A tanker in the rain, a colonel losing his mind, and a game that saw our era coming twenty years early.

The gut ranking is surprisingly measured: picked on instinct, MGS2 sits ahead of 58% of games, barely above the middle. Then you look at the detail, and it takes off. Rediscovery puts it ahead of 97% of titles, the soundtrack ahead of 97% as well, fun ahead of 96%, controller feel ahead of 93%, desert island ahead of 92%. Connection follows, ahead of 84% of games. Only one line lags: art direction, right around the average, on very few votes. There's the tension: analysed criterion by criterion it crushes almost everything, yet chosen on impulse it stays a notch behind. As if its strangeness slows down immediate buy-in before memory does its work.

Against the other monuments of stealth, that's a signature: the play and the score still hold up today, while a PS2 image inevitably aged. The dip on art style mostly says that.

So, who's it for? For you if you like demanding stealth, stories that openly manipulate you, and a soundtrack you still put back on twenty years later. Much less so if a dated look pulls you out before the first alert even sounds.