Some boss battles are a test of sheer endurance (Cyber Ninja, the entire end of the game), while others are more like puzzles (Psyhco Mantis). The nice thing is that most challenges require both a perceptive mind to observe the enemy's behavior and mad skillz to neutralize them.
Despite having such high stakes and such good voice acting, the characters never forget that they're in a video game. President Baker tells you to look at the back of the Metal Gear Solid CD case to find Meryl's Codec frequency. Naomi tells you to put the Dual Shock controller on your arm so the game can pretend to massage you with the vibrate function. The Colonel comes up with the brilliant idea of plugging the controller into the second player port to escape Psycho Mantis' mind reading.
Oddly, all of these references to the artifice of the world never takes us out of the moment. We all appreciated the game's honesty, and I much prefer it to the faceless text-driven tutorials in other video games. The sense of urgency might actually be heightened exactly because the player's role in the story as its operator is integral to helping Snake progress - the only one who can press the Circle button fast enough to resist Ocelot's torture is the only character who has thumbs: the player.
Things of note that happened between Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2.
The World Trade Center was attacked.
Kojima produced Zone of the Enders
Kojima watched The Matrix, and probably a bunch of other movies.
Joe and I played MGS1.
Joe and Chelsea played MGS2.
Sons of Liberty is more full of things.
Snake can do more things. He can aim at specific body parts and things, he can sidle up to walls and shoot around corners, he can KO enemy guards and stuff them into lockers. There's more to do, and there are more expectations. We saw the game over screen many times.
The cut scenes are longer. The character models are more detailed, so time is actually spent on the expressions. Time is spent on looking at a LOT of things, actually.
MGS2 is so much longer than MGS1. Playing it, we all remembered that Fatman was the first boss encounter. What we didn't remember was the encounter with Fortune, and that you accidentally "kill" Vamp before that boss fight. We all remembered the bomb disposal mission, but we forgot how long it took.
The difficulty threw some of us for a loop. Me, I remember MGS2 being really hard. Being able to go into first-person view and aim at any part of any enemy from afar - introducing fatal headshots to the series - opened up a lot of strategies. In response, the enemies get much more ruthless. For us, being caught is tantamount to a game over, unless you want to hide in a corner for three minutes and wait, which none of use ever wanted to do.
I also don't remember the fight against Fatman taking so damn long. It doesn't even really make any sense. The idea is that, while fighting him, you have to disarm bombs which he plants, and you can't hurt him through his bomb suit, so you have to shoot him in the head - he takes something like a dozen shots to the head to die. It's just frustrating.
Most of the challenges in the first game were do-or-die. You had to find the best strategy to quickly and efficiently take care of bad guys before they killed you. There was always weight. In MGS2 everything feels like an endurance test. The difficulty feels half-assed.
To take the fight with Fatman as an example. When he has very little health left he stops planting bombs, which means he stops coming to a halt. Instead he just zips around on his rollerblades. He takes shots at you, sure, but they don't even hurt much, not enough to Game Over you. But the only way to get a head shot on him is to go into first-person mode which makes you stand in place, which isn't very helpful when shooting a target that is constantly changing direction and distance. Otherwise he just rolls around, wasting your time. It's not punishing, it's annoying.
Mr. X shows up and throws a lot of objectives on you. You have to use a directional microphone to identify the hostage with the pacemaker, but to GET to the hostages you have to dress as an enemy soldier, which means you need to carry the same kind of artillery as well. And this is before you even get to the part of the Big Shell in which you need to apply this information. I forgot how much time you spend running around the same areas of the Shell at the start of the game. MGS1 only has one mission that requires backtracking... Maybe two.
While walking to strut F to get the M9, a Cypher came in from nowhere and spotted us - it just floated in without warning and was like, "Oh, you're in alert mode now." We fled to strut F were we just laid down the controller and let the massive attack team waiting for Raiden fill him with bullets. It was easier to just have the game kill us and send us back to the time we entered the room, safe and stealthy. The risk is not worth the reward.
MGS2 is DEFINITELY a game in transition. I don't believe they yet knew how to balance the difficulty - or the fun (like sitting in a locker and waiting for the CAUTION gauge to empty) - to match all of the new actions you could perform.
It's once you find Ames that the game unfolds and the pace picks up. Raiden's life is directly threatened, Ocelot steps up and the Ninja jumps in. MGS2 starts shining as a sequel. It makes me wonder if Kojima was even paying attention during the entire Fatman chapter.
Now we have to get to Shell 2 to find the President. Which means we have to disarm the explosives on the bridge by shooting their triggers. Which means we have to go BACK to Strut F to get a sniper rifle. Jesus, the game DOES NOT want us to move ahead. We've been on Shell 1 for eight years.
Though this is definitely where things start getting crazy. Solidus officially introduces himself to us, and Vamp, having already died once, comes in with a Harrier, which Solidus JUMPS onto. It's also the first incident of Raiden one-uping Solid Snake in terms of heroism - a jet is certainly a more impressive take-down than a helicopter. Also, "Pliskin" hovers around in his helicopter throwing you rations and ammo through out the fight. It's the first time he and Raiden team up, and it's pretty great - the first step in the passing of the hero baton. I guess it wouldn't have been so effective if they hadn't been through so much together. In that way, the whole Fatman fiasco serves a purpose. I wish there was some other alternative, though.
Also: ridiculous and amazing that characters switch to Codec communication to keep others from eavesdropping on them. It's as though the Codec screen is totally separate from the rest of the game's reality.
Once E.E. dies, all bets are off. The game officially goes into crazy-awesome mode. Snake and Otacon have a manly handshake, a parrot makes us feel sad, and everything we've done is a lie.
Y'know, when you break it down, by virtue of the Solid Snake Simulation, MGS2 is just like MGS1. There's a serious problem with real world implications - plus a bunch of voodoo. The only difference is that MGS2 amps up the crazy.
It's a fucking riotous success as an exploration of vidjer gams and the future of the digital age. The trade-off? Up until the end, it's not very fun.
I'm watching the ending right now. There's more to say, but I'm not the one to say it. Just read Dreaming in an empty room.
... Though what DOES Kojima feel about women?
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