Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty HD

With Metal Gear Solid 2 being one of my favourite games back on the original xbox, and with a bunch of playthroughs already under my belt, I was looking forward to revisiting this game and reliving the withering memories I had of it and seeing how it lived up amongst some of today's games.

Set a couple of years after the Shadow Moses incident of the original Metal Gear Solid, the game initially sees Solid Snake infiltrating an oil tanker with the help of computer specialist Otocon, as they attempt to investigate rumours of the development of a new Metal Gear Nuclear Weapon. Not wanting to go to deep into the story here, for want of not spoiling it for new players, lets just say that certain events take place as this chapter of the game comes to a close.

The second and larger part of the game, sees players take control of a new character called Raiden, as he infiltrates a oil plant called 'The Big Shell', to neutralise a terrorist threat known as the 'Sons of Liberty' who have taken lots of hostages including the US President and are demanding a random of $30 Billion and threaten a cataclysmic environmental disaster if their demands aren't met.



Gamplay wise this is classic Metal Gear at it's finest. Stealth and sneaking are the best way to progress, while avoiding all enemies, this was the first Metal Gear game to introduce the 1st person weapon view point, which helps alot due to the awkward pre-set camera angles you spend the game in. Thankfully the game has a very good radar sytem that shows in real time where the enemy is, what angle they are facing and if they are alerted to your presence or not. To make things a bit harder, if you are spotted at all, you lose all radar functions and this makes it alot harder to hide from enemies. You can shoot out certain lights to aid in your stealthiness, and can even shoot out enemies radios to stop them from calling reinforcements.

In the main menu of the game you are given a list of 'Bonus Missions' called VR Training. These consist of virtual reality situations, where you must reach the goal in the set amount of time while also reaching certain objectives. These can range from not being spotted, killing all enemies etc. There are also categories that challenge you to use each weapon in the game to complete your goal. With ingame leaderboards, different playable characters and advanced modes, theres literally tons of replaybility in this.

Graphically, they have done a good job of remastering the game, though compared to the HD version of Snake Eater, this isn't as polished, but it's not really a problem either, because it still plays very well even by todays standards and after a few hours you just completely forget about the graphics and become engrossed in the story and gameplay. Sound is very good, with excellent voice acting from all of the characters, and little things like hearing enemies readying there weapons, or footsteps coming up behind you adds a real tense feeling to the game, which is always a good thing to have in a game that relies on your sneaking through areas unseen.



Achievement wise this is going to be a very difficult game to max. A majority of the points can just be unlocked through one run through, but then there's an achievement for collecting all Dog Tags in the game, which require you to hold up enemies and make them drop them, which is made even harder by having to do this with most enemies in each of the 5 difficulty levels. Also, the advance VR Missions may make some players struggle as they can be very difficult to master.

Overall I think this is a very good game, and although the graphics dont live up to today standards, it's still very good at story telling, even if alot of the time it does feel like some confusing mess, but it just adds to the lore of the Metal Gear universe. You will get tons of gameplay out of this, with lots of VR Missions to complete, Snake Tales which add 'What if?' senarios to the game from Solid Snakes perspective, and with at least 5 playthroughs needed to get all of the dog tags, it's definitely worth the asking price. I really enjoyed playing through this game and reliving some of the memories I had of it, I know these types of games aren't for everyone, but this definitely has to be one of the best collections I've seen.

I give Metal Gear Solid 2 HD a very respectable 9 out of 10.