June 2021 Playthrough - Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

[Mr_Stubbes]

You may enjoy the next portion of the game more. The Shell is labeled and you can use a map to find 'strut A' or wherever you need to go next in relation to where you are.

Also, use the radio more. In the tanker section, call Otacon if you don't know what to do next. In the Shell you'll call someone else but I won't spoil it. Also the game keeps you on the rails more in the main portion of the game; if you go the wrong way you may get a forced radio call that ways something like 'what are you doing? head to strut F' or whatever.

I'd hate to see you get stuck on the tanker, so one other thing you can do is bail to the main menu and start a new save starting at the Shell, bypassing the tanker section completely.

That’s good to hear. I’ll definitely make an effort to keep playing then. I’ve contacted Otacon a few times and I only really remember him telling me things about shooting pipes/hydrants to stun/hurt enemies. That or he’ll contact me about walking into some vary obvious and very noticeable lasers and explosives. So he didn’t seem very helpful, but maybe I wasn’t contacting him in the right areas? Since I started the tanker I’ll just do my best to get through it. I did find it a little weird how you could pick and choose where you wanted to start the game without previously playing through it.

[douglie007]

I've been so busy this month, I got through the first mission.  I might restart in very easy just to run through it.

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[singlebanana]

HELLOOOOOOO Exposition..... 😆

[Mr_Stubbes]

Just finished the Harrier fight. I’m really glad I’m sticking with this one. Shawn was absolutely right when he said that the game gets better once you reach the shell portion. While fights can be a touch challenging due to the controls, I feel that the best part of this game so is the boss fights.

[GrayGhost81]

Just finished the Harrier fight. I’m really glad I’m sticking with this one. Shawn was absolutely right when he said that the game gets better once you reach the shell portion. While fights can be a touch challenging due to the controls, I feel that the best part of this game so is the boss fights.

[img width=480 height=380]https://i.pinimg.com/originals/da/f6/c7/daf6c73443929becd580d713043d3376.gif[/img]

[Mr_Stubbes]

Just finished the game and as I stated before, I’m glad I stuck with this one. I also want to say that the Tanker portion wasn’t as bad as I made it out to be. While it was a little misleading on where you needed to go at first, it’s fairly straightforward after the Olga fight. Its especially not that bad when you consider that the tanker portion takes about 20mins to get through. Once I made it to the plant section of the game, I had a much easier time progressing through the story without any real need for a walkthrough. This game does some things very well but definitely has some areas where it can improve. One of the best parts of the game in my opinion is the boss fights. You face a good variety of bosses, with all of them (at least the human ones) having different personalities that not only contribute to the story but you also learn that while they may work along side one another, they all have drastically different end results to their mission at hand. Another thing that I feel this game does well is that it blends the kind of seriousness that would expect to go into military/tactical espionage game with the absurd. This includes things like rollerblading mad bombers, sneaking around in computer boxes, using dirty magazines to distract guards, wandering around naked through areas of the game that are named after different parts of the digestive system, getting into a gun fight with a literal plane, a badass female Magneto who wants revenge but to also die, Snake withholding important information because “well you didn’t ask”, and who can forget vampire jesus, who can walk on water, dance like a ballerina, and somehow throw knives super slow. I honestly feel it’s the absurd that keeps this game together, because without it, I feel this game would be a boring tactical/stealth game with way too much exposition and dragging cut scenes. Honestly, this is also my biggest gripe with the game. There are points where the amount of information being thrown at you, through what feel, like never ending codex calls and cutscenes that can just bring this game to a halt. The worst case of this is right before the final boss where there is just 15-20 minutes of calls and cutscenes that just keep going and going. Which is weird because right before they start you are literally squaring off with the final boss. This is also another instance of absurdity, because what kind of villain would just wait patiently next to you while you essentially have a 20min internal monologue. Some lesser things I was not a fan of was the fact you couldn’t pause any cut scenes. You were basically left with the dilemma of either waiting for it to end to pause the game or just skipping it entirely and missing out on potentially important information. Another issue I had was with the controls. While they were fine for a PS2 era game the HD remake on the PS3 was kind of rough, you would hope with the higher standards for how a PS3 game should control that they would have put more time into improving the somewhat outdated PS2 controls. Because the controls weren’t that great there were times that they got me killed which at times was a little frustrating, but the game was at least fair enough to respawn you close to where you die. With all that being said I enjoyed my time with this one. I’m not sure if I’ll go too deep into the series as a whole, but I feel like it at least warrants another attempt at the original MGS on the PS1.

[img width=700 height=525]https://i.imgur.com/gaKAfeC.jpg[/img]

[GrayGhost81]

QUESTION OF THE MONTH

We are recording our Metal Gear Solid 2 episode on Friday night and we want to know:

What’s a game you love that wasn’t what you expected it to be?

[Mr_Stubbes]

QUESTION OF THE MONTH

We are recording our Metal Gear Solid 2 episode on Friday night and we want to know:

What’s a game you love that wasn’t what you expected it to be?

My pick for this would have to be Incredible Crisis. The cover art, which is a plain yellow background with the red face of a man with a volcano on his head, tells you absolutely nothing about that game. Not knowing what to expect, I was pleasantly surprised when I picked it up as a rental in the early 2000s and found out it was this quirky and hilarious game consisting of quick time and rhythm based mini games. While it is a short game and some of the mini games can be finger numbing and repetitive, it is still one of my favorite PS1 games of all time and one that I'm glad I took a chance on