Metal Gear Solid 2: Mushroom Samba
I?m going to admit right off the bat, I was feeling some trepidation going into this game. MGS2 is by far the most controversial game in the series (followed by maybe 4). So I took a little time off before really tackling this. After faffing around a bit with Saints Row 3 and 4, I finally decided to get it over with.
This is going to be a difficult section to write, mostly because of how different this game feels to the rest of the series thus far. Mostly because plenty has been written about the ending here and my purpose is not to rehash all of it. There's also the fact I ended up reading through the fan comic The Last Days of FOXHOUND before and during my platy through and I have to try and keep the comic bits and the bits that actually happened in game separate from each other. If I slip up on something, that might be why and feel free to correct me. If it?s just something I missed, again, feel free to correct me.
Anyway, starting the game, I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to slip into. The tanker chapter hit all the right notes, introducing the new mechanics and catching us up on the story thus far.
Despite the "Riding off into the sunrise with Meryl/Otacon" ending of MGS, Snake apparently can't stay retired and is now working with the anti-metal gear group "Philanthropy", which may or may not consist solely of Snake and Otacon. Their goal is to oppose new Metal Gears, which apparently have sprung up all over the world like weeds since some mysterious Russian who dresses like a cowboy took the Metal Gear test data from the last game and sold it on the black market. Now word is that the US Marine Corps are developing their own version (Along with the Navy and presumably the Air Force, since REX was the Army's baby, it seems) and snake plans to get evidence on camera to publish on the internet. Presumably they plan to petition congress after that, since it's never made clear exactly what Philanthropy does to stop Metal Gears since that bit gets pushed to the backburner pretty quickly. Expecting only a USMC guard presence on a "Tanker"(actually a freighter disguised to look like a tanker), Snake drops in with a Traq pistol (a first for the series), only to arrive just before a group of Russian commandos board the ship and quickly take over. The Russian are led by the Russian Colonel Gurlukovich (mentioned in the previous game as being allied to the FOXHOUND rebels) and his daughter Olga.
From there on, the mission goes increasingly pear shaped. Snake finds the new Metal Gear, RAY (an amphibious anti-metal gear metal gear(?)), only to have Ocelot show up and true to his Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, kills the Marine Colonel in charge of the operation, betrays his Russian allies (including the Russian Colonel) and then steals RAY before blowing up the tanker and escaping into the open ocean. Snake is presumed dead and the ship is lost with all hands (except those later revealed to have survived. Also, Ocelot apparently now has the hand of Liquid Snake grafted onto his arm, which occasionally possess him. So that happens.
Flash forward two years and "Snake" is deployed to deal with another Terrorist situation. Dead Cell, a Naval Anti-Terrorist Training team, along with a group of Russian Mercenaries, have seized control of Big Shell (and the US President, who was visiting), a big oil rig-like facility in lower New York Harbor, built to clean up the "Oil Spill" from the destruction of the "Tanker" from the opening chapter. Seal Team 10 has also been deployed, but without the knowledge that a FOXHOUND operative would be there as well.
"Snake" is soon revealed to be a new character who is designated "Raiden", a light haired, light skinned rookie, aside from having done a ton of VR training because it?s ?indistinguishable from real combat". In tow are Colonel Campbell from the previous 2 games and Rosemary, who is both Raiden's data analyst(save point) and Girlfriend. It's not normal to have your GF act as your one of your mission controllers, and Rosemary goes a long way to showing why it's a bad idea, which I'll get into later because I have to special bit of grief just for her.
The structure of Big Shell, and the mission in general, bears more than a passing resemblance to MGS. There's 3 major areas, one of them bridged by a chokepoint and another has a Point of no return. Raiden, like Snake, does a water infiltration to an underground dock. A Harrier boss fight stands in for the HIND D in the previous games (MG2: Solid Snake also had a Hind D boss fight with Stinger missiles). There's a Cyborg Ninja who just happens to be there (and is actually a character met previously), though this once is not a boss fight. There are two important Hostages to try and save (which, once again, the protagonist fails at). The most notable similarity, however, is this games Requisite Quirky Mini-boss squad, Dead Cell(DEAD CELL?).
Not by coincidence, Dead Cell is the US Navy's answer to the US Army's FOXHOUND Freak Show (because apparently there's a federal hiring quota for wierdos in elite black ops units in the Metal Gear universe), albeit a bit smaller. They're quickly introduced to you over the first hour or so of playing as Raiden. First off, you meet Vamp, a weird crazy-ass nigh-unkillable vampire guy(honestly, I don't really know what is going on with him. He's the only one who really doesn't get developed much despite getting more screen time then most of the others). Then there's Fortune, a lady in half a wetsuit (like she got halfway through disrobing and decided not to bother with the rest) with an EM Railgun, a death wish, the ability to summon Sad Saxophone music and somehow repels bullets and explosives (later revealed to be a fancy tech field thingy that she apparently didn't realize she had).
Fatman rounds out the bunch. He?s a crazy bomb nut who gets about about an hour or so of his own personal "Die Hard with a Vengeance" subplot where he leaves C4 bombs all over Big Shell, forcing Raiden and Snake to run around freezing the bombs before Raiden finally engages him in a kind of ridiculous(though entertaining) boss fight, even if the "twist" involved was easy to spot a mile away. Namely, that all of bombs are in places that make no sense if you're trying to cause maximum damage with a minimum of explosives. Turns out they're almost all decoys....and defusing the last one triggers the real bombs in spots that will do a ton of damage.
The surprise guest in this lineup is the leader of Dead Cell, Solidus Snake AKA the 3rd Big Boss Clone AKA "Mr. President" from the stinger of MGS. The former president of the US (and apparently resigned over the Shadow Moses incident), he led Dead Cell(and the Russian Mercs) as the "Sons of Liberty". He also wears a special US Army Power Armor Doc Oct tentacle suit, because why not. Notably, he's roughly the same sage as the other two snakes, but looks far older because of his Clone heritage (which apparently is meant to foretell what happened to Snake a few years down the line).
Apparently, there were meant to be two other members of Dead Cell who didn't make the cut. There was Chinaman, who was a Vietnamese diver and Special Effects Expert who got folded into Vamp (including his boss arena). Probably for the best, considering how.... unfortunate that name is. And then there was Old Boy, apparently meant to be a really old Nazi Sniper and was recycled for The End in MGS3(without the Nazi part).
Because this is a Metal Gear game, Snake shows up again, but not as the PC. For the rest of the game, he's posing(badly) as the last of Seal Team 10(after Fortune and Vamp quickly wipe out the others) under the name of Iroquois Pliskin(a nod to Snakes inspiration, Snake Pliskin), which I'm pretty sure fooled absolutely nobody other than Raiden.
The game introduces a few new mechanics, which are quite welcome. A first person (weapon aim) view is now mapped to the controller, which makes using weapons SO much easier, especially in situations where you can see beyond the range of patrolling guards. The Tranquilizer pistol (and later sniper rifle) makes pure stealth runs feasible for much of the game (except a few boss fights where lethality is mandatory). Finally, the tweaking of the guard response, where being spotted will result in an alert phase where attack teams will swarm the area and do room sweeps looking for you, gradually easing up if they don't spot you until a normal state of alert was reestablished. An added complication is that certain guards will check in every few seconds and if they fail to report in, a search team will be deployed to check for him. Knocked out guards will be reawaken and Dead guards will be replaced if discovered.
Admittedly, I tried to play the game killing as few people as possible, using the traq gun for almost all situations, which probably got me killed more times then I really should have. I probably should have also read the manual better, because I did not realize there was VR training for this game or realized there was a Chokehold move for unarmed takedowns. I felt even worse when I went back and realized MGS also had a chokehold move available and I never realized it (I didn't play the VR missions for that game either, despite knowing they were there). I don't know if that means I'm a shit MG player, I'm trying to go through the games too fast or that I'm constantly carrying over habits from the previous games with different mechanics (MG2 to MGS is particularly jarring). However, I?m quite happy with the gameplay improvements MGS2 made over MGS.
Now that I've covered all of that, it's time to get to the interesting part. MGS2, if nothing else, is known for 2 things (other than Raiden). The first is the introduction of the Omni-present conspiracy that apparently lurks in the background of the rest of the series, here known as the ....er, The Patriots. The other is the meta-fictional/post-modernist weirdness/soapboxing that pervades the final act.
About halfway through the game, after the bomb plot is dealt with and Raiden proceeds to his primary goal of rescuing the President, among other hostages. After an....interesting procedure for disguising himself as an enemy soldier, Raiden makes contact with Ames, a member of the secret service who finally talks about the Patriots, setting the stage for later on when the US President finally lays out kind of what's going on, with the Patriots and Arsenal gear. Essentially, the entire mission up this point has a bit a lie, and it turns out there was a hidden mission involving the Sons of Liberty trying to steal a new type of Metal Gear from a secretive cabal (who are totally not the Illuminati) who apparently control at very least the US government.
The Tanker incident was a farce, an excuse to build Big Shell covering up the construction of what's essentially a huge submarine/amphioxus assault ship, with it's own complement of deployable, unmanned Metal Gear RAYs. Amusingly, Arsenal Gear, as it's called, was built by the US Navy and it seems fitting that the Navy would pretty much built a giant experimental combination of two ship types and called it a Metal Gear (My initial guess was that the Navy just named a warship USS Metal Gear and called it a day). I can imagine the only reason we didn't hear about an Air Force version of Metal Gear is that it's difficult to make a tank light enough to fly.
Much is discussed about the Patriots, their motivations and the threat they pose, but what is known is that they are the true puppet masters behind the US Presidency (and Congress), were responsible for framing Snake for the Tanker incident and their true goal is to use Arsenal Gear as the core of a program to essentially control all digital information to prevent any threats to their power from getting strong enough to stop them. One of the more interesting facets of their masquerade is that anyone who knows enough about them to do anything is also prevented from doing so, by rendering them incapable of discussing them. In Japanese, their name renders in speech as syllables that don't exist (if I understand correctly) while an English speaker just spouts a bunch of nonsensical syllables that make you sound like an idiot.
Solidus, Dead Cell and a few others are aligned against the patriots, making it extremely questionable exactly who the bad guys are in this situation, though also becomes increasingly difficult to determine exactly who is working for who and for what at this point on. Numerous characters, including Rose, are revealed to be Patriots or Patriot agents (willingly or under duress) and near the end of the game, it feels like keeping track of who is betraying who requires a flow chart of some sort. Revolver Ocelot is a big factor in this, both working for and against dead cell and the patriots (it would seem), leaving it unclear exactly what he has in mind(or how he keeps all of this straight). It's a nice twist(s) but also a convoluted gambit pileup in the final stretch of the game.
At least it's somewhat comprehensible compared to the post-modernist slant the game really starts piling on towards the finale. I don't intend to rehash all the theories and arguments I've seen regarding what the hell is going on, partly because it's so difficult to talk about succinctly and this write up is already going to be long enough as it is. Suffice it to say, Raiden gets a lot of backstory revealed (in a manner that makes him a lot more sympathetic), which in turn goes hand in hand with the concept that entire game is a commentary on the series and sequels in general. The similarities between Big Shell and Shadow Moses are intentional, feeding into the idea that Raiden, presumably trained exclusively in VR (now revealed to be a lie, as his actual experience is much more tragic and brutal), in the same place as the player, pretending to be Snake and reliving his experiences. The previous games and even the opening chapter are implied to be simulations (or video games) and even in the present, the difference between reality and simulation is blurred, leaving Raiden (and the player) with a sense of emotional whiplash.
Or at least, that's the intent. Some of this works much better than other parts, and a fair bit of that is due to the fact I'm playing this in 2017 and not when it released in 2001, so a bit of the impact has been lost. Since then, Bioshock (and Infinite), the Stanley Parable, Spec Ops: The Line and Undertale have all played with post-modernism and speaking directly to the player. Some of which, including Spec Ops, have done it better and it's hard to really get past those other experiences that have played with this concept in the years since MGS2 to get into the same mindset that a player in 2001 would have had.
There's also the implicit knowledge that MGS4 released nearly a decade ago and apparently did it damnedest to try to put context to and explain all of this shit that MGS2 placed on the table, a perspective that a player in 2001 wouldn't have had as to how real any of this actually was.
It's my understanding that Kojima never had any intention of following up on the ending and having to explain what he, partially because he had a message he wanted to put out, partially (no doubt) that he was engaging his inner auteur without regard to what anyone else though, and to the best of my knowledge, he was doing his best to kill the series and move onto something else. I've also heard (but haven't confirmed) that the team was partially running on desperation and probably throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.
Of course, the success of MGS2 and the fact MGS3 is considered one of (if not) the best game in the series meant Kojima wouldn't be able to get away with just letting people figure out what the hell happened at the end.
How do I feel about it? In some ways, it's fucking brilliant, using the entire game structure as a commentary on the series and sequels in general. However, it's also a total fucking mess at times, not helped by the fact quite a few scenes near the end were cut out due to 9/11, so Arsenal just kind of shows up in the middle of NYC so Raiden and Solidus can have a sword fight on a rooftop (despite the fact Raiden knows at this point that killing Solidus is exactly what the Patriots want him to do).
Regardless, I'm at least glad it tried something different. Especially in a world where so many series pop out the same iterations every year or so. Listening to Kojima trying to lecture you about meme theory and the influence of information manipulation on society for 15 minutes like he'd just read through a bunch of peer reviewed essays on the subject and desperately wanted to discuss them with someone is more noteworthy then Shoot the Dude in the War game #784 that tries to aw you with all the 'splosions with maybe a word of lip service to the idea that war is bad.
Kojima, despite his penchant for depicting larger than life character and/or circus freaks and bizarre plots, is fairly good most of the times of trying to tell stories with fuzzy moral lines. In MG2, characters who betrayed or opposed you had good reasons for doing so(at least to them) and even Big Boss gets a moment to shine. MGS makes gives it?s villians decent, if not outright empathic, character development and MGS2 continues this trend. For all their shitty actions, most of the antagonists are depicted as not entirely bad guys, especially since when their opposition to and betrayal by the patriots comes to light. Solidus, who is revealed to be a fucking monster, makes some pretty good points about why he?s doing what he?s doing.
And then there?s Raiden, who apparently was quite hated when this game came out, apparently because: 1.) He wasn?t Snake, 2.) He wasn?t revealed to be the PC for much of the game until after the game released (the trailers flat out lied about it) and possibly because 3.) He?s not a manly cynical badass like Snake (at least, not at first). My feelings on him weren?t nearly as cynical, though again, I had the benefit of not playing this at release and knowing he was going to take over for Snake early on. There?s also the fact I recently played through MG and remember that Snake started out as a Rookie with no personality at all, so I figured they were doing a parallel with Raiden (though I?ll also admit being occasionally amused by his slipping on bird poop and falling into the ocean like an idiot). Occasionally I was annoyed by how dense Raiden was, such as repeatedly being told that FOXHOUND has been disbanded for years by different people and yet never thinking to question why people keep telling him them, or near the end, suddenly realizing he?s never actually met the colonel in person (it takes him a REALLY long time to figure out what?s going on with that). The question if Rosemary is even real (the person, not the character she admits she was playing for him) seems particularly dumb considering it?s already been established that him and Rose live together and are intimate. I know it?s supposed to be him losing it and questioning just how much of his world is real, but that bit doesn?t work well and I would hope Raiden can tell the difference between sex with another person and fucking his pillow.
Then again, the realization that he?s pretty much been manipulated and brainwashed his entire life as part of a Grand Patriot Scheme (to accomplish what exactly I?m still a little hazy on, since the ?making anyone into Snake? is apparently bunk), as well as the realization he was actually a particularly murderous child solider in his youth (courtesy of Solidus) helped explain a lot to me, as well as giving me more respect (and sympathy) for the character. While MG2 also touched on the subject, MGS2 is one of the few games (or media for that matter) which even talks about child soldiers and one of the reasons I?m willing to tolerate Kojimas other faults to a certain degree. The reveal that Raiden was unwittingly working for the Patriots the entire time and pretty much did exactly what they wanted(ensuring their victory) was a nice touch as well.
However, on the other hand, there?s the subject of Rosemary, who was perhaps the most grating element in the game as a whole. I don?t mind the idea of a Metal Gear game finally having a love interest for the PC, especially if it helps develop the character. The inherent problem with Rosemary (or Rose, as I?m going to call her from now on) despite acting as a vital party of your Mission Control team(and your Save Point), Rosemary spends an inordinate amount of time bugging Raiden(or Jack, his apparent ?real? name) over the CODEC about the state of their relationship. Even at times it?s really not appropriate or helpful for her to do so. It comes across as seriously clingy after a while and at one point I was desperately hoping there was a ?Break up with Rose, bring in replacement? option so I could quit having to listen to her continually prattle on. It?s made worse considering you have to call her to save and she?s rarely content to let you continue on your mission once you have saved.
In the end, it ends up sabotaging part of what it was meant to achieve, because after a certain point I started skipping their relationship talks, stopping just long enough to scan and get the gist of what they were talking about because I really honestly didn?t care anymore. There were far more interesting things going on in Big Shell and Rose breaking into his Raiden?s room because she thought he was cheating on her wasn?t high on my list of ?Things I care about? at that point. Especially considering it?s all supposed to build up to the revelation of Raiden?s shitty past and brainwashing. The eventual revelation that Rose was/is a Patriot agent who was playing a role to keep tabs on him only made me dislike her more (her ?But I feel in love with you for real? to the contrary) because not it feels like she?s purposely trying to mess with his head and distract him the entire game. Unless that was the entire point, to add another element of stress?. However, I?m not sure that?s what Kojima actually had in mind or if he somehow thought that this is an example of a good relationship (his attitude towards women is questionable at times, considering some of his other games).
The other bit of the game I was particularly annoyed by was EE?s entire arc, which feels like a really bad joke at the expense of the player. Early in the game, it?s established that Otacon is looking for someone important to him, his half(?) sister Emma, or as he calls her, EE. Later in the game, it?s brought up that she?s on Big Shell and a genius computer programmer or some such. Her skills are needs to upload a virus that will cripple the AI that controls Arsenal Gear. Getting to her is relatively easy (aside from a fight with Vamp). Getting her back to the other side of Big Shell is a massive pain in the ass.
First of all, due to some fun with explosives and a harrier earlier, the bridge linking the two sides of Big Shell has been severed and much of Shell 2 is flooded/flooding. When Raiden finally meets up with EE, he learns that due to some fairly disgusting character development for Otacon, EE is afraid of the water (despite once being a strong swimmer). This means you literally have to carry her through 2 underwater sections (and her O2 bar is a bit shorter than yours is) and it takes Raiden a fair bit of coaxing to even manage that (despite the fact the room she was in starts flooding, so her only alternative is to stay and drown). If that weren?t enough, she has apparently been ?injected? with something that makes her unable to walk, meaning you literally have to hold her hand and drag her along. To add insult to injury, there are bugs that look like roaches called ?sea lice? (seen much earlier in the game) that suddenly appear directly in your way (with no way around), at which point EE starts freaking about because she?s scared of bugs. Even past that, despite the fact it?s mentioned several times that the guards should be evacuating due to Arsenals impending activation, some guards decide to start patrolling areas directly in your part where they weren?t before. This is all complicated by the fact you are not allowed to hold a weapon and pull EE along at the same time, requires a lot of ?Let EE go, select weapon, deal with threat/bugs, put weapon away, grab EE, continue?. I was going to lose it if EE had said she was afraid of ladders and Raiden had to carry here when they have to descend a long one. At least she does that without pitching a fit, because I was seriously getting pissed about her constant whining about everything that she?s conveniently terrified of that happens to be blocking the only path to the other side of Big Shell. The final run is sniper mission where she has to be protected while walking along a narrow path from enemy snipers, mines and armed drones that some out of nowhere, which at least didn?t require her to be dragged because she finally realized she had legs and could walk it. And then Vamp pops out of nowhere and fatal wounds her, because reasons. Yep.
The whole sequence put a bad taste in my mouth. The abovementioned factors made it feel like the escort mission from hell. I didn?t realize till afterwards that you can literally just smack her until she passes out and carry her past the obstacles, because that would have been preferable to listen to her whine the entire way. Not helping was the bizarre and disturbing revelation that young Otacon was apparently having sex with his stepmom which is why EE almost drowned and now has ?hydrophobia?, or having Rose accuse Raiden of creeping on EE if you talk to her during this whole sequence. Apparently because Rose thinks Raiden is into screwing younger women (possibly a teenager) he?s just met while the Big Shell is on the verge of collapse (Once again, I was searching for the ?Break up with Rose? option and was disappointed to find none). Honestly, I was kind of glad when EE dies at the end because it meant I was finally done with this whole ordeal (that and I found her obnoxious), I didn?t even mind so much that Vamp pretty much made all the escorting her to that point pretty pointless.
Moving on to other things, I?m still kinda confused about the whole Ocelot/Liquid Arm thing. It?s introduced during the tanker chapter and every so often, when ocelot shows up on screen it ?acts up? and sometimes Liquids voice and (presumably) mind takes over Ocelots body. It doesn?t really seem like anyone really notices it or finds it particularly strange. It just kind of happens and people just kind of accept it. Even for this series it?s weird and there?s not even any explanation (that I found) for WHY Ocelot decided to replace his severed arm with Liquids Arm. I knew about it before playing, but I was hoping for some kind of context. Presumably I?ll find out in MGS4.
For those of you still reading, MGS2 is quite an interesting journey and often a fun one, but is often messy and even nonsensical at times. I can only imagine how this would feel if I didn?t know more games would be released later to fill in some of the holes and provide context for what happened. However, I can keep those in mind because next up is MGS3: SSSSSSNNNNNNNNAAAAAAAKKKKKKKKEEEEE EEEEEAAATTTERRR
