Despite the poor conversion to PC, Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance is one of the best games of the past decade.
User Rating: 9.5 | Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance PC
Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty was one of the most highly anticipated games of 2001 but it was only for the PlayStation 2. The original MGS was released on PC and this second installment was given an updated version in 2003 dubbed Substance, released for the PC, Xbox, and PlayStation 2. Now PC gamers can continue the story of Solid Snake but everyone was in the for the shock of their lives as he was NOT the main character. Raiden, an inexperienced rookie of FOXHOUND takes center stage. MGS2's story is rather convoluted but in 2007, Solid Snake infiltrates an oil tanker in NYC to find proof of a new Metal Gear, RAY, being built by the marines. The mission goes wrong when Revolver Ocelot steals RAY and destroys the tanker with Snake being presumed dead. Two years later, a terrorist group called the Sons of Liberty, led by the mysterious Solidus Snake and a motley crew of freaks that includes Vamp, Fatman, and Fortune, take over the Big Shell Decontamination Facility. Rookie FOXHOUND agent Raiden is sent in to investigate and stop the terrorist group but not everything is as it seems. The story divided many people with some deriding it as overly complex for an action title. Many themes are touched upon such freedom of choice, conspiracy theory, censorship, genetics and artificial intelligence. There is a lot going on and you have to pay attention to everything but I found the story incredibly engrossing, if needlessly complicated. It's presented with numerous cut-scenes, all of them exciting and thrilling to watch but impatient people will end up skipping it and missing large parts of the story. The actual time where you "play" the game is small and the emphasis is on stealth. The camera is static and changes angles when needed. As Solid Snake and Raiden, you sneak through many areas and try to remain undetected. You procure your weapons yourself and explore every nook and cranny for ammo or items. Some of the gameplay elements are a little tongue-in-cheek with floating items floating off the ground and guards not noticing you unless you're in their field of vision. In each area, you immediate goal is to find a computer which gives you a layout of the area. You can kill the guards but you can also knock them out or put them to sleep using the M9. Boss battles are the highlight and sometimes can be a pain, especially when you're battling with 5 Metal Gear RAY's at once! The keyboard controls are terrible but it is not impossible to beat the game using it. You just have to remap them to suit your tastes. The graphics look archaic with blurry textures but it still looks sharper than the console versions. You can tell this game squeezed a lot out of the PS2 with special effects such as motion blur and rain although on PC, it's no problem. Sound is excellent with an epic score from Harry Gregson Williams and professional voice acting including David Hayer as Solid Snake. Substance includes the original Sons of Liberty which should last around 20 hours and additional VR missions. There's also Snake Tales where its the same as Sons of Libery but instead of Raiden, you play as Snake but this is non-canon. The PC version is a pain to run on today's machines and is only compatible with Windows XP. To get it to run on Windows Vista/7, you need to update to the latest patch, use a hex editor to fiddle with the main .exe to force it to support current ATI and Nvidia cards, and download Creative Alchemy Universal to fix any audio issues. Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance is an excellent entry in the famed stealth franchise and I'm glad I've finally had the chance to experience it. Despite the rough translation to PC, this is one game you cannot afford to miss out on and is one of best of the past 10 years.
