Yeah MGS2 really is where the near future aspects of the series went totally off the rails. There are some decent story elements in there but it gets bogged down by one attempt after another to outdo a previous plot twist. By the end you get three or four explanations of what happened and why and none of them really make a lot of sense, especially when you play it for the first time and try to sort through all of that garbage. But MGS 4 kind of takes that and rather than clearing out all up in a way that makes sense it bends over backwards to explain things that didn't need explaining (vamps abilities) and bandages) hand waves everything else as nanomachines. Shame too since i like the gameplay in many ways, even if they really fell short of every promise they made during development and the last three acts, while they have their moments, are a clear downgrade in terms of gameplay from the first two.