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)

Overreaches itself, but still amazes.

The Good
The most hyped game of all time. How does it stack up?

First, of all, it should be said that you will enjoy Metal Gear Solid 2 much better if you've played it's PlayStation prequel, Metal Gear Solid. In addition to featuring very similar gameplay, the storyline is Byzantine enough as it is having what you know of the original plot to fall back on.

Metal Gear Solid 2's strength is in it's gameplay. At first glance, it seems identical to the first MGS. Your job is to carry out your mission using stealth and, if necessary, violence. You duck around corners, avoid guards and cameras, and take down bosses in a variety of ways, usually revolving around a specific weapon and technique.

But once you start to get into the game, you realize just how much deeper it is than it's older brother. Considering that MGS was widely considered the best action game ever on a console, this is high praise indeed.

First of all, the slightly 2-dimensional feel the overhead perspective seemed to lend the original game is all but gone. Guards can now spot you from all angles, and almost all levels have multiple tiers and catwalks to watch as well. Also, the role of the first-person perspective is greatly increased. Snake can now fire his weapons in first-person view instead of in only four directions as in MGS1. This is useful, since the tranquilizer darts you will get take longer to send a guard into sleep if you hit their foot.

The AI is also incredibly improved (but be forewarned: this is only noticeable if you bite the bullet and play on something other than Easy mode). When discovered, guards will try to knock you out and then run a short distance away to radio for backup, so you can't immediately get up and cut them off. Spot a corpse and they don't just glance around and walk on, they sound an intruder alert and call the attack team in to patrol. The snowy footprint gimmick of MGS1 has been expanded into an all-out feature as they can follow blood trails, wet spots, and even the sounds of your footsteps.

Graphically, MGS2 is easily the best looking game ever conceived on the PlayStation2, and might just remain so for the duration of the system's existence. Like the original game, EVERYTHING is rendered, from the empty magazines of your weapons, to the individual ice cubes (which will melt over time) in a tanker minibar, to the eyelids of the characters. Cutscenes, which use the in-game engine, are a sight to behold. The models are almost as well rendered as the characters in the Final Fantasy movie -- give Konami one more generation of hardware and they'll have caught up to Square Movies.

The amount of detail put into this game can't be overstressed; this engine is a masterpiece both graphically and gameplay-wise. It's just fun to be able to cock your gun a short distance behind an enemy terrorist and watch him throw up his hands in surrender.

The voice acting is also top-notch. All of the voices from the original MGS return, and most of the new characters are tolerable at worst.

Playing MGS2 is one of the most fun experiences you can have for any console.

The Bad
Notice I said that PLAYING the game is fun.

Nearly every review for the original Metal Gear Solid game had only two gripes with the game: it was too short, and it had too much movie-watching and not enough game. Konami apparently decided the answer to this was to stuff the game full of MORE fluff and filler.

The characters are actually very cool, from old faces like Revolver Ocelot to new bosses like Fatman and Vamp. I know a lot of idiot fanboys hate Raiden (the young character who you play as instead of Snake for part of the game), but I found his character to be one of the better onces in the game.

When you get down to actual hours played, it's entirely possible to complete both missions in the game (which is broken into two parts: the off shore tanker and the environmental cleanup plant) in about the same time as it would to complete the original MGS. Granted, there aren't any tedious backtracking sessions like the supremely annoying temperature-key task in MGS1, but it's still just not enough.

Even worse is the sheer volume of codec speech. For those of you not familiar with MGS, the Codec is a combination story cipher and hint system that allows you to communicate with your support crew "back home." All you see is two faces and some numbers, while you hear Snake talk. This would be fine, except the game insists on delivering dramatic plot points through the Codec rather than as a movie. Listen up, Konami: There's a reason radio hasn't been a significant art form for fifty years. It just doesn't have the same impact hearing it on the codec. It's incredibly frustrating to watch a video of Snake meeting a new person, who is usually well-rendered, then promptly asking them "Do you have nanomachines?" and then dropping into the boring Codec. Why Konami had to rush this codec gimmick instead of producing well-directed cutscenes for all of this is mystifying.

This would be tolerable if the story was better (I will try not to spoil it). The original MGS had a plot that, while somewhat cheesy, was still enough to keep you going through the entire game. MGS2 starts off strong, and about halfway through the game the twists and turns to the plot start to kick in, and you start to think that it's really going to start cooking.

But as the plot gets thicker, the game gets thinner. Towards the end, Kojima nearly abandons the game format altogether, throwing cutscene after codec conversation at us. As the game winds down, wholly unnecessary plot points (such as the one involving the nanomachines and the AI program) just make the game seem silly. As a movie director...Hideo Kojima makes a damn good game designer.

By the time the near-infinite conclusion rolls around, it's just not fun anymore. The last 90 minutes of "game" are actually just two boss battles, one of them ridiculously tedious (the endless wave of identical RAYs) and the other laughably easy (the terrorist leader). The rest is just lots and lots of movie. I even skipped several scenes to try and get to the rest of the game, something I never did in MGS1.

The ultimate ending is weak.

Besides the poor storyline, there are only two other (minor) flaws to the game:

  1. Despite it's increased use, there is still no way to move around in first-person mode. While I understand they weren't trying to make an FPS, it's untenable for furious fights with the enemy, where you have the choice of standing still and taking lots of damage, or wildly shifting from view modes to move and shoot, leaving you very disoriented.

  2. Finally, I know Konami made a big deal about hiring movie musician Harry Gregson-Whatsisface to do the score, but nothing of his stands out at all. The only memorable themes in the movie are the re-arrangements of the standard Metal Gear Solid theme.

    The Bottom Line
    It might sound as if I'm slamming this game; I'm not. It's a blast to play through, even if it does get overly heavy-handed towards the end. And the sheer amount of secrets and Easter Eggs (look for several references to the original MGS, such as the "Limitless" bandanna and Johnny "Cramps" Sasaki) make it worth several runs.

This is a great, tense action game with many memorable moments and killer graphics, hampered only by a poor plot and horrible ending. Still, I would recommend this disc to anyone, and don't in the least regret dropping forty bones on it.

PlayStation 2 · by Anatole (58) · 2002

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

An ambitious and innovative game that divided a fandom.

The Good
The refined gameplay is incredible, and you get to play as Solid Snake and Raiden saving Manhattan from a nuclear disaster involving the new model of Metal Gear: Rey.

It's got unexpected turns, some nice surprises here and there and the music is superbly fitting in this adventure.

The Bad
The story, while nicely complicated and thought-provoking, can be a little too weird and contrived at times, but it's still an enjoyable romp in New York making urgent commentary on the dangers of warfare and espionage affecting the world at large.

I guess what I said I liked about the story can also be applied for what I didn't like as well. It's nice and complex and layered in its story, but it tries a little TOO hard, and sometimes succeeds, in confusing and alienating the player.

The Bottom Line
It's the sequel to the original Metal Gear Solid, and it's a worthy if somewhat unexpected continuation of the story. It's like any sequel trying to expand the world of an original work: it strives to be a cog in a massive work and as gaming's equivalent of James Bond I say this game does exactly that.

PlayStation 2 · by John H. (52) · 2019

[ 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.