Metal Gear Solid 3 Review

hello ladies and gentlemen this is the third in a series of four reviews that I'm doing on Metal Gear Solid if you've never watched these videos before then I recommend starting with the previous two videos first as this one picks up where those left off as such this video contains full spoilers for Metal Gear Solid one two and three Metal Gear Solid 3 which incidentally doesn't feature Metal Gear or Solid Snake was released in 2004 for the PlayStation 2 instead of adopting the near-future setting of the previous games mgs3 goes back to the Cold War and follows Big Boss on one of his earlier covert missions in Soviet territory once again the opening cutscene is worthy of commendation tracking Big Boss as he undergoes a high-altitude drop into enemy territory it recalls the bridge seen from mgs2 but on a grander scale keeping with the times the game ditches the Kodak from the previous titles and instead uses a radio it's an interesting choice since I've always gotten the impression that the Talking Heads present on the Kodak screens remain lis a way to maintain player interest in the conversations they probably could have presented some stylized split-screen view of the radio conversations to maintain this which shows the places more accurately in snake shoes instead by sacrificing a valuable feature I like the route they took with the radio and initially it's very charming to see the more low-tech solution especially the little pictures the player can flip through while they're talking over the course of the entire story I think it does end up detracting a little though once the novelty wears off it's a weaker version of the codec than either of the previous games unlike the sparsely-populated codec of mgs - big boss can talk to various members of a support team and in fact they're almost perfectly analogous to the supporting members from mgs1 major 0 replaces Colonel Campbell paramedic fills the shoes of Naomi and mei-ling SIGINT provides military information like Natasha Eva acts as a similar contact to Meryl and the boss parallels Master Miller of these characters the boss is the most important which is why she's given a lot of radio time right at the start where her relationship with snake is clearly established while I think it was the right decision to introduce the boss so early there's a really questionable amount of time attic exposition thrown into her dialogue right from the get-go she basically spells out the main theme of the story immediately talking at length about the soldiers pace in war and how the times change allies and enemies listen to me jack just because soldiers are on the same side right now doesn't mean they always will be having personal feelings about your comrades is one of the worst sins you can commit politics determine who you face on the battlefield it almost seems like the boss is prepping snake for the unfortunate events to follow much later in the story yes it doesn't seem like something which would be on the boss's mind at that particular moment though since you would be well used to that aspect of war and it sort of comes out of nowhere when snake is asking what makes a good soldier I feel like the timing on this is just a little bit misplaced and I think it would have felt a lot more natural had it been placed into the start of operation snake eater a little while later since it's only once the virtuous mission is completed that the boss knows snake will eventually have to kill her then not only would the underlying message still just wrong but the words would mean a lot more since the boss would have an ulterior motive for saying them this isn't the only bit which feels out of place during the opening scenes at the start the major mentions to snake that anyone could be listening into their conversations you already in enemy territory somebody might be listening in not long after that he goes into great detail about the operation including the fact that snake is an American operative aren't supposed to be any American soldiers in Russia it could spark an international incident he also talks about how survival will be paramount but earlier states that they have a four hour time limit on the virtuous mission if the game hadn't been broken into two separate operations this would all make a lot more sense I know there's a lot of crazy stuff in this series so you have to be willing to suspend your disbelief to some degree but these are basic story inconsistencies that are glaring and completely unnecessary shortly after this introduction is complete the boss introduces the largest new gameplay element in mgs3 the camo index since the game takes place in a jungle rather than the industrial environments of the other games snake is expected to use camouflage to blend into his surroundings the camo index it's at the top right hand corner of the screen and gives the player an indication of how tough they are to see it's a sort of analogue version of the stealth camo from the previous games 100% means snake is invisible and low or even negative figures means snake sticks out like a sore thumb the soliton radar has also been removed instead replaced with some much more low-tech less useful equivalents and the guards have been gifted vastly improved senses this all works together to make mgs3 much slower paced compared to its predecessors snake often needs to crawl around in the grass and slowly take out the guards in an area since the removal of the radar and the increased vision of the guards makes running around much more difficult to get away with than it was before the camo system has its ups and downs blending into the environment itself is great the player needs to pay attention to the various textures in the environment and match up as best they can to remain unseen the tall grass adds another element to the mix and snakes movement itself acts as a modifier as well the slower he moves the harder he is to see the player has enough factors to consider to make things interesting the final element are snakes clothes themselves which can be changed from the camel menu to more closely match the environment he's in this is handled by a menu system which becomes a major going into the menu to change the camo eats up a serious amount of time and disrupts the experience the menu usage in mgs3 is perhaps the biggest problem with the game now but the original release of snake eater suffered from something worse the adherence to the top-down camera standard from the rest of the series the later re-release of subsistence included a much more traditional third-person camera which was pulled down to ground level and controlled with the right analog stick I can certainly understand why Kojima wanted to stick with the top-down camera from the previous titles to keep mgs3 feed and consistent with its predecessors but all the other changes feel like they were designed to work with the subsistence camera in particular the top-down point of view doesn't mesh very well with the vastly improved vision of the guards for the purposes of this video I'm using the newer camera as I feel it's by far the better option of the two so much so that I'd consider the camera in the original release to be one of Kojima's biggest blunders with the series CQC is touted as another new addition but I'm not sure if you can really call it that snake has a slightly expanded moveset when it comes to hand-to-hand combat for example guards can be drawn to the ground with ease but overall this doesn't have much impact on the game at all guards can be interrogated which is a nice touch but it's debatable whether this falls under the umbrella of CQC at all slicing throats is a nice new move but it's more or less the same as the neck breaking from the other games the movements are fancier but they accomplish practically nothing that wasn't possible in the previous games that said they are wonderfully animated and you can tell how much effort was put into the way this looks and feels the animations even withstand the scrutiny of being shown in slow motion close up on the menu screen although this wasn't that a huge amount in the game it does make the close combat options vastly more satisfying to use which is a benefit in and of itself even if the player will never really be forced to use them at any point the general changes from mgs to like first-person aiming persist and layering these with the new stuff in MGS tree produces something vastly different from mgs1 the stealth premise is common to both games but the comparisons start to run thin pretty quickly mgs 3 is a far more methodical slow game than mgs one ever was but I don't think either approach is inherently better than the other there's a lot of satisfaction to be gained from the speed at which mgs one proceeds it helps the player to feel much more skilled and the results are binary either snake makes it through an area on detected or an alert phase happens this simple nature of being detected or undetected makes success that much more satisfying since its absolute skilled players well used to the game can get through mgs3 at a decent pace even rivaling mgs1 but most players are unlikely to manage it and it's not designed to be played this way getting through an area usually necessitates shooting the guards are at least allowing them to become suspicious that snake is nearby this combined with the slower movement makes the success feel a little less absolute than mgs1 which was a far more arcade-like experience despite this I'd have to say I find mgs3 more satisfying before I played the game I would never have guessed that lying in grass and moving along at a snail's pace would make for a very satisfying experience but it does it feels downright predatory it's a wise idea to stick to the tall grass as much as possible almost like an animal but unfortunately instead of pouncing on the prey all it takes is a single headshot from long-range the first-person aiming at mgs 2 made the guards much easier to deal with than mgs one but the cramped environments and higher guard density went a long way towards offsetting this change the environments in mgs3 are more sprawling and open than they've ever been which makes the first-person aiming even more valuable than it was before it's a little too easy to just pop headshots from halfway across an area until the whole place is cleared out I feel like this could have been remedied a lot by removing the abundance of weapons and most importantly the silencers they now wear down with each use which would be a nice touch if they weren't so easy to come by without the ability to fire silently from across the map all the time I think the game would have been improved for the better by forcing the player to get close to the guards to take them out or find a way to avoid them completely that sounds a lot more like the essence of Metal Gear than shooting people in the head there's also plenty of traps in the environment and it might have been interesting to give the player away of creating some of these as a way of dealing with guards claymores are always an option of course but they caused a huge amount of noise defeating the purpose going back to an area a player would need to be wary of their own traps which sounds like exactly the kind of trick Kojima would love to pull on people although the guards are easier to deal with when advancing cautiously the players patience is pushed much further than it ever was before thanks to this slow pacing rash decisions and impatience are punished just as harshly as ever so it's easy to see how some players might run into difficulty adapting to the slower speed after getting used to the changes though it's unlikely players will run into too much trouble as they go along thankfully the series has always been good at accommodating self-imposed challenges the tranquilizers which were introduced in mgs two are probably the best example giving the player a way to do non-lethal runs at the expense of having to use a comparatively poor weapon for the whole game this option returns in mgs3 and the improved feel of the close quarters combat also tempts the player into trying to use it when they don't necessarily have to combined with the large amount of difficulty levels that can be unlocked it's a game which is really as difficult as you want to make it players are given some time to get to grips with the new mechanics on the virtuous mission this acts as an extended introduction similar to the tanker section from Metal Gear Solid 2 and introduces several of the characters Ocelot appears again but in a nearly unrecognizable form I don't think anyone who had imagined our slots past was expecting to see him making silly hand gestures and meowing to call in backup prequels are a tough thing to get right since people have a way of filling in backstories for these characters themselves and contradicting those impressions can prove to be disastrous at first I wasn't impressed by the new version of Ocelot but by the end of the game I think he becomes quite likable largely because of the relationship that starts to form between him and snake as the story unfolds it's also refreshing to see an otherwise very serious character treated this way Ocelot was young at one stage just like anyone else and it would have been ridiculous to suggest he had been born with the personality he has by the time the later games rolled around immediately after the run-in with Ursula snake comes across the boss on the bridge where she reveals she's defecting to the Soviet Union the Cobra unit and Vol'jin are also introduced with nearly all of their special abilities being put to use essentially telling us these will be the boss fights even after the boss assault snake dismantles his gun and breaks his arm he still reaches out to her when she holds out her hand which goes to show just how highly he thinks of her the body language here is great and says a lot in a more subtle way than normal for Kojima ah ultimately snake is thrown off the bridge and left a float downriver not long after Vol'jin being the absolute nutcase that he is decides to fire off one of the mini nukes which kicks off the main section of the game it's noteworthy that the conversation between Johnson and Khrushchev has shown rather than merely alluded to in previous games the political motivations behind events were left hazy are only barely touched upon mgs3 shows the scene because it fits perfectly with the central theme of the changing times it's also no mistakes that the events take place during the Cold War the relationship between America and Russia today contrasts well with the events back then Kojima also goes one further and places the bosses history back in World War two when Russia and the US were allied towards a common goal more effectively illustrating his point after this set up the Snake Eater mission begins and snake quickly runs back into the boss who once again dismantles is gone there's a clear mentor-student relationship at work here not totally dissimilar from the one between Ryden and snake from the last game but it's made even more explicit here the physical nature of their fights demonstrates the boss's dominance very clearly it's practically embarrassing for snake to have his gun ripped out of his hands and destroyed not only that for Big Boss was described as a legend in the previous games at least on par with Solid Snake which makes the boss a force to be reckoned with one snake meets Eva and shuts down a slot again that's when the game really opens up and the interruptions ease off it's now that the environment really starts to shine the different areas alternate between being very linear and becoming more open overall I'd say the jungle suffers a little from how wedged in Aitkin field sometimes but it was pushing the PlayStation 2 to its limits and his trade-off allowed the team to maintain the level of detail the Metal Gear series had become known for the jungle is covered in all sorts of flora and fauna skittering about there's birds frogs snakes rats bats rabbits and crocodiles some of these are more complicated behaviors than others snake and hunt and ultimately eat the various animals fruits and mushrooms to replenish his stamina meter one of the other new additions the meter works well with the more long-form slow paced progress if it gets load and snakes health won't regenerate properly his stomach will also start to crumble potentially giving away his position and his hand will be less steady when aiming it's a nice addition not one which would have worked in the previous games but it's a perfect fit here considering the amount of effort that obviously went into crafting the ecosystem it's surprising it doesn't play a larger part it can largely be ignored since there's also rations and other food items lying around that snakin use instead this isn't this ad edition of the animals is a worthless one the game would have felt very sterile without them if you can ignore how cramped the jungle is sometimes it's an extremely impressive environment thanks to how much life all these animals bring to it Ocelot reappears again after a while to present snake with the first boss fight it's very similar to the alga fight from mgs to a first-person one-on-one battle with pistols it's never connected with me as much as the olga fight though snake can shoot a beehive to disturb Ocelot but this is a lot less shocking than Olga positioning the light and mgs2 to throw off snakes vision it's a fairly straight gun battle as the first boss something which seems to have become tradition at this point Ocelot is a fairly normal character in comparison to the Payne who comes along afterwards he's somehow able to control Hornets and can even fire them out of his mouth the strange elements of the pain are not only ridiculous they're unnecessary he doesn't make for a particularly good boss fight and his name doesn't even fit the matically what most of the other bosses pain isn't an emotion it's a sensation I also think it's fair to assume that the pain along with all of the other cobras setup his attack on snake in advance it's clearly supposed to be an ambush of every area in the entire game the pain picks the single worst face the ambush snake standing on a platform conveniently surrounded by water so snake and avoid the Hornets everything about the pain and his encounter with snake is contrived I believe gameplay is king so I can handle contrived scenarios if they lead to an interesting fight but here they most certainly don't it's nothing more than swimming around and firing off a few shots every now and then afterwards snake ends up in a river where a new type of enemy almost as bizarre as the pain is introduced in the form of the hovercraft guards during clusion here is utterly ridiculous since the timeframe for the action is supposed to be the 60s there's something vaguely retro about them which does help them to blend in somewhat but the level of anachronism here is off the charts it's like mgs3 wants to have it both ways it goes to some lengths to establish a veneer of 1960 spy films a sexy double agent a British commander and even the aesthetics of the men you feel somewhat retro that's all well and good and mixing it with a higher than normal level of technology would be fine if this was a standalone game it's not though the other Metal Gear Solid games had an undercurrent of paranoia with regards to technology and the near future setting helped establish this in MGS - snake runs across a cipher on the tanker and this was supposed to be an interesting moment it was the first time we had seen a small unmanned drone which could fly around anywhere an advancement in technology compared to mgs1 by the time the plant section happens just two years later the ciphers are being used far more frequently technology is are we steadily advancing in the Metal Gear universe but MGS 3 really screws up this progression once again these strange cards are not only ridiculous they're unnecessary there's no point in the game where they perform any duty a regular guard couldn't fulfill very easily after a bit more trekking through the jungle snake arrives in the research lab where he finds Grandin who explains his plans about building a walking tank this connection to the previous games feels far more force than the other stuff especially since this conversation would mean next to nothing to snake at the time the plans for Metal Gear Rex are shoved in front of snakes face even though Otacon was supposed to be the one who designed it I can only assume as well that this bit where the origin of the Metal Gear name is explained must make a lot more sense in Japanese because it makes no sense to me at all this technology will be the missing link between infantry and artillery a kind of Metal Gear if you will and this magnificent Metal Gear will mark a revolutionary step forward in weapons development metal here that said Grenon is a likable character and his dismissal of the shadow heart as a misguided project seems perfectly reasonable sleep up next is the fear who currently shoots snake in the leg thereby illustrating one of the worst new additions to mgs3 the cure menu this is introduced at the end of the virtuous mission and to begin with it's an impressive little menu where damage inflicted to snake is shown very specifically and various tools can be used to treat the wounds sometimes it's fine but a lot of the time it gets in the way of the pacing particularly during the boss fights it's massively disruptive to the experience to be in the middle of a boss but then be forced into a minute or so of menu you we're snake is supposed to be performing an operation on himself it's poorly implemented but I don't think it was necessarily a bad idea there's certainly a lot of thought put into the various ways they can take damage it's just a shame it forces so much menu usage I think this menu should have been locked during boss fights so that players would have to deal with the injuries afterwards looking over battle scars once a boss is complete would probably be a lot more enjoyable and in a way rewarding disruption isn't the only issue though after healing a few wounds it can start to become tedious because the practice simply involves choosing stuff from a menu I feel like they should have even removed the Cure menu entirely or made it more interesting it could have done with a bit more interactivity like hammering the square button for a few seconds to keep the wound compressed or making some slicing motions with the analog stick to use a scalpel anything at all would have made these more interesting than they are currently that said this would potentially annoy players even more if they were forced into repetitive actions every time they took serious damage all told there are four major menus in mgs3 the Cure menu the equipment menu the food menu and the camouflage menu the camouflage and food menus while intrusive feel much more vital than the cure and equipment menus which probably could have been removed outright I appreciate that the team we're trying to take a lot of different ideas and make them work here but the execution is sloppy the goal here should be to facilitate players crawling around the jungle not force them to crawl around the bloated interface the fight with the fear himself is about as bland as the fight with the pain I think one of the largest issues with these boss fights is how easy it is to just stand somewhere and shoot them with a rifle for massive damage the player barely has to do anything at all other than shoot and dodge the occasional attack they each have a gimmick like previous bosses in the series but they don't force the player to do anything other than move around a little and look down the barrel of a gun many of the other bosses in the series forced the player to take on different tasks or at least have more major consequences for under estimating them this place is littered with traps but the way the fear moves rapidly from tree to tree encourages the player to stand still and track his movements rather than move around the environment themselves it would have made a lot more sense to use traps in conjunction with a boss that snake really needs to flee from in typical Metal Gear fashion the next boss isn't far away this time snake goes up against the end and extreme sniper in my Metal Gear Solid 1 review I said I probably consider the Vulcan Raven fight to be my favor Metal Gear Solid boss because of how well it personifies the series well to be honest I was excluding the battle at the end because it's not just my favorite in the series I think it's possibly the greatest boss in any game I've ever played it's analogous to the snowfield fight with Sniper Wolf from mgs1 but it's executed on another level entirely boss fights are typically personified by action even in a stealth game like Metal Gear Solid all the bosses are about snake taking on opponents with sheer force and a little bit of cleverness the fast-paced boss music might kick in the character might seem to be against impossible odds but through scaled fast reflexes and a bit of luck they'll pull through it's in your face it's exciting and it's over after a couple of minutes this boss fight can last over an hour has for entire areas dedicated to it and mostly involves crawling around this is one of those things I think kijima gets away with that many other designers wouldn't dare to try it's a bald subversion of the boss fight as a construct nothing but snake and the end playing hide and seek for as long as it takes for one of them to get the job done best of all it fits the stealth theme of the game perfectly and it feels like a genuine battle between two snipers the length of the fight also helps to accentuate the survival system in a way no other fighters and the length of time between each confrontation also helps the Cure menu to feel less intrusive not only that but the radio doesn't interrupt either unless the player decides they need advice depending on the length of the battle this single boss fight may be the longest completely uninterrupted sequence of gameplay in the entire game in short the fight with the end goes against the established notions of how a boss fight should be constructed but not just for the sake of it it bravely risks alienating some players and something amazing is crafted as a result it stresses all of the good points of mgs threes core mechanics and minimizes the interruptions as if this boss wasn't amazing enough it's also got a few of those wonderful Metal Gear Solid touches after the end is wheeled out during a cutscene earlier in the game the player can quickly snipe him if they do this they don't have to fight him later another way to deal with them is to save during the fight itself if the player saves then waits a week or changes the internal clock for with a week then the end will die of old age both of these additions are fantastic and it's noteworthy that they both the player to skip the boss entirely I think this was an intentional decision to allow players to circumvent the boss fight on repeat playthroughs since it can eat up a lot of time and it isn't necessarily something players will want to experience more than once even if they want to play most of the game again neither method is likely to be discovered on the first playthrough but both give players a way of avoiding the fight on subsequent playthroughs without feeling like a cheat snake has come pretty far already at this point but the game is far from over this is one of the biggest improvements in mgs3 compared to the earlier games there's a little bit of backtracking most notably at the start and a little while later after snake meets Grandin but this is the first and the solid series which really feels like it has all the space that it needs it's interesting as well because the environments in mgs 1 & 2 were full of geometrical shapes which are a lot easier to put together than the more natural terrain of Snake Eater mgs3 benefits by reusing the mgs 2 engine and coming towards the end of the console life cycle when the team's techniques would have been more refined it's allowed them to craft a larger and better paced game without any reliance on backtracking instead of all the boss fights feeling like the cram together some of them have a fair bit of space between them for the player to breathe quality has never been the issue with the Metal Gear Solid series the stealth elements have always been inherently well-constructed and satisfying a longer game isn't always necessarily a better one but the problem with the other installments was definitely the amount of game on offer incentivising repeat playthroughs went some way towards alleviating this issue but giving players more challenges to overcome is better than asking them to do the same once again this is doubly true for the Metal Gear Solid series because once the layout of the levels on the position of the guards is known then what your detention is drained away there's also fewer set pieces than before most of the areas just see snake sneaking his way past guards mgs 1 & 2 had a larger variety of obstacles for snake and Ryden to overcome towards the end of the game and many of these are pretty enjoyable honestly I feel like variety when implemented well is one of the best virtues a game can have but since those games were so short it always felt like it was coming at the expense of the core gameplay which is obviously more important the variety in mgs3 comes in more subtle ways like including more water to swim around in running snake into a disguise or having a helicopter periodically flying overhead this is vastly different from making snake rappel down the building because it all fits with the stealth team making mgs3 much more coherent and focused than its predecessors after clearing the mountain the next boss is the fury of all the members of the Cobra unit he's perhaps the least fleshed out of any of them he's not even seen until this section begins upon which he says a few words about his motivations for some reason being in space made him angry of course this doesn't make any sense but it also seems to contradict the Fury's entire purpose we later learned in the story that the boss was the first human in space in the early 60s but the fury was part of the Cobra unit back in World War two well before he would have gone into space if I was him I'd be more angry about the fact that my entire life made no sense the Cobra unit is set up in a similar fashion to the Foxhound one from mgs1 the rolls are a lot more clearly defined in dead cell and labeling them by emotion feels familiar to the animal code names of the Fox and unit unlike Fox and though each character gets basically no time to be introduced before they're killed off in their fight snake and mgs1 often ran across bosses before their fight or at the very least they would have a fairly lengthy monologue before the fight began the introductions to the Cobra unit are very truncated by comparison not only that but the death scenes are once again missing which is where some of the most interesting moments with the Fox and unit took place if the members of the Cobra unit had a little more time before their fights and didn't immediately explode upon death then they could have been fleshed out into interesting characters as it stands they're not quite as bland as dead cell but not quite as interesting as Fox sound either the fight with the fury itself isn't as weak as the pain and the fear but it's not amazing either it probably suffers from coming after the fight with the end which is a tough act to follow it's similar to the Vulcan Raven or fat man fights from the previous games and well that still doesn't top the simplicity of the Vulcan Raven fight it can at least be pretty tense it does also fit with the stealthy him a lot more than the earlier fights in the game since taking the fury head-on is pretty much suicide at a time when mgs one or two would be plowing along through the final bosses or set-pieces mgs 3 introduces grozny grad a new military base for snake to sneak through the indoor areas this time are very different thanks to the removal of the soliton radar it's much harder to get a grip on where the enemy guards are so it's a good thing snake is provided with a scientists outfit in order to blend in the objective here is to impersonate an officer called Rykov who happens to look identical to Ryden Kojima is poking some fun at the negative reaction to Ryden as he did in the initial teaser for mgs3 camera loud to tranquilize or even kill him if we so choose with Rykov tucked away the player is allowed to act out a visual representation of the emotional toll Metal Gear Solid 2 took on some people by having right and beat up a bunch of nerds with impunity this is just a slight breather and it's not long before the story ramps up again the torture scene is basically set up to answer the question of how Big Boss lost his eye and it plays its cards well by first of all teasing that the boss may cut it out herself Ocelot is ultimately responsible though by shooting snake in the side of the face and snake tries to save either once again mgs3 has done a decent job of answering the kind of questions that fans will have on their mind there's also a moment where Ocelot talks about torture this feels a little more forced but the script doesn't draw too much attention to it just the sentence to tie it into the other games Vol'jin has been shown a few times by now in every single time he shows the emotional depth of a toddler Eva really nails it when she calls him a sadist the problem is that's just about all he is it's far more cut and dried in the previous villains in the series since he's set up to be wholly unlikable watching him throw tantrums all the time like a child can be irritating there's a vicious scene repeats of snake and he's never painted as likable in the slightest even though he only has the depth of a puddle at least I can say Vol'jin works as an antagonist because he's so easy to hate on every single level snake inevitably escapes captivity and after a little running he ends up in a river where the next boss fight happens if you can call it that the section with the sorrow is another very creative and wonderfully realized moment and once again it subverts the idea of a boss by completely The Sorrows health bar is empty when the fight begins and snake has no weapons with which to fight back the Metal Gear Solid series has never glorified war and Kojima has moved more towards demonstrating this with each installment mgs one simply talked about the horrors of battles in cutscenes mgs2 had the guards begged for their lives when they were held up and gave the player the option to take them out non-lethal e making the player solely responsible for their own kill account mgs3 continues the non-lethal option and in this fight forces the player to walk past the ghosts of all those snake has killed if the player clears the game using non-lethal options up until this point then the only ghosts earned out of the previous bosses I'm not sure that a game will ever accurately recreate the harrowing psychological effects that battle can have on the soldiers involved but MGS trees attempt here is valiant at the very least before I move on to the end of the game I think it's only fair I list off some of the little touches and Easter eggs in mgs3 since it includes about as many if not more than were present in mgs - when our slot is knocked out at the start of the game killing him will result in a time paradox since it contradicts the events of the other games during the fight with Ocelot the player can initiate a duel by walking up to the edge of the cliff the fake death pill can trick several of the bosses into letting their guard down allowing snake to get in a couple of easy hits snake can blow up a helicopter early on in the game and if he does so then it doesn't show up during the mountain section when snake washes up on shore during the virtuous mission panning the camera around will reveal the corpse of the sorrow opening the Cure menu and spinning snake or IVA around in a circle will result in them getting sick here's an incredibly specific one in the mountainous area there are vultures which will feed on guards that the player kills if the player lets a vulture feed on a guard then kills and eats the vulture this soldier can be seen later during the fight with the sorrow he hate me even when snake has full stamina his hand will still tremble very slightly and if you watch it carefully you can see that the trembling is happening because of his heartbeat similar to this it's also great that the site of the screen is blacked out a little one snake loses his right eye Eva's medical history has a few interesting entries including one for breast enhancements and last but not least snake's vision in a cave will gradually improve over the course of several minutes as his eyes adapt to the low-light conditions once again I've probably left out more of these than I put in and I think it's worth saying that these little touches are one of the main reasons the Metal Gear Solid series is special to a lot of people the ending kicks off with a battle against Vol'jin one thing I think Vol'jin personifies very well is the way the Metal Gear protagonists are always put up against hugely overwhelming odds neither of the snakes or Ryden have any special powers and yet they're constantly thrown up against people with enormous advantages like being able to control electricity this is why it's so impressive and satisfying when they finally prevail because they did so just as a regular human being Vol'jin is a very intimidating presence and his boss fight is one of the harder one-on-one battles in the series but it's not over one snake takes him down the shack ohad is the next stage with snake and eva weaving around Grozny grad trying to avoid it it's an impressively lengthy and well scripted chase scene where Vol'jin destroys the entire base they could have easily shied away from this by just moving the action out to the runway immediately or using camera angles to mask the destruction but instead some of it is happening while the game is actually being played it's impressive to see the shadow hog kicking around the line of tanks while the game is in motion eventually this leads into the battle with the shadow heart itself which was inevitable since it's the 1960s Metal Gear substitute unfortunately it feels a little formulaic at this point it attacks using some front-mounted machine guns like Rex and Ray and the pattern is basically the same as battling a ray shooting into threads then hit the weak point over and over the chase scene is really the interesting part - the shy go hard and the fight itself is merely a formality the conclusion to the battle is one of the most insane Metal Gear moments yet as Vol'jin fries his ammo belts are ignited turning him into a firework show for snake and even since rain throughout the whole game is always associated with the sorrow I'd say it's actually the sorrow who lands the killing blow on Vol'jin in the end since he seems to take a liking to snake after snake makes it true the earlier boss battle with him reminiscent to mgs1 snake and even make their escape by car while snake shoots down the pursuers the difference being this time that the game goes on once this section ends afterwards there's an escort mission with even considering the fairly negative reaction to the escort stuff in mgs - I don't think this section was put in solely for its own sake I think this is here mostly to act as a buffer between the exciting car chase stuff and the final battle with the boss which is supposed to be a lot more somber the escort mission is a way to shift the tone downwards gradually so as not to create a jarring change coming directly after the car chase the fight with the boss would feel totally different since players would still be in an action sort of mindset the boss once again talks about the central theme - mgs3 before the ending it's been summed up as scene which is really just a way to make it sound like it fits with gene and meme it might be more accurately described as environment or as the game says itself the times allies and enemies and really all things are relative and power is much greater than any of these characters will have a big say in shaping their lives although scene is a terrible word to try and sum this up I would say it fits very well with the larger Metal Gear Solid theme of identity in mgs one it was determined by snake that he couldn't be solely identified by his genes in mgs - writing begins to understand the value of passing on information to the next generation and how that can shape their lives in mgs3 snake and the boss struggle with being caught on opposite sides of a conflict greater than themselves all of these things show who a person is and affect who they become so the series ties together very nicely when you look at it in that light snake and the boss do battle in a field of white flowers which makes her a beautiful looking set piece the boss perfectly matches snake skill set she hides behind trees sometimes and her clothing makes her tough to see amongst all the flowers she also demonstrates her CQC again but this time snake can sometimes break away before she can do anything or even get the upper hand showing how he's come a long way as a student one particular thing I loved about this fight is the lack of music once again mgs3 is ignoring boss by conventions to stress a point there's nothing triumphant about this battle it's too people I care a lot about each other in a fight to the death and it's not worth celebrating with a flashy boss team unfortunately I was disgusted to learn recently that if this fight goes over seven minutes the Snake Eater theme starts playing there's good times to be irreverent by playing this cheesy tune like when climbing up the ladder earlier in the game but this isn't one of them I think it was a terrible idea to play such an ill-fitting cheesy piece of music over such an otherwise wonderfully executed fight I can only imagine this happened because of a language barrier if you don't speak English and Kojima doesn't then this music would fit the scene much better the entire story is very much focused on these two characters in the relationship with one another funnily enough there are times when naked snake feels like a clone of Solid Snake rather than vice-versa it's true that the two are very similar in character but there are some subtle differences naked snake seems more naive during the events of mgs3 than solid snake ever has probably because Solid was raised from birth to be a soldier snake you're just like the boss for the same reason Solid Snake is hinted that you enjoy battle now you're worse compared to you I'm not so bad naked snake shows some affection for a well-made gun but it seems as though he just thinks of the missions as nothing more than a job Naked Snake also shows far more desire to include people in his life he spends the entire game conflicted about the fact that the boss abandoned him but if she were to rejoin his side he'd probably be delighted at the end he spent some time with even a secluded cabin and seems a little disappointed when he realizes she's gone Solid Snake spends most of mgs1 pushing people away and although the ending hints at a brighter future the events of MGS to show that maybe he just couldn't let the job go basically I think these differences exists to highlight the effects the vastly different upbringings have had on what are essentially the same person despite this the two are ultimately more similar than they are different naked snake is painted in a pretty positive light even though he becomes an antagonist the Solid Snake later in the series chronology catch you this time the boss as a character walks a very thin line as a female soldier riding a woman character into a masculine role can be particularly difficult since it's easy to make her seem like just the man who's been gender swapped the boss is not just the ultimate badass of the Metal Gear Solid universe though there's something very feminine and motherly about her she softly spoken and I've always gotten the impression that her comforting relationship with snake was perhaps the only thing keeping him afloat as he became a soldier even though she's ostensibly painted as an antagonist she never really gives that impression and her ability to keep our slot and Vol'jin in check as the story progresses serves to reinforce her status as a character beyond such simple labeling her last monologue before the final fight lets the player in on all the suffering she's experienced having killed her former squad mate and lover given birth on the battlefield and losing her baby these stories finally reduce her from being a walking legend and turn her into a fully fleshed out character painting her and just as positive a light as naked snake himself it's important then that when the final moment comes snake isn't the only one to pull the trigger the game makes the player complicit by having the player do it themselves this slight change makes this moment a lot more powerful than it would be otherwise and I think the MGS series could probably have used a few more interactive sequences like this in place of cutscenes the protagonists in Metal Gear games are always being used but when mgs3 forces the player to kill the boss it's not just a cheap way of garnering sympathy the entire game builds up to this moment and a twist about the bosses mission but sneaking the boss never had any other choice even if snake had known everything in advance his mission would still require him to kill the boss in order to stop the cold war from escalating it's how the game gets to the player on an emotional level but it's also an illustration of the main theme as well the story of mgs3 is a lot more simple in the rambling insanity of MGS 2 but it's not necessarily better or worse as a result the two games are just striving for different things mgs 2 was going for a more intellectual slow-burning payoff which might only arrive after a second playthrough when some part about the experience there's no denial of players expectations in mgs3 if anything allowing the player to take on the role of big boss is a complete reversal from forcing us into the role of riding instead of trying to be clever mgs3 goes for a straight-up good punch emotional ending and as far as I'm concerned both games succeed at what they set out to do I think it's fair to say that games developers have so far had a hard time getting an emotional reaction out of people as easily as other media even though the ending to mgs3 gets me every time and I'm sure it's a powerful moment for a lot of other people as well I don't think I would say this is a great example of how games can affect people emotionally since it's mostly achieved using cutscenes that said the final scene perfectly achieves what it sets out to do and I'm not going to bother showing it here while I'm talking because I think it would just cheapen it so you've got away sue so that concludes mgs3 rather than saying it refines the gameplay of MGS 2 i think it's better to just say that it adjusts it they're not really the same thing anymore once you add in the slower movement and the camo system but that also means they complement each other well the earlier games are better for stealth in closed environments and mgs3 adapts the stealth for more open environments it does address some major issues though the cutscenes are a bit less intrusive than they were in mgs two in particular there's much more breathing space between radio conversations since the support team don't constantly call snake with updates on every little situation the bosses are also a big step up from mgs too and although they lack the personality of the Fox end unit the fights themselves are sometimes very impressive apart from some of the bosses under chase scene near the end nearly everything in the game revolves around stealth and there's more of it than there ever was before it's not without flaws though some of the boss fights feel particularly weak and the menu system is extremely intrusive at times the story is greatly simplified compared to the earlier games as well so people drawn in by all the previous twists and turns of the series might feel left out in the cold for me the pros far outweigh the cons though a few weak boss fights on a poorly thought-out menu system is a small price to pay Metal Gear Solid 3 has the confidence to stick to its core gameplay right away true to the end and the resources to craft the vastly larger and more intricate world than ever before if I had to guess given his fondness for messing with players and intricate stories I'd say that Kojima probably considers MGS 2 to be his masterpiece and while I respect that game a great deal for me the masterpiece is definitely mgs3 in the next video Solid Snake returns and isn't replaced an hour in this time in Metal Gear Solid 4 so hope you'll join me then thanks for watching

Channel: Matthewmatosis

Views: 472,132

Keywords: MGS3, MGS1, MGS2, MGS4, Metal Gear Solid, Snake Eater, Subsistence, Sons of Liberty, Substance

Id: 5gWcbyOd-Qw

Length: 42min 34sec (2554 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2013