[REVIEW] Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

[Alseid]

So, I've just finished playing Metal Gear Solid 3, and i feel the need to spread the snake eating love. So, I decided to write a review. I won't use a rating system, simply because I feel it'd be too arbitrary to just assign a number which would be more or less random. Instead, I'll let my words be all the rating the game needs.
So, here we go.

First off, I have to say this is definitely the best game of the Metal Gear Solid saga. And possibly one of the best games ever. The game improves everything that the older MGS had, and then some.


Story: While not as grand and deep(and badly executed, thank god) as the MGS2 story, MGS3's story is very interesting, and touching at times. Much more straight forward than those of the older MGSs, it starts rather slow and simple, but builds up to a great political suspense story, while retaining the close and personal feeling, which MGS2's story lacked.
The story is basically this: A Russian scientist, Sokolov, requests the United States to get him out of Russia, apparently because he's become afraid of one of his own creations. So, as a test mission for the FOX unit (later known as Foxhound) they sent a single agent, with the codename of Naked Snake, to retrieve Sokolov and bring him back to the west. He is supported through the radio by a team composed by a paramedic known as... Para-Medic, Snake's boss, the Mayor Tom, and Snake's master, The Boss. But just as Snake manages to get Sokolov, The Boss shows up, revealing she has defected to the Soviet Union, and, along with the Colonel Volgin, leader of an independent army inside the Soviet Union, they take Sokolov and leave Snake severely wounded, and Volgin proceeds to nuke a research facility, just for the fun of it. Snake is retrieved and brought back to the States, and one week, he's sent on another mission. Apparently the leader of the Soviet Union contacted the president of the United States and menaced to unleash a new world war if they didn't somehow prove that they had nothing to do with the nuclear explosion of the research facility. So, Snake has to, once again, get Sokolov, destroy the most terrible of his inventions, The Shagohod, and ultimately, kill The Boss... Along the story he finds a number of allies and foes, including the spy Eva, the GRU officer Ocelot, the Cobra unit composed by The Pain, The Fear, The Fury and The End, all students of The Boss, and The Sorrow, who at several times helps Snake out, in subtle ways.. I won't say anymore, for fear of spoiling the story more than I already have.
The character development is really good, although some claim that the Cobra unit had little to no backstory, and that they were merely boss filler. One of the strong points of the story is, as said by the Boss, a soldier is made to follow the mission, no matter what. And that's exactly what the Cobras did. They were there to prove The Boss' point. They played their parts on the mission, whatever the cost was. As for the rest of the characters, we get to learn a lot about the characters we already knew, as Ocelot and the Big Boss (Naked Snake). Ocelot in particular, was cool before, but now he has a whole new fanbase. We also get to learn how Big Boss became the greatest soldier ever, and why he did what he did on the original Metal Gear games. Also, a little bit more of light is shed on the whole Patriots issue, which has been a big mystery since MGS2.
All in all, it's a great story, and like all the MGS games, and even more than the others, it would almost seem as if it was meant for a movie. Plus, it's all very well executed, unlike MGS2, where the excessive and unnecessary codec conversations slowed it down, and made it feel tiring and, overall, boring. Instead, in MGS3, the radio conversations are kept to the necessary minimum, and the story develops trhough cutscenes, that have a very cinematic feeling. As I said, in this aspect, MGS3 could very well be a movie.


Graphics: Simply beautiful. Once again, a MGS game sets the bar on PS2 graphics. All the characters are greatly modeled, and their animations are great, realistic and natural. All objects found in the game are near photo-realistic, even the animals, insects and even fruits that populate the different areas. The environments are breath taking; ample and varied, ranging from the heart of the jungle to the top of the mountains, from underground caves to swamplands, from abandoned military outposts in ruins to high tech military fortresses. Each zone is carefully designed to be as realistic as possible, and to offer a number of strategic possibilities for both battling and sneaking.

Sound: While the in-game music is great, it doesn't change all that much, quality-wise, from MGS2. Which is not bad at all, mind you. Now, the main theme, some cut-scene music, among others, are simply brilliant. The semi-symphonic pieces from scenes like the Halo jump at the beginning of the game, or the main theme, go very well with the overall feeling of the game. Specially the main theme, which has a very retro, "James Bond" feeling to it.
The voices, however were at first a bit of a letdown. After hearing the original Japanese voices, which were very fitting for each character as well as much better acted, the English voices sounded a bit out of place, particularly Volgin's "Kuwabara Kuwabara". In Japanese it sounded great, even scary, but in English it sounds rather ridiculous. But one gets used to it quickly as the game advances. I was particularly worried by the lip sync on the English trailer, which was awful, but it turned out most of the dialogs didn't belong to the scenes shown in it, so it's all good. All in all, the voices are ok, could have been better. And God knows I prayed for an option to change the voices to Japanese with English text.


Gameplay: Can't really talk of the gameplay in one go. I'll divide it on several subsections devoted to a particular aspect of the gameplay.

Fighting: The system greatly evolved since the older games. In MGS1, you had some guns, which all had some sort of auto-lock on enemies, except for the sniper rifle. When unarmed, you'd be able to punch and kick a bit, but that's it. In MGS2, weapons lost the semi auto-lock, but gained a first person view in which you could aim on your own. When unarmed, the only new feature was to jump towards the enemy when running, so you could take the enemy to the ground shortly. In MGS3, all that carries over, but the system gains a whole new level of depth. This time, fighting unarmed is much more effective, with the CQC (Close Quarters Combat) system, which consists of, when equipped with at least a knife, being able to, depending on the time you hold the attack button, and the direction you point the left analog stick while you do it, hold up the enemy to use him as a human shield, cut his throat, interrogate him, or slam him to the ground, rendering him unconscious.
In the end of the day, it's up to you if you wanna go Rambo on the enemies and shoot them to hell, or quietly taking them down one by one, or snipe them from afar.

Stealth: New to the saga is the camouflage system. In MGS1 and 2, there was a radar on the top right of the screen showing a map of the surrounding area, with spots representing the enemies, also showing their visual range as a cone, so you'd simply walk, or crawl, around, hiding yourself the best you could, distracting enemies, staying out of their visual range, etc. But now, the radar is gone. Instead, you have a camouflage index, which shows just how hard to spot you are at the time. If you're standing, you'll be more noticeable, and the index will be low. Even negative, at times. Crouching will make you less noticeable, and the index will go up. Lying on the ground as well. And then, you can use different camouflage suits depending on the place you're hiding. To hide in a patch of grass, you use the Woodlands Facepaint and the Tiger Strip Camouflage suit. To hide by pressing yourself against a three, you use the Black Facepaint and the Three Bark Camo suit. And so on, there's Facepaints and Camo suits for urban environs, for deserts, for snow, etc, as well as some just for fun and badass factors, like the Zombie Facepaint. Needless to say, now you have to personally check where the enemies are, but there's different items that help you do that, like a directional microphone, a sonar, a motion radar, thermal goggles, night vision goggles, binoculars, anti-personnel detectors, mine detectors, etc. And the environments offer a lot of different possibilities for sneaking, from hiding inside a hollow three to going around a little cliff next to a military outpost to be able to snipe all the enemies undetected, hanging on the side of a rope bridge so the soldiers walking on it won't notice you, or shoot a bee hive so the bees will scare away the enemies on the area. It's up to you to find the best way to pass unnoticed, and, with a bit of effort, to use the possibilities to the max.

Items: As the old MGS games, you have a menu that opens with L2 and R2, where you scroll through your items and choose which one to use. But this time there's a little difference: all your items are in your backpack, and you have to equip some to be able to use them on the L2-R2 menus. Of course, you can't equip everything at once, so you have to decide which items are more likely to come handy in the current situation, and leave the unnecessary ones in the backpack. At first it may seem it limits you a bit, but it's very well thought. Considering this time you get more different kinds of weapons than in any other MGS, ranging from the average .44 handgun to the RPG-7 rocket launcher, passing by knifes, sniper rifles, shotguns, several kinds of mini-machineguns, handkerchiefs soaked with tranquilizers to make enemies sleep, grenades, chaff grenades, even a fork, etc, and items, all the aforementioned utilities to find enemies, keys, accessories, etc, the menus would be overwhelmingly long with all the items available at once. Then there's The Food System. On the top left of the screen there's two bars, life and stamina. Life records amount of life you have left, and decreases when damaged. Stamina records the amount of energy you have left, and decreases as time goes on, or, in special instances, when you're sick or being shot tranquilizers. The importance of the Stamina bar is that, the more stamina you have, the better your performance will be. Your wounds will heal faster, your steadiness will be better, etc.
Life restores itself as long as there's stamina, and can be restored with life medicines. Stamina is restored by eating food, which you'll have to find through exploring enemy storages or hunting. Normal, packaged food (Rations, Calorie Mates, Ramen Noodles...) has to be found, doesn't rot, and normally restores great amounts of stamina, while hunted food (any animal you can hunt, fruits, even mushrooms) has to be obtained through killing the animals or capture it alive (you have 3 cages, so you can keep 3 animals alive), rots over time (except the ones captured alive) and restores stamina depending on the animal. Snakes restore good stamina, as do big animals, like crocodiles. Small animals like rabbits restore decent stamina, as do fruits, while mushrooms generally restore barely noticeable amounts. Also, the more often a kind of food is eaten, the more taste you'll develop for it, and over time, the stamina restored by it will be greater. Some animals, fruits and mushrooms also give healing items, which leads me nicely to the next big system of the game, The Healing System. When you receive damage, sometimes the life bar will have a red portion. That means there's an injury to be treated. To do that, there's a menu that shows you a full view of the character's body, with circles around the injuries. Highlighting them will give a briefing about the injury, and according to what it tells you, you have to treat them. Bullet wounds will have you extracting the bullet with a knife, then stopping the blood flow with styptic, disinfect it, then bandage it. A deep cut will be treated similarly, stop the blood flow, disinfect it, sew it up with a suture kit, bandage it. Broken bones will be paralyzed with a splint, then bandaged. And so on. Also, at times you'll become sick for one reason or another. Then you use a medicine according to the illness, be it serum, antidote, laxative, even a medicine for a cold.

Bosses: They deserve a section on their own, aside from the fighting section. The boss battles are like nothing I've seen so far. While the first boss battles aren't particularly surprising, they become more and more complex as the game advances, leading to a final battle that can be only described as beautiful.
Each boss fights in a different way:
Ocelot, obviously, fights you on a shootout.
The Pain fights you using his bees to attack you and protect himself.
The Fear fights you from the three tops by shooting crossbow bolts at you, be it with venom or fire, and at times he comes down to hit you personally, all the while being almost invisible.
The End is probably one of the best boss battles I've ever seen. Through 3 whole areas on the forest, The End, an old man, master sniper, hides on different sniping points and shoots you, as you try to find him. Sometimes you find yourself standing next to him, without even noticing it. Sounds simple, but it's a very intense battle, and can be very, very long. I'm talking of hours here.
The Fury is a really cool battle. You're on a big room divided into several corridors, and you have to find The Fury amongst the fire he causes, as well as keeping yourself out of harm's way. May not seem that impressive, but being the bit of a pyro I am... I found it brilliant.
The Sorrow, that has to be the most unconventional boss battle I've seen. You walk through a river full of the people you've killed, all screaming in pain and sorrow, chasing you, while The Sorrow, as a spirit, floats around you, taunts you and from time to time, attacks you with some strange sort of energy, creating a really shocking and creepy effect. And all you can do is keep walking forth, until it all ends....
Volgin's battle is the equivalent to the fight with Liquid on top of Metal Gear Rex in MGS1, and with Solidus in MGS2, but this time it's taken to a new level. You have to wait for him to leave an opening, and then use it to attack and maximize the damage all you can. Can be rather easy, though.
Shagohod's battles are very, very cinematic, but rather easy, specially the first one. But then, I feel that, if the battles were much harder, the whole feeling of them would have been lost, and I find them more memorable than the much harder battles with Rex and the Rays in the older MGSs.
The Boss. The last battle of the game, and definitely the most beautifully executed battle I've seen in a game. I won't say more about it, because I feel everyone should see it on their own, and saying any more would spoil the experience.

Replayability: It has a great replay value. First there's the different difficulty modes the game has, going from the novice friendly Easy, to the nerve destroying Very Hard. But that's a feature that's taken for granted nowadays. There's many items hidden that may be missed easily, as well as unlockable items. Defeating the bosses in a particular way will get you a special camo suit (one that protects you from bugs, other from fire, other has a great camouflage index, at cost of stamina, other will keep your aiming steady, etc...). In each area there's a Kerotan Frog toy hidden, and shooting them all (64 in total) will give you a perfect stealth camo suit at the end of the game. Like all other MGS games there's hidden conversations on the codec/radio that can be easily missed, as well as ratings on the end of the game, thus encouraging to play several times in different ways to achieve different ratings There's also a couple minigames, one openly available since the beginning (Snake vs. Monkey, where snake has to catch all the monkeys from Ape Escape through 6 levels, the last 2 being unlocked by beating the normal game once) and one hidden, and only accessible at one part of the game (Snake's Nightmare, which is a weird action game that reminds of Zone Of Enders, only ground based and with a guy with two metal bars fighting some sort of crocodile cops.. weird stuff. You get to play it for 3 minutes, then Snake wakes up).

So, all in all, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is a great game. If you like the older MGS games, and Stealth games in general, you MUST get it. If you don't, it's still worth a try. Unless you have no patience at all, you'll get hooked to it fast.

So, yeah, that's it.
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All the way to the edge of this world