately (SPOILER!!!) your entire mission was staged by AI entities determined to see if human behavior can be controlled. If so, they'll know that they can control the multitude of 'nonsense' information on the internet, decide what's most important, and pass that story down to later generations (the AI can't trust the stupid humans to know what's important or not). At least, that's how I understood it. A lot more to it, but that's the gist of it.

The game is highly addicting and enjoyable just like the first, but I think it lost some of the original's charm. It seems like it bit off more than it can chew when it came to the movie part of it, and I think it detracted from the overall experience.

PlayStation 2 · by lado (25) · 2012

Great game but didn't have the same touch as the first

The Good
Well once you pop in the disc the graphics will blow you away. The enemy AI is great, just try getting to the first boss in Extreme mode. The "hold up" move is great. The voice acting sounds good with most characters. Wide range of weapons to use. Story is great.

The Bad
RAIDEN! This game could've been SO much better if you didn't have to be the annoying Raiden and have to put up with his boring girlfriend Rose. The CODEC scenes can get really boring between the two. The game is way to short, i beat it in under 8 hours. The whole story probably could have been explained better. There's not enough actual gameplay.

The Bottom Line
Great game if you dont mind listening to the game as much as you play. Still one of the best games on the PS2.

PlayStation 2 · by Matt Ogles (14) · 2002

[ View all 12 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Action figures

Just as for the original, a line of action figures has been released by McFarlane Toys. Most of the main characters are depicted and as an added bonus each individual figure comes with a part of the new Metal Gear. Collect them all and assemble the monster!

Development

The development budget for Metal Gear Solid 2 was somewhere in the region of 10 million US dollars.

Ending

Pretty soon as the game starts and you get used to controls, you are requested to enter your name, date of birth and such things (like in some typical Square RPG games). In the ending animation, when Snake asks Raiden about that dog tag he's wearing, Raiden looks at it, before he throws it away, and in that cinematic, on a dog tag, you see your name and info.

Intro

On the opening of the game, there's one piece that somehow does not fit the game without any explanation. First, we see some roman letters (numbers) etched on stone, then we see some Japanese ink writings on a paper, and then we see programming data and computer code. Hideo Kojimo commented how that was to show the advance of civilization from storaging data. First through stone, than using paper, and the least digital data which is the only that doesn't have its existing time period. And that is then connected to the game and especially Arsenal Gear as an AI with great capability to track, store and control data.

Making of

On the Making Of MGS2 documentary that comes on an extra DVD, Hideo Kojima said that idea for Metal Gear series originated from his playing 'hide and seek' with his son.

North American version

In comparison to the Japanese version, some extra gore was added to the North American version. In the Substance re-release this was revoked.

Raiden

In order to cover up the character Raiden, the promotional trailers for the game showed several scenes with Solid Snake in different scenes. In the final game, Raiden is involved in the same scenes, but in Snake's place. Hideo Kojima used computer tricks to cover up Raiden and no one knew of his existence until the game was released. However, the manual spoils the surprise on its very first pages.

References

  • Just as in the original Metal Gear Solid, a poster for Hideo Kojima's previous game Policenauts can be found in the Computer Room in the Shell 1 Core.
  • If you look quickly in the scene where Snake logs into the computer to send the pictures to Otacon, you can spot another reference to Policenauts.
  • During the game, you will come into contact with a man named Pliskin who is actually former protagonist Solid Snake in disguise. The name is a direct reference to "Snake" Plissken, the main character played by Kurt Russell in John Carpenter's movies Escape from LA and Escape from New York.
  • A crazy Bomber man, one of the bosses is named Fatman. That was also a name of one of the atomic bombs that fall onto Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
  • The names of the characters Jack and Rose were taken from the main characters of Titanic. This film also influenced the decision to set the first chapter of the game on a sinking tanker.
  • emma's nickname (E.E.) and full name (Emma Emmerich-Danziger) are references to E.E. Danziger, a character in Jack Finney's novel Time and Again.
  • In the flooded basement of Shell Core 2, you can find a rubber duck floating harmlessly in one of the air vents. While it's possible that it's just a humorous detail, it's most likely a reference to the original tech demo for the PlayStation 2 which featured a rubber duck floating in a tub.

Series

In a Gamespot interview done shortly after the finishing of the American release, Hideo Kojima has amended a former comment about MGS2 being the last installment, saying, "I really think that Metal Gear has to live on in some form. But as I said at the end of Metal Gear Solid, I really think it is time for me to hand the director role over to someone else. I might do the initial planning for the next game but not much more than that."

He goes on to mention that the future of a certain character who is disliked in some gaming circles is still uncertain.

Soundtrack

Due to the success of Metal Gear Solid, the development team had a higher budget for the sound of the game. However, they didn't know who they would hire to compose the score for the game. One day, executive producer Hideo Kojima and sound director Kazuki Muraoka went to see Replacement Killers at the cinema. They both liked the movie a lot, and the music from the movie seemed pretty good. So, they flew to US, and got Harry Gregson-Williams to make the score for Metal Gear Solid 2. They actually took his music from other movies, such as The Rock, Enemy of the State and some and put on one CD, and told him they'd like to make this video game with a Hollywood type of soundtrack. He also saw the interest in composing for something before he actually saw the picture, since when composing for movies, he always got inspiration from the pictures. And so the soundtrack for MGS2 was created.

Women

Looks like developers of Metal Gear Solid 2 had focused minds on some things while making a game. You open a locker, you see wrapped up posters of a women, you enter the dining hall, you see framed pictures of women in swimming suits. There is even a poster of the Charlie's Angels movie in one room.

Working Title

During development, the game was originally going to be called Metal Gear Solid III (MGS3 for short), which would have completely skipped over the second installment of MGS. This can be seen in the Metal Gear Solid 2 Grand Game Plan by Hideo Kojima.

Awards

  • EGM
    • February 2006 (Issue #200) - #82 out of 200 of the "Greatest Games of Their Time" list
  • GameSpy
    • 2001 – PS2 Game of the Year (Readers' Choice)
    • 2001 – PS2 Action/Adventure Game of the Year
    • 2001 – Best In-Game Cinematics of the Year
    • 2001 – Best Force-Feedback of the Year

Information also contributed by Big John WV, FinalGMR, MegaMegaMan, Mejs, J. Michael Bottorff, Juan Pablo Bouquet, Macintrash, MAT, Ray Soderlund, xofdre and Zovni

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Macintrash.

Additional contributors: MAT, Unicorn Lynx, Ganjo, Apogee IV, DreinIX, β€”-, Cantillon, Caelestis, Patrick Bregger, Thomas Thompson, FatherJack, 64er.

Game added November 17, 2001. Last modified March 11, 2024.