Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty - rules of nature

Pictured: Raiden with his sword. All credit to Yoji Shinkawa and Konami.

MGS2 ramps up the craziness right off the bat. Solid Snake is back! Briefly. He’s on a mission with an NGO to investigate another nuclear problem! And then everything goes wrong.

MGS2 then picks up with a new character, Raiden, as he investigates an oil rig supposedly taken over by terrorists. This cell is led by a man claiming to be the very Solid Snake from before! (dun-dun-duuuuuh)

Sons of Liberty controls much like the first game, though it handles a bit better and looks a bit better too. Bosses for the most part aren’t nearly as infuriating.

Now, here’s where this review gets a bit complicated. I haven’t finished MGS2, and it isn’t for lack of trying. I played it (along with most of the series) on my PS3, in the collection. It turns out 2 has a semi-notorious bug that causes it to hard crash at a certain point, and the game is more or less bricked after that. Sometimes starting new saves helps, sometimes it makes it worse, sometimes you can brute force your way through the crashes.

As of now, roughly 3/4 into the game, I cannot finish it. I enjoyed what I played, I know plenty of others have too, but every attempt to finish the game to date has ended in a repeat crash in the same area.

Bit of a buzzkill, but I’ll keep trying. If I can make my way past the crashes I’ll update this review specifically, and no other games in the series gave me this issue.

Onto MGS4!