The game starts out with the main character Dingo working for a mining company operating a basic mining mech. While mining one day he stumbles across a large box, which turns out to contain the Orbital Frame Jehuty. With an attack imminent, Dingo is forced to board Jehuty and fight back. What follows then is a journey to revisit the demons of his past, and an eventual showdown with Anubis, another Orbital Frame as powerful as Jehuty. The story is well told throughout, and presented in a high quailty anime style with cut-scenes interrupting the action at certain points. It's a story full of twists, as Kojima's stories normally are, although the player is not left confused as with the Metal Gear Solid stories.

One of the features of the game is the high pace that it runs at. The 2nd Runner does several things to achieve this speed and urgency throughout. Firstly the narrative needs to drive the speed at which the game is played. It does this through a series of tight levels that interchange well between cut scenes and gameplay, keeping the player on a mostly linear journey. There are very few quiet points in the game. The player is constantly pushed to new areas of conflict, and this fits in well with the urgency presented in the storyline. It's a welcome change from a lot of games in which there is an urgent mission where the player is allowed to meander or explore, or go fishing. The fast, linear story works very well here.

Secondly the control in the game needs to be spot on. Without fluid control of Jehuty the game would slow down, and become frustrating to manage. Controlling Jehuty is well implemented, with easy control of the Orbital Frame. Movement around 360 degrees is well done and the player able to maintain there bearings throughout with Jehuty unable to flip upside down. Jehuty has two main weapons, a sword slash for melee combat and a laser for distant combat. Switching between these is automatic depending on where the current target is. Jehuty is armed with an automatic targetting system, and disabling this or switching to a different target is fairly simple. Powering up the sword or homing laser is also possible as is the ability to use the laser to target up to 100 enemies with a weaker homing laser. The controls seems to have been very well thought out. Just as well as since all of the gameplay consists of controlling an Orbital Frame.

As well as the main weapons Jehuty can equip a sub-weapon. Sub-weapons are acquired throught the course of the game, and are designed to increase Jehuty's fighting ability to the point where facing Anubis will not be futile. Various sub-weapons are available starting with the ability to grab opponents, and then extending to such things as paralysing and teleporting functions. These sub-weapons add a lot of variety to Jehuty's combat, and mixing up attacks or using specific sub-weapons will become necessary especially at the harder difficulty levels where normal attacks may not be as effective on their own.

The third thing The 2nd Runner does that is necessary to keep the pace of the game up is the graphical look of the game. In this the game excels, rendering dozens of enemies and mechs in quite a bit of detail and then making the game run at a very high speed. The PS2 is certainly being pushed to maintain the speed, and as far as we could tell there was only minimal slowdown. Most of the battles involve quite a lot of complexity onscreen, and at times is quite breathtaking to watch The 2nd Runner in action as emenies fire multiple attacks at Jehuty and Jehuty responds in kind. The amount of effects and enemies onscreen at once and how they move is certainly not done just with the screenshots we've included. Players will also need to adjust to the pace of the game. In battle there is generally nowhere to hide, no place to recover or catch ones breath short of pressing the pause button. One graphical criticism though is the lack of a 60hz option. In 50hz there is a little bordering on the screen, although the ingame graphics do certainly look better as it is presented here.

So The 2nd Runner plays well and looks good doing it. To top this off the game also presents the player with some great enemies, including some excellent bosses to battle against including some that return improved from the original such as the pesky Viola. Even though Jehuty is technicallly superior to most of these bosses they will still require quite a bit of skill and a range of attacks to defeat, even at the lower difficulty levels. All the bosses posses devastating skills and attacks, and can easily get the upper hand in a battle if the player is not careful. And all of the bosses met during the game are somehow linked to the story or to Dingo's past, rather than just being a random enemy met through the course of the game. It all ties in very well with the overall story, and quite a few of the storyline twists revolve around these bosses.

As well as the tough boss mechs players will also need to contend with a variety of minor mech opponents, each with certain strengths and attacks. The simplest of these are the pesky mosquito-like enemies, which swarm in their hundreds. The homing lasers will be able to eliminate dozens of these in a single attack. Further up the chain are such mechs as raptors, motherheads and cyclops, which require certain long and short-range attacks. Part of the difficulty of the game is when several different types of mechs are attacking at once, requiring the player to mix up attacks and adapt moment by moment. The mix of enemies throughout the game is quite good, slowly introducing more as the game progresses.

One of the problems we found when playing the game was the camera. Most of the time this worked well, staying behind Jehuty and showing battles well with the focus on the current target. But in general flying situations visibility was often cut down as the camera caught up with the action. For instance, turn the other direction from flying forwards and there would be several seconds of flying blind before the camera got around to shifting behind Jehuty. Also, in the interior sections of the game it was often hard to find doors and items due to the way the camera was zoomed in. Granted that most of the times when these difficulties appeared there was no danger but making the camera more adaptable to the situation, such as adopting a more panoramic view when not in battle, would have been nice to see.

The soundtrack is The 2nd Runner is absolutely fantastic, pulling you in from the opening theme song. A mix of dance and more classical stylings, the music always seems to evoke the right emotion, and fit perfectly with both the battles and the changing storyline. Voice acting is generally very good throughout, although an option to have the original Japanese dialogue instead of the English would have been appreciated.

The main story is again a little on the short side, although not nearly as short as the original. This is balanced though, with quite a bit of longevity once the main story is completed with quite a few bonuses available for players. Firstly there are the extra difficulty levels, including the extras added for the European version. There is such a good story attached to the 2nd Runner that it is still interesting with multiple viewings, and quite a bit of skill will be required at the higher difficulties. More than this however, once the story mode has been completed dozens of extra missions are unlocked, as well as a versus mode. These extra missions generally consist of short objectives set in the game world and act in a similar way to the VR missions in Metal Gear Solid 2. Different mechs are available to complete these missions with, and they are a nice addition to the overall story mode.

One of the main forces behind The 2nd Runner is Hideo Kojima, and it's easy to see his influence. From the twisting storyline to the outstanding cutscenes, from the emotive soundtrack to the to the overall stylishness of the game Kojima's mark is all over the game. The 2nd Runner is quite similar in style and presentation to his other big game series, Metal Gear Solid, even retaining the same menu system and difficulty settings.