METAL GEAR SOLID 2 - SONS OF LIBERTY

WARNING: All my writings contain spoilers!

The first Metal Gear Solid for Playstation was a great game, highly praised by critics and gamers. Metal Gear Solid 2 - Sons of Liberty is also a great game. Or more like half game half movie. There's a LOT of cut-scenes that carry the plot forward. I beat the game in about 15 hours and maybe as much as half of that are cut-scenes. They are well done, but sadly much of the story is told in the familiar CODEC mode and it's not too fun to read text when there's nothing but green heads on black background opening their mouths. The plot is very complex and I myself didn't know what the hell is going on midway to the game. The plot twists are great though, but some of the twists and turns aren't that good. The voice-acting is well done, but the dialogue is more than often very cheesy, especially when it comes to the back stories of the characters. The story involving the Metal Gear itself is great. There are however quite a big amount of stuff about things like the essence of humanity and why we make some of the decisions that we do. This philosophical element grows towards the end of the game and it doesn't sit that well for a Metal Gear game. Also the ending is very unsatisfying and didn't really make sense and didn't wrap up the story too nicely.

This game has been criticized as playing itself and I agree. There are many moments in the game that are done via the cut-scenes when you'd want to play the scene yourself. The game is 10-15 hours long (which is a big improvement to MGS that was like five hours long) but there's not nearly as much of actual play time. The time you do get to play is superb though. Many of the items from before make their appearance like rations, boxes and claymores and there is a good selection of new weapons and items to use. The controls are good and this time the character has a few new moves that come in handy along the way. 


Another complaint I have is that majority of the game is played with a new character called "Raiden". You do get to play with "Snake" for the first hour or two but from there on it's Raiden only. I have nothing against new characters but Raiden is just very irritating. He's very green, doesn't know what the hell is going on and whines a lot. A thing he does a lot is that he repeats sentences said by someone else and makes it a guestion. You also get a lot of lines like "what?!", "huh?" and "...". Snake is in the picture and helps you along the way and gives a lot of information about things but it's not the same. Raiden is just too irritating to really care about.


There are some cool stuff in here, like when you input the virus in the GW, The Colonel who is a part of Metal Gear Arsenal's AI starts to malfunction and among other things tells you to turn off the console and just quit. And at one point the Mission Failed window appears but it says Fission Mailed so you know you didn't really fail your mission and you should just continue shooting the bad guys. Reminiscent to the 'change your controller to port 2' thing from Metal Gear Solid that totally confused me over 10 years ago.

Still a great game inspite of it's flaws and I can't wait to play Metal Gear Solid 3 - Snake Eater in the near future.

GOD OF WAR

The main character is a great spartan warrior with red tattoos called Kratos. His story is revealed to the player in video cut scenes that appear every now and then as you proceed in the game. He shows no mercy and he slices and dices pretty much every person or creature that comes to his path. 

I purchased a PlayStation 2 less than a week ago and my first PS2 game for it was this one. 

To me GOD OF WAR seems like a perfected combination of PRINCE OF PERSIA, BATTLE OF OLYMPUS, CASTLEVANIA, TOMB RAIDER (especially puzzle-wise) and THE LEGEND OF ZELDA games. There's even some TEKKEN in the final fight with Aries. I've never played a game with such perfected game controls as this one. They're just so responsive and when you jump to your death it's always on you, not the controls.  Kratos can jump, dash, swim, dive, climb, hang, swing on ropes, balance his way on narrow bars plus he's got tons of cool combos to use in battle all named after gods in Greek mythology. 

The levels are big and pretty varied and there's quite a good amount of them. I especially liked the swimming element in some of them. They're not as clever puzzle-wise (like TWILIGHT PRINCESS for instance) but they're still good and there's not too much backtracking which is always positive. Also the puzzles are a bit too turn-this-lever-to-open-that-door -like but they still work and bring variety to the button smashing. There's only a couple of different weapons but both have a lot combos in them.

There's a good variety of different enemies in the game such as cyclopes, harpies, legionnaires, centaurs, minotaurs, seirens and medusas (I hate those bitches and how they chase you down with their stoning sight).

The "Path of Hades" level simply made me smile the first time I saw it. You could see the doomed souls falling to eternal pain and suffering everywhere you look. There's blood and bones and fire all over the place. Even the enemies are all on fire in this level. Very cool. And I died like 30-40 times during this level so it wasn't too easy (or then I suck, big time).


Simply put one of the best action-adventure games I've ever played, if not the best. And all the cons that come to mind are very minor and don't affect to the overall experience.

Pros:

+ Amazing visuals and stunning design both on creatures and the levels

+ Near perfect controls

+ Blood and gore

+ Level design

+ Cool enemies

+ Music

+ Story
+ Female nudity (in the beginning of second level you see two pairs of bare boobs)

+ The game's brutal anti-hero Kratos

+ The mini-games in battles are fun and rewarding

+ Barely any loading times and when they appear they're like 4 seconds max

+ Huge amount of combos to learn
+ A lot of replay value with several difficulty levels, Challenge of the Gods -mode, hidden chests and secrets (like five alternate costumes for Kratos)
+ Four different difficulty levels. Even the "normal" was quite challenging and there's two harder levels of difficulty:  "hard" and "god mode". The easiest way to ruin a good game is to make them too easy (no pun intended) and this game is NOT guilty of making that mistake

Cons:

- Too few boss battles as there were only like three or four

- I'd wanted the game to be longer, at least 20 hours, I just wasn't mentally finished with it when the credits started to roll just after 10 hours

- The puzzles are a bit too easy (though I needed online help in couple of them)

- You should be able to use the red orbs faster on weapons and magic abilities that need a lot of them. It can take like 30 seconds of pressing X-button to level-up, say, a weapon that uses 7500 orbs.
- After beating the game it would've been nice to have stats of your performance. E.g how many times you died, how many secret chests you found, how many enemies you killed and so on

I completed the game on "normal" difficulty and in the end the game clock showed 10 hours and 50 minutes and it took me three days. So not a very long game but the time it lasted it was just a phenomenal experience. I started a new game instantly on "hard". If you own a PS2 and haven't played this game go and buy it at this instant.

GOD OF WAR 2 is making it's way to my home via mail as I write this, so as soon as I've completed that one I'll review that one too. I have big hopes for it as it's said to be even better than this one.

THE ODD COUPLE

Opens up with a funny scene as suicidal Felix books a room in a hotel from the 9th floor and as he is ready to jump out of the window he hurts his back trying to open it as it's jammed. The movie is based on a play (Neil Simon) and that shows and it works especially well on screen. Matthau delivers the funniest lines and the two are just a perfect pair to team up (this was their second movie out of ten total). The scene where the girls from next door are invited for a dinner reminded me of a similar scene in one of my favorite movies, SWINGERS. I'm pretty sure Jon Favreau has seen this movie before writing it.


What more is there to say. Lemmon and Matthau are in perfect form as the obsessive cleaning Felix and the sloppy Oscar. A very funny movie. I recommend. There was a sequel made 30 years later but I hear that's not nearly as good as this one.


The funniest dialogue in the movie:


Matthau: When did you take these pills?
Lemmon: I don't know a couple hours ago.
Matthau: How many pills did you take?
Lemmon: I can't remember. A whole bottle.
Man#1: A whole bottle! My god! Somebody call an ambulance!
Matthau: We don't know what kind!
Man#1: What difference does it make?
Matthau: Well maybe they were vitamins! He could be the healthiest man in the room.