Wait, what's this game doing here? Well, remember my Snake Eater blog a while back? It was around this time that I started pining for more Metal Gear goodness. I'm aware of how strange that sounds in lieu of me blasting Snake Eater, but keep in mind that I really only took issue with Ocelot. With him out of the picture (or at least not a whiny little shit now), I should enjoy the experience more, right? Surprisingly, that's exactly what happened. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Metal Gear Solid 2 is the Moby Dick of gaming.

By which I mean it's incredibly dense and hard to understand. (Like one of my blogs. I future stole your joke, reader person.) There are just so many cutscenes in this game and they're all incredibly long and dense with information. In fact, almost half the game involves you sitting on your ass and watching things happen. Do I even need to say that's too much? And it's not even like that's a necessary number, because these cutscenes have more padding than a nervous teenage girl. A lot of the dialogue is the characters discussing what types of bullets their guns can use or how their nanomachines can read their biodata or whatever. I appreciate that this level of thought was put into constructing a believable, realistic world (where the Marines are building laser burping metal dragons), but maybe all that information should have been condensed or shoved aside into supplementary materials in the levels or something.

Otherwise, it's just going to distract from all the actually enthralling moments in the story, and believe me, there are actually elements here that are worth checking out. For instance, you get a ton of kickass action moments to help tide you over through all that Navy procedure talk. But more than that, Sons of Liberty has some pretty good points to make. I know what you're thinking: meta-game theme fuckery, right? Well, yes and no. I mean, it's definitely there; it would be hard to deny it when the game's nearly explicitly telling you as much. But sadly, it was not meant to be. A pretty damn thorough understanding of the original Metal Gear Solid is required in order for that reading to hold any water, and since that's a separate game completely outside this one, that's not gonna work out too well. You're just going to risk confusing people who have never played a Metal Gear Solid game, and that's on top of all the other confusing parts about this game. Sure, there's a plot synopsis included in the supplementary material, but from what I've read, it's somehow dense and bare-bones. That has to be some type of achievement.

Fortunately, Metal Gear Solid 2 has other ways of creating meaning. Namely, about how far legends differ from reality and trying to live up to them is only going to end in failure. This is a message you're going to see everywhere in the game, pounded into your head at every opportunity, and not just because of how dense these cutscenes are. It's clear that a lot of thought was put into these themes, and for proof, we need look no further than the protagonist: Raiden. Hot off the heels of ultimate badass Solid Snake, the guy's got some pretty big shoes to fill, and he knows it. Go watch his introduction and then compare it to anything Snake says. It sounds like he's copying Snake's inflections, almost like he's trying to be the legend himself. Predictably, he fucks that up big time. He's unjustifiably smug, egotistical, cocky, incompetent, and overall very abrasive. (Just like me. Am I psychic, future blog thief?) I'd throw in melodrama, too, but that's not exclusive to poor Raiden. Not the Solid Snake you thought you'd be getting, is he? So yes, I'm calling Raiden a bad character, but that's part of what makes him such a good character. I'll give you a moment to clean the nose cum from your keyboard. The best part about it, though, is that the entire game is just spilling over with these types of examples.

The worst part is when the writers lose their iron grip on the writing. No, I'm not talking about Fortune deflecting bullets with the power of smooth jazz or Vamp being Vamp. Yes, that's all incredibly silly, but I feel like Kojima planned for that. What I want to talk about are the things he didn't plan for, and not just about how CODEC calls make no sense for a stealth agent. At times, the plot feels way too convenient, like this scene, for example. To get to this point, I had to check everybody in the room in three second spurts lest the other guard become suspicious. Nice to know he's willing to let Raiden have a conversation with the man for as long as he does. And it sure was convenient that the microphone I needed to do all that was right where I needed it to be just when I needed it. But it's OK, because in the end, this all ends up being part of a plan concocted by Ocelot or the Patriots or whatever. A plan that would have to be executed ludicrously perfectly, given the number of variables that could go wrong (including the one that does, despite the amount of time in which it could have been fixed). And why does an American conspiracy group have a distinctly Japanese name? My point is that the story requires some heft suspension of disbelief in a few areas. Its made even worse by the attention to realism that I previ-

Wait a minute. Aren't I supposed to be talking about a game that you play with your hand fingers? Guess I should get started on that. To begin with, it's a stealth game. A really, really slow stealth game. But unlike all those cutscenes from before, this actually works to the game's advantage. You try plowing through the levels like Sonic the Hedgehog, you're going to get a bullet through your brain and any other part of your body that happens to be exposed. If you want to complete this game, you're going to have to slow down, observe your environment, and generally think things through. Naturally, this requires a lot of patience on your part, but it's well worth it just for that sense of reward you get from completing things flawlessly. But if you do fuck up (and you will), there's still fun in actually escaping enemy fire.

And then there's the tranquilizer gun, which.....actually does nothing to the overall gameplay. Yea, it gets the enemy out of your hair, but not instantly. If you don't put out the enemy immediately (or if you do so when another is watching), Sons of Liberty's gonna come down hard on you for it. So we return to the reasons why Sons of Liberty is so good, making the tranq gun the best weapon in the game. Wait, why do I even have multiple weapons? This is a stealth game; I'm trying to get by people, not outright kill them. Now there are times when you are tasked with killing people, but since Metal Gear isn't that type of game, the end result is all kinds of awkward. You're working from a top-down perspective, cover fire doesn't work (nor should it), and going into first person turns you into a sitting duck. Specifically, this duck. You are not at all equipped to handle direct combat, which makes any boss battle that doesn't use a sword or a Stinger a very strange presence.

I'd probably go on about how the flat skin textures make Fortune look like she's permanently sweating vegetable oil, or how you get to watch women sleeping, but I think I got my point across in as many words as possible. Actually, now that I think about it, my blog's a lot like Metal Gear Solid 2: the writing is incredibly dense and hard to penetrate, with an unlikable asshole at the center of it all, but that's just part of the charm, and underneath it all, there's something worth picking out. But that's not why you read. You read for the precise, methodically paced stealth action you know you can't get anywhere else.

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Review Synopsis

• Hideo Kojima didn't throw in the kitchen sink when working on the story. He didn't even throw in the kitchen. He threw the entire fucking dining hall into Metal Gear Solid 2.
• And then somebody designed a pretty damn good stealth system while Kojima was coming down from his high.
• That not enough for you? Laser burping mecha dragons.

Speaking of postmodern insanity:

Once upon a time, there was a King by the name of VGLocks who stumbled upon a lone forest cottage. Having too much experience with JRPGs and too little respect for the concept of ownership, he tossed a rock through the window and broke in. Within, he found three televisions, each with an SNES hooked up, each SNES holding a Quintet game. (Let's say that this house belonged to nostalgic college bears.)

Curious, VGLocks tried the first game. "This gameplay is too repetitive", he moaned. Next was the....next game, I guess. "This story lacks direction and focus", he cried. Finally, he stumbled upon an action RPG that didn't see a release in America. VGLocks thought, "This game is juuuust fucking awesome." And then he discovered a super powerful sword just by the door for no reason and dogs began developing brain tumors and stuffing their skin into jars and oh god, let's just get to the fucking review before the night terrors return.

What I'd say I like most about Terranigma is just how aware it is that it's a video game. In fact, you can say just that right from the very start. Our hero's a rambunctious asshole who causes trouble wherever he goes. This doesn't make a lot of sense until you find yourself trying to open a treasure chest that very clearly isn't yours. You see what just happened there? The game knew what you were going to do and worked it into the story. This is the type of thing that's going to pop up a lot in the story. A lot of the time, it's just minor tricks on convention, but there are those glimmering few moments when Terranigma goes for something big, like the most common thing you're going to do in the game.

That's right, I'm talking about the violence, even though I really shouldn't. The game simply waffles on this topic. On the one hand, it makes a concerted effort to transform it from an act of destruction to one of construction (more on that in a bit, though). So hooray for that. But then the game advances, and you find yourself killing the very things you brought back to life. Remember how you revived the animals of the land, player? Well, how about you go kill some wolves. Oh, and these aren't special demon wolves or some shit; they're regular fucking wolves. Terranigma's clear on that, if not on the entire topic. Yes, the thematic structure underlying the game essentially equates construction and destruction as two sides of the same coin, but that just feels like too easy a solution. Maybe it should've been more thorough with its themes of reconstr-

That's right! There's also the reconstruction aspect that I love ever so much. Oh, sure, you also get stuff like fate and nature and blah blah blah, but how many others integrate themselves into the gameplay? Although not the main gameplay element, a large part of the game is simply guiding the world in its slow revival, and arguably, it's the best part of the entire game. Killing something is small potatoes; bring something back to life, and the game makes a huge fucking event of it. Bring plants back to life? Have a fucking awesome cutscene. And that's just the plants. Needless to say, it's a great way to foster a palpable sense of accomplishment, especially given how absolutely huge the world you're restoring is. It also helps that the story throws some cool characters and sad moments (and cannibal goats) your way so as to create a personal emotional attachment to the world you're helping to revive. If you're going to take one thing away from Terranigma, take this: it knows how to tell a story.

And then it gets needlessly political. Take, for instance, the voting sequence in Loire after the death of King Henri. That's already bad, but just give it a second. You get two candidates who wear their political ideologies on their sleeves: one who will bring about the Golden Age of Man and the one who will cause existence itself to implode into nothing. This is especially strange in lieu of the previous section's declarations on how democracy is just so goddamn awesome, you guys, even though one could make the argument that communism is closer to democracy than capitalism is (at least the pure Marxist version that nobody's ever managed to pull off.) But it doesn't end there. The game also goes out of its way to insult Islam and/or Russia (they're combined into one for reasons I don't quite understand) for no real reason. You were doing just fine with the themes of rebirth and reconstruction, Terranigma, so why you chose to add a transparent political dimension to things is beyond me. Then again, that very same racism is probably why there's a skateboarding wizard in this game, so maybe it gets a pass?

And have I mentioned how amazing the gra....you know what? Maybe I should get around to the combat. That's how these things go, after all. You can't be a video game if you're not killing something, and even by those strange standards, Terranigma is damn good. It's mechanically solid. You have a decent variety of moves with which to kill people, and surprisingly, each one has a definable personality and presence to it. Yes, that sounds strange, but it's easy to feel when you're meteor-ing into enemies or putting a ton of holes in them rapid fire style. Granted, it's easy to forget that you even have a few moves (did you know that you can block incoming attacks?), but I'm more willing to take the blame than place it. That not doing it for you? How about some awesome enemies, great levels, and OK bosses? A lot less specific, but it gets the job done, if you're into killing things. But it doesn't always have to be about violence. That's not what makes Terranigma great. It's about bringing life, not taking it away. By the time you see Ark dream his last dream, you're going to feel like you've accomplished something AND be justified in that belief.

Review Synopsis

• The wiki page for this game says it combines the best of Seiken Densetsu and Link to the Past. It's not kidding.
• And then it lays that feeling of creation and rebirth on top of it all. Ooooohhhhhh yeaa.......
• That not enough for you? How about sewer lions, skateboard wizards, and fucking this?