Introduction
Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance is a directors cut of the game "Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty" which was released on the PS2 in 2001. There is alot of new stuff added to Substance, and it makes a great game even better. Read on to find out more about this wonderful game!

Gameplay
The story mode of the game takes place in two areas, the Tanker and the Plant. In the Tanker, you play as Solid Snake, and in the Plant, you play as Raiden. The basic story of the game is that you need to stop the main enemies from using the Metal Gear to destroy the world. During the game, there are many twist and turns. The game itself takes about 10 hours, but about 2 or 3 hours of that is cut scenes, so be prepared to watch alot of story. Alot of enemies and allies from the original Metal Gear Solid will be in it, but I don't want to spoil any of them for you. The Tanker is about an hour and a half, and the rest of the game is in the Plant.

Fun
There are many modes in this game other then just the main one. First off, you can play 500 different VR missions! Each one has a different objective, like getting past all the guards to get to the end of the level, or maybe having to shoot as many guards in the head as you can, and my favorite is one that you need to protect food from guards who try to get it. It'll take a very long time to beat all of these, but thats not the last time you'll play them. You can go onto Konami's site and put in the password for any of the missions you get a high score for, then you can see how you rank against people all around the world. This was a very nice addition by Konami. Some other modes are the Snake tales, which allow you to play as Snake in the plant, and a section that allows you to read hundreds of pages of Metal Gear history. These were all great additions to the Sons of Liberty game.

Story
Substance is a action game that is based around stealth. Often you can take one or two guards on by yourself, but to survive when several guards are in an area, you need to make sure no one sees you when you move around the area. Another very important aspect of the stealth is that you must sometimes kill one of the guards, but you must do it without alterting other guards that you did that. This adds alot of extra strategy, since you have to figure out how you can do all this stealth in all the areas of the game. Both characters you use in the game both are easy to control, and both can do basically the same stealth manuevers. This is almost as good as you can get for a third person action game.

Graphics
The graphics when they were on the PS2, were probably the best on the system. Even though these are 1 year old PS2 graphics, they still really impress on the Xbox. The details are great, and the textures are even better. The framerate is perfect at 60 FPS, with only minor slowdown when you are out in the rain on the tanker. Each character is able to make alot of different facial expressions, so you can tell exactly how they are feeling at that point in time. There are also many good lighting effects, like reflections off of walls that can help you tell if there is a guard in a certain area. This is a great graphical package on any system.

Sound
The voice acting in this game is probably the best I've ever heard. It seems like every actor is actually in the game, since they sound full of emotion, and are very convincing when saying their dialouge. The voice acting really helps the presentation feel like its a movie that you are watching. The music always seems to fit the situations perfectly, from having millitary music when you are in an area with alot of soldiers, to having a dark theme when you are in an area with alot of dead people. The sound effects are very convincing. Each gun has a different sound, and the explosions sound amazing. Another nice touch in the game is that every different surface sounds different when you run across it.

Conclusion
This is probably my favorite Xbox game currently... Its amazing how much they jam packed into this one disc! It sells for about 30 dollars now, so there is no reason why you shouldn't go buy it if you haven't already!