To me, there are two main reasons why Metal Gear Solid needs a two player mode. Its the one thing lacking in this otherwise brilliant game, and I`m sure it would benefit from the extra mode to an amazing degree. It may be one of the best games ever, and it will certainly be the best looking game around upon release here in the UK, but it still lacks that mutliplayer fun that can be found in games like TimeSplitters.

Firstly, there is the obvious multiplayer choice, the co-op mode (co-operative). As in games such as Mickey and Donald`s World of Illusion, and Perfect Dark, this mode allows two human players to team up, and work together to defeat the enemy. Of the two mentioned above, World of Illusion was easily the best, as it really made two people work together, rather than simply doubling the number of bad guys. In World Of Illusion, there were mine carts, see-saws, and large jumps that could bot be tackled alone. Instead, the two heros would work together, pushing pulling and lifting things to help eachother. Metal Gear in my opinion is a game that could provide a perfect scenario for complex co-operative play.

The kind of co-op situations that could occur could range from simple things such as one player distracting a guard, whilst the other silently approaches and takes the guard down, right up to more complex situations where the two characters split off for a longer period of time, and put into motion a more difficult two pronged attack. There were simple examples in the first game that saw Solid Snake team up with another character to turn two switches at once, but the other character was controlled by AI, rather than a human.

There is an obvious problem with this in that a new character would be required to join and work with Snake, which would require major plot changes, and large alterations to Snake`s method of infiltration - its less easy to hide two people. Another problem is the graphical detail, as it is so complex in Metal Gear Solid 2 that two screens worth of data would certainly lose a large amount of data, thus sacrificing some of the hard fought for detail. There are flaws, but the idea of a co-op mode is still very exciting - and certainly a better idea than a head to head shoot `em up as in the gameboy version!

The other, slightly less obvious, mulitplayer mode is hide and seek, or possibly hide and shoot. This mode would involve two human controlled characters, sneaking around the ship (featured in MGS2), which could be populated with guards out to get you. One character would be the "seeker" and would have the task of tracking you down, and perhaps tagging you with a dart, or paint mark. Once hit, the title of "seeker" would change hands, and the roles would be reversed. The positions could also be changed if the hider is discovered by a guard, meaning that he would have to be extra careful to remain out of sight of everybody, not just the "seeker". To complete this mode, a timer would have to be set, keeping track of who was hiding the longest - which would indicate the winner.

Both of the modes mentioned above have huge potential in a game like Metal Gear Solid, and I would love to see them put into later games - though the flaws in graphical power may be too great to overcome at this stage. The future of gaming seems more orientated a online play for a lot of games these days (see Tony Hawks 3), but online play would become a little too complex in a game like this. There would be thousands of people all fighting to save the day from the same evil villain. With that many Snakes around, I doubt any bad guys would be stupid enough to bother anymore!