Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty - Thoughts
It’s time to talk about Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty! In past posts, I’ve discussed the ambitious Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, the underrated Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, the pointless but impressive Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes, the fantastic Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain and the legendary Metal Gear Solid. We are getting close to the end of this saga, but there so much good stuff left!
Metal Gear Solid 2 takes place a few years after Metal Gear Solid. Those darn Metal Gears are still a threat and the only person who can take them down is Solid Snake…well…maybe not.
The game itself released in 2001 on the PlayStation 2, marking the first foray for Snake and company on the new beefier Sony hardware. Sons of Liberty was an immediate success despite its controversies (more on that later) and quickly became one of the best-selling video games of 2001.
What I Liked 😃
What Does It All Meme?
Every once in a while, something will come along be it a video game or a movie or a TV show that will seem almost prophetic in its storytelling. We’ve seen The Simpsons predict things like Donald Trump being president and determining Super Bowl winners well ahead of time. The movie The Truman Show foretold that people will love to watch the hum drum lives of others before reality shows really got started. And with Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Hideo Kojima discusses topics that are so relevant to today it’s insane. Everything from the concept of social media to government control to AI to fake news and memes, it’s like Kojima stepped into a time machine, traveled to 2024 and then high tailed it back to the early 2000s to write it all down. I guarantee you if you play this game all the way through, you will no doubt hear something that makes you go “hmmm, this sounds familiar”. A lot of the deep philosophical stuff occurs near the end of the game, and I will admit it all comes at you really fast. I had to go online to really get an understanding of everything that was discussed.
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However, the main takeaway for me personally was the notion that too much information may not be a good thing. We will all end up isolated, never having to leave our homes, consuming information rather than functioning as a society. Sounding familiar yet? Keep in mind this game was released in 2001.
In addition to the deep-thinking subject matter, the story is just good. There are so many plot twists it’ll make your head spin. Just when you think you have a handle on what is going on, a new piece of information is revealed, or a new character is introduced. Ocelot and Liquid become one entity, Solidus Snake (Solid’s big bro) shows up, Solid Snake dies (or does he?), Raiden is confused throughout all of it. Speaking of Raiden…
While I do have issues with it, the fact that the story is told from the perspective of Raiden was a good choice. The reason being, we get to witness the story as a noob. Raiden is inexperienced, gullible and has no clue what is going on and is a vast departure from the calm, cool and collected Solid Snake. Maybe more than any other Metal Gear Solid game, we are truly the surrogates, playing through Raiden’s naive eyes. Raiden ends up being one of the more tortured characters in the series with this game and the subsequent Metal Gear Solid Rising: Revengeance, which we will get to very soon.
Hard Work Paid Off
On top of a great story, Metal Gear Solid 2 was the culmination of a lot of video game mechanics over the previous several years.
Yes, Metal Gear Solid’s stealth gameplay is fun, but MGS 2 does it better. The player can now drag knocked out enemies away from the open and even stash them inside of lockers.
Navigating the world in Metal Gear Solid was cool, but MGS 2 does it better. Moving around in the world is easier and more intuitive. The first-person mode not only allows you to view in first person, it’s also a way to more accurately fire your weapon.
Of course, the game is much prettier than Metal Gear Solid. In fact, the game overall is still quite impressive to this day. Yes, maybe some of the controls could use a polish and the graphics could technically use an overhaul ala Metal Gear Solid 3 Delta. But it’s not really necessary. Metal Gear Solid 2 is considered the first postmodern video game. I don’t know about all that fancy talk, but it certainly feels like a touchstone in video game history. You can point to this game and see how it perfected all of the concepts and mechanics that came before it.
What I Didn’t Like ☹️
Snake. Snake? Snake!!!!!
Spoilers for a 2001 video game ahead, I guess.
So, the game starts with a really cool opening sequence starring Solid Snake. Snake infiltrates a tanker that has a Metal Gear on it as well as his “brother” Ocelot/Liquid. Unfortunately, after this mission we are led to believe that Snake dies. And from that point forward, the player has control of Raiden, a rookie agent ordered to rescue the president from the “Sons of Liberty”. This was a hugely controversial decision by Konami and Kojima. Before the release of the game, it was not revealed that the main character for the majority of the game was Raiden. Even when players ripped open the shrink wrap and inserted the disk, they played as Snake for the first hour. And then BOOM, one of the biggest swerves in gaming history. Snake is dead and you are now this unknown blonde male super model named after a Mortal Kombat character. WHAT?!?
Kojima has stated that the reason he didn’t want Solid Snake to be the main protagonist in this game was that he had already starred in 3 games prior, and it would seem weird to have the veteran Snake go through all the basic tutorial stuff yet again. Kojima also wanted to show Snake from another character’s perspective as a way to explore the character from a different approach.
I understand the reasons (although that first excuse seems pretty flimsy), but even playing this game again in 2024, I selfishly wanted to be Snake the whole time. Yes, Snake was the main character in Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2, but those were retro games that didn’t have a whole lot of intricate storytelling. And Metal Gear Solid on the PlayStation 1 is great, but this was the first Metal Gear Solid game on the PS2. I wanted to see Snake get into the thick of it. It doesn’t help that we get a glimpse of what might have been in the first hour of the game.
Overall Thoughts 🤔
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is one of those Mount Rushmore of games. Video games after it are better because of the ideas and mechanics that it introduced. Within the Metal Gear Solid series, it stands as one of the best. While I prefer Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain more, I think the storytelling in Metal Gear Solid 2 is better and honestly more important. We as a society learn to understand and be compassionate and get better from the things we read and experience. The fact that Metal Gear Solid 2 has so many forward-thinking concepts should make us reflect on where we are as a society and how we can be better. When a video game can do things like that, it deserves all the highest praise.
Where Can I Play This? 🕹️
Similarly to other Metal Gear Solid games I’ve reviewed, the best way to play Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is via the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol 1.
I played the game via the Metal Gear Solid Legacy Collection on the PlayStation 3.