Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance

"Two words. Great. Game"

''The Hudson River...two years ago.''

In Metal Gear Solid 2 : Substance you start as Solid Snake, an ex-member of the special forces unit FOX-HOUND. After the Shadow Moses incident of the original Metal Gear Solid, Snake has stopped working for the government and has joined up with Dr. Hal ''Otacon'' Emmerich to form Philanthropy, an independent group that is trying to stop the existance of Metal Gear, a huge walking nuclear weapon of mass destruction equipped with an arsenal of highly dangerous weapons. We now find Snake on a Marine tanker holding a Metal Gear prototype. Amed only with a small M9 tranquilizer firearm, a digital camera, and a his lucky cigarettes, Snake has to infiltrate the tanker holds and take photographic evidence of Metal Gear Ray. But he discovers some problems on the way.

Here is my review of MGS2 : Substance.

GamePlay

There are so many different fields of play. In the original Sons of Liberty game you have a few choices, use silence and shadows to your advantage or just go all out and kill the first guards you see. Using stealth requires you to be a more skilled player. You need to sneak around and hold up the sentries rather than just killing them. This also grants you their dog tag, which unlock certain extras incuding Stealth camoflauge and unlimited ammunition Bandana for Snake or different Wigs for Raiden. When using the ''John Woo style'' as I call it when you go in guns blazing, destroying everything you see, your bound to get caught easier thus making it wiser to use the Stealth technique. The story of Sons of Liberty is extremely enticing and very exciting. It may seem a bit of a trip at some points, but it still kicks major ass.

As you may know Substance is basically Metal Gear Solid 2 chock full o' extras. It includes the following :
The full Metal Gear Solid 2 : Sons of Liberty game.
350+ VR Missions
150+ Alternate Missions
Unlockable game modes including the European Extreme, Boss Battle and Casting Theater Modes previously only available on the PAL version of Sons of Liberty.
6 unlockable characters to play as in VR and Alternate Missions including Lieutenant JG Iroquois Pliskin and Raiden as the Ninja complete with the HF Blade!
5 Snake tales each with alternate endings.

In other words tons of replay value!

10/10

Graphics The graphics in this game are superb! The textures, cut scenes, camera angles, and characters all look excellent! Also the way the characters' mouths move to the in game speech is some of the best I've ever seen in a game! The only bad part is a coding fault causing slow down on certain areas of the Tanker and Plant missions. This brings down the score a point because this was absent on the original Sons of Liberty game for the PS2. But all in all the graphics are very good.

9/10

Sound

As with the original MGS, the sound in Substance is wonderful. The dialogue is perfect, it sounds like they are actually there. David Hayter(the voice of Captain America on Spider-Man : The Animated Series, and screenplay writer of Scorpion King) does the voice of Solid Snake and portrays him exactly as he is, the ultimate bad ass. While Quentin Flynn, the voice of Raiden, gives the feeling of a green newbie to the ''Intruding game''. It is so good that it brings me to wonder why games like Resident Evil and Onimusha have such terrible voice acting. The musical score of the game is composed by Harry Gregson-Williams who has done music for films such as The Rock, starring Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery, and Armageddon, starring Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, and Billy Bob Thorton. The music in Substance is phenomenal! It adjusts to the tenseness of the game, so when sneaking around the Tanker it is calm but still pulse pounding at the same time, yet when having shoot-outs on the Shell 1-2 Connecting Bridge it is loud and booming. The weapons also sound very realistic. The sounds are probably the best I have ever heard in a game.

10/10

Overall this is a great game! The extra modes add to the already great original SOL game. For the small price of only $20-$30 new at Electronic Beautique I more than highly suggest to purchase this game.

Final Score: 10/10

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 01/25/03, Updated 01/25/03