Great game. Eerie world with lots to see and do. AI is a little bit broken(ish) at the moment, but certainly isn't game breaking. Graphics are stunning! 1440p, Ultra, I get 60+fps everywhere, except Zalissya where it drops to 30fps. Setting hair detail to low bumps that back up to 50fps. I am sure a performance patch will fix drops like this. Everytime I play, I just want to play more, very addictive world, a brutal world that will kill you quickly. Survival, need to manage hunger, radiation, weight, etc. -- The poppy field is particularly beautiful.
As a big Conrad fan, who still frequently plays the original (yes, on Mega Drive), I was really excited to see Flashback 2 finally get a date. Starting with a poor release on GOG, 24 hours later than Steam, and only half the game being uploaded to GOG, all of which have now been recitfied; I am ready to dive in. The Bad: - Some graphical glitches, with textures vanishing and flashing in/out. - Moving Conrad, I have found it easy to move him out of bounds and get him stuck. - Opening chests and collecting items seems a little unresponsive. - FPS stutter, it is not a smooth gameplay experience at all, frequent FPS drops and what seems like shader cache lag is annoying. - On occasion, the controls make conrad feel like he is floating or laggy. I expect slightly awkward controls because of how the original plays, but this laggy feeling is something else. The Good: - It does have some nice graphics, and some areas are well made. - The music is good and sets the scene. - Some have said the shooting and aiming is terrible: I haven't had this, I think it works well. - I do get caught on some objects with the "3D" play area, however I just need to adapt to that. - I am enjoying walking around the larger environments and just exploring a little. - Conrad has a cool dash/roll/breakdance manoeuvre. It's probably lame, but I like it. Flashback 2 certianly won't win GOTY, but it certainly is not bad. The release seems like it may have been a little rushed, and after a few patches hopefully this turns out to be everything I had hoped for.
The game looks great, plays pretty well (not perfect). The story starts and I was interested almost immediately. So many tangents that missions/quests go off on. The city is alive and interesting. It needs a bit more polish, I get slight slow down in sections where ?nothing? is really happening or going on, but in big full combat areas it runs smooth as butter. Controls could use a little bit of refinement, I am using the Keyboard and Mouse and some controls are not the best. This is an RPG, but has big action sequences in it. The game does both these elements pretty well. Why do I wear my clothes in the shower?
Despite the videos linked on the GoG page showing a full widescreen version of gameplay running, this game lacks that, even the UNIWS implementation is a bit average and unreliable at best. I get continuous cutscene issues, where there is either no video, or no audio.... The Steam version on the other hand has the Aspyr patch, which has full 1920x1080 support, as well as gamepad support and in game mappings. GoG, you guys should hassle this Aspyr fellow for his patch, I prefer GoG over Steam any day, except today.
This is a good way to play MGS 1, if you a revisiting an old classic, or playing for the first time. I was able to remap my XBOX One controls in the games standard menu and have it work the same as the PSX pad did. You can make the cutscenes play in proper widescreen and have the game render in widescreen (HUD will be slightly stretched, but game is perfect) using; http://ps2wide.net/pc.html#mgs Read the readme in that file to figure out the install. I edited the .ini afterwards to make it render in 1920x1080. Only thing I needed to do to get it running was run it in Windows XP SP2 compatibility mode. Enjoy.
MGS Franchise is probably one of my favourite ever. I am glad to see these gems drop back to us, especially on GoG! As stated in some other reviews here, a fix is essential to get the best experience out of this game. I'll post the link, just so everyone keeps on seeing it; https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/59h2jd/metal_gear_solid_2_substance_vs_fix_pc/ Really easy to run and configure, allows you to setup video for widescreen and fix the control type, because the default PC controls are a dumpster fire. For me, the game looks amazing and runs flawlessly. I can't wait to drop too many hours into this one! I hope you all enjoy as much as I know I will!
As back in the day, I still enjoy playing this and on PC it's better than any console counterpart. Supports 4k at 60+fps. Only issue I have is a few garbled textures. Game looks amazing with Radeon Image Sharpening enabled.
