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Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

Some games are so good, it’s almost intimidating to play them. You begin to wonder if your gaming skills are up to the task. You bought the game because you know it’s great. You know it’s great because everyone says so. And you agree. But you’re almost hesitant to pop it in. Now imagine trying to review a title like that. This is always how I’ve felt about the Metal Gear Solid series. Ever since I hopped on board with the series in its PSone incarnation, it’s been a game whose pure excellence has left me so in awe, I’m a bit hesitant to pick up the controller and play it, let alone write a critique of it.

Despite these Wayne’s World-style, “We’re not worthy!” feelings, I was eager to launch myself into the world of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, and boy has it been rewarding. While visually amazing, as the series always is, the last installment, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty did have its weaknesses; everyone knows that the Snake-Raiden switcharoo was not well-received, and the “run around as naked Raiden” was cringe-inducing, so the hope has been that MGS3 would make up for it.

Does it ever. Going back in time to play in the Cold War-era, post-Bay of Pigs 1960s, to play as a much earlier “Snake” than the one we’re used to from previous games, Snake Eater plays with great atmosphere and intensity, benefiting from the Cold War setting for the appropriate “fear of nuclear annihilation” atmosphere that worked so well for spy fiction of all sorts, right up until the fall of the Soviet Union at the very end of the 1980s. While MGS and MGS2 relied on 24-style terrorists for its enemies, many of those antagonists were Cold War dinosaurs in a post-Cold War world, so those games didn’t benefit from a post-September 11-style of villain; thus, the move back in time to the actual Cold War makes the game feel more “native” and “at home.”

The visual style of the game is, amazingly enough, several steps above the last chapter, MGS2, even though both are PS2 games. Now more familiar with the boundaries of the PS2 hardware, Hideo Kojima’s team has done a superior job of pushing the limits of the hardware more effectively than last time out. Areas and environments are not just limited to military set-pieces, as before, and the result of plopping Snake down in an outdoor setting allows for far more complex and detailed environments. It also allows for an all-new set of stealth challenges and gameplay elements, such as survival techniques.

Some of these elements gave long-time series fans a healthy sense of skepticism. Needing to eat and drink to survive? Learning what Snake likes to eat, or doesn’t? Fixing your wounds in the field? Either you were pumped at the new level of realism or worried it might drag the game down to a slow plod. Fortunately, the latter is not the case; the new gameplay elements do add a lot of new, additional realism to the series without significantly entrenching the game in a muddy trench. Need to eat? There’s plenty of wildlife to be found in most environments; some easier to kill than others. Mending your wounds in the field? It plays out like a macho scene from Rambo. It adds to the realism of the game without slowing you down, and that’s good news.

The rest of the good news is nothing new for Metal Gear Solid games; the plot is deep, rich in character and intrigue, the surprises and betrayals and other twists of fate plentiful. Some folks hate prequels because, the argument goes, with the future already known, all possibility for surprise is ruined. Yet that’s not quite the case with Metal Gear Solid; it’s become clear that more than one agent has “worn” the title of Solid Snake throughout history, so even going back in time doesn’t necessarily destroy suspense.

The premise of the game begins with somewhat standard spy fare; in the wake of the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, Snake is briefed that much of what we think we know of those events is a cover story for a darker, more insidious reality. Apparently, a German scientist captured in the closing days of World War II, active in Russia, has created a super-weapon and, out of conscience, wants to leave and take the secrets of its creation with him. But rescue in Snake’s world is never easy and despite a prologue segment of the game where you seem to rescue the scientist with some ease, events soon make Snake’s life more difficult and the mission about a million times harder; while trying to avoid spoilers, let’s just say that the first rescue gets botched and launches Snake and the mission that makes up the bulk of the rest of the game.

In a game rife with younger versions of familiar characters, Snake is sent into wilderness settings to accomplish his missions, and while there must blend into his surroundings using appropriately-colored clothing and military face-paint. The stakes are now not only rescue and world-saving, but the personal survival element is present at its most basic, even when enemies are not present on screen; enjoy the segments of the game where wildlife is rampant, because in some portions of the game, prey – and thus, your food sources – is more rare; conservation of resources is part of the key to survival.

Yet there are other elements that enhance the gameplay and make MGS3 more than just the same type of gameplay in a new setting. For example, gone is the ever-present radar that has been there in the previous two titles, cluing you in to the presence of enemies you can’t otherwise see; in its place is simply environmental clues, such as voices and other sound effects, footprints and a variety of “real world” cues that an observant spy would have in his capabilities – it sounds a bit daunting but once you’ve played MGS3, you’ll likely find the radar in previous titles a bit of a “giveaway” that simplifies the gaming experience at the expense of a deeper stealth experience.

Yet let’s not take the game’s purported “realism” too seriously, here; although the game is a quantum leap ahead of MGS2 on many levels, the game is still a game and has many elements that stretch credibility if you take the game too seriously from a cinematic perspective. For example, let’s say you’re Snake and you’re hiding in the tall grass as a soldier patrols nearby. Then, you suddenly realize that your golden-brown desert camouflage is not exactly blending in well, and neither is your matching face paint. In MGS3, you simply go to the menu and instruct Snake to switch over to dark green-and-black “jungle” camouflage, and change his face paint to green and black also. Do that, exit out of the menu, and suddenly Snake’s in his all-new gear right at the moment that you left off. Now, this is standard procedure in games of this sort, but we all know that in the “real world” a soldier couldn’t be hiding in tall grass with an enemy solider nearby and suddenly change his clothes, his appearance and have it all take place instantaneously without Snake making noise and moving blades of grass, no matter how good the camouflage may be.

And what about the bodies of dead enemies Snake has killed? Do those corpses go on lying there, creating a stink and an obvious giveaway that all is not well and spies are about? Not really; once a corpse goes cold in the game, after Snake robs it of supplies, the body remains for a while, then flickers and disappears. Would that all “inconvenient bodies” were as easy to dispose of; it’s hard to claim MGS3 is the ultimate reality engine as long as bodies in the game flicker and disappear; they ought to remain to be potentially discovered, a “ticking time bomb” of suspense in and of themselves. And what about all those crocs you’ve been carving up for food? Unless Snake buries the remains, such things should remain in place for a guard to stumble across and sound the alarm on.

Imagine this scene: Snake makes his way carefully toward the enemy base, using his best stealth procedures. He sneaks by guards and enters the cell where the hostage he is supposed to rescue is waiting; suddenly, an alarm goes off and the whole camp is on high alert. Did Snake wear the wrong face paint or stand up from a crouch at an inopportune moment? No; but the player playing Snake was careless. About 200 meters from the camp, in the woods, guards have found the remains of a monkey Snake butchered up for food, as well as the fresh body of a guard whose throat he slit. Since the player never disposed of the remains, and they didn’t blink out of existence 30 seconds after their death, they’re still around to be discovered and send the local guards into a panic. In such a game, one could give Snake the luxury of several options for body disposal, each with advantages and disadvantages. He could simply pull the body into some heavy brush to conceal it; toss some lime on the body and cover it with some twigs and leaves; immolate the body, despite the risk of smoke and scent it would cause; or bury the body in a shallow grave. There might even be other options if time is given to get creative with the game engine. But with so many other aspects of Metal Gear Solid being so “real world” in execution, the blinking and disappearing bodies are an element that really do remind you you’re in a videogame.

My only other pet peeve with Metal Gear Solid 3 is that so many of the coolest battles play out in non-interactive story segments, rather than player-controlled battles. Sure, there are plenty of cool boss-battles to be found in MGS3, including one involving a sniper taking pot-shots at you while you try to stay alive long enough to track him down and put him down; it’s a lengthy, tense battle that lasts for nearly an hour and really tests a gamer’s mettle. Yet, there are still many battles that play out in cinemas and they do expose some of the weaknesses of the player-controlled battle engine: Why can’t you get Snake in those hyper-cool gun stances when you’re the one in control? Why can’t you pull off the same hyper-cool battle acrobatics when you’re in control? While player-controlled battles are great, they are not as polished as the cinema battles and that means there’s still some room for the series to grow into.

Now, this is different than the criticism some level at the series; some gamers complain the game just has too many cinemas that “get in the way” of playing the game. That, by now, is a bogus criticism; sure, when Metal Gear Solid debuted on PSone, those used to the SNES outings could raise that as a difference in the gaming experience they were used to from more archaic platforms; but by now, people should be used to the type of game Hideo Kojima likes to produce – he enjoys delivering cinematic-style gameplay with lots of story, so either you’re gonna like that, or you don’t. If you don’t like Kojima-style games, with lots of story segments between intense gaming portions, then this outing won’t convert you. However, if you like your game to have more of a movie-style feel, MGS3 is an example of a master game designer producing a work at the height of his executive producing powers.

While the game offers a modest online element, allowing you to download new camouflage designs and other stuff that’s not that engaging, for the most part MGS3 sticks to its core strength; an offline, single-player stealth action game that – thank god – you don’t need a light gun to play. Offering a better story than ever, slightly less preachy but still with a message, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is by far the best entry yet into the series and is loaded with all the secrets, extras and in-jokes you’ve come to expect from one of the top game designers working today. Far superior to Sons of Liberty, which was excellent but a disappointment due to the Snake-Raiden disaster, Metal Gear Solid is arguably the best game you can find on the PS2. You’d have to be a fool, or really not like the stealth genre at all, to disapprove of this game.

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Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Mar 7th, 2005 and is filed under PS2 Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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