After years of waiting, it's finally come. The most eagerly awaited sequel of all time. We've been teased with trailers and tantalising info, read every preview down to the tiniest detail and bought Zone of Enders mostly for the MGS2 demo that comes with it! Even though the sequel to the original tactical espionage action title has had a hype machine bigger than Xbox, it still lives up to expectations!

The game is longer, the challenge harder, the plot-twists bigger, the stealth more cunning and the action more epic. The general style and execution of the game hasn't changed a lot from the last instalment, but has been updated to include a lot more moves for the player and a more advanced stealth and evasion element. In addition to general shooting, kicking, punching, crawling and hiding around corners, there are a lot more moves in MGS2. You can jump off the edge of something and hang from its ledge, jump down on enemies from above, hang down from a freestanding ledge and kick with both legs, hide bodies, roll aggressively(!) and even stretch up to shoot over a tall obstacle. When trying to stay hidden, it is now possible to peek around and jump out from behind a corner then fire a tranquilliser and dart back seamlessly, sneak behind a guard and grab him or throw your used ammo clips away to act as a distraction. Every action has a consequence. For example, if you try to roll down a set of stairs you'll hit your head and be knocked unconscious. A very nice touch is the use of the analogue sensitivity of the buttons. If you aim your gun, you can slowly release the button to put it back away, rather than needlessly firing off a round. All other actions are pressure sensitive too, for example if you press the look button too hard while hiding in a locker, you'll bang your head!

Also featured is the indispensable option to fire in first person perspective. This is a very welcome inclusion, having been tweaked since the MGS add-on disk and is the preferred view for most gunfights as any body part can be targeted which is essential when enemies have bullet-proof shields to protect them. Additionally, damage to each body part is proportional and reactive. Shooting an enemy in the head gets an instant kill whilst shooting his foot seriously limits his movement. This works when using the tranquilliser gun too, a shot in the head or posterior will take less time to affect than a shot in the leg. As a consequence of all this realistic mortality, your character is more vulnerable too. If you get injured you will start bleeding, losing health and be easy to trace, due to the drips of blood you leave as you run. This makes the new bandage items essential to carry at all times. The vibration sensor also debuts, making the controller vibrate when enemies are near or pulse like a heartbeat, adding immensely to the atmosphere.

The soldiers and guards, mainstay opponents in the game, have been given an intelligence boost but have also been made more realistic. If they see you they have to radio for help and if you can shoot the radio out of their hands (or destroy it while it's still in their pocket) they will have to run away to get help. If the alarm is set off, a much more active search is deployed than before. When you hide, you are actively searched for, guards looking under and around objects and you have to be a lot sneakier for a longer period, making sure that next time you make a better attempt at staying hidden.

The moment you play this game you will notice the remarkable improvement in the graphics. Everything is constructed with an amazing amount of polygons and looks very realistic in a slightly stylised way. Almost unbelievably, the introduction and subsequent cut-scenes are rendered in real time, not CG movies, and detail is stunning, right down to the driving rain beating on the lens. It's just as well, as the brilliant story progresses through this medium and is well worth watching, though the cut-scenes are very long and do actually contribute a lot of time to the game's increased length. In-game, the detail is just as deep when a gunfight in a crew rest area results in individual bottles breaking, copies of adult magazines ripping to shreds and glass in the windows breaking into tiny little shards. Just about everything is breakable or interactive. There's even a Vulcan raven toy with a firing b-b-gun!

Thankfully, the voice actors from the last game are back again and put in another sterling performance, though a certain character's voice is still annoying and over-stereotyped (you know who I mean). As this is a DVD production, it would have been nice to have the choice to have the soundtrack in English or Japanese with subtitles, but maybe even the mighty DVD format didn't have enough room. It's a shame, as Ninja's Japanese counterpart certainly sounds cooler than his American one. There are many in-jokes and references to the first game and a lot of humour despite the mainly grown-up feel to the game. Your character will often converse with people on the codec (radio) in jest to cut the tension, Otacon being a genuinely funny joke-teller in a tense situation (a-la the film Assassins). If you look at certain things or are in certain places (such as looking at a girly poster, or hiding in a locker), when you ring up someone on the codec there'll be a unique and often funny response from the person you're phoning. Snake even gets mad when Otacon tricks him into taking a diazepam tablet as a cure for sea-sickness!

With the game's release in Europe an irritating 4 months after the localised English version in the US, the European version has been given a few more features to make up for it. In the same vein as Silent Hill 2 and Resident Evil CODE: Veronica, there's a whole extra disk featuring a video of the making of Metal Gear Solid 2, with insights into it's creation from its conception to the final masterpiece. In the way of actual game modes, there's an extra difficulty setting, if you thought the highest setting from the demo and the last game wasn't hard enough already! Boss Survival mode is a new feature where you pick from the game's two protagonists (no spoiler here) and fight against the game's bosses in sequence from Olga through Vamp to the last boss (still no spoiler). This also allows for 'What If?' battles as your characters don't always fight the same bosses in the duration of the game. And finally, there's Casting Theatre mode where you can play back certain unlocked cut-scenes and change the characters featured in them for other characters including ones not even in the game, the most humorous being an old lady.

Metal Gear Solid 2 is a true masterpiece of gaming that manages to surpass even the benchmark of the genre, the original MGS. It would stand up on its own even as a film just from the cut-scenes and no PS2 owner should be without it.

Reviewed by AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).