I didn't look at the spoiler, but I'm guessing from the above comments, it is relying heavily on Peace Walker. I still think it's an incredible achievement for the PSP, but I was hoping it would just carry over the bare minimum. I was worried when I saw the mammal pod in the trailer, but I was trying to be optimistic—I still have hope! Maybe it would have been better to make a true MGS sequel, since I thought MGS2 was more of a existential experience, and he could close the series off with a final prophetic political mouth piece.
I was going through the games in preparation, and I really wasn't enjoying 2. It's a great game, but since I've already got it's message, I'm kind of left with a pretty dull environment with a lot of backtracking. Story-wise and gameplay-wise, the Tanker is amazing, but the Plant doesn't have much depth to the environment or gameplay, and there's a lot of cheesy dialog and melodrama. I remembered that things only pick up when Solid Snake is around, and even though I was playing on extreme, I got to bored to continue playing half-way though. When I came to this board, I originally said that MGS2 was my second favorite game of all time right under MGS3, and I can't really say that anymore.
I originally thought that Metal Gear Solid 2 was Kojima’s platform to advise fans to stop nerding out over the details, and to appreciate life as best as they can. He flat out tells players to turn off the darn console and get our butts outside! Of course, it's a terrible philosophy for artists since they should strive for quality work, but it's great for consumers. Raiden was there to tease players that they aren’t going to ever be as amazing as a guy as Solid Snake if they continue having such a myopic opinion on life. That’s why we get to play with such a dull atmosphere in comparison to the incredible tanker level. It’s why we slip on bird poop, we constantly whine through Raiden, we are forced to cartwheel naked, and we are humbled in seeing Solid Snake perform our tasks in much more efficient methods than we are able to. I thought Kojima’s point is how our expectations are destroying our appreciation of life is no better exemplified than in the conversation with Rose about Raiden and her first date. Raiden becomes attracted to her because of an argument about a plot discrepancy of an old movie. Then what do they do? They don’t go out on some romantic date, or do anything exciting. They spend all night re-watching the movie all the way through the morning. Kojima was basically ripping apart nerds obsessiveness and expectations (using relationships). It takes a horrible event for Raiden to finally deconstruct and reconsider his life. All that VR training (video game playing) didn’t add anything of value to his life, and he nearly gives up hope until Solid Snake gives that uplifting speech about appreciate life’s beauty.
I'm not sure if I feel that way anymore, but that's probably because I played it five times. Then again, there’s some other stuff about that game that I never understood, like why we needed to know of Otacon’s affair with Emma’s mom. I don't know, but I have to take back what I said awhile back. While I don't enjoy the backtracking or the controls and cheesiness (which, to be fair, MGS3 has it's melodrama), I definitely like MGS better than MGS2. Don't get me wrong, MGS2 is still a great game, but I just had a change of opinion.
probably the same for collectibles since we almost had an incident, and the general dicussion thread.
