“Metal Gear Solid 2” is synonymous with subverting expectations. It’s synonymous with a lot of things, actually, representing its impact on the gaming industry.
If we can praise any one game for the rise of the video game auteur and the rush to build armies of developers to implement those visions for a hungry audience … we can certainly credit this one.
Hideo Kojima’s sequel to his PlayStation breakout hit has been celebrated partially as a showcase for the PlayStation 2 hardware, and partially as a game that prioritizes story to an almost absurd degree (hence the armies of developers).
The ultimate lesson at the heart of the story is to think for oneself, a worthy ambition for sure. The game gives us a cast of characters who are all entirely unreliable to illustrate this point, and yet, the entire narrative begins to collapse under the question of what is real and what isn’t. That might be a problem inherent to this type of story. But I confess to it breaking the suspension of disbelief more than I’d prefer. If I am to pretend that a story is true to engage with it, what am I to do when I am told the story is in fact not true?
If these questions seem a little too serious for a game about people creeping around under cardboard boxes, well, don’t blame me. The point here is to start using the brain, after all.
It was an absolute pleasure to engage with this, but I struggle with the question of just how essential it is, especially when we have the original game to play as well.
I’ll sit with this a bit more before I score it. For now, it’s enough to say that there are no regrets about having played. It’s a wacky-ass game.