Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance is not, strictly speaking, a new game. It is, however, the biggest basket of Easter eggs we've ever seen. An expanded version of Metal Gear Solid 2, it includes new missions featuring Solid Snake, hundreds of VR missions both challenging and bizarre, as well as other bonus modes to be named later. It's as if the game's creators decided MGS2 wasn't a big enough toybox already, stuffing it full of even more ways to have fun with Tactical Espionage Action. Hell, it even has Solid Snake skateboarding. You know you want some of that.
Variations on the basic Tanker and Plant episodes in Substance include the ability to play through the game with a number of optional characters and player skins. Solid Snake is available in both missions, wearing his "Iroquois Plisken" guise or a sharp tuxedo (with no bandanna -- his mullet swings free). In turn, Raiden can play through the Tanker episode, and it looks like the Ninja's sword is available at any time. If that's not enough, the Ninja herself is playable in both the game and the multitude of VR missions.
VR training includes a massive array of puzzles and challenges, just like the original MGS Integral. On top of the usual shooting and stealth challenges, there are now a few fencing missions to boot, requiring nimble passes with the Ninja's sword. Substance also recycles some classic gag missions, like a Godzilla parody with lumbering 50-foot-tall Gurlukovich mercenaries. The cute part, however, is the inclusion of little Godzilla spine-spinkes down the back of an exterior guard's brown forest fatigues.
And then there's the skateboarding game. Solid Snake is a playable character in Konami's upcoming Evolution Skateboarding, but Substance includes a mini-game that seems to obviate the need to buy that game at all. Snake skates about the quarterpipe-strewn surfaces of the Big Shell, as we wonder "Why?", and then "Why not?" It's pretty funny to imagine the game's designers pondering the very same questions.
The details on the "Snaketales" portion of the game remain unclear. Konami promises "all-new adventures in which players assume the role of Solid Snake," but no more details than that are available. There are plenty of holes to fill in Snake's story, however -- his adventures prior to the incident on the Discovery, his half of the bomb-disarming portion of the Tanker episodes -- and we look forward to seeing him come back in an original setting.
Indeed, we simply look forward to his return, or his arrival if the XBox and PC versions of Substance will be your first exposure to Metal Gear Solid 2. The XBox version is taking the lead, with a confirmed release in November 2002, while the PS2 and PC versions have no official release dates as yet.
Look forward to further screens and updates.
Click here read an exclusive interview conducted by IGN.com with Hideo Kojima!
Contains alot of information on MGS2: Substance and how Kojima came up with the skateboarding idea!
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