My boyfriend played through Metal Gear Solid 2 this weekend and finally finished it last night. The plot declined throughout the game, and it just lost it at the end! It wasn’t just complex, it was plain ridiculous.
I must say that I enjoyed watching Raiden do his little girly-flips in the nude. 
I thought the story was awesome, until it went completely insane near the end. Once you beat the Metal Gear Rays, it goes downhill fast. After watching the ending a few times, though, I finally understood it, but even then, it didn’t help that for the last hour of the game, you play for less than 2 minutes. There’s only so much boring blather about what you’re going to send on to your kids that you can take.
I’m working on a “Post-OP” breifing from the Patriots for my site, which I"m hoping will make the story a bit more understandable to those players that don’t have the luxury of beating the game 5 times to catch all of it.
John
Fridays Penny-arcade. Also a perfect explanation of the game.
Actually, that’s very close to it, aside from the spores. The first Metal Gear was really a VR Hallucination back in 2300BC, and it all went downhill from there.
Other than the end, I thought the plot was rather good. The only major quarrel I had was the you didn’t play as Snake more. Any actual theories on what is going on with the Patriots.