Metal Gear 2 is where Kojima first flexes his storytelling muscle in the series, along with now-familiar improvements.
You start the game reprising your role as Solid Snake (obviously) a few years after the events in the first game. This time you're heading into Zanzibar, a militant small nation near Mongolia, with orders to rescue Dr. Kio Marv. Marv is the inventor of OILIX, a key new energy source that must not fall into enemy hands. Unlike the first game, the story in Metal Gear 2 is a lot more developed. There are a few plot twists during your mission, and you actually interact with a few characters. While it's not as deep or intricate as the stories that the Metal Gear Solid games are famous for, there's an unmistakable step towards the storytelling found in the Solid games. Those who are drawn in by the stories of the Metal Gear Solid games will undoubtedly enjoy Metal Gear 2 more than Metal Gear.
The story isn't the only now-familiar staple of the Metal Gear series that made its debut here. The first thing that you'll likely notice when you start a game is the radar in the upper-right corner. The radar shows the enemy locations and basic layouts of your screen and the surrounding eight screens. Not only that, but enemy patrols are no longer confined to their own screen; now they can wander across multiple screens. Now a collection of 20 screens or so creates an "area" where guards can freely roam across and anything you do will be "remembered" until you leave that area. Due to this, you can no longer just enter and exit screens repeatedly to gain unlimited ammo and rations; instead you have to leave the area and then deal with all the guards again. This certainly helps alleviate one of the more abusable practices in the original. Guards cannot see across screen boundaries, but they can have very long patrol routes that cover the whole area. In a number of places, the player is forced to stay on the move to avoid the patrol sweeps.
When you are discovered by the enemy, another new feature that fans are familiar with will kick in - the alert and evasion modes. You will remain in the alert mode when you are in the enemy's line of sight, and evasion mode begins once no guards can see you. They'll continue looking for you while the countdown is active, then return to their normal patrols once the timer is up.
Another new feature is the ability to crawl, which gives Snake access to ducts and the ability to use crawlspaces to hide. Grated floors and other surfaces that magnify the sound of footsteps make their debut as well. Running across these surfaces while sneaking up on a guard will alert them of your presence and you'll soon have a few soldiers to deal with. I did find some surfaces to my advantage, however. If you make a sound while you're out of the guards' line of sight, they'll stand still and look around for the cause of the noise, giving you the opportunity to take them out with their backs turned.
Many of the weapons and items from the first make their return, along with a few new ones making their debut. Stinger missiles (which can target any spot on the map in your current screen or adjacent ones), grenades, gas grenades, and night vision goggles join the standard handguns, submachine guns, mine detectors, and gas masks. You can even use the cardboard box disguise to have delivery trucks move you around the complex.
One thing that is rather surprising is how many events in Metal Gear 2 are repeated in Metal Gear Solid - the run up stairs with soldiers in pursuit, the meetings in the women's bathrooms, and how you use the brooch. I found the three-in-one launch card in Metal Gear Solid to be very unique, and only now do I discover that the concept was basically reused from Metal Gear 2. When a game is released only in Japan on a lesser-used system, all old tricks are new again for the majority of players.
Of all the games in the series, this one unquestionably has the greatest amount of backtracking. It feels that every time you make some progress in the game, you need to head back to the Zanzibar Building to get the next item that will allow you to proceed further. By the end of the game, you'll have the patrol patterns of a few soldiers memorized.
The very beginning of the game is the hardest, where not only are you without any equipment but the layout makes it difficult to avoid any guards. However, the layout evens out afterwards, and your ration carrying capacity gives you a decent safety net to work with. The first boss also probably proves the most difficult, especially considering your limited ration supply, but they again even out as you progress through the game. Without giving away any details, the final boss of the game is a rather memorable battle.
The graphics were very good for the era, with as much detail and immersion as the system could provide. Some of the littered junk in the sewers was a rather nice touch. The sound is also an improvement from the original, with a wider selection of music as well as good environmental effects.
Those that know precisely where to go can probably finish the game in a little over four hours. Those on their first playthrough without a walkthrough will probably finish in between five and six hours, as some of the clues of where to proceed to next can be rather general.
Fans of the series who picked up Subsistence would probably find it worthwhile to experience this game once. While its replay value is rather limited, it does show a key chapter in the series' growth. The improvement in gameplay from the first to second is great, along with all the new ideas it brought to the series. The American debut of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake is long overdue, and finally gives fans the chance to experience the lost chapter in the Metal Gear saga.