Metal Gear Solid 2, my new old love

I think I have to start with thanking Drew and Dan for deciding to endurance type run seemingly the whole main saga of the MGS franchise. When they started playing though MGS it was really cool to see someone totally new try and get into the game, in 2014. I really enjoyed watching Drew struggling to come to terms with the controls, especially now.

But when Drew decided to take on MGS2 I was a bit worried, but first, I need to back track to my own experiences with MGS2.

Back in the day I got games only at birthdays and Christmases, because I was a child and had no job or pocket money, so I missed out on the ZOE MGS2 demo, but I didn't miss out on the OPM cover story and I was hyped. Like so many the retaliation that you play the game as Raiden was a huge shock and one I initially disliked. But the more I got into the plot of MGS2 and seeing that this new character allowed me to view Snake (my hero) in a new light was pretty cool. It was also cool that Raiden was a lot more mobile than Snake.

But for me the biggest issue I had with the game was the story, MGS2 is very cut scene and codec heavy and as a child the story passed me by without me even noticing and I skipped all the codec stuff I hated and emotions and Rose. I hated it and didn't care to listen.

That aside, I loved MGS2, the game play was so much better than MGS and really anything else on the PS2 I had ever played. It was a joy and I played the game to death. Literally, to death. By the time I was done with MGS2 (getting the dog tags etc) I had come to the point of resentment and anger. The music of MGS2 was like nothing else and it grated me.

This feeling stuck with me to the point that when the HD Collection came out I never bothered to replay MGS2, the mere thought of it just bought up bad memories.. and the music, ugh how I hated the music.

Cut forward to the start of the month and Drew and Dan are starting season two of there somewhat insane MGS endurance run and I'm watching them watch the opening cut scene for MGS2 and.. the feelings that Dan was talking about came rushing back, I suddenly had the overpowering urge to play MGS2 along side Drew, so I could compare notes and breeze through things he would struggle with. But I had a problem, atm, due to work and new personal issues I travel a lot more and don't really have ready access to my PS2 or PS3 enough to play MGS2 on it with Drew and Dan. So I made the decision to invest in a Vita.

I think it's fair to say that it wasn't really a gamble, I'm a huge MGS fan and the ability to properly play MGS, MGS2 and MGS3 on the go was a huge positive, but still it wasn't a cheap move, to play one game... one game I kind of hated.

But I think it was possibly the best move I could have made, The Vita is pretty great, and apart from god awful analogue sticks is the perfect way to play MGS2.

At this point Drew has finished the Tanker chapter and has just started The Plant. I breeze through the Tanker level and the joy of playing MGS2 starts to come back to me. I'm not playing it to get zero kills, or all the dog tags, just to play it as best I can. I start The Plant chapter, before I realise I've jumped ahead of Drew and Dan by an hour or two (or given the last video of strut F maybe three or four ha).

I couldn't put it down, knowing about the plot and the story and the messages Kojima was trying to convey everything in the game has a brand new meaning to me playing it after such a long gap. The music, man the music is amazing! It fits everything so perfectly nearly half of the story telling seems to be coming from the music, and how it changes throughout the game. The codec messages now between Raiden and Rose mean so much more and I can see so many hidden meanings within them.

Suffice to say that I finished the game last night and I can't stop thinking about it or stop listening to the music. It's a really amazing game and I think it might be moving closer to the top of the list in terms of my favorite MGS games. Never before have I been able to replay a game after such a long gap and have it mean so much more and be able to really experience it differently given my age and the present climate.

So this is a huge shout out and thanks to Drew and Dan for going on this epic quest as it has helped reunite me with a long lost love of mine, one I now cannot put down, or stop thinking about!

And for reference, here is my collection... y'know in case you guys didn't think I was a true fanboy after reading that anyway haha

@baldgye: Good read! Watching Dan and Drew play MGS1, I felt like I had just played it last week. I remembered every secret, every room layout, guard routes, boss patterns, lines of dialogue. I didn't realize that I could probably write an FAQ for that game without so much as looking at a screen. I actually did a little write-up here on how that playing that game (and VR Missions) obsessively as a little kid has shaped the way I played every game after it--as well as including my personal history with MGS.

MGS2 definitely hit me at a weird time. I loved it to death, though, I remember playing through the Tanker tons of times after I beat the game and just fucking with guards. One of my favorite things to do is on the deck of the tanker, if you go towards the left one of the guards has a patrol that is sort of close to the side of the ships. You can spin-kick him over into the water, and I loved that. I didn't know until Metal Gear Scanlon that you could drag guards over the edge, and if I did, I probably would've sunk another six hours into that game as an elementary school boy.

I can't really remember disliking Raiden or Rose that much, so I don't know why I didn't give that game the attention I gave MGS1, MGS3, or MGS4. I definitely wasn't old enough to understand what that game was doing though. Honestly it's making me really want to buy a Vita for the HD collection, or just pray to the video game gods that the collection gets a PS4 release. I guess I could get it through PSNow but I just don't like the way that feels or looks. It's off somehow.

Even though Dan and Drew haven't gotten so far as Fatman though, watching them play is both bringing back memories but also making me curious about a bunch of stuff because I simply don't remember the lions share of MGS2.

Although I do remember you can stand under a patrol while he pees, and if you call Campbell while the guard is peeing on your head, you get a stupid codec conversation. I hope they find that.

I bought the MGS2 PS2 Greatest Hits edition back in the day because everyone always talked about how great the game was. However, I distinctly remember trying to play it back then (having never played any other MG games), and found it to be wildly unapproachable and confusing to where I ultimately gave up on the game early on. After having watched Metal Gear Scanlon, I dusted off the old PS2 and decided to play along with this one. I'm enjoying it now, largely because I learned what kind of batshit craziness to expect from watching Dan/Drew play through the first MGS. I'm glad I held on to the game for this long. It's fun seeing how Drew does things as opposed to how I'm doing them, mainly because we both don't know what the hell we're doing. Loving this video series.

I just bought the hd collection played mgs 1 a few years back on my psp. So excited to play through the series