The big hype around Zone of the Enders was that it came packaged with a demo of Metal Gear Solid, but discarding this game and just playing the MGS demo is crazy, as ZOE is a good game in its own right. My intuition was to pop MGS in first, but decided to put in the one that has its name on the box. Overall, it’s an entertaining and visually pleasing game.

The whole game is centered around a young boy controlling a mech, though they are called frames in the ZOE universe. He accidentally enters one in fear and ends up fighting countless enemy frames.

The training missions are really quick to go through and are worth the couple minutes it takes to run through them. The computer demonstrates, then you can try for yourself. The time it takes to do these missions is basically the ZOE learning curve. Once you dive into the real meat of the game, you’re ready for just about whatever comes your way.

Visually, the game looks nice. Little details such as a technology shimmer when your machine lands, to the buildings. I was impressed flying over the cities and seeing the buildings. It further made you want to defend them from destruction, though the orange glow of the fires looked nice too.

This is a good example of where the graphics are pretty good, but it’s the game play that makes it worthy of your time and money. The controls are smooth, and while all the PS2’s controller’s buttons are utilized, it’s still a breeze to use and within a few minutes, I was kicking major frame butt. Part of what I like is that you not only have a whole arsenal of long-range weapons, you have the ability to get close to your enemies and slash away. Using the dash slash, there’s nothing more beautiful, nor fun than slicing and dicing enemy metal.

The story isn’t anything groundbreaking, but it’s decent. You do spend a fair amount of time listening to the computer’s instructions, but it’s not to the point that you’re constantly yearning to start blowing stuff up. Well, alright, you’re going to always want to blow things up, but you get the point.

My biggest complaint is the camera angles. While flying in circles, the camera is always behind. Once you start heading forward (i.e. letting go of the left analog), the camera snaps into position. While, most of the time this is an annoyance, in battle it’s more than that.

Additionally, the game has all kinds of missions, but they are all pretty similar and one only wants to sit and play this one for a while before it’s time to do something different, or pop in a different title.

There are 4 skill levels to keep the game interesting. My recommendation is to play one of the middle two as Easy is beyond easy — more like super simple. The most difficult of levels is a little too hard to start out on.

This game is a lot better than most of what I’ve played for the PS2 so far, save SSX and Madden 2001, but I think I’d still be hesitant to buy it. Instead, I think I’m going to search for this one used or on eBay. I think most could justify buying this one at full price, but if you can, find it used and add it to your PS2 library. Just make sure that your Metal Gear Solid Demo disc is included when you snag this one previously played.