3/5 ★ – HomeVideoHustle's review of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.

This is a weird review to type. I LOVE the Metal Gear Solid series and while I didn’t love the original Metal Gear when I finished it recently, I still enjoyed my time with it. I went to play Metal Geat 2 and immediately was hooked by the intro. It is so much more cinematic than the original, it looks better, it sounds better, it plays better, everything about this game is technically better. So, why didn’t I enjoy this more than the first game? I just didn’t have as much fun with Metal Gear 2. There were many instances where this game gave me such a headache trying to figure out what exactly to do or just having moments that were so tedious for no damn reason. For example, there is a part where you have to cross a swamp but you have to follow a specific path that you can’t see and if you accidentally stay off of it, you sink and die. You have time to get back on track but if you got flipped or too far off the path, you’ll die. I hated this section. The backtracking was not a lot of fun either and the gameplay is fun until it isn’t. It’s hard to explain. If it wasn’t for the plot I wouldn’t probably have cared as much to finish the game. It’s not all doom and gloom though. I love the plot and how the story plays out. It was crazy to see just how much of this game got remixed into Metal Gear Solid and it was fun to play through all those sequences I either read about in files or heard about in dialogue in the MGS series. Boss fights were fun and it was admittedly fun to actually be able to fight Metal Gear and not just put bombs at its feet. The music is another high point as well and it gave off the vibe of a 80s action movie. It is a good game, I won’t say it’s bad but I just didn’t always enjoy my time with it. I like the story, music and overall vibe here more than the original but I had more fun with the first game. In the end, I think I’d go back to the original before this one but in all honesty, now that I’ve actually beaten them, I’ll probably just go back to the MGS games and leave these as memories in my mind and two boxes checked off my Metal Gear fandom.