I ushered in 2008 with all four of my friends, hosting a pathetic excuse for a party in my house before moving out of home. Calling it home still feels weird, but it’s still the place I’ve lived in longest to date. I had just spent the previous year essentially house-sitting until the lease ended after my father retired from the Air Force. No one should’ve left eighteen year old me in charge of anything. In the year I lived alone I held a lot of intimate drunken gatherings, I lived off a single meatloaf for three weeks, I blew up the fridge and one month during winter I slept in front of my heater in the lounge room for warmth.

Those drunken gatherings were known as Camp Dirty Bad Fun, and mainly consisted of my best friend who had moved schools, a friend from the year above and two other friends from the year below. So basically I’m admitting to giving minors a lot of alcohol and letting them throw up in my garden. We’d try and have a theme every time, the first Camp Dirty Bad Fun ended up a Midori-stained toga party, there was a bad mall goth night and the final gathering was meant to be classy cocktail party. It was not. It pretty quickly descended into a rant about these dang Metal Gear games I had been playing and I drunkenly tried to quote a bunch of crazy stuff I had just seen in Metal Gear Solid 2. No one really cared. Then I spilled a bunch of cheap wine on my nice dress and went to bed grumpily. Why didn’t anyone find being pissed on by a Russian PMC hilarious? I thought I was friends with a bunch of plebs.

I had found a copy of Metal Gear Solid 2 for $15 a couple of days before, and having just finished Metal Gear Solid 3, I was keen to get back into sneaking around as a well rendered ass. I knew vague details about the twists, the possessed arm and of course – the famous purple stuffed worm in flap-jaw space. I thought it would be good for a laugh. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into.

I really wish I had been able to play this when it came out, because the amount of crazy tech-demo level details presented in the Tanker Chapter alone would have blown my mind. Konami put a lot of love into these early PS2 titles and Metal Gear Solid 2, along with Silent Hill 2, shipped with Behind the Scenes DVDs filled with interviews and pre-release trailers. It was a nice touch. It’s hard to remember just how much of a leap it was from PS1 to PS2. In these early years of the new generation, it seemed that Konami was open to a lot of experimentation, something that we’ll never see from them again once they complete their shift into mobile development.

Metal Gear Solid 2 has a unique setting, it’s practically urban. While the rest of the Metal Gear series is relegated to remote bases, jungles and tundra – you can view the Manhattan skyline from the top of the tanker. It brings a sense of familiarity to a military setting, some normality to the insane happenings on the Hudson. It reminds you that while you’re isolated on this ship, the outside world is still functioning. Usually civilians are far removed from the series, but Metal Gear Solid 2 introduces them in the Plant chapter. It’s refreshing to hear civilian voices that don’t necessarily overload your codec with a bunch of military jargon. It’s just as refreshing to find that you’re just as powerless as them.

The Tanker is a wonderful toy box, even though it may be a huge tease at a game that never quite develops. Hold guards up for dog tags, shoot out fire extinguishers to expose infra-red lasers, watch ice cubes melt, make out with bikini model posters in a locker – there are a ton of rather counter-productive details added in that encourage experimentation. Though you have to wonder if they wouldn’t have had to rely on codec conversations as much if they actually focused on developing key story areas. But would we have as charming a game? No, and we sure as hell wouldn’t have gotten a close up shot of Raiden’s junk obscured by a soda can.

There’s something oddly positive about Metal Gear Solid 2 that feels quite foreign now, having just come out of the Y2K pandemonium and released just months after 9/11. If it had come out a year later, I can guarantee the tone of the game would be drastically different. For a game that ends with killing the former president in the middle of the city, it doesn’t go overboard with ramming patriotism down your throat. Of course, deleted scenes expose more blatant symbolism that was taken out for consideration.

Information control and loss of personal identity are pretty prominent themes in Metal Gear Solid 2 and after the Harrier boss fight, the plot steam rolls out of control. Yeah, that Vamp guy running on water was pretty crazy, and the fact that Solid Snake isn’t dead apparently blows Raiden’s mind – but JUST WAIT. It was right around this point that I resumed playing after my failed New Year’s party. I holed myself in my room in front of my tiny CRT TV, basking in the ominous blue-green glow of the codec screen. There’s been a lot of arguments about whether Metal Gear Solid 2 is an example of a post-modern video game. As someone who couldn’t understand its purpose or intent until several playthroughs later, I can attest to that. But are you really meant to get it? The game trolls you from start to finish, from making fun of gamers who claim their simulated experiences would make them great soldiers to the did-it-even-happen ending. Once Arsenal Gear takes off, the game rapidly descends into madness, and I can only describe it as Episode 26 of Evangelion on a constant loop.

While I sat there, overwhelmed with conspiracy theories about government surveillance and censorship and whether the characters I’d been interacting with over the radio for the past several hours were real or not, I was sure I had never played anything quite like it. I never would experience the same kind of mindfuck again, as I’m yet to play another game that pushes the boundaries like this one did. I haven’t felt so consistently underpowered and armed to the teeth since. As GW is overcome with Emma’s foxdie virus and Raiden is literally stripped of all his gear, the codec starts getting real crazy. I wasn’t expecting that level of absurdity. The colonel goes off the rails, recounting his past life as a North American Fall Webworm, his alien abduction and then flat out tells you to turn off the game because the mission is a failure.

At this stage in my marathon I was getting pretty dreary. I hadn’t moved in at least three hours. It was getting pretty close to 3 or 4 am. I ascended to the top of Arsenal Gear and fought a bunch of Metal Gear Rays. I thought that would be it. Then Ocelot appeared again, and then flipped the story yet again. Then Arsenal Gear crashes into fucking Federal Hall. I tried to get my bearings as Solidus challenged me to the ultimate anime sword duel, then I receive the mother of all codec calls. I just wanted the fight to be over. But I kept getting interrupted by yet another reason to believe that I should’ve called it a night hours ago. Oh cool, Colonel isn’t real. Yeah, I picked that. Oh, Rose isn’t real either? Sweet merciful Christ. My eyes glassed over at the codec screen as if I was sitting through an episode of Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex. I wanted it to be over. I took none of it in. It was far too late at night/early in the morning to deal with this level of mindfuckery.

Then I slashed through Solidus’ robo tentacles for the last time, and heaved a sigh of relief. It was over. Now I could just sit back and enjoy Snake’s philosophy 101 monologue over live action stock footage of New York. I got a little teary. I still don’t know if it was because of exhaustion or because I found myself sentimental for an intentionally cold game. It was a rollercoaster, that’s for sure. Then I was overcome with a sense of emptiness that could only be filled by another Metal Gear.