The “3″ in the title Metal Gear Solid 3 (MGS3) indicates that this isn’t a new series in games. MGS3 continues the saga built by Kojima that stretches all the way back to Metal Gear for the NES. In MGS3, Kojima presents the tale of the original Snake character, who will eventually become Big Boss of Metal Gear and Metal Gear Solid 1. So yes, even Kojima couldn’t resist the power of the darkside – a.k.a. the prequel. MGS3 has a lot of great points and some small lame ones as well.
Most obviously, if you’ve never played a MGS game before, MGS3 is not the time to jump in. Considering how MGS2 and 3 reference back to MGS1 so often, if you haven’t played MGS1 you’ll be completely lost. Having played MGS1, it is easy to say I was still lost from time to time. Kojima tells a great story, but his biggest downfall is that there’s more story and plot than gameplay. You will most likely be watching more cut scenes than anything else, so make sure you’re comfortable, because some of them are long. A prime example of this would be the ending. Now sure, I beat your game and I deserve a reward, but an hour long cut scene didn’t seem fitting. This is also one of those games that has a level before the intro to the game actually starts make the first level sometimes pointless. So when you suck real bad at the first level, be prepared to keep a walkthrough on hand. For those of you out there who hate prequels, you’re out of luck. If you want to skip MGS3 and go to MGS4 then you’ll be utterly lost. MGS4 pulls from every game, but MGS3 especially. And trust me, once you get through MGS4 you’ll be glad you played through MGS3. That being aside, let’s get down to the gameplay.
MGS is renowned for its sneaking. It’s one of the first games that realistically lets you know you can NOT take down 50 people at once. Your best defense is to hide, and hide often. The negative side to this is that you’ll spend a good deal of time hiding and waiting for an all clear signal, just to come out of hiding and trip the alarms again. MGS3 adds a lot to the mechanics from MGS2. You now need to kill and hunt for food, and you need to change your camouflage to blend into the background. You also have to tend to your wounds. Fractured bones, bullet wounds, paper cuts- they all must be addressed to stay healthy. Above all, the camouflage is the best aspect of this game. If you wear the right camouflage, you could lay prone in a grassy field and a guard could walk right about 2 feet from you and not notice. To top it off, since the cut scenes use in-game models, Snake will stay in camouflage throughout the cut scenes, instead of switching to another outfit, as if it’s a pre-rendered cut scene. So, for instance, if Snake is wearing a Zombie face paint, and you go to a cut scene Snake will have the Zombie face paint in the cut scene, making the game seem more fluid. I can’t say enough about how simple this process makes the games pretty impressive. The good news is if you’ve played any other MGS then the controls are exactly the same, except for adding the CQC (close quarter combat) system. This is a double-edged sword for me. Although I find the controls and menus pretty intuitive, they’re also outdated. I never had a problem with a top down view in MGS1 and 2, but I’ve played a lot of games since then that use 3rd person view. To come back to a top down view seemed dated, and many times I tripped the alarms because I couldn’t see around the corner. Since the game is set in the 1960s, some simple tools like a heads up display that shows where bad guys are and their cone of vision are not present. This was a he issue that Kojima fixed in the Subsistence (director’s cut). In Subsistence you can spin the camera around completely to see everything near Snake. Although you could now have a better range of sight, there brought new issues. The main would be the fact the game was really built with the top down camera, so from time to time if you’re in a jungle and you spin the camera too much you may become disoriented. And for people not happy with the new camera, rest assure you can switch back to the top down camera at anytime, so you can get the best of both cameras.
MGS has always had interesting boss fights. MGS3 goes beyond simple boss fights. Not only do you have to out think the boss, but in most cases, the game itself. I don’t want to give away game secrets (That’s what walkthroughs are for!), but there’s a boss that’s rather advanced in age. You have the choice of fighting him head on, or avoiding him. Head on was darn near impossible, but fun. Eventually, I opted for the easy way out. This meant I literally had to not play the game for a week. When I turned the game back on, the boss had died from old age. Snake isn’t happy with you for not having a fair fight, but he’ll get over it, and it’s about time you take advantage of a boss’ weakness! MGS3 deserves to be played for the way you need to take down some bosses, alone. You have to think outside the box and sometimes dying doesn’t mean you’ve lost the fight.
MGS3 has a pretty high replay value. Despite the long-winded, and sometimes preachy, cut scenes, (why does every bad guy have to tell you his plot?), the first thing you want to do when the game ends is start over. For me, my reasons come down to mastering the CQC and camouflage system. But above all, I suck at MGS’s sneaking. It makes me want to play the game over again just to see if I can finally sneak around without being caught. This game is one that pushes the PS2 to its limits and still looks good on the PS3. They never cut corners in the look of the game. Although I would suggest people try this game, I would once again reiterate that it helps to play MGS1 before playing this game. You could skip MGS2 to play MGS3 since 3 is the prequel and 2 is more like an afterthought to 1. But, that’s a review of its own.