Really interesting to hear a non gushing review of this game, that says alot if what I’ve thought about the game over the years. The games need to be thought of as post modern is so blatant throughout with kojima literally spelling it out at the end, that the events itself dont matter just the aspects that you yourself respect or learned from it, but that comes at the cost of the game having an interesting narrative on top of the message. Finally your ability to communicate your thoughs so efficiently compared to some of these pseudo intellectuals who spend the majority of their multi hour analyses simply recounting the story says alot about your skill by comparison.
Great review! You have a really great voice too which made it even better. Just a suggestion: have you ever thought of providing transcript/text review like the Spiderman one on your site or at least subtitles for future reviews? English is not my mother tongue which makes it difficult at times for me to fully understand. Subscribed and keep it up man :-)
Interesting point of view. The story actually worked for me, but I do agree with your points of criticism about it. To this day I do believe as well that Kojima could have achieved the same goals using a different, more intetesting setting and without Raiden being such an extreme character. ("extreme" as in; to elicit extreme player reactions). I do take issue with the gameplay part as well actually; as a result of the setting which is Big Shell; the gameplay contains tons of back tracking once again and this is amplified by its sterile bland aesthetics. Somehow the stark contrast hues and pixelated textures in MGS 1 made it feel that much more immersive. Also; they put tons of time and development effort into details which don't really add revolutionary aspects to the gameplay. The whole thing is worth less than the sum of its parts so to say, gameplay-wise. Examples; the environmental interactivity such as breaking glass , Raiden's hair physics etc. On top of that, I do think Kojima is a bit of a hack; because it's oh so easy to amp gameplay challenge by simply throwing masses of insta-spawn alert phase enemies at the player as compensation for deaf guards (since you can still run run behind their backs without them hearing a single footstep). However, despite all of my issues with MGS2, I think the exact polarizing nature of this game is what propels it into (pop)Art status. As a game, I rate it 7.5 out of 10 but I do think it's a piece of art, worthy of 10/10.
Awesome review. I respect MGS2 and it's story but at the same time I personally *absolutely hate* it's story if that makes any sense. I did a review of it myself a while ago and I was struggling not to shit on the game more than I thought was necsesary. The swimming, the fact that whenever I start a new save and have to sit through Stillmams boring tutorial and some of the Emma Emmerich Escort spectacular always kill my willpower to play it. Great game but def not my fav. 👌
I agree with everything you said but MGS2 released right after 9/11. And in development, they were planning on a terrorist attack in the financial district. And in an interview Kojima himself says that he was thinking of cancelling the project completely. Later they came up with this instead. So... yeah. Is it perfect? no. But it works in my opinion.
Great review. I completely agree with your points, but 8/10 is a bit generous for a game that barely had 7 bosses. (I understand quality is more important than quantity.) I also felt that MGS2 as a game is too short (especially if you skip all the cutscenes and codec calls). It only had like 6 proper boss fights. (I don't count Fortune since that's just an endurance level to survive until the battle is interrupted by the codec call.) Also, swimming with EE was really annoying for me. Still, pretty good though.
The campaign isn't great, but it has a sturdy foundation. What elevated MGS2 to an 8/10 for me is the sheer volume of bonus content, almost all of which I quite like. There is some rock solid level design for a number of the VR and Variety Missions. And the combat sequences during a lot of those Variety Missions are some of the best in the game. You also have the added benefit of three additional VR bosses, like Gurlugon, the Giant Genome Soldier or Robo Genome, which was easily my favorite of the trio. If it was *just* the campaign, I dunno how I'd rank MGS2 because there's too much I don't like. But all the bonus content allows me to enjoy the parts of MGS2's campaign I enjoy the most and bypass all the stuff I hate. As a result, I'm much more favorable towards the game as a complete package. I'd rate the game a lot higher if it had just a few more boss fights, and if there was more actual rooms to sneak around in as opposed to the constant backtracking. But as a game, I can just pop it into the PS3, play any number of bonus missions for hours in the night and have a great time. And this is gonna be a nineteen year old game by November, and it still holds up quite well, in my opinion. That's why I rank this game as high as I do. For all the stuff I dislike, there's plenty more that I enjoy and can hop into at my leisure, bypassing the swimming, the escorting, the backtracking, or the pseudo platformer nonsense.
MGS 2 was not meant to be good game, Kojima literally secretly designed this game to fail and be done with the series, but the actual working developers salvaged it.
Mgs1, mgs2, and mgs3 are all 10/10 games, the rest of the mgs series never quite hits that same peak. Shame you couldnt enjoy mgs2 as much as a lot of others, but i completely get it. Not everyone likes a convoluted mindfuck of a story, and lots of people werent expecting it in the sequel to mgs1. Plus the bosses are weird and not everyone likes the big shell. But as snake says at the end "what you thought about doing this mission is yours, and what you decide to do with it is your choice"
Really interesting to hear a non gushing review of this game, that says alot if what I’ve thought about the game over the years. The games need to be thought of as post modern is so blatant throughout with kojima literally spelling it out at the end, that the events itself dont matter just the aspects that you yourself respect or learned from it, but that comes at the cost of the game having an interesting narrative on top of the message. Finally your ability to communicate your thoughs so efficiently compared to some of these pseudo intellectuals who spend the majority of their multi hour analyses simply recounting the story says alot about your skill by comparison.
Great review! You have a really great voice too which made it even better.
Just a suggestion: have you ever thought of providing transcript/text review like the Spiderman one on your site or at least subtitles for future reviews? English is not my mother tongue which makes it difficult at times for me to fully understand.
Subscribed and keep it up man :-)
Interesting point of view. The story actually worked for me, but I do agree with your points of criticism about it. To this day I do believe as well that Kojima could have achieved the same goals using a different, more intetesting setting and without Raiden being such an extreme character. ("extreme" as in; to elicit extreme player reactions). I do take issue with the gameplay part as well actually; as a result of the setting which is Big Shell; the gameplay contains tons of back tracking once again and this is amplified by its sterile bland aesthetics. Somehow the stark contrast hues and pixelated textures in MGS 1 made it feel that much more immersive. Also; they put tons of time and development effort into details which don't really add revolutionary aspects to the gameplay. The whole thing is worth less than the sum of its parts so to say, gameplay-wise. Examples; the environmental interactivity such as breaking glass , Raiden's hair physics etc. On top of that, I do think Kojima is a bit of a hack; because it's oh so easy to amp gameplay challenge by simply throwing masses of insta-spawn alert phase enemies at the player as compensation for deaf guards (since you can still run run behind their backs without them hearing a single footstep). However, despite all of my issues with MGS2, I think the exact polarizing nature of this game is what propels it into (pop)Art status. As a game, I rate it 7.5 out of 10 but I do think it's a piece of art, worthy of 10/10.
Awesome review. I respect MGS2 and it's story but at the same time I personally *absolutely hate* it's story if that makes any sense. I did a review of it myself a while ago and I was struggling not to shit on the game more than I thought was necsesary. The swimming, the fact that whenever I start a new save and have to sit through Stillmams boring tutorial and some of the Emma Emmerich Escort spectacular always kill my willpower to play it. Great game but def not my fav. 👌
This review series is great. Here from J’s reviews recommendation
ahh another person who doesn't really get MGS
@@Luna-pk7gzwhy do you say that
Interesting, keep up the good work
The boss battle with the soldiers in the Tanker section should be mentioned too.
I agree with everything you said but MGS2 released right after 9/11. And in development, they were planning on a terrorist attack in the financial district. And in an interview Kojima himself says that he was thinking of cancelling the project completely. Later they came up with this instead. So... yeah. Is it perfect? no. But it works in my opinion.
Great review. I completely agree with your points, but 8/10 is a bit generous for a game that barely had 7 bosses. (I understand quality is more important than quantity.)
I also felt that MGS2 as a game is too short (especially if you skip all the cutscenes and codec calls). It only had like 6 proper boss fights. (I don't count Fortune since that's just an endurance level to survive until the battle is interrupted by the codec call.)
Also, swimming with EE was really annoying for me.
Still, pretty good though.
The campaign isn't great, but it has a sturdy foundation. What elevated MGS2 to an 8/10 for me is the sheer volume of bonus content, almost all of which I quite like. There is some rock solid level design for a number of the VR and Variety Missions. And the combat sequences during a lot of those Variety Missions are some of the best in the game.
You also have the added benefit of three additional VR bosses, like Gurlugon, the Giant Genome Soldier or Robo Genome, which was easily my favorite of the trio. If it was *just* the campaign, I dunno how I'd rank MGS2 because there's too much I don't like. But all the bonus content allows me to enjoy the parts of MGS2's campaign I enjoy the most and bypass all the stuff I hate. As a result, I'm much more favorable towards the game as a complete package.
I'd rate the game a lot higher if it had just a few more boss fights, and if there was more actual rooms to sneak around in as opposed to the constant backtracking. But as a game, I can just pop it into the PS3, play any number of bonus missions for hours in the night and have a great time. And this is gonna be a nineteen year old game by November, and it still holds up quite well, in my opinion. That's why I rank this game as high as I do. For all the stuff I dislike, there's plenty more that I enjoy and can hop into at my leisure, bypassing the swimming, the escorting, the backtracking, or the pseudo platformer nonsense.
No
@Good Hunter If you keep a blind eye to its flaws.
MGS 2 was not meant to be good game, Kojima literally secretly designed this game to fail and be done with the series, but the actual working developers salvaged it.
Mgs1, mgs2, and mgs3 are all 10/10 games, the rest of the mgs series never quite hits that same peak. Shame you couldnt enjoy mgs2 as much as a lot of others, but i completely get it. Not everyone likes a convoluted mindfuck of a story, and lots of people werent expecting it in the sequel to mgs1. Plus the bosses are weird and not everyone likes the big shell. But as snake says at the end "what you thought about doing this mission is yours, and what you decide to do with it is your choice"