Sometimes it's the simple things in life that make the greatest difference. Consider the minigame: a bite-sized experience nestled within a larger video game. We all know some terrible examples - ones that force you to complete arbitrary nonsense so mind-bogglingly boring, you'd rather watch your theoretical future son be left at the theoretical future altar by his theoretical future spouse then finish one more hacking puzzle.

But every now and again, a minigame comes along that cuts through this bleak miasma of mediocrity with the shining rays of clever game design. Like a fine wine or exquisite, European cheese, this minigame is the perfect blend of complexity and accessibility. It's ingenious systems keep you coming back time and again, sometimes siphoning hours from the main storyline; or in extreme cases, eclipsing it completely. What follows are the creme de la creme; peerless minigames that will deliver your son from his theoretical, future heartache.

Video games have a rich history of card game sidequests (some of which are included later in this list). The Witcher 3's Gwent is certainly among the best, even without the . It's a trading card game built around speed and efficiency. You can tailor your deck to fit a certain playstyle. You can fake out your opponent with different tricks and strategies during a match. But the most refreshing thing about Gwent is that it will end - no matter what - in three rounds or less.

The limited play time adds gravitas to each card placed on the table. Strategies must be decided upon quickly, and their results are felt almost instantly. A bad call in the first round could easily lead to an early defeat in the second. Unless that first round was a feint; a ploy to lure your opponent into wasting their best cards. Gwent, like all great TCGs, is a game of calculated risks. What's nice is that it doesn't take another 45 minutes to see if your bet paid off.

This unassuming casino game hides an interesting mix of Minesweeper and Sudoku. Just like in Minesweeper, you want to reveal all the panels on the grid that do not contain mines (or, in this case, Voltorbs). Revealing one of those is an instant Game Over. Avoiding the Voltorbs is where the Sudoku aspect comes into play. With a bit of mathematical reasoning - and luck - you can deduce which tiles are most likely to contain Voltorbs based on the clues provided and which tiles you've already flipped over.

For example, look at the screenshot above. You see the red box in the bottom left-hand corner? The '02' means the numbers in the column add up to two, while the '3' next to angry-face Voltorb means three of the tiles are Voltorbs. Each row and column is labeled like this, and by comparing them all against each other, you can puzzle out where the Voltorbs are hiding. It's basically one big logic puzzle, and clearing a really challenging board feels like you've achieved Holmesian-levels of deductive reasoning.

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Winning at Command Board feels just like winning at Monopoly. While you're swimming in an ocean of cash, your opponents are stuck paddling around the board bleeding money at every turn. It's a . But the Monopoly comparisons don't stop there. You earn your fortunes by buying up colored spaces on the board and - stop me if you've heard this before - improving those spaces so that their rent increases. And you better believe that owning all the spaces of an identical color nets you a hefty rent multiplier. The only thing missing is a diminutive old chap with a cane and tophat.

A well-executed game of Command Board is really a thing of beauty. When you exploit the board to its fullest, snag the high-traffic sections you want, and exploit those territories for all they're worth, it makes victory taste that much sweeter. To help speed the game along, each player can also spend cards for special abilities - such as rolling three dice instead of one - to tilt the odds in their favor. The only real drawback is the braindead AI, which can only stumble blindly into victory when the stars align and Lady Luck has completely abandoned you.

used to invoke images of Fallout 3's word search or BioShock's rip-off of Pipe Dreams. But Deus Ex: Human Revolution puts them all to shame. Its hacking challenges require you to think fast, act faster, and juggle about a half-dozen tasks all at once. Your objective is clear: bypass a series a nodes until you reach the one controlling whatever it is you're hacking. Along the way, there are various bonus nodes you can hack for extra credits or items, but doing so will almost always trigger the security AI. And once that's done, your hack becomes a mad dash for the virtual finish line.

The security AI is basically doing the opposite of what you're doing, only with the efficiency of a machine. It wants to reach you, you want to reach the final node. You can slow down the AI by reinforcing nodes you've already captured, or by using special programs you've collected to disable it temporarily. This is where the juggling act starts, as you jump between reinforcing some nodes, capturing others, using programs to maintain control, and more. It's a fun minigame that throws just enough techno-jargon at you to make you feel like a hacker.

thanks to its wonderfully challenging platforming, quirky personality, and a little soccer distraction called Kung Foot.

At first, you won't even notice this totally optional minigame because it's unassumingly tucked away in the main menu. But once you hop into it for the first time with a friend or two in tow, it's nigh impossible to escape its addictive grasp. It's so simple: You just run around trying to kick a soccer ball into the opponent's goal by using the platforming and physics established by Legends' campaign. Hours turn into days, days into months, and before you know it you'll have missed the birth of your child - a heinous crime that has only one remedy: more Kung Foot (and maybe a nice bottle of Gulden Draak).

You're familiar with Rapunzel, right? That gleefully light-hearted story about the little girl who's kidnapped and confined against her will in a tall tower in the middle of a wooded glen, whose captor climbs her hair like a rope because ladders make way too much sense? In , you can enjoy that delightful children's tale as a puzzle minigame found in Vincent's favorite watering hole, the Stray Sheep bar.

The gameplay here mimics the block-based puzzle stages of Catherine's (somehow more bizarre) main story. As the fabled prince smitten by Rapunzel's beautiful voice and physical appearance, you have a limited number of moves to manipulate a series of blocks and scale them to your objective. Every few stages, a new bit of the minigame's narrative is unveiled via a series of rhymes <(a href="http://catherinethegame.wikia.com/wiki/Rapunzel_Story_Transcript" target="new">full transcript here), eventually uncovering a tale that's almost as tragic as Vincent's own life.

When it comes to Final Fantasy minigames, two of the most loved are both grid-based trading card games: Final Fantasy VIII's Triple Triad, and FFIX's Tetra Master. In both games, the goal is to control as many of the cards on the playing field as possible (think Tic-Tac-Toe, but far more complex) by the time its grid has been filled out. Here's the kicker: you can gain control of the opponent's cards. In Triple Triad, this was super basic: If the card you played had a higher value assigned to it than the opponent's adjacent card, you'd win.

But in Tetra Master, each card had its own HP, damage, and defensive stats, and could potentially attack any adjacent cards or diagonal ones. This added a shiz-ton more strategy to the game, even allowing for combo attacks that could sweep the entire board at once (thus explaining those seemingly random situations in which an your opponent would suddenly flip every card you had and win the game). Compared to Triple Triad, Tetra Master offered a far deeper layer of strategy, even though its systems were woefully ill-explained.

In hindsight, it's pretty wild to think that one of the Xbox 360's first successful downloadables started life as a minigame in Project Gotham Racing 2. Geometry Wars, a twin-stick arcade shooter, can be found within the in-game garage between races. What began as a neat side attraction eventually became the primary reason for booting the game back up long after we'd scratched our racing itch.

Its ruleset is brilliantly simple: controlling a claw-shaped ship, you have to blow up as many enemies as you can before getting destroyed yourself. It wasn't long before bragging about record PGR lap times gave way to bragging about high scores in Geometry Wars. And because of its popularity, it eventually led to the creation of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2--one of the .

The World Ends With You is one of the most memorable JRPGs in the Nintendo DS catalog thanks to its story, neat battle system, carpal tunnel-inducing control scheme, and, of course, Tin Pin Slammer. The goal of this minigame? To slide your pins around the board in an attempt to knock your opponent's pins out of bounds. Basically, it's 1971's Milton Bradley board game , except the DS stylus replaces the plastic guns and little metal pellets. Crossfiiiiiuuur!

Trying to outmaneuver your opponent made the game addictive enough on its own, but the addition of "whammies," or special moves, made things a bit teresting. You could, for instance, summon a giant mallet from out of nowhere, which would spin in a circle and send every pin it made contact with flying. You'll get caught up in the Crossfiiiiiuuur! Of course, that's not to mention the stage variations, which add handicaps to change the rules on-the-fly, or the fact that you can collect hundreds of pins, each with unique stats and properties. And when you finally overcome a particularly grueling match-up, victory will have never tasted so sweet. Crossfiiiiiuuur!

In the world of Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor, peasants and adventurers alike gambled in taverns by way of Arcomage - a tabletop game not unlike Magic: The Gathering (freakin' nerds). Each player has a deck of cards, a tower (which acts as an HP counter), and a defensive wall (think MTG's creatures) that protect said tower. Each turn, you generate resources that can be spent to play cards that either fortify your wall, replenish your tower's hit points, or attack your opponent's tower, creating a delicate balancing act of knowing when to strike and when to play it safe.

In its earliest forms, Arcomage was a mere minigame in a single-player RPG, meaning you'd only ever get to play against AI opponents. It became popular enough, though, that The 3DO Company eventually released a standalone version that could be played with others via LAN or an Internet connection. These days, enhanced variations of it, such as the Android game , are readily available and surprisingly popular.

Few things in life are as exciting as recounting tales of the good ol' days, back when Windows ME was the hot new OS (that everyone quickly grew to hate) and people had to sit through this before they could connect to the World Wide Web. It was during this now-ancient time period that we lost many a night to Mephisto farms, Diablo grinds, and, eventually, Taco Baal Runs in Blizzard's beloved hack-and-slash RPG, Diablo II. But there's another aspect to the game that dungeon crawler veterans will recall with ease: playing .

Now, it may not have been immediately apparent at the time, but everyone soon picked up on the joke: trying to rearrange your inventory just so you could pick up that rare hunting knife meant moving items around just so, dropping them on the ground to swap others in, then out, then back again. And just when you started to think that the Horadric Cube was a space-saving godsend, you discovered that it only complicated the sadistic game of inventory Tetris by increasing the number of windows you had to manage in order to maximize your rearrangement efficiency. Ah yes, the good ol' days, indeed.

An action RPG is perhaps one of the last places you'd expect to find a highly customizable rail shooter, but Kingdom Hearts II's Gummi shooting segments were surprisingly enjoyable. On the surface, Gummi ships were just a neat way to open up the next world for Sora and his crew to explore. But if you were willing to spend a bit of time poking through everything Gummis had to offer, it was easy to get hooked.

We've spent hours unlocking new Gummi pieces just so we could build new ship designs from scratch. The sheer variety of vessels you could create was downright impressive, ranging from basic starships to freakishly inventive designs . Best of all, the on-rails shooting was enjoyable all its own, complete with operators Chip Dale, who sounded an awful lot like Slippy from Star Fox 64.

In the mid- to late-'90s, digital pets were all the rage. Anyone who was anyone had a Tamagotchi or a Nano Baby; ownership of one of these was mandatory to get any kind of street cred on the middle school playground. But this craze also made its way into a staggering number of console games, including 1998's Sonic Adventure, in which you could hatch and raise living, breathing plant-people called Chao.

Though you couldn't really do much with the Chao in the first Sonic Adventure, its sequel allowed you to affect the baby Chao's alignment to good or evil. If you were playing as, say, Sonic, cooing to the baby and patting its delicate head would make it a good Chao. The process for making an evil Chao? Step one: Bash a Chao egg into into sharp rocks over and over, forcing it to hatch prematurely. Step 2: Kick / slap the baby Chao until it cries out in utter, heartbreaking despair. Step 3: Respond to those cries with complete indifference.

Christ.

Seeing Blitzball appear in a list of awesome minigames will cause you to react in one of two ways: either you'll agree, or you'll tell the writer of this very article to please go cartwheel into highway traffic. Still, many came to fall in love with Blitzball. It's basically underwater rugby, where two opposing teams - such as Tidus and Wakka's own Besaid Aurochs and the damnable Al Bhed Psyches - try to drop kick a medicine ball through the other's goal.

Matches are frustrating early on, seeing as the RPG stats of your player roster matters just as much as (if not more than) your skill. But once you scout out some free agents, level up your team, and win a few games, it's easy to to play for hours on en - just kidding, we all know Blitzball is fu***** terrible.

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is almost upon us, and with it comes closure to a decades-spanning saga. While the series has amassed a huge following over the years, for many people, The Phantom Pain will be their first exposure to a convoluted world filled with walking battlemechs and genetically-enhanced supersoldiers. It's not exactly the easiest story to keep track of, as characters and organizations often go by multiple names and are usually double- or triple-crossing one another. To make matters worse, the story is told out of sequence, so there are plenty of instances where series creator Hideo Kojima has retconned important events from past games in order to fit into the current, overarching plot.

But you don't need to fret, because I've compiled a timeline detailing the series' most important events. There's even a glossary at the bottom in case you get your Snakes mixed up (it happens to the best of us). If you're hopping into Big Boss' shoes for the first time (or simply need a refresher), and you don't want to watch hours upon hours of cutscenes to get the big picture, this will get you properly up to speed. The events of the Metal Gear saga cover over a century of world history, so strap in and enjoy the ride. Oh, and if anything doesn't make sense to you, just remember: nanomachines probably did it.

Big thanks to the and the Metal Gear Solid 4 Database on PS3 for helping me keep my dates and names straight while I wrote this.

Metal Gear's story truly begins in the aftermath of World War 1, as the wealthiest and most influential members of the US, the Soviet Union, and China form a secret organization known as the Philosophers. With their vast reach and near limitless resources, the Philosophers aim to influence world events so we never have to experience another global conflict on the scale of WW1. As its members die off, the group begins to splinter, and by the 1930s, the true purpose of the organization had distorted from its original ideals, eventually giving way to the Cold War, an era of nuclear tension that began thanks to the infighting between members of the Philosophers.

Before their nasty break-up, the Philosophers pooled together vast sums of money to stop World War 2 in its tracks, gathering over $100 billion (or over $1.6 trillion, in 2014 dollars) to develop nuclear weapons and genetically-enhanced supersoldiers. The money-laundering records needed to store this amount of cash were kept on microfilm - called the Philosophers' Legacy - along with the names of all of the organization's members. The Cold War started because each of the world's three major superpowers fought over this massive chunk of change, until a Soviet commander and Philosopher agent named Boris Volgin stole the microfilm and passed it on to his son after his death.

The Philosophers may have lost their slush fund and they may be fractured, but they haven't lost their teeth. Before the events of Metal Gear Solid 3, President John F. Kennedy goes against the will of the Philosophers during the Bay of Pigs invasion and is subsequently assassinated - such is the power of this shady organization.

A Soviet rocket scientist by the name of Nikolai Sokolov wants to defect to the US, so the government calls upon FOX, a CIA covert operations unit formed by Major Zero (a British SAS officer) and The Boss (head of Cobra Unit, a legendary squadron of soldiers who fought numerous battles in WW2). John (code name: Naked Snake), an ex-Green Beret and the first-ever FOX operative, is sent into the Soviet jungles to retrieve Sokolov, but is stopped when The Boss, Snake's mentor and mother figure, double-crosses him. The Boss recaptures Sokolov and joins up with members of Cobra Unit and Commander Volgin (son of Boris Volgin), who steals the Shagohod, a nuclear-equipped tank and Metal Gear progenitor, and launches a Davy Crockett nuke at his homeland, ensuring the US gets blamed for its illegal presence in the Soviet Union.

In order to prevent retaliation and mutually-assured destruction, Naked Snake must return to Volgin's command center, destroy the Shagohod, and kill The Boss. Along the way, he receives help from EVA, an ex-NSA agent/actual Philosopher agent and Snake's sole contact in the Soviet Union. He also meets Russian GRU officer Adamska (code name: Revolver Ocelot), forming a special warrior's bond with him despite their opposing allegiances. With their help, Snake defeats each of the members of Cobra Unit, destroys the Shagohod, takes down Volgin, and faces off against The Boss. Before Snake deals the final blow, The Boss hands over half of the microfilm containing the location of the Philosophers' Legacy.

Snake returns to the States a hero, and receives the title of Big Boss, but he also learns the horrible truth of his mission. The Boss was secretly working for the US from the inside to recover the Legacy, but thanks to Volgin's nuke, the parameters of her mission changed: she had to die by Snake's hands, forever known as a traitor. While Snake succeeded in his mission, he grew disillusioned with the government who betrayed him, renounced the title of Big Boss, and quit FOX.

FOX has gone rogue, and is now being led by Gene, a super-soldier the Philosophers used as a subject for genetic experiments. Gene wants the Philosophers' Legacy to create his own empire, so he captures a base on the San Hieronymo Peninsula and kidnaps and tortures Naked Snake, since he's the last person to know its whereabouts. Snake promptly escapes from the facility, along with Green Beret Roy Campbell. After meeting up with Major Zero, he learns that the government has classified him as persona non grata, thinking he is the cause of the FOX revolt. In order to clear his name, Snake forms the beginnings of FOXHOUND along with Zero, Ocelot, and Frank Jaeger, a war orphan Snake rescued a few years prior.

Snake recruits a variety of soldiers and finally defeats Gene, who recognizes him as the true successor to The Boss, and bequests FOX to him, as well as the plans to a soldier's paradise called 'Army's Heaven'. Of course, this wouldn't be a Metal Gear game without some kind of twist: the entire rebellion was actually staged by Ocelot and Major Zero as an attempt to lure the CIA director out of hiding and grab his half of the Legacy. Ocelot kills the director, snags the Legacy, and forms a new, even more shadowy secret organization called the Patriots with Major Zero and Naked Snake.

Snake, Major Zero, and Revolver Ocelot originally formed The Patriots to honor The Boss' dream of a perfect world. Zero interpreted this to mean creating a 'World Without Borders', effectively uniting the nations of the world under one rule. So Zero exaggerated and distorted the legend of Big Boss, using it as a means of control. Snake isn't too happy about being a puppet for Zero, believing that Zero is skewing The Boss' vision for his own gains.

The final straw was Zero’s creation of the Les Enfants Terribles project without Snake's knowledge or consent. The project aimed to take Snake's DNA and use it to clone a series of enhanced supersoldiers. From the project came three 'Sons of Big Boss': Solid, Liquid, and Solidus, each one representing the best parts of Big Boss' DNA, with some accelerated aging thrown in to prevent the enemy from copying the clones' genetic code. Snake finds out about this and is understandably pissed off. He leaves The Patriots and FOXHOUND, drifting from skirmish to skirmish, until he meets Kazuhira Miller and forms the Militaires Sans Frontieres. Sometime after Snake's departure, Major Zero and the Patriots take on the code name 'Cipher'.

Snake is asked by Costa Rican agents Paz Andrade and Ramon Galvez Mena for assistance regarding a mysterious army that's holed itself up in the Latin American nation. He only agrees when he hears a recording of The Boss' voice, seemingly alive and well. That voice actually belongs to an AI program attached to Peace Walker, a nuclear-equipped weapon created to ensure that mutually-assured destruction could never come to pass… by guaranteeing mutually-assured destruction would occur if anyone ever launched a nuke. It's best if you don't think about that too much.

Anyway, Snake and Miller set up Mother Base off the Costa Rican coastline and design it to resemble an offshore oil rig. Snake wanders the jungles, recruiting soldiers for his army, researching new tech, rescuing Dr. Huey Emmerich (the scientist responsible for Peace Walker's design), and building his own nuclear deterrent, a walking battlemech called Metal Gear ZEKE. Snake discovers that Galvez is a KGB agent who wanted Peace Walker for himself, but Snake puts a stop to him and once again prevents a nuclear holocaust, finally adopting the title Big Boss as his own.

Oh, it's not over yet. Paz is also a double agent, who actually works for Cipher (aka Major Zero). She attempts to steal ZEKE and frame MSF for launching a nuke should Snake decide not to join Cipher. Snake quickly defeats ZEKE, and Paz is flung into the ocean from the resulting explosion. Miller was also apparently a business partner with Cipher and knew all about Paz's plot, using his connections to build MSF into a driving force of the Cold War economy. Snake is apparently cool with this, and the two continue to operate MSF together, growing Mother Base into massive mercenary operation.

On the eve of a nuclear inspection (brought about by Huey's insistence that MSF proves to the world that it's running a squeaky clean operation), Miller and Snake receive word that Paz had survived their encounter, and is currently being held at Camp Omega, a US black site in Cuba. To make matters worse, one of Snake's recruits, a young teen named Chico, went off to rescue her and got himself captured. Both Paz and Chico know of the existence of Metal Gear ZEKE, so Snake needs to rescue them before they reveal any information to their captors.

Snake infiltrates the facility and rescues them, but returns to find Mother Base under attack by operatives of a mysterious new organization, XOF, led by their equally enigmatic CO, Skullface. Snake finds Miller and the two escape via chopper, only to be thwarted by a bomb planted inside Paz's body by XOF. She leaps from the helicopter in an attempt to save Snake, but the blast causes their helicopter to crash, putting Snake into a coma which lasts for nine whole years.

Snake awakens from his coma to discover that his left arm is missing and… Well, we don't know what's going to happen in this game since it's not out yet, but the final chapter of the Metal Gear saga aims to close the loop on Big Boss'/Naked Snake's history, showing his descent into villainy as he rebuilds Mother Base and gets his revenge on Cipher. Hopefully, we'll also find out how he gets back into the US government's good graces well enough to take control of FOXHOUND again, which will lead into...

The US learns of a secret weapon of mass destruction in a South African facility known as Outer Heaven, and calls on Big Boss and his FOXHOUND unit to take care of the situation. One problem: the US doesn't know that Outer Heaven belongs to Big Boss, and thanks to retroactive continuity, he's using it as a staging ground to build another Metal Gear and take down the Patriots. He sends in his son, Solid Snake (who doesn't know Big Boss is his dad at this point), as a way to stall the operation so Big Boss can complete his plans.

Big Boss feeds Solid Snake faulty intel, leading him into a series of traps, all of which Snake overcomes. He rescues Gray Fox (aka Frank Jager), destroys the Metal Gear, and defeats Big Boss before NATO carpet bombs the place into oblivion. Big Boss survives the explosion, and gathers the survivors together, returning even stronger a few years later.

The world is rapidly running out of oil, and Dr. Kio Marv has the perfect solution: OILIX, a synthetic fuel source that could solve a potential global crisis. So of course he gets kidnapped by a military force in Zanzibar Land. Roy Campbell, now head of FOXHOUND (y'know, after Big Boss proved to be, ahem, less than reliable), brings Solid Snake out of retirement to rescue the doctor.

Snake finds a hell of a lot more than that in Zanzibar Land: Gray Fox is now his enemy, Big Boss is alive, and - you guessed it - there's another Metal Gear. Dr. Marv is tortured and killed, and the OILIX formula ends up in Gray Fox's hands. Snake is able to defeat both Fox and Big Boss before the day is through, but not before learning that Big Boss is his father in a grand Empire Strikes Back moment. Snake leaves Big Boss for dead and retires to the Alaskan wilderness. The Patriots pick up Big Boss' body and place him into a nanomachine-induced coma, where he will remain for the next 15 years as a sentimental prize of Zero's. Oh, and his genes are once again stolen from him, this time to create the Genome Soldiers used in...

Keeping FOXHOUND around seems like a hell of a lot more trouble than it's worth. Liquid Snake, Solid's twin brother/clone, is now commanding officer, and - I sound like a broken record here - has gone rogue, using the newly-created Genome Soldiers to take over Shadow Moses Island, a nuclear weapon storage facility and home of Metal Gear REX. Liquid, Revolver Ocelot, and friends plan on launching a nuke unless the government hands over the remains of Big Boss and $1 billion.

Roy Campbell drags Solid Snake out of retirement once again to rescue a few VIPs, all of whom die of mysterious heart attacks thanks to the FOXDIE virus Dr. Naomi Hunter secretly injected into Snake's body before the mission. After a battle against Revolver Ocelot, Snake learns that Gray Fox isn't just alive, he's been turned into a cyborg ninja - who promptly slices off Ocelot's hand with his katana. Snake then meets up with Campbell's daughter Meryl Silverburgh, as well as REX designer Hal Emmerich (Huey's son), both of whom help Snake make his way through the facility.

After a variety of trials and tribulations, Solid Snake finds himself face-to-face against his brother Liquid and Metal Gear REX. Gray Fox steps in to sacrifice himself, giving Solid Snake enough time to destroy REX. Liquid then gives Solid a long-winded speech about his origin as a clone of Big Boss. The two do battle on top of the destroyed mech, Solid Snake wins (because of course he does), and escapes the facility alongside Meryl. Liquid continues his dogged pursuit, ultimately dying at the hands of the FOXDIE virus. Revolver Ocelot escapes (sans one hand), and in the game's closing moments, we learn that Solidus (aka George Sears and the perfect clone of Big Boss) is currently President of the United States and was essentially in on the whole thing.

Prior to MGS2's events, Revolver Ocelot grafts Liquid Snake's hand onto his arm and begins selling Metal Gear REX's schematics to the highest bidders. Oh, and Liquid's hand starts taking over Ocelot's mind, affecting his speech and thought patterns (more on that later).

On a tip from Hal's sister Emma (an AI programmer who is also working on a type of Metal Gear), Solid Snake infiltrates an oil tanker off the coast of Manhattan. He arrives just in time to see the ship being taken over by Russian soldiers, but Snake doesn't care too much about that - he just wants to find Metal Gear RAY and expose its existence to the world. After wending his way into the belly of the tanker, he finds and photographs RAY and uploads the images for Hal. Just in time, too, because Ocelot/Liquid shows up, betrays his Russian comrades, steals RAY and blows up the tanker, leaving Snake for dead. Snake is framed for the destruction by the Patriots, as tons of oil allegedly seep into the New York coastline. It's enough to greenlight the construction of Big Shell, an offshore facility designed to clean up the 'oil leak'. But nothing is ever so simple in this universe, as the facility is actually a front, housing the construction site of the greatest weapon of them all: Arsenal Gear.

Big Shell is taken over by the Sons of Liberty, a terrorist group made up of members of Dead Cell, an (ironically) anti-terrorist organization that has - say it with me now - gone rogue. They're led by Solidus Snake (aka ex-president George Sears), and they've taken the current US president hostage and have demanded $30 billion in ransom. Of course, that's not why they're really there - Solidus wants access to Arsenal Gear and GW, the AI program inside of it.

Raiden, a rookie operative trained by VR (and the player character for the rest of MGS2), is sent to Big Shell to stop the terrorists at all costs. He finds a poorly disguised Solid Snake, who helps him infiltrate and navigate the facility. As Raiden closes in on Solidus, he finds a cyborg ninja, everyone he's supposed to save mysteriously dies of a heart attack, and his ultimate goal is to find the GW AI and upload a virus that mimics FOXDIE. If a lot of the events of MGS2 sound familiar, it's because the Big Shell incident was an attempt to recreate the events of Shadow Moses in order to train a soldier on par with Solid Snake.

Or… not. The Big Shell incident was actually part of a Patriot plot to prove the effectiveness of the GW AI's ability to control and distort information and manipulate individuals through this distortion. The Colonel Campbell giving Raiden orders throughout MGS2 was actually this AI, and thanks to Raiden's unquestioning devotion to the mission, the program was a smashing success. An out-of-control Arsenal Gear smashes into the Manhattan coastline, and Raiden and Solidus are forced to do battle atop Federal Hall. Raiden emerges the victor, completing his role as the Patriots' pawn. Ocelot/Liquid once again escapes, this time with RAY in tow. Ocelot uses RAY, as well as the remnants of the GW AI found in Arsenal Gear, to quickly build an army of private military corporations, forming the basis of a newly-created war economy.

A rapidly aging Solid Snake is brought out of retirement (once again) by Roy Campbell. His final mission: to assassinate Liquid Ocelot (yeah, he's basically Liquid at this point) and stop the never-ending proxy battles fought by his PMC organizations. This wouldn't be so difficult if it weren't for the fact that everyone is loaded up with nanomachines, and Liquid controls the AI program that governs them, causing soldiers to convulse wildly at the push of a button. Snake fails to capture him in the Middle East, but tracks his assistant, Dr. Naomi Hunter, to South America and rescues her - with a little help from Raiden, who's gone full cyborg ninja by this point.

Snake then makes his way to Europe, searching for Big Mama (aka EVA, from Snake Eater), and the remains of Big Boss. Ocelot finds Snake and uses the remains of Big Boss to unlock the final key in the Patriots' AI program, giving him control of virtually every army on the planet. Things are looking grim: EVA is dead, Snake is wounded, and Ocelot escapes to Shadow Moses, where he plans on stealing REX's nuke (because it's one of the only ones freely available that isn't controlled by the Patriots) to use it to destroy the Patriots' global AI network. Snake gives chase, reliving old memories in the derelict facility, but ultimately fails to stop Liquid from stealing the nuke.

In a last ditch effort, Snake and his crew storm Liquid Ocelot's base of operations, Outer Haven (*nudge*), where he uploads a virus of Dr. Hunter's design called FOXALIVE (*nudge nudge*) and defeats Liquid one last time. With the world saved and free from the Patriots' influence, Snake visits The Boss' grave for one final goodbye... and discovers a Big Boss who is very much alive. It was Solidus' body that actually burned back in Europe, and when the Patriots' AI went offline, Big Boss was awoken from his years-long coma. Big Boss explains how Ocelot used nanomachines and psychotherapy to make himself believe his body had been taken over by Liquid's hand in order to trick the Patriots into granting him access. He then suffocates a geriatric Zero and shares a final tender moment with his son before succumbing to the FOXDIE virus still mucking around in Snake's body. With their deaths, the Patriots are effectively destroyed, and Snake can finally retire - for good, this time.