Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance

Nice concept, terrible execution.   September 4, 2007
I really like Splinter Cell.

MGS2 is no Splinter Cell... not even close!

The one main problem is the horrible camera angles. Just let me play in 1st person mode!

Next, why in the world doesn't Snake have a knife? If I had just put a terrorist to sleep, knowing he'd wake up again in a few minutes, I'd just slit his throat! At the very least, toss him overboard, toss his weapons overboard, or something!!! And why can't I pick up their weapons?

Also, what's with the stupid shaking the body to find stuff? Why can't Snake just go through the pockets, instead of having to shake the body repeatedly, to try and find something? And wouldn't this wake them up if they're asleep???

Dumb doesn't even begin to describe the contrived story line and limitations.

Wasted 3 hours on it, trying to see if it would "grow on me". Yeah, it grew... like fungus.

I'm not sure why I'm even giving it 2 stars, but I'm in a generous mood.

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MGS 2 isn't quite as memoriable as the first, but its good.   August 4, 2006
We find our hero Snake secretly boarding an oil tanker ship that belongs to the United States Marines. The reason: there is a new Metal Gear, codenamed Ray, as it's cargo. Just as our boy Snake gets on board, the entire ship is brutally taken over by terrorists of Russian decent. Just as Snake makes his way to the bowels of the ship where it's cargo is being held, and after a moment of intensity between the Marines and terrorists, Revolver Ocelot jumps into Ray and sinks the ship killing everyone and spilling oil everywhere.... skip a few years ahead and we find ourselves controller a new comer named Raiden as he sneaks into a huge facility in the middle of the ocean called "The Big Shell" which was built to contain the oil spill Ocelot caused..and which has also been taken over by Russian terrorists. Raiden's original mission objectives are to rescue the hostages of Big Shell, but as the game moves on Raiden must stop the demented FOXHOUND unit and put an end to the Metal Gear Ray project.

For once you can go into first person view to manually aim in MGS2: Substance, which is really helpful. You can jump over railings and hang over ledges to hide from hostiles, you can roll to knock them down, and you can do the infamous melee combo to knock 'em out. Both as Raiden & Snake you collect a lot of weapons including a tranq gun, a SOCOM handgun, an "adult entertainment" magazine, an assault rifle, chaff & frag grenades, a sword and many more. You can actually swim in this game which is a real plus. Now you can "hold up" terrorists for their dog tags... not really important but pretty fun. At one point you'll find yourself running around disarming bombs all throughout Big Shell which was kinda fun.. thought I'd mention that.

Oh yes, this is the first game where if you take down an enemy or are spotted, back up actually comes. They use radioes to contact each other, and if you are really good at aiming, can destroy their radio. It was a neat little idea.

What really seperates Substance from the original Sons of Liberty is it's huge VR mission system, and the mini games "Snake Tales". We'll start with the VR missions - there are probably over 100 of them since you have to play a bunch with Raiden, Snake, Pliskin, Snake in different suits, etc. These missions can range anywhere from "use stealth to get to the end" all the way to "snipe all the enemies who come near the curry". If properly completed you unlock a mini game where you can skateboard as Snake.. meh. "Snake Tales" stars Snake in various missions on Big Shell.. thats really it.

I'm gonna be straight with you guys - MGS2: Substance has amazing graphics and even better music. Everything in this game looks so real and textured.. it's really beautiful for the PS2. I mean seagulls actually do their business on Big Shells roof and you can slip on it, how much more realistic can you get?? The music is superb.. words can't even explain it. Sometimes you'll feel depressed (when he time calls for it) orfeel pumped up for a big battle through the music..truley helps the overall feel & atmosphere of the Substance.

Characters... FOX-HOUND (and MGS2 in general) have some real entertaining characters to say the least, all with a fictatious background that is pretty miserable to say the least. The best is Fat Man because hes fat, roller blades, is funny, and plants bombs all over the place. You'll meet up with a familiar ninja ;), the daughter of someone who died on the Marine tanker, Otacon's sister who is just as lame and annoying as Otacon himself, and many more.

The only downfall is the length of the game and the story near the end of the game. The ending was so confusing I don't even get it... as your running around your getting codec calls from Colonel Campbell saying, "Go ahead and take a rest, I'll save your game. Turn it off." or "Hari Kari Siscors 69!!"... then it turns out everything is a VR mission? Lame. Also there is A LOT, and I stress A LOT, of talking in this game. It's rumored that about 2/3 of the actual game is talking.

This review is too long for it's own good, so I'm gonna sum it up now - if your a fan of the Metal Gear Solid games or if you really enjoy sneaking around...or talking....you have to play this game. It's fun, has awesome graphics & music, and it's a pretty cheap game nowadays. Go for it.

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Understanding the MGS fans (1 of 4 Found this Helpful)   May 26, 2006
I see a lot of reviews comparing MGS to Ghost Recon. The problem is the most the the people who play MGS know MGS from the day when most gamers today where still in there diapers. Metal Gear is an almost 20 year old game. I saw some diaper wearer here posted that the game had no story line. Its what happens when you pick up a book and read the last chapter. Then again, kids today don't have to know how to read to graduate, so I guess I can't expect them to know what a good story line was if it smacked them in the face. Go ask you Dad, ya mama's boy, to break out the old NES so he can whoop you assssssss! There are 8 Metal Gear games all of which are Great games and without them there would be no Ghost recon.

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Disappointing!!! (1 of 8 Found this Helpful)   August 27, 2005
I took the plunge and bought this recently for $6.99 from my local video store, and I'm taking it back.

My sense from reading previous reviews is that many gamers are inclined to like this game on the Xbox because they have enjoyed previous versions on another console (PS2 I think). And I'm ok with that.

I need to admit here that my only frame of reference for this game is the Splinter Cell series on XBOX and for that reason the gameplay is just so disappointing to me.

If you're a Splinter Cell fan and are expecting something even remotely akin to that gameplay experience you will be terribly disappointed. (In my humble opinion.)

There were two major problems with the gameplay for me:

1) The camera angle is not well positioned which makes it difficult to get a good orientation of one's surrounding and makes movement difficult, I found. I can't emphasize strongly enough how much the camera angle bothered me.

2) Given how bad the camera angle for the game is, one wants so very desperately to play in first person mode. But, while the game does allow one to look around in the first person mode, it doesn't allow one to *move around* in first person.

Bottom line: the game lacks the fluid gameplay experience that I've come to enjoy from Splinter Cell and just doesn't even come close to measuring up to that standard.

On a more positive note, the graphics were very impressive and the story-line and cut-aways were equally impressive.

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mgs2 (1 of 3 Found this Helpful)   March 25, 2005
this is one of the most fun and addictive games i have ever played. sme bits are annoying like when you have to do something or go somewhere and you dont know how or where. the cutscenes are interesting but also quite tedious. also the person who saves for you is raidens girlfriend so after when you save you normally get a long speech about how empty raidens room is and why he wont sleep next to her and when they met they argued over what building king kong climbed up or something like that. there are lots of plot twists and after a little while i was completely confused on whats going on. it is very interactive. its possible to kill almost anyone or anything. like it is possible to shoot seagulls that fly around in the raiden levels. also when you have to save the girl thats scared of water i accidenly used melee attack on her a couple of times which brings me onto something else. the controls are awful when im crouching down or something and i guard walks over i want to get up but i normaly end up lying on the ground which means i get a kick in the head from the guards. most of the bosses are werid like theres one called fatman who is a fat guy on rollerblades who plants explosives all over the place and before he dies he says something like laugh lots and grow fat. the characters are weird like theres a bisexual vampire who is in love a marine commander. theres otacon the weird person with glasses who had a realtionship with his mum the main character looks like a girl. on one of the levels you are walking around inside a metal gear naked and whatever you do one hand is always on his you know what. also when your naked the guards arnt afraid to kick you and shoot you. then you find out that raidens girlfriend is pregnant and your commander is ai and loads of other stuff. it has lots of annoying bits like the very long cutscenes but overall it is a very fun and addictive game well worth the money

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