Feature By

Chi Kong Lui

Click here to buy

If first impressions are critical, Konami got Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (MGS2) off to a dazzling start in May of 2000. At the world’s largest videogame tradeshow, E3, the media and gamers alike were treated to a sneak-peek of the title in the form of a dramatic Hollywood-style movie trailer shown through-out the three-day event. The buzz was almost instantaneous, and it sent shockwaves throughout the industry as the media machine went into overdrive. MGS2 would be heralded as a dawning of a new age of interactive entertainment.

Flash forward to present day. It’s only a couple of short months away from this year’s E3 and the one-year anniversary of the historic debut of MGS2, but time has done little to calm the tidal waves of hype and expectation. For each gamer, it has been an agonizing eternity; our own little private hell of waiting, wondering and hoping with only brief moments of comfort and jubilance in the scant press clippings, screenshots and interviews that have been strategically offered to us before the ambiguous release date of sometime in Fall 2001.

Konami must have sensed this mounting tension with the gaming populace, and rather than have the hype backfire and escalate to dissention, the powers that be decided to throw us a bone in the form of an early playable Trial Edition to MGS2. The Trial Edition demo comes as a pack-in bonus to their most recently released title Zone Of The Enders, but sort of like when the Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace movie trailer debuted before the film, Meet Joe Black, I get the feeling that most people are going to be skipping the main attraction and heading straight for the demo disc.

Following the same format of all the previous Metal Gear titles, players once again assume the role of Snake, the stealthy one-man army on yet another mission to put an end another terrorist group with the trademark nuclear-powered giant robot named Metal Gear (this time Ray). The sequel has been a long-time coming, and after playing through the 45-minute, single-stage demonstration and trying to fully experience what the title offers, I’m happy to report that the MGS2 delivers the goods big-time and should be as great as gamers are expecting.

If it’s one thing that should come as no surprise to anyone is that the visuals are just drop-dead gorgeous. For months now, blurry movie files and high-resolution screenshots of the game have circulated over the Internet, so almost everyone has some semblance of what’s in-store graphically. Yet to witness the game in actual full-motion gameplay glory is still quite a sight to behold regardless. Series creator, writer and director, Hideo Kojima, has stated in many interviews that a high level of attention and detail was focused on capturing the sense of natural weather and subtle ambient effects. For anyone who experiences the demo for themselves, it goes without saying that Kojima and his team of developers were incredibly successful in that endeavor. The game opens in a torrential down-pouring of rain, and it’s incredible to see and feel that effect played out on-screen. Significant amounts of smoke and shadow effects also come into play later in the interior scenes, but they have nowhere near the dramatic impact of the outdoor rain scene in the opening moments of the game. Combined this with the ultra-realistic polygon models in the characters and environments, smooth life-like animation, hip Steady Cam-style camera work in non-interactive cut-scenes and distinctive sense of cool in the overall art direction, and you have yet another candidate for the old debatable most-visually-impressive-game-ever distinction (although this one might actually hold true more than any other title in recent years).

In terms of story and voice-acting quality, it’s too early to tell. All the voices are still in Japanese with English subtitles, and while the demo hints at some story elements to come, very little plot details are actually revealed in the opening sequences. Though I will say that the dialogue between Snake and Otacon is so quick and convoluted in the introduction movie, I had a hard time understanding what exactly was going on.

What I personally liked most about MGS2 so far is that Snake has many more abilities than in his previous outing. One of the main complaints I had about the original Metal Gear Solid was that Snake’s player-controlled abilities were limited, and I never really felt immersed in the character. The sense of role-playing was weak, and the game was much too story-based than interactive for my taste. The balance between gameplay and story in MGS2 is much more to my liking. The environments are more interactive (almost everything can be opened, explored, and shot to bits). Snake is still capable of performing all his old regular moves, like the dragging choke-hold, crawling on the floor, shadowing walls, creating diversions by knocking on walls, and the ultra-advanced crawl-inside-cardboard-box disguise, but there are also plenty of noteworthy additions. At any time, Snake can look and attack from a more accurate and stationary first-person perspective. Snake can now hang, hide and shimmy over banisters and ledges. Once he’s hanging, he can drop down onto guards and knock them unconscious. For more stealth options, Snake can also peek and perform surprise attacks around corners. Incapacitated guards can also be dragged and hidden in lockers or thrown overboard in a ship. Then there’s my personal favorite, the hold up. If players are able to sneak up on guards and beat them to the draw, guards will surrender with their hands up, and give-up items if you take aim at either their head or groin!

Would I say brief MGS2 demo has the same kind of near-perfect seamless gameplay found in classics like The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time and GoldenEye 007? Not by a long shot. While the overall game design felt good so far, I had issues with the control scheme. I was always critical of the controls for the original MGS, and the problems that plagued the original still haven’t really been resolved in the sequel, either. The main problem I have is when I back Snake into a wall, the camera angle changes, but the control orientation remains the same. One second you’re supposed to point left to lean into a corner, then camera angle changes so that you’re facing an entirely different direction, but you’re still expected to point left. I’ve always found this setup to be confusing and unnatural, and I wish they would have come up with another method of control that wasn’t so dependent on orientation. What only makes things worst is the overly sensitive analog stick and the unintuitive button layouts. There may be many more actions and abilities for players to have fun with, but it’s a double-edged sword that comes with consequences. The button schemes for all the various maneuvers are extremely complicated and hard to manage in the heat of the moment. To perform certain actions like peeking around corners and surprise attacking a guard in a first-person view requires a bit of finger gymnastics in order to hold down two shoulder buttons while pressing and holding down another—all the while trying to keep track of the control orientation and aim with an overly sensitive analog stick!

Another complaint I have is that performing some of the more advanced moves and tactics is way too difficult and frivolous. Players can stop guards from alerting others by shooting the walkie-talkie in their hand. Sounds simple enough, but when you’re in the middle of the action, trying to figure out all the buttons and aim with an overly sensitive analog stick, it becomes a near impossible task. It also makes little sense when you can just as easily cold-clock the guy with a combo before he completes his transmission. The same could be said of the extremely cool "hold up" feature. First of all, not only did it take me hours just to get it work (again another testament to the difficult controls), but the ability doesn’t really serve any real purpose or function. It’s much easier and efficient to just put a cap in the guy’s head with his back to you and search his lifeless body for items instead.

Regardless of those complaints though, I was still impressed. It’s too early to fully evaluate the game based on what little we’ve played so far. All I’ll say for now is that the Trial Edition held many enjoyable surprises for me, and hopefully later stages will make much better use of the advanced tactics. Speaking personally, I’m actually a bit relieved. If MGS2 fails, I could imagine a huge fallout in which the heads of top industry heads would be rolling, and the entire market dragged down by its failure. Expectations for MGS2 are through-the-roof, and from what I gather from the Trial Edition, it should be the sales record-setter that the executives are hoping for and the kick-ass rich gaming experience that the gaming public is craving. Even as I write this sentence, I can’t wait to get back into the game, sneak-up on another hapless guard and figure out a new way to administer some digital ass whupping. If anything, that’s a good sign.

Tentative Rating of Trial Edition: 9.0