User Rating: 8.1 | Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance XBOX
Having always been a Metal Gear fan from way back in the day I had pretty high expectations due to the series' continued success. One could say the Metal Gear Solid Substance/SOL is a great game, but I don't think anyone would conclude that SOL is comparitively great to its predecesors. It is definetly does not follow the previous trend in the series to raise the bar in all areas. I'll get right to the specific on the bad side and end up with the good. First, I have always hated the metal gear camera and a lot of gameplay aspects too. The top dow angle never works with any game that has a good deal of shooting. The fact that Substance adds a first person ONLY when you stand still is like they are teasing us our something. I did give me a taste of how cool it would be to have MG in a FPS view. This release in the series also had a severe lack of emphasis on any boss fight proper. The cut extravagant cutscenes that led up to these fights seemed to drawf the actual fight itself. And yes Raiden does blow so much that Substance's creation is justified. Here in lies the biggest "con" of the game, and the transition of my review to the "pros" of SOL/Substance. THERE ARE SOOOOO MANY CUTSCENES!!!!! that I repeatedly call SOL a movie by mistake. The gameplay is only filler to this long winded novelistic plot-twisting epic story. There is definetly too many cutscenes and way to much subtitled "CODEC communication." Now I like cutscenes to the point where my friend wonder about me. I always have to load up the cinematic intro when starting up a new game for the first time, and if I (or jr.) press the X button and accidentally skip a cutscene I'll restart giving up unsaved data in large proportions sometimes. Now the good... The quality of the cutscene's animation, graphics, and uber-cool action are of the highest of caliber. The mature theme was really put to excellent use in this game. You can see that the project concentration was much more on presentation than gameplay. Falling short only to the greats like Square and , well... Square only comes to mind really. Graphics (cutscene specific) can really only mean something when complimented by a good storyline, and here Metal Gear SOL also scores big time. Again setting records, this time in plot twists, this story is both highly entertaining and well asembled. Government conspiracies have always been a favorite, and when you throw in multiple sections of the military and some dark agencies you apparently get a stellar story. The character cast was also well created. Actually the villians win heavily in the category with cool members like Vamp, Fortune, and Fatman. A story of this size and suspense has to be woven so intricately that in times it did falter, more towards the end, but for the most part suceeded highly. Metal Gear Solid: Sons of Liberty is definetly a great game, but it suffers from an unbalance of gameplay and story, and the half that got the attention showed, and its counter part did not unfortunetly. A sequel is fully possible, and I hope they would bring the story line back down to earth just a little, and throw in the option, only the option, to play the whole thing FPS. Sarge
