Three years later Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake put meat on those bones and then some in this absurdly ambitious 8-bit adventure.After the events of Metal Gear youve gone into retirement, only to be summoned for one more mission (this would go on to be a recurring problem for Snake).A top scientist with the formula to solve the worlds energy crisis has been kidnapped by military nation Zanzibarland and youre the only man who can rescue him.
As such, Metal Gear 2 feels like the work of a confident creator with a bagful of ideas and a willingness to test the limits of a medium. At one point, his phobias become gameplay elements, with him refusing to take certain actions unless he first smokes a cigarette to calm his nerves. You simply arent going to get any other 1990 video game where you have to consider the feelings of your gruff soldier-man game character. This freedom results in some adorable and totally bonkers sequences. One hatches into an owl, with which you can trick a guard into deactivating a laser fence as its hooting makes him think its night-time (despite the sun obviously being high in the sky). The other egg hatches into a snake which squirms around your inventory eating your precious health items. When that hit shelves, players marvelled at how the game pushed boundaries, most of them not realising that many of its best moments were transplanted from a game already close to a decade old. This means clunky controls, random difficulty spikes and a sometimes sadistic design philosophy. For example, crawl into the wrong room and you may find a nest of poisonous Zanzibar hamsters. These furry bastards can and will kill you with a single bite of their sharpened incisors. The Metal Gear franchise hadnt yet acquired that signature Yoji Shinkawa consistency, so everything looks a bit bland and generic, and the muted colour palette doesnt help. My enjoyment was couched in the knowledge that its potential would fully blossom in Metal Gear Solid, which Im itching to replay in June. A 16-bit Metal Gear 3 could have been something very special ( and seems to have been briefly considered ). Perhaps the excellent Metal Gear: Ghost Babel gives us an idea of what could have been.
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