Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance

"A ugly port of a great game"

Most people believe that ports(PC games that were released first on a console system) are a waste. Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance won't be changeing their minds anytime soon.
The game itself is great, having played and finished MGS2 on the playstation2 quite some time ago, I was expecting a better experence since the PC is a lot faster and able to render much higher polygon counts than the Playstation2. What we get is the same graphics, same story(which isn't bad) and sadly numerous graphical glitches that make the game shine on consoles, but isn't really worth the effort on the PC.

Graphics:

Graphics aren't everything, but graphical glitches make a game hard to watch. Using an ATi Radeon 9700PRO the game was just ugly. Yes, it was playable but, this is like a sick joke. nVidia cards faired much better, but in the end they to had graphical problems. Since the port itself is based on the Xbox version (hench the Substance title) which uses nVidia GeForce graphics, it could be that Konami did not change their source code to match ATi's driver commands at all. Which would be sad. Problems aside, the graphics are good.. just do not expect Anisotropic Filtering to help out much.. (AA just made the game uglier). All in all the graphics are tolerable, buta far cry from ''good''.

Sound:

The dialoge is awesome! Just like it's console counterparts the game features a lot of dialoge that fills out the back story and intresting (sometimes whitty) conversations that do not really lead up to anything. The SFX are well done, gun shots sound beliveable, and the ambient sounds are polished. No problems here.

Gameplay:

If you use a gamepad you won't run into any problems.. if you use the keyboard/mouse combo..well now their's a problem. Unless you have one of the Logitech keyboards with the mouse wheel implanted in it, chances are youre going to end up frustrated. I would recommend at least a cheap gravis gamepad, they do the job and are easy to work with. I won't go into the story, because I won't partake in anything that resembles spoilers; however, I will say it's classic. By no means can anyone fault the story.

System Requirements:

I used a ATi 9700PRO/ Amd Athlonxp2600+ combo. Graphic problems aside, the game was playable, graphics maxed out I was able to achieve 75FPS (my monitor's max at 1024x768). I also used a GeForce4 TI4400/ Athlon1.4ghz I ran into some problems at the highest detail settings, but when dropped to medium the problems went away.

NOTE: As of the time I am writing this their is supposed to be a patch in the works for MGS2:Substance that eliminates most of the problems mentioned in the article. If the patch works as advertised I would give MGS2:Substance a 8. As it is, it's a port that feels unfinished and unpolished. Also note, the game is a DVD, you need a DVD player to play the game.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 04/04/03, Updated 04/04/03