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TLS 2020 Community Playthrough: Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

Clement Rage

Pro Adventurer
Imagine a Clever, Artistically Brilliant Banner Here

Welcome one and all, to TLS' Community Playthrough for 2020! This year it's Metal Gear Solid 2, a well known game originally released for the PS2 and later the XBox. It is also available for PS3 as part of the MGS HD Collection. Given that this is quite a lore heavy game, to put it mildly, I would advise everyone to be aware of spoilers when engaging in discussions, in the event we have newcomers participating.

Settings wise, please select "Tanker-Plant" in the opening settings of a new game as otherwise you will skip ahead of the rest of us.
You may begin whenever you wish. Part 1 ends at the point when you are prompted to save by the game shortly after the spoken line "Mr President"

  1. What do you know about/what are your expectations for this game? (spoiler if necessary)
  2. What are your first impressions after the opening sequence?
  3. Did you find it easy to navigate? How about the controls?
  4. What do you make of Metal Gear Ray’s design?
  5. What did you think of the final confrontation? What do you think is going on


  1. How does it feel to be back here again? Looking forward to things? Afraid? Internally cringing?
  2. Did the gameplay come back to you easily, or did you need to adjust? Any mishaps?
  3. Did you notice anything new this run?
  4. Anything still confusing after all this time?
  5. What is your stance on dramatic coat shooting and those involved?

  1. Describe your playstyle in five words or less.
  2. Any notable codec calls you want to talk about?
  3. Thoughts on Olga, mechanically or character wise?
  4. Did you listen to the Commandant’s whole speech? How does he rate as a speaker?
  5. Any other notable things I missed?



As of now, Chapter 2 will begin in one weeks time, but there is no pressure to stick to any schedule and that's subject to change depending on how things go. Good luck, and enjoy yourselves!
 

ForceStealer

Double Growth
Got the PS2 hooked up and working and...boy I'm terrible, lol. I wonder if I played on Easy before or I'm just still adjusting to the controls.

The tranquilizer gun is the really the only way to stealthily take someone out, right? I can't choke people out? The time's I've tried have not gone well, lol.
 

Tetsujin

he/they
AKA
Tets
You can choke people out iirc but you need to pay attention when they fall unconcsious. If you continue pressing square past that you'll break their neck instead :monster:
You can also try holding them up and then punching them in the balls, it's an instant knockout :P
 

ForceStealer

Double Growth
Hm, okay. The time I tried the choke out move Snake just flipped the person over his shoulder. Which had a way of alerting everyone :awesomonster:

Got through the first boss, that'll do for now. Aiming is a trip, lol
 

Strangelove

AI Researcher
AKA
hitoshura
  1. How does it feel to be back here again? Looking forward to things? Afraid? Internally cringing?
    i remember it from release (although i didn’t play it straight away) and i have played it since, but being a shitty little contrarian i didn’t have the negative response others had to it and i am looking forward to go back to it
  2. Did the gameplay come back to you easily, or did you need to adjust? Any mishaps?
    i have been playing terribly. i don’t think i was ever skilled at it, but i am tripping over myself a whole lot so far. the last mgs i played (not counting survive) was the phantom pain which uses a more standard shooter control scheme so it’s taking some adjusting to holding square to aim and releasing to fire. also it was almost an hour before i remembered how to hang off ledges, and by remember i mean randomly pressing buttons near an edge until something happened

    it took me an hour to get to the olga fight
  3. Did you notice anything new this run?
    i am playing the japanese version because i am a giant weeb, which i have played before (i have a special anniversary edition of the ps2 release in a drawer somewhere) so i have seen it previously, but one of ocelot’s last lines to snake here is

    やはり貴様は馬鹿(ソリッド・アイボリー)だな!
    you really are a fool (solid ivory)!

    ‘solid ivory’ obviously a play on ‘solid snake’ but the roots of that eluded me before and japanese players as well. but i actually looked into it just now and it’s apparently old slang for a thick headed person

    the japanese versions do this a lot where a word will be annotated to give it a different nuance or implication or to more clearly spell out what possibly unfamiliar words mean such as acronyms. i know ‘nerd’ is coming up soon (ナード(オタク)iirc). olga had one as well, 「ニューヨーク(この国)は捨てたもんじゃない!」(this country (new york) is not so bad!)

    it’s kind of hard to get the same thing in english but i always thought those were interesting
  4. Anything still confusing after all this time?
    why did you do the arm thing hideo
  5. What is your stance on dramatic coat shooting and those involved?
i am sure hideo ‘my body is 90% movies’ kojima has taken that from some film, but i was thinking that i also would like to do that in a film because it looks cool :sadpanda:

  1. Describe your playstyle in five words or less.
    slowly tranqing guards one by one
  2. Any notable codec calls you want to talk about?
    calling otakon while in a locker
  3. Thoughts on Olga, mechanically or character wise?
    i remember her having unshaven armpits being a bit of a big deal, but now after months of quarantine surely there are many olgas out there

    also the little knife trick she does is still cool
  4. Did you listen to the Commandant’s whole speech? How does he rate as a speaker?
    i think this is the first time i have ever gotten the entire speech. the timer actually hit zero (i wasted ages trying to get the kojima spirit photo) and i thought it was over for me, but then another minute and a half got added to the speech and then another minute on top of that

    i am sure it’d be annoying having to listen to a long speech with rambling sidetracks, but as a bad video game player i appreciate the extra time. but i don’t think i have ever properly listed to the speech after all this time, so i am going to see if anyone has a video of the whole thing online to watch without worrying about gameplay

while waiting for the next part i think i will finally read that 200+ page book they included in the ‘previous story’ section. using a in-universe method to recap the previous game is an interesting idea, although i do question if they thought many people would read several hundred pages of made up books. but that was a gutsy choice
 

Roger

He/him
AKA
Minato
You can also just punch them till they fall unconcious, just wait a sec with pressing square so you don't complete your combo.
 

ForceStealer

Double Growth
How does it feel to be back here again? Looking forward to things? Afraid? Internally cringing?
So as I've stated elsewhere, I had never played MGS1-3 at their release. But because I had had a PS3 fairly early in its release, which didn't have a ton of games, and there was SO MUCH excitement about 4. Then this boxset of the first 3 released:
51FH4WTS3uL.jpg

So I got it in like the beginning of May or so and I played through all three one after another and finished 3 the night before 4 came out. It was pretty great, not having to wait after anything, haha.
So, anyway, I did know about 2's "twist," so without that shock/disappointment, I remembered liking 2 quite a bit. As I'm not a great player of action games in general, I rather like MGS1's more arcade-y gameplay, and I remembered 2 being just a more polished/featured version of that.

Did the gameplay come back to you easily, or did you need to adjust? Any mishaps?
Oh boy, did it ever not. I guess because I don't play a ton of action games, I'm not used to struggling with controls in older games, since I'm probably just booting up a JRPG or CTR, lol. But as mentioned above, I did struggle and died a lot, lol. During my tour through the series in 2008, I know I played 3 on Easy in the interest of getting through it in time to play MGS4 when it released. I don't remember if I played 2 on Normal or Easy. Right now I'm on Normal, but it could just be adjusting to the controls, which are certainly awkward. That holding :square: and releasing to shoot is...woof. lol
I will say, on my second sitting after the boss fight, I handled the controls a lot better, at least. Made my way back down the ship fairly easily. And I really remembered the part with the Marines for some reason.

Did you notice anything new this run?
Hard to say what I discovered new or just didn't remember, but I did take notice of just how many references to the first game are packed into this opening. All the talk about Mei Ling and her proverbs, calling Otacon in a locker, etc. I especially like how Snake flashes back to Revolver Ocelot in the MGS1 graphics :lol:

Anything still confusing after all this time?
As hito said...the Liquid arm thing is so dumb, lol. Also, this has ALWAYS confused me: Why does Liquid Snake call Snake "Snake," and not "Solid?"

What is your stance on dramatic coat shooting and those involved?
With all due respect to any Marines, I find it very hard to believe that all those troops would have continued to hold their fire once all that movement and bullets started flying :monster: Also once the Commandant was already dead, but I guess we're supposed to assume that the semtex detonator was a dead-man switch?
But the move itself was cool, seeing him through the bullet holes in the coat. Very Vincent in ACC.

Describe your playstyle in five words or less.
Poor?
lol, let's go with: "Avoid conflict at all costs"

Any notable codec calls you want to talk about?
Hm, can't think of one in particular. But I had forgotten just how meta these always were. "Enough, so all I have to do is push the Action button in front of the computer?" lol. Lots of early games would deliver gameplay instructions in the voiceover, but none play it so straight as MGS.

Thoughts on Olga, mechanically or character wise?
Despite the difficulty I was having with the gameplay at that point, I actually quite enjoyed the boss fight. They did a good job of intentionally limiting the actions she and Snake could take, so it really just focused on the things you had been practicing so far. And getting some lucky hits through the tarp after she loosened it was pretty satisfying.
When her father mentioned her pregnancy, I did note the trope of how she had to touch her stomach at the mere mention of it, lol.
And just since hito brought it up - I understand his point about the unshaven armpits for a female character, but it made me think about how basically NO video game characters have armpit hair, lol.
ECxI1dVW4AEkpfa.jpg


Did you listen to the Commandant’s whole speech? How does he rate as a speaker?
Yes, though not intentionally. Despite remembering most of that sequence pretty well, I could not remember where the MARINES lettering was. Wasted a lot of time trying to find it. Walked all the way back to Hold 1 to try and get to the upper level that Liquid Ocelot uses to board it later. (turns out there are some useless M9 rounds up there :/ )

Any other notable things I missed?
No, but amusingly I had just seen something about a suppressor attachment to the M9 and about how it locked the slide, making it a single-shot gun. It was funny to hear Otacon mention it so soon after I saw that.

Describe your playstyle in five words or less.
slowly tranqing guards one by one
giphy-downsized-large.gif
 
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Strangelove

AI Researcher
AKA
hitoshura
i visit this thread for a nice friendly chat and i am being attacked

(i wrote that post on my phone right after finishing this section and i was so worried about messing up the formatting that i didn't even think to count the words)

i played through this part of ffx about a week or two ago as well. don't know what it is with video game characters showing me their armpits lately.
 

Tetsujin

he/they
AKA
Tets
Alright, finished the Tanker. I'm doing my playthrough on Hard. I enjoy a little bit of extra challenge in MGS2.

How does it feel to be back here again? Looking forward to things? Afraid? Internally cringing?
Feels good. Love me some MGS2, I used to replay the game a ton back in the day, trying to get all the dog tags etc. Looking forward to some of the late-game weirdness. Afraid? VR missions. I'm planning on doing these after the playthrough since that is the only trophy left unearned. All other trophies I achieved back in 2012. I never tackled all the VR/alternate missions though and I think they can get pretty brutal...

Did the gameplay come back to you easily, or did you need to adjust? Any mishaps?
I'm generally good at retaining muscle memory even for games I haven't played in years. It helps I also played MGS1 again before this. That being said, I did accidentally alert a guard because I knocked against the railing instead of jumping over it like I planned...
It does feel awkward after being so used to games with 3rd person shooter style controls (including everything from MGS4 onward).

It feels like you sometimes need to press an unnecessary amount of buttons for simple things. Wanna shoot while walking/running? Press :x: while holding :square: and moving the stick. Wanna peek out from behind cover while in first-person view and shoot somebody? Hold R1 for first person, L2/R2 for peeking left/right or both for peeking up and hold :square: to aim. I'm pressing four buttons here just to aim, come on man!!

Also, using the analog buttons in awkward ways. Shooting? Let go of :square:. Lowering your weapon without firing? Also let go of :square:...but gently. The potential for this to go wrong is huge, especially when we get to full-auto weapons.

Did you notice anything new this run?
Can't say I did! I think I explored pretty much every easter egg in all my playthroughs.

Anything still confusing after all this time?
When Liquid takes over...why does the sleeve disappear? It's not rolled up, it literally just seems to phase out. Ghost magic, I suppose. The really confusing part comes with MGS4 and conflicting explanations of what's happening here...

What is your stance on dramatic coat shooting and those involved?
Not gonna lie, that was kinda dope.

Describe your playstyle in five words or less.
Saving lots for Otacon quotes.

Any notable codec calls you want to talk about?
I saved pretty much every time I entered a new room to get all the Otacon "proverbs". They get more and more random and stupid until the last one, when Mei Ling herself comes in for a cameo to tell him off and do it properly herself. Fun stuff.

Also, after calling Otacon enough times he'll eventually run out of gameplay tutorial calls and mention some plot-related stuff like the Navy pursuing its own Metal Gear program and that he tried to find out more but always hits a brick wall, with one name repeatedly coming up: The Patriots. That's some very early foreshadowing right there.

Thoughts on Olga, mechanically or character wise?
I like this fight, there's a few fun mechanics here with her using the tarp for cover and you being able to shoot the straps so it comes loose and flies off. You can do this pre-emptively too! Same goes for the light.

Did you listen to the Commandant’s whole speech? How does he rate as a speaker?
Nah, I finished with 2 minutes left to spare. Those Marines gotta be so bored. He literally repeats lines on occasion.
 

Strangelove

AI Researcher
AKA
hitoshura
tets coming into the thread to flex on me, as i play on very easy and do it very badly.

Also, using the analog buttons in awkward ways. Shooting? Let go of :square:. Lowering your weapon without firing? Also let go of :square:...but gently. The potential for this to go wrong is huge, especially when we get to full-auto weapons.
i forgot/didn't know you could do that. i have been trying to do hold ups, but then i have to quickly press :r2: twice to unequip and reequip the weapon. or i waste a bullet shooting into the air.

the whole pressure-sensitive button thing sounded cool when the ps2 came out, but in practice it's finicky and especially in fast pasted action games it is easy to slip up

or i am just really bad at video games
 

Tetsujin

he/they
AKA
Tets
The pressure-sensitive buttons really are finicky. Barely anyone ever used that feature anyway, there's a reason the DS4 doesn't have that anymore.
In MGS3 it makes the difference between holding someone and slitting their throat if I remember correctly and ugh, why would you do that :@
 

ForceStealer

Double Growth
Wanna shoot while walking/running? Press :x: while holding :square: and moving the stick.

Well this is handy to know. But yeah the number button presses to do simple things is crazy. I remember the CQC in 3 and 4 being a little crazy for that too. Ditto on the pressure-sensitive button stuff.

the last one,
when Mei Ling herself comes in for a cameo to tell him off and do it properly herself. Fun stuff.

Whaaaat? Hahah, hilarious.
 

Tetsujin

he/they
AKA
Tets
I just rewatched the E3 2000 trailer for nostalgia's sake:


I watched the heck out of it back in the day. The trailer was so hype that PlayStation magazines were shipped with a freakin VHS tape with just the trailer on it (I've never seen that DVD the dude has in the DF video and obviously VHS made sense pre-PS2 release as you couldn't be sure people had a DVD player).
This trailer made me so ridiculously excited for next-gen and MGS2. I actually ended up buying MGS2 even before I got my console for whatever reason...
 

Lulcielid

Eyes of the Lord
AKA
Lulcy
  1. How does it feel to be back here again? Looking forward to things? Afraid? Internally cringing?
  2. Did the gameplay come back to you easily, or did you need to adjust? Any mishaps?
  3. Did you notice anything new this run?
  4. Anything still confusing after all this time?
  5. What is your stance on dramatic coat shooting and those involved?

The most adjustment I had to was remembering a bit of the soldier patrol but otherwise coming back was mostly a smooth experience, I was surprised how much of the game I remembered despite having not played in ages.

  1. Describe your playstyle in five words or less.
  2. Any notable codec calls you want to talk about?
  3. Thoughts on Olga, mechanically or character wise?
  4. Did you listen to the Commandant’s whole speech? How does he rate as a speaker?
  5. Any other notable things I missed?

1) Sneaky Pacifist infiltrator
2) Otacon schooling snake for (implied) fapping to woman's poster.
3) She's a solid first boss fight, not much to say as a character.
4) Solid performance, knows when to give a break in the speech to not wear down the audience, would rate it 3/5

Btw pro tip, you can auto-aim/lock-on with L1 :monster:
L1 also allows to run while aiming, and If you fire a tranq shot and inmediately follow it with a roll, the enemy will instantly go ZZZ, a very common strat on speedruns.

The pressure-sensitive buttons really are finicky. Barely anyone ever used that feature anyway, there's a reason the DS4 doesn't have that anymore.
In MGS3 it makes the difference between holding someone and slitting their throat if I remember correctly and ugh, why would you do that :@
While I like the more confortable control scheme that the series took from MGS4 onward (aiming with left shoulder button, firing with right shoulder button), they stopped having the weight that aiming with gun capable of killing carries, something that the pressire-sensitive system translated beautifully imo.
 

Strangelove

AI Researcher
AKA
hitoshura
I just rewatched the E3 2000 trailer for nostalgia's sake:


I watched the heck out of it back in the day. The trailer was so hype that PlayStation magazines were shipped with a freakin VHS tape with just the trailer on it (I've never seen that DVD the dude has in the DF video and obviously VHS made sense pre-PS2 release as you couldn't be sure people had a DVD player).
This trailer made me so ridiculously excited for next-gen and MGS2. I actually ended up buying MGS2 even before I got my console for whatever reason...
i have a bunch of old dvds with trailers and special features and stuff for games and i'm tempted to try doing this with some of those for prosperity's sake
 
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