Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

The fundamental problem with MGS3 is that Kojima is terrible at writing women and The Boss is no exception. In his attempt at creating a noble character he came up with a boring, annoying and dumb caricature of a supposedly glorious female soldier.

Almost all we know about her character comes from either long and monotone speeches delivered in a very boring manner, or in the form of other's characters reactions towards her. It is quite perplexing seeing other people admire her so much even though we never see her do anything admirable through the entire game.

To get into SPOILER territory... no, she didn't save the world, she was the one who put the world in danger in the first place by personally giving Volgin a nuclear weapon. And let's not forger that Volgin is a deranged maniac so what she did was not just stupid but criminal, and she only did this in order to to steal some money from him.

The plot is just shockingly bad, writing is much worse than in either MGS or MGS2, and honestly I think that's intentional, I think Kojima is mocking his fans for their reception of the previous game and so he and Fukushima created a hilariously stupid plot to see if fans would like it better. And a lot of them did in fact prefer this stupid schlock over the more serious and carefully crafted plots of the previous games,

All this stupidity also affects the gameplay in regards to the boss battles. Storywise the Cobra Unit are a laughable bunch of crazy old people, while in gameplay they are some of the worst boss battles in the series (nowhere near as bad as those in MGSV though), with most of them relying on annoying gimmicks: This one forces you to open the healing menu if you get damaged, this other one hides and runs away endlessly, this other expects you to use CQC even though you might not have even used CQC through the entire game and for this other you are supposed to use a very specific item in order to progress.... how I am supposed to know this?

What saves the game from being a complete disaster is the vastly improved stealth mechanics, just the camouflage system alone adds an entire new layer of depth to the game. Also levels are much larger, stamina management adds amusing survival elements, the camera system was significantly improved and even the less advanced equipment makes for a more interesting experience since you need to think better about how to use your tools.

The Metal Gear Solid series always had this problem of mixing brilliance with stupidity and MGS3 is possible the most glaring example of this: Gameplay wise it has has greatly improved mechanics alongside poor boss battles, storywise it has a dumb and schlocky plot that wants to take itself seriously at random moments. And finally it has a main antagonist that's very unlikable yet we are supposed to care about killing her just because she is a mother figure to Snake.

Em termos de gameplay, o melhor de toda a série, mas não possui o mesmo grau de experimentação da narrativa do antecessor - pra mim o ponto mais fascinante de MGS.

Hideo Kojima is perhaps one of the first full-fledged "autheurs" and artists of the videogaming universe, one of those visionaries that attempted to transform a gambling-related lucre business into the halfway between computer engineering, drama, and art. How else can be described the work of a man that is rehearsing the same poingant, cynic, and grotesque story in the course of 10 years?

If one has to track the beginning of this self-contained revolution, one has to look even before the first Metal Gear Solid, precisely to Final Fantasy 2 (1988, the NES game) and its cyberpunk relative, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1992, for the Konami's own cartridge console). At that time, plots and character personalities were mostly new novel ways of packaging the RPG genre of videogaming, that by then had become stuck in a long series of clichés that mined its own survival, especially with the rise of the action RPG (Zelda, and the same Metal Gear 1 from 1987) and the more popular platforming games (Mario, Sonic, you name it). Metal Gear 2 thus continued the character development pioneered at Squaresoft, yet with a twist: adding further drama to the action and more psychology. Fast Forward to 1998, and the same thing was applied in 3D games: both Metal Gear Solid (itself a subdolous hommage to Squaresoft) and Zelda: Ocarina of Time had repurposed the aesthetics and purpose of videogaming, from gambling to a crossover of engineering into the arts. Metal Gear 1 had its (technical) limitations, tough: facial expressions were lacking, diminishing the degree of drama that had to rely on the voice acting and camera angle (that is why the game excelled at those two points). That is why the equally popular Metal Gear Solid 2 improved these aspects, yet it was (even story-wise), the same game recycled in a better format for the new console era (and it is its drawnback).
Kojima and fellow employees had thus to demonstrate that theirs was not a simple reheasrsal of the same game over and over, they had to come up with something more original and more long-lasting if the metal gear franchise was to earn its immortality meritocratically. And in 2005 they succeeded with this game.

Metal Gear Solid 3 once again raised what was to expect from videogames and, to tell the truth, there is a good chance that no game in the last 15 years was capable of truly coming up with an equally appealing and revolutionary sense of gaming.
The secret of this game and its long-lasting appeal and revolution is the degree of interaction: whereas other 3D games were solid block of everything, the degree of interaction of the player with her/his surroundings was unparalleled at the time (or of all times, if that matters). It feels like a true survival experience. It is hard to find games from the same time that has such a graphically pleasing depiction of the wild and of the open nature: Zelda games, albeit extremely graphically appealing, did not feature the same amount of interaction with the environment: in Metal Gear Solid 3, whatever you do has repercussions on the gameplay, from how you dress to how loud you are, your character sleeps, gets poisoned, gets realistically injured (and gets eventually a permanent injury later on), gets burns, bone breakings that he has to heal with self-constructed clutches, food poisoning, and so on, and, most importantly, so do other characters, from the enemies to Eve (the (Anti)-Heroine) that you have to help later on in the game. Yes, Snake even gets addicted to cigarettes which have repercussions and effects on him. You have to manage your food, outsource it during your explorations and peregrinations, and so forth. Animals are there and interact with the surroundings, and you can eat whatever (at your own risk), and so do plants. Your aspect plays a crucial role too, as how you dress determines your degree of stealth-camouflage. It feels like an extreme life experience at times, it is clearly a step beyond the whole action RPG genre, surpassing and setting new levels for the genre.

Voice acting has always been a strong appeal in this game, and so the cinematics. The game goes further and introduces novel cinematic techniques drawn from cinema, that can even be optional: you can look in first-person view on key cutscene and grasp additional details that can help you in the game.
The Shakesperean dimension is evoked both in the grotesque sense of tragedy and the manipulation side characters enact to reach their own goals: from the traitorous Eve to the Boss, who basically entangled Snake there to kill her since she had not the will to do so from the very beginning. The whole game feels like a play in which the Snake (tempted by/tempting Eve) is basically used by anyone for their own means and purposes, which have somehow a few parallels with the Biblical history of the Genesis. Drama, violence, and the gross-out humor intertwine.
Furthermore, the story can be altered in-game by taking story-influencing decisions that can slightly alter the outcome of the game, either facilitating or complicating it, adding to the replay value overall.

Because of its extreme depth, detail, and degree of interaction that was unmatched at the time, this qualifies as the masterpiece of the Playstation 2 games, let alone the sound and voice acting compartments.
It is also a foreshadowing of a future in which virtual reality and videogaming get intrinsically blurred by the degree of interaction with the environment they can reach, and the cause-effect relations that are enacted. A very impressive work of engineering, programming, and architecture.

4.5/5 ( 9 )

What can you say about this game that hasn't been said?
The best in the series in my opinion, the boss fights are downright amazing, so varied, each one is unique and has its own feel and strategy.
It features the most likeable protagonist in the series, an admittedly convoluted but great story, amazing atmosphere throughout the game, amazing level design, some of the best stealth gameplay in gaming history. It's the best of all Metal Gear games that came before and after.
There aren't many games i'd call a masterpiece but this one is definitely it.

While it may not be as mind blowingly amazing as MGS2 is, MGS3 does improve on the gameplay a little bit in some pretty satisfying ways. Some boss battles feel a bit too trial-and-error in order to know how to beat them, which is unfortunate especially since the bosses themselves are so memorable. The escort section at the end is obnoxious, which is unfortunate, but with a good story (though probably not as good as the first two) and very varied and deep gameplay, MGS3 is, of course, another great entry in the series.

It's not that I dislike this game as much as I dislike the direction it took the series in. The end result is something that is fun to play, but leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

Mechanically, yes, the game is quite good, but would it be worth sacrificing the artistic themes and subversions of the medium in previous entries? Not at all. It would take mechanics as polished and purely enjoyable as The Phantom Pain's to offset that loss. Even then, the gameplay mechanics are what's GOOD about Metal Gear, while what's GREAT about it is entirely absent.

Generally speaking, the boss fights are some of the worst in the series. I'm hesitant to say this, because some of the gimmicks are excellent (the different, novel ways to kill The End come to mind), but the actual FIGHTS themselves are some of the most tedious and meaningless. Great Metal Gear bosses have a thematic point, while I'm not sure this game has a point at all.

The Boss is a horribly-written, insufferable character, far more egregious than anyone in MGS2, despite popular opinion. She acts as a surrogate for the ideas that would spawn later, more interesting events in the timeline. That's really the thing about Snake Eater, it seems obsessed with the genius of its own series.

Coming off of one of the greatest games of all time in MGS2, Snake Eater loves itself and its fellow members of the Metal Gear canon. The game creates a bizarre parallel where it seems explicitly for fans, in its origin story of their favorite protagonist, yet is only suitable as an entry point for better games in the series. I started with Snake Eater, I liked it much more at that point in time, I would even recommend it to newcomers 90% of the time. I see it as a bridge to the better games, where others see the series' pinnacle.

It is fun to play, but blandly so, and the pointless and irrelevance of its game world is toxic and unintentionally bleak.