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Great game, if you don't already own it.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: March 30, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Metal Gear Solid 2 is a great game. Although not everyone liked the plot, the stealth gameplay is still the most fun on the market. The game was released over a year ago on PS2, but last winter, this souped-up game came to Xbox. Now it is back on PS2, and finally PC.

The main game, Sons of Liberty, is a great game. People have critized the plot, but I found it enjoyable. The variety of gameplay is great, though. You go undercover as a terrorist, defuse bombs, destroy security cameras, take pictures of Metal Gear Ray (a powerful nuclear weapon), and fight hard bosses. All of Snake's stealth tactics are present, even the new first-person view. In case you haven't heard, there is a new character (Raiden). However, he can perform all the same moves that Solid Snake could. The main game really emphasizes stealth, but if yuo are caught, it is not game over. Instead, you have a hard firefight ahead of you. It is fairly long, about 15 hours.

What is good about this game is all the extra content. There are over 300 VR missions. They are similar to the main game, but take place in a computer-generated combat zone. They have a good variety, and are fairly challenging. There are also over 150 alternative missions. The difference is that these take place in locations from the game (Big Shell or Tanker). Once again, these are challenging, varied, and cool. There are also 5 new Snake Tales. These include Solid Snake, and take place in levels from the game. However, all theese extra modes are difficult. There is no difficulty select for them.

Overall, this is a great game. If you do not own it, buy it. If you own another version of Metal Gear solid 2: Substance (PS2 of Xbox), this is not worth buying again. If you own the original on PS2, you should buy this for the extra content. As for which system? Depends on if you like a controller over a keyboard and mouse.

yeah

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: April 04, 2003
Author: Amazon User

if your the Xenosaga type and can stand long times when they won't shut up then this is for you. If you can't stand them talking then you will be screwing yourself. I think it's a great game. So many added features. but they just won't shut up. Anyways I give it a 5 out of 5

[darn it] raiden why do you have to look like a girl?

Dissapointing port

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: April 07, 2003
Author: Amazon User

MGS1 which was ported to PC by Microsoft was a classic and I instantly became a fan of Solid Snake. I wish I could say the same for the sequel. The game is actually a direct port of Xbox version and suffers from poor optimization for the PC. The game runs poorly even on my Pentium 3Ghz with 512MB Ram and GeForce FX 5800 rig. The settings need to be turned down to the lowest for the game to run satisfactorily and there are still significant slowdowns. I just hope Konami is working on a patch to optimize it.

There better be a patch in development...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 7
Date: May 13, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is the most disappointing PC gaming purchase I've ever made. This is not to say the actual MGS2 game (i.e. for the PS2) is worthless. My problems happen to be PC specific. For one, the controls are the worst I've seen since the invention of video games. It would have been nice if Konami included an easier interface, such as clicking the action you wish to edit, and pressing the button you wish to control that action, instead of that keyboard layout hunk of junk. That keyboard layout is completely worthless. For example, it lists "Button 6XYZP29H" instead of "Shoot" or "Crouch." What good is that? My other complaint is that there's no option to invert the y-axis. This is insane as many gamers, including me of course, cannot play with standard y-axis movement, especially in FPS type games. To further emphasize my anger with this horrific port, I just recently formatted my hard drive and didn't bother to install the game back. If a patch comes out to fix these issues, I will reinstall the game. Furthermore, the sound is full of static and garbled, making the game unplayable from the annoyance. I can barely hear any of the cinematic video clips. I don't have to "turn off hardware acceleration" in any other game to get normal quality sound. And it isn't my machine, it's a bug. I have an Asus A7N266-C, Athlon XP 1800+, 512 MB DDR, and an MSI GF4 Ti 4400. The onboard sound of the nForce chip is supposed to be great, so that's not the problem. Konami = lazy. If these issues don't bother you, the game gets a 5/5, but personally I can't play the game in its current state.

This game it's worth the effort!!!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: June 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

UPDATE 7/3/03, SOLVE THE CONTROLS AND MOUSE PROBLEM!!!. At first I couldn't find how to use the controls, BUT after trying and testing several of the ones I own, curiosly the mouse and game pad adapts and works perfectly if you use a Microsoft pad or mouse. I guess this is logic if they basically translated the Xbox game for the PC almost directly. Unlike GTAViceCity where they go to great lenghts to rebuild everything so you have a quality product to play on the PC.

On the other hand, if you survive the technical difficulties this game it's really GREAT!!! Story wise it's amazing and something that I have never seen in video games before. Cinematics are very detailed and with great music. I give it 3 stars because in this age pc gamers shouldn't struggle with incompatibilities issues, specially if you are using the latest equipment.

Metal gear solid for PC

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: July 03, 2003
Author: Amazon User

First off this is one of the best games for teh xbox and ps2 and now its on the PC!!! despite what ever you have heard for other sources and from other reviews they are mostly wrong. this game does play well on a non super computer
you dont need all the best graphics cards and such to run it.
i have an old dell with 256 ram and a geForce 2 ultra and it runs good enough for me and on the tanker level (the first level) i crancked up the graphics all the way and it runned like "buttuh"(butter) smooth as silk. and another thing people complain about is the "bad controls" tthey are NOT that bad sure a controler would be nice but i am not made of money so i stuck with the defult settings and itt works slick!!! one thing though press "enter" then press "down" to save and press "esc" to quit DONT HOLD ESC!!! or the game starts getting wierd. if you wanna use rations hold "a" select rations then press "x" (all with default controls)

Good game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: February 01, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Metal Gear Solid was, unquestionably, one of the finest games even released for the classic Playstation. It was a surprise hit that took the world by storm. And when creator Hideo Kojima promised a sequel, gamers were ecstatic. And now the sequel has arrived! How does Metal Gear Solid 2 - The Sons Of Liberty measure up? Read on and find out! This will be a two-part review - one part covering the game, one part covering the extras of the "Substance" reissue.

-THE GAME ITSELF-
PROS:
-The most noticable improvement over the original Metal Gear Solid is the graphics. The first game had terrible, pixelated graphics which were a pathetic attempt at 3D. NOT SO HERE. These are some of the finest graphics ever experienced in a video game!
-Unlike the first game, you can now shoot from a first-person perspective. This makes hitting your targets WAY easier than in the first game.
-Other play control aspects are also improved.
-The game is divided into two quests - the first involves Solid Snake going aboard a Marine ship to photograph the new Metal Gear prototype - Metal Gear Ray. The second involves a new agent called Raiden (no relation to the Mortal Kombat character) infiltrating an ocean base.
-The game has a variety of cool weapons, items, and characters.
-The game uses the voice talents of Phil LaMarr - better known as Hermes from Futurama (he does the voice of Vamp in this game.)
CONS:
-The storyline in the Raiden quest is terrible. It adds so many plot twists as you progress, that after a while, nothing makes sense anymore.
-WAY TOO MANY CUT SCENES! I like cut scenes, but this game beats them to death! And if you skip them, you miss important storyline information!
-Many of the new characters destroy the "realistic" feel of the game. For example, Vamp seems more like he belongs in Konami's vampire-hunting series, Castlevania.

-THE SUBSTANCE REISSUE-
PROS:
-The game adds a number of VR training missions.
-There are also new sub-quests that let you experience the Raiden quest through Snake's eyes!
-The skateboarding mode is pretty cool - It's an actual skateboarding sub-game, comparable to the Tony Hawk series.
CONS:
-There just aren't enough new features to make people who bought the original version of the game want to buy this version.
-The original version of the game is a MUCH better value. Let's see. You walk into a store and see the original for $20 and this version for $50. Which would YOU choose?
-The skateboarding mode, while fun, isn't everything it could have been.

OVERALL:
Overall this is a excellent game, despite some flaws. If you've got a Playstation 2, just get the ORIGINAL version of the game (it's now a Greatest Hit.) If you've got an XBOX, this is the only version of the game available on it. This is also the only version of the game available on the PC. My final verdict is just to buy whatever one you own the system for.

Sound fixes...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 5
Date: May 23, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If you have staticy/glitchy sound in MGS2S for the PC:
1. Install the latest patch. (As above!)
2. Go to "Sound" in Control Panel.
3. Click the "Advanced" button in the "Speaker settings" box.
4. Click the "Performance" tab.
5. Lower your "Hardware acceleration" slider by one notch.
6. Try the game and it should sound fine now!
7. If you still have problems, try lowering it more.

MGS2 Problems resolved - It works

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: September 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I had such a difficult time with this before, but found 2 second fixes and like the others say, it works great now. There's some things that they didn't post that I found ton o' people including me had issues with, so I'm posting it.

I'm getting the same errors as well. Error code: 5005 Doing an extensive google search revealed that there was something wrong with install shield Ver. 7. However, the steps I did are posted below, none of them worked so I will tell you what worked for me.

I copied the entire DVD to my HDD, and installed it from there instead. It worked fine.

Anyway, then I had to edit the DVD rom drive cause running the game, it was looking for the DVD on the wrong place, obviously. So I edited the key in

HKEY Current user / software/ konami/ metal gear solid 2 substance and edited where it said SrcDrv to the drive letter of my DVD rom which was E:\

and it ran great!!

If that doesn't work, it may be your install shield. Visit http://consumer.installshield.com/ and find the links there to update your install shield. It has great links to update the engine, driver, and so forth - its designed for consumers who are having problems with Install shield products. Its pretty lengthy, but hopefully one of the above would work for you.

And then install patch 02, even if you have nvidia. I set all the settings on high, except for model detail and everything ran and looked gorgeous. I was suprised because model detail, you would think that was characters and stuff. I was like great, this is gonna be crappy. But it wasn't. With that setting on low, everything else on high, it ran beautifully on my Geforce FX 5600 Ultra! I mean, it looked incredible. I highly recommend you get this game and do the steps if you run into trouble. I feel sorry for the folks who bought the game earlier cause the patch didn't do squat for them. So if you were debating whether or not you should buy it, yes, it totally works and any work arounds you will need to do is very small. (It just took me a couple hours to figure it out that's why I'm sharing my info)

HTH

Rye

Awesome game, awesome price, terrible port

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: April 12, 2006
Author: Amazon User

First things first. This game was amazing. I loved every second I spent playing it and finally, after not having played any of the Metal Gear Solid games on a console, I now know what all the fuss is about. However, the game is pretty much just a direct port of the Xbox version which is pretty much just a direct port of the PS2 version so as far as the game itself is concerned, you can generally just go by the reviews for these versions and I won't be saying anything that hasn't already been said if I continue talking about.

The really unfortunate part about the PC version of this game is that what you get for your money is, literally, an image of the XBOX disk and what is essentially just an XBOX emulator, to make it complete you even get a copy of the MGS2 XBOX version's manual. I kid you not. It's true and it sucks.

This might all be tolerable if it weren't for the fact that the emulator program isn't even a good one. Namely, it makes it virtually impossible to play this game without a gamepad, not that this comes as much of a surprise. Intend to play this with keyboard and mouse? Dream on... it simply is not possible. You can't map anything to your mouse or mouse buttons. By default the mouse funtions as the equivalent to the right anlog stick on a PS2 or XBOX controller and that is all you will ever be able to get it do (unless of course you want to manually configure a control scheme using a text editor in which case it might work, don't know, haven't tried).

If you happen to own a game pad that has a minimum of 10 buttons along with a D-Pad you should be fine as far as controls go.

There are also some serious problems with graphics card compatibility. Owners of newer NVIDIA cards (geforce 5, 6, and 7)
have pretty much unanimously reported issues with setting the "model quality" option to anything higher than 2 out of a possible 4. There have also been numerous reports of improved performance on NVIDIA cards AFTER installing the game's ATI patch, though this in turn can cause some minor texture issues within the game. Not owning an ATI card, I can't really say much about them except that it sounds like ATI owners HAVE to install the MGS2 ATI patch in order to get the game to run at all.

I personally also had some problems trying to re-install the game. Namely, the installer wouldn't even run.

Overall this is a fantastic game but a very shoddy port. It's definitely worth the money if you can get it up and running properly, and at the current price of $10 it's an absolute steal.

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