It's hard to imagine a game more highly anticipated than Metal Gear Solid 2. The original Metal Gear on NES was a mild success and had a small following for years, but the series reached true stardom when creator Hideo Kojima pushed Solid Snake into the third dimension via Playstation. Metal Gear Solid won perfect scores from several gaming publications and became a smash success all over the world.

Obviously, the series was destined to continue on future systems. Metal Gear Solid 2 was announced for Playstation 2 not long after its predecessor's release. The first extensive video footage was shown at E3 2000; people were standing in front of Konami's giant video screen four half an hour or more, waiting for the MGS2 footage to start. What they saw was arguably the most graphically striking game ever conceived; the video looked like FMV feed, and yet Konami's announcer confirmed that every single second of it was running in real-time with the game's graphics engine.

When Konami released Kojima's first PS2 game, Zone of the Enders, they included the first-ever playable demo of MGS2. The demo sheds a lot of light on what to expect with the final product, and some possibilities for improvements on GameCube.

Since the last game, Metal Gear schematics have been spread all over the world, and now every major power has its own. Solid Snake and Otacon have gone freelance, and as the demo (and likely the final game) opens, Snake is in New York to investigate a Marine Corps boat carrying a new model of the Metal Gear. Just as you bungee off a bridge onto the boat, your cloaking device malfunctions and you have to finish the job with only your skills and a tranq gun. You quickly learn that a Russian terrorist group has also landed on the boat and quickly disposed of the U.S. marines onboard. So, you have to get to the bridge and nab the sensitive data while evading (or sedating/killing when necessary) the terrorists.

The gameplay is roughly the same as in Metal Gear Solid, but there are some noticeable differences. Most obvious is the first-person aiming mode, which is extremely useful for shooting weapons. Note that you cannot move around in first-person view, except for leaning left, right, and up. You can also now hold soldiers hostage while you escape their buddies, and you can (and should) drag around bodies so they aren't found by other soldiers. Finally, the game is played at a much lower angle than its predecessors, so that your views are often comparable to a more typical third-person view like the one in Zelda 64. Everything else is pretty much like the last Metal Gear game...but of course, these three differences create all kinds of new gameplay situations.

The graphics are, simply put, stunning. MGS2 sports the closest thing to FMV ever seen on a console. Everything is lavishly textured and anti-aliased, and the animation is about as life-like as it gets. There are also some incredible effects, including transparencies (for the cloaking device...WOW), atmospheric fog, and amazingly realistic weather, like rain that sticks to the screen. The only part that doesn't always hold up is the polygonal models; a lot of them are a bit too simple, too "geometric" looking. Hopefully that's one aspect that could be improved in a GameCube port.

The sound is excellent, with crystal-clear voice and lots of cool sound effects. As you might expect, the music is mostly ambience, but that could change for the final version. Because of the stealth-based gameplay, surround sound will be a great asset for those who are equipped for it.

So, MGS2 looks to be a pretty sweet game. But does it have a chance of coming to the land of GameCube? Absolutely. Hideo Kojima is known to have a great respect for Nintendo and especially Shiggy. Plus, the series is already headed to multiplatform status with an Xbox version (of which game, we don't know), so there's not much reason to NOT port it to GameCube. Of course, Metal Gear also got its start on a Nintendo system, and a lot of people would like to see it make a triumphant return to the company. Perhaps we'll see that happen just yet. MGS2: Sons of Liberty for PS2 is currently slated for a Fall 2001 release, so expect any sort of GameCube version to arrive in very late 2001 or early 2002.