The Best Metal Gear Solid Game

on the box [Music] this big brain time [Music] if I ever had to properly narrow down my top five video games of all time I think without a doubt one game that would always make the list is Metal Gear Solid 3. developed by Konami in what's really become hideo kojima's Masterpiece it's the prequel to the entire Metal Gear Saga and not only just one of the best games for the PlayStation 2 but really just one of the best games ever made in general yeah its Legacy is proved in the fact that people are still talking about it and that that being clamoring for a proper remake for years now and with the recent news that Konami seemed to be doing just that with the upcoming Metal Gear Solid Delta there's never been a better time to go back and take a look at the original here's where the fun really begins it's one of those things that I just can't help but keep coming back to and I know every man in his dog has gone through the motions singing its Praises on YouTube for years now and I doubt I'll even go about half as deep as some of those videos have fine have this but how about just for the next half hour so you indulge me and listen to what a grumpy 37 year old Boomer has to say about one of his absolute favorite games I've been waiting for this now although this is a prequel to everything that came before it it doesn't mean it's just the kind of thing that anyone can pick up and get right into and it does require a pretty good understanding of what's going on to get the most out of it oh no I can't hold it anymore that said being set at the beginning of the whole timeline does make it more accessible as it doesn't have all the baggage of the previous games at least not on the surface it's kind of funny playing through it now in 2023 when you consider all the stuff that's gone on with the Marvel and the DC cinematic universes because back then in 2004 and even earlier than that in 2001 it really was like kijiman was creating his own Cinematic Universe before that was even like a thing I am shalashaska also called revolver awesome with all these characters and factions popping up in each game and hideo always finding a way to fill in the blanks and adding even more backstory about the whole thing clicks together I mean we even got those old post-credits Stingers goodbye Mr President plus I've always kind of thought of the MGs games is kind of like the Back to the Future movies in the way that they spend multiple time periods and always seem to find a way to bring back the same protagonists and characters particularly ocelot who's really in this case the Biff Tannen of the metagosa universe [Laughter] Butthead so viets where Marty McFly ends up at that cafe in downtown Hill Valley before Biff shows up with whatever Entourage of douchebags he has at that time to throw a spanner in the works something very familiar about all this and also too much like how the third Back to the Future movie went the most back in time so does Metal Gear Solid 3 from the futuristic year of 2007 in mgs2 to the mid-1960s in mergue solo 3. this time focusing on big boss before he was even big boss I mean he wasn't even called little boss he was just a guy named Jack coincidentally given the code name of naked snake your code name for this Mission will be naked snake and at that point you've really got to think that Kojima has just taken the piss right I mean we've got solid liquid solidus and now naked snake I mean all we're missing is flaccid snake you don't like snakes it's also showing the guy at a point before he was one of the primary antagonists showing how he lost his way and became that tragic villain and it's kind of like seeing Anakin Skywalker before he became Darth Vader well Martha Stewart before she committed tax evasion the stories that snakes heading into Russia to extract a scientist named sokolov who's developing a super mega powerful weapon called the shaggerhod I've come to escort you back to the other side of the Iron Curtain now this thing's a nuclear equipped walking battle tank capable of launching missiles from any kind of terrain sound familiar yeah it should he's being assisted by his mentor legendary Soldier and motherly figure named the boss not to be confused with the overrated Bruce Springsteen and she's responsible for teaching him pretty much everything he knows the only catch is that she's got plans of her own because as it turns out the boss is defecting to Russia and there's proof of her allegiance to her new benefactors she turns sokolov over to the Russians and the sadistic Colonel volgan and also brings along her old former Special Forces Unit the cobras with these guys being the pain the Fiat the end the sorrow and the fury let us fight together again snake does his best to stop her but pretty much has his ass handed to him has his arm broken for his troubles and is then thrown from the top of a rope bridge by someone he always looked up to and thought he could trust and vulgar being the absolute piece of [ __ ] that he is launches a nuclear missile to instigate a war between Russia and the United States so damn dog not an ideal down the job for old mate snake though it does explain how we first got that bandana so that's something at least after this snake is then sent back in about a week or so later with the same objective only this time to also bring his former teacher to justice for a crimes along with stopping volgan and proving America's innocence in that whole missile attack but you know anyone who's played any of these games knows it's never that simple and there's far more going on here than meets the eye because the boss's true motives are far from being that one-sided and yeah she's a pretty interesting character without ever feeling like her skill and expertise is shoehorned in on account of agenda and whenever you hear some brain dead idiot bitching online about how there's not enough strong powerful female characters in gaming well tell them to Google the boss you know in case a character literally being called the boss wasn't a dead giveaway go home and also while you're at it maybe tell them to Google you know Meryl silverberg Olga galukovic Jill Valentine Claire Redfield Ada Wong Lara Croft t for Lockhart samusaran Kate Archer Joanna dark Heather Mason Alex Vance Faith Connors Mona sacks you get the point medical solitary also introduces Ava snakes Ambiguously Allied companion who's supposed to be like a double or triple agent or something either way though she seems to be on his side when it matters the most and the two of them end up working together in more ways than one when this mission's over you'll have to treat me to a nice dinner disgusting I will admit though that the whole snake and Eva thing with it being a bit of a play on the atom even snaking the Garden of Eden is a bit on the nose but then again subtlety in these games has never really been kojima's strong suit considering you've got a revolver wielding bad guy just named Revolver Ocelot yeah how does he come up with these creative titles Special Operations [ __ ] sound revolver Assad and actually two speaking of ocelot we get to see him in this game as a cocky arrogant little [ __ ] heading up his own Special Forces Unit and really acting like a bit of a spoiled brat that's major arcelot to you seeing him getting bodied by snake numerous times is pretty funny but also from his perspective seeing snake best him and survived these countless scenarios that probably should kill a normal man at that point you can start to understand why ocelot forms such a man crush on him and why his allegiances would eventually shift do you hear me I said shoot him sorry Colonel I'm afraid I can't do that so either way this is without a doubt some of the most memorable versions of these characters and the voice acting across the board is just really top-notch stuff pretty good with David Hayter returning yet again to voice snake this works it also makes sense that he's front and center yet again because whenever there's a medical solid game you can bet your bottom dollar that a snake ain't too far behind there's nothing here and it is interesting seeing this guy's backstory getting filled in considering that big boss is always at a pretty pivotal role in the franchise in the first couple of games it was the main antagonist in mgs1 solid and liquid snake only exist because they risk clones in the first place and liquid's whole master plan was based off big boss's ideals and a means of trying to get revenge on a father that he felt mistreated him yeah classic daddy issues now I'll finish the work that father began in medical Solitude solidus was yet another clone of big boss who was trying to take down the Patriots that clandestine organization that big boss also sought to destroy I've drown you fools for interfering so it's kind of fitting that Konami chose to go back to where the whole thing started commencing virtuous Mission now before Big Boss even earned that title and it's a well-known fact that the 1960s aesthetic is one of the comfiest ones of all time just ask Kate Archer certainly not but it's the way that the game seems to reuse a lot of those familiar themes and motives that makes it all so enjoyable and you might notice how all of these games always seem to have some very similar key moments answer me the starters they always start off with the main character dropped into the mission area by themselves to soon be helped out by a woman whose motivations aren't fully known at that point yes an early boss fight involves a shootout often with ocelot or in the case of mgs2 another Russian in the form of Olga galukovic later in the game the main character gets tortured with electricity before then having a breakout of confinement by getting past the weak bowel suffering prison guard and then it all ends in a fight against a large mech suit capable of launching nukes in mgs1 it was Metal Gear racks in mgs2 it was the metal gear Rays lots of metal gearrays and now on mgs3 it's the shaggerhot but what makes mgs3 different is that it feels by this point they've finally cracked how to bring all of this stuff together and make it play out in the most cohesive way so all of the backtracking and the blatant filler from mgs-1 is more or less gone than the repetition in the environments from mgs2 you know exploring the same struts of the Big Shell Oil Rig over and over also gone the Light metroidvania Elements in the previous games have been replaced with this more succinct journey through an actual place with a subtle night and day cycle emphasizing the amount of time you're spending on the mission and really making it feel more believable in fact it's really just like an outright immersive Sim at this point letting the player mess around with more or less a fully interactive world huh what's that sound it just finally feels like they found a happy medium between telling a lengthy and thorough story but then also allowing the player to feel like they're actually spending enough time playing through it as opposed to sitting there and watching literal Talking Heads or running back and forth to a furnace to change the color of a [ __ ] power key I deactivated it the best example of that is just how few mandatory codec calls there are this time despite there actually being more codecalls in total compared to mgs2 now there's far less of them throughout the main campaign you're forced to listen to plus they're also spaced out better too making it less exhausting to sit through them you've got to be kidding me the most egregious example in mgs2 is during that whole sequence when you were disarming all of those bombs and it felt like after every single one of these Ryden had to check in with snake and still went to give them a update or something right in here I took care of the C4 in Strut c ha some of the earlier ones in this third game are kinda lengthy but they're really just there to make sure you understand what your objective is it's never just talking for the sake of talking and when someone else calls in a random to talk to snake they're calling for a specific reason and to share details that the player needs to know will you give it a rest and that's a good thing because it means you can spend more time playing the game as opposed to twiddling your thumbs while the characters talk to each other like they've started up their own [ __ ] podcast this is Ryden the C4 found in Strut A has been frozen and disposed of oh even still though they've left in that aspect where you can call someone up at random where they'll often come up with some useful tidbits of information or just offer up a random moment of levity hey you've got thermal goggles don't you this should make it easier to find the end even when he's camouflaged speaking of jokes as well mgs3 again showcases the series well-known and often bizarre sense of humor with fourth wall breaking remarks meta moments plus all that harmless crude sexual stuff like seeing a character who's a very clear reference to Ryden wearing a leather thong that's got a lightning bolt on it I don't know it's because who are you there's even a whole sequence where your disguises this guy and can even go around bullying all of these poor soldiers and scientists and because you're their Superior officer they'll even thank you for the ass whooping forgive me for troubling you sir one of the new mechanics is being able to see certain cinematics through snake's perspective by holding down the R1 button and whenever you're interacting with Eva it's common for snake to just have his eyes locked right onto those baby bumpers as if the guy's never seen a pair of cans before the name's Eva appreciate what what you show me right now but in this case I could also actually works with Eva's character being this alluring mysterious Bond girl Trope that's got her own mission goal she's working towards using her assets here as best she can to keep snake off his game we've got company it's the ocelot unit let's get out of here hurry and if anything it's actually probably a bit of a power play that he stares so much I mean if you think about it he's really just asserting his dominance and a weaker man would have taken the easy route and instead held eye contact with ever the entire time but yes son not this guy you've got to be kidding me I also find it really funny how in almost every single MGS game there's some kind of sitting where snake gets a hard on when talking about a weapon incredible I think if someone ever gave this guy a gun with boobs on it well he'd probably have a goddamn heart attack and not only that nearly every part of this gun has been expertly crafted and customized wow wow slow down Egghead Jokes Aside though the story is mostly about snake trying to prevent world war three after Colonel volgan unexpectedly launched that missile which understandably yeah pissed a few people off revolgan is really a nasty piece of work as well he's kind of like what would happen if Ivan Drago and Lord Ryden from Mortal Kombat had a love child and then if that love child had butted a sanding built and he's easily one of the most villainous characters in probably the entire series ah when you look at liquid snake and even solidus despite being clear-cut bad guys they were still working towards some kind of warped vision of what they thought big boss's ideal vision of the world was damn the Patriots volgan on the other hand is just a complete [ __ ] and he just wants to launch nukes and watch the world burn We Can't Let Him Live the scene where he absolutely beats this [ __ ] out of snake is where I really started to hate this guy and I finished this game probably like a dozen or so times and I've only ever sat through that scene Twice first time is obviously when I first played the game and then the second time was when I was capturing footage of that scene for this video I mean that's how nasty it is I'm not going to show the whole thing here but if you really want to see a grown man have his skull methodically bashed in by a maniacal Tyrant well it is on YouTube so can't be my guest [Music] this whole torture scene also shows how big boss loses his eye which is again kind of rough to sit through ending in a chase scene where he has to LEAP from the top of a dam which is obviously a reference to that one episode of The Simpsons Keith yes I'm kidding I know it's from The Fugitive installation is that you do get to get your revenge on this guy because he serves as one of the Final Bosses and you have to take him on not once not twice but Thrice yes so first you have to beat him in a straight up fight which be honest is tough enough but then after that there's a lengthy Chase sequence where you're also being chased by the shaggerhod only to then have to take this thing on directly with an RPG but even then that's not the end of it because volgan Jacks into the side of this thing by punching through its outer shell at which point you can finally take him down when he's fully exposed kind of reminds me of those final liquid snake fights in mgs1 like how you're first at that fight against Metal Gear Rex then the fist fight on top of it before that final Jeep Chase where liquid tanks about a bazillion machine gun rounds and then even after all that is done you've still got to escort Eva through this final patch of the Jungle which admittedly is probably one of the worst sections in the game and then you can take on the boss for the final showdown so yeah it really just keeps going on and on there I'll give you 10 minutes that's what she said when you watch people's speed run mgs3 like almost a quarter if not a third of the entire run is taken up with these final sequences which should really tell you how long the whole thing goes on for and just like all good Metal Gear Solid bosses volgan makes sure to yell out snake's name just moments before he [ __ ] it which is honestly like some kind of Unwritten Law for these guys so yeah could Jimmy really cemented this guy as one of the baddest dudes in the entire franchise and his appearance is still pretty damn unique which is really saying something in the same game series where you've got a character with a Tommy Gun who can shoot Hornets out of his dick hole when it comes to how the whole thing looks it's without a doubt another really impressive entry combining what was cutting edge graphics for the PS2 at the time along with kojima's trademark knack for creating highly cinematic and memorable cutscenes all of this stuff is again completely motion captured making it feel like you're watching an actual movie at times with properly trained actors to bring the whole thing together and yeah man check out the weapon they hired to do all the gunsling in MO cup for ocelot and really some of the best cinematics of those earlier ones like seeing ocelots get new [ __ ] pushed in by both snake and Eva foreign s with the pain and his literal swarm of hornets is also just downright impressive considering the limitation of the PS2 as a console and then just the basic weather effects like rain fog and water are also really ahead of their time in the second half of the game once snakers lost his eye whenever you aim in first person mode there's a vignette effect highlighting his Newfound handicap and loss of death perception plus you've got all those various effects for things like the night vision and the thermal goggles along with weapon Scopes catching The Rustic feel of the 1960s era weaponry and Tech then of course you've got the theme tune yeah that theme tune not only the best theme tune in the entire series but without a doubt one of the best theme Tunes in any kind of medium ever epitomized with what might be the only singing ladder in known existence [Music] I still remember watching that early E3 demo for the first time and that chorus dropping is Cynthia Harrell's vocals kicked in it still puts Goosebumps on my arms and A tingle in my balls [Music] about the only thing I don't like that much is the new game over screen which does fit the time period but the absence of that iconic jingle from mgs1 and parts of mgs2 was felt kind of hard [Music] snake what's also cool about the third game is that it's the first game in the series where each boss got their own unique fight theme in MGS one and two it was the same tract issues for more or less every single boss fight which did take away a bit of the individuality from those encounters but here in mgs3 they're all completely unique for each character and yet does make them seem much more memorable the Furious theme for instance is this constantly shifting Melody of brass instruments and jazz guitar and it captures the vibe perfectly of fighting a super pissed off guy in a flame-proof suit who has the ability to lose his [ __ ] at a moment's notice some jet across the area covering it in Flames the Flames of my rage will incinerate you having said all of that though there is like a slight sense of diminishing returns with the presentation not that it's a bad thing but it's kind of like comparing a 64 Mustang to a 65 Mustang yeah okay now the job between both mgs1 and mgs2 might be one of the biggest leaps I think of all time when it comes to Graphics along with maybe Wolfenstein 3D to Doom or GTA 2 to GTA 3. in terms of what Konami pulled off when you compare those first two games back to back it is absolutely night and day and staggering to consider that those two were only threes apart mgs2 and mgs3 on the other hand are now four years apart but those improvements are much less noticeable which was always going to be the case when you consider that they're on the same console now that's not to say that it's not impressive and mgs3 is without a doubt one of the best looking games for the platform but it's just not quite as groundbreaking or jaw dropping as mgs2 was after coming off the back of its PS1 predecessor what it does have though is that Timeless mid-2000s era aesthetic going for it and there's a reason why so many games from this time period still look that good even by today's standards back when art Direction Trump technical limitations and yeah what a time to be alive what mgs3 also does exceptionally well is really make you feel like you're out there in the middle of a jungle where it gets worse here every day with countless hazards like crocodiles quicksand traps and enemy soldiers to avoid 2004 was also the year when jungle environments in video games really started to take off and I don't know what it was about this year in particular but it just seemed like something clicked with developers and these environments started becoming that much more believable and aversive I mean consider the fact that this is the UN Far Cry launched where the jungles in that game were so realistic that you could practically feel the mosquitoes on your arms where you were playing so for metal geostola 3 a console game on the PS2 to also capture that same feeling it's pretty damn impressive and it looks even better if you're playing it with the HD Collection yeah I suppose we should probably talk about the fact that in 2011 blue point games remastered mgs2 3 and peace Walker for the PS3 and the Xbox 360. and that's what most of my footage here has been captured with and I know that opinions on this thing can vary but I do feel like the HD Collection kind of renders the old PS2 version redundant mostly because of the improved resolution and frame rate but also for my are not that very important reason and that's the inclusion of that more traditional third person camera I think a lot of people forget that back in the original the camera still used that isometric top-down perspective which was the same thing in MGS one and two and yeah it worked fine in those games mostly because you had an actual radar and the areas were mostly small in interior but in mgs3 you're in these wide opened up jungle environments and that fixed camera outright prevents you from seeing ahead of times and combined with a complete lack of a radar it means you literally can't see what's coming at some point though Konami realized how dumb it was and added in what we now know as a traditional third person camera into the mgs3 substance Edition which then served as the basis for the HD Collection all those years later and let me tell you man that's a good thing because that old camera perspective is God awful and an outright handicap in certain areas and look anyone who says differently hasn't tried beating the end on a European extreme run I guess my point is that if you are gonna play this which I do recommend you're absolutely better off doing it with the HD collection and ideally on the PS3 not the 360 because to me something about playing an MGS game with an Xbox controller just seems wrong I wouldn't be so sure if I were you or of course just wait for that Master collection due out later this year and hope Konami don't go all gross Street games on it as for the gameplay well this is definitely the most tactical of the Tactical Espionage action that we'd gotten up until that point and the way that I describe mgs3 is that it's an easy game to pick up and play but one that's incredibly challenging to Master on the surface it's the same as it's always been you run around these various environments trying to not get spotted by enemies using a combination of the third person view and then first person aiming you give them the option to go lethal or non-lethal with their still being absolute bugger options there for the ladder and ghosting entirely is also possible reserved for those with the absolute biggest wangs of all silenced weapons are still a thing but now science is break after a certain amount of shots which means you don't have this perpetually silent sleep gun anymore that can knock out enemies indefinitely instead now you actually need to look out for replacement silences which aren't too common mgs3 also adds in the CQC system which is really just a fancy word for being able to grab someone and throw them to the ground yeah if you've got the right weapon equipped you can get up behind someone and shake them down for information either hold them up at gunpoint for items or just throw them to the ground like a hot bag of [ __ ] freeze being said in the 1960s that magical omniscient radar system which shows you exactly where enemies are and even which way they're looking is completely gone replace with a much more basic motion detector enemies are also dressed in the proper attire with uniforms that make them blend into the backdrop and it can be really tricky at first getting used to spotting them the consolation there is that they patrolled a lot slower than they did before in mgs2 enemies would circle around a room keeping an eye on things at such a fast pace that it was almost like they're taking a bump of the old booger sugar before they got on patrol shift in mgs3 though they've moved much slower which in these jungle areas probably makes sense I mean someone power walking around a jungle doing laps a Recon like that is likely to roll the wrinkle in a ditch or break their toe in a tree route on top of that your footsteps are much more audible now and you can't just run right up behind someone like you could do in the last game now the enemy react to your footsteps and quickly spin around and if you're not quick in dispatching them it can go pear-shaped pretty quickly [Music] so in a lot of ways mgs3 was really the most skill based game they'd made at that point with it being way more than just staying out of someone's line of sight cone and more about the stance you're in whether it be standing crouched or fully prone along with what kind of camouflage you were also wearing yeah and of course Snake Eater adds in the camouflage system where you're constantly having to swap through different kinds of camo for snakes uniform and face often almost having to do it in every new area you enter and the right camo in the right place can make all the difference especially since there's no set distance where you can be spotted from anymore so wearing something bright and loud in the middle of the Jungle you may as well put a neon sign above your head all up there's a couple of dozen of these in total with a lot of them having to be found throughout the campaign and others only unlocked by beating the bosses non-lethally the only problem here and something that sure isn't getting any better over time is that swapping these out is this tedious process of pausing the game going into that menu selecting the right camo equipping it and then backing back out which does start to get a bit annoying after a while to the point where I'd often just find like a middle-of-the-road camo pattern and stick with that one instead about the best Improvement that mgs4 made was the way that they essentially reworked this idea with the Octo camo suit where all you added at that time was stay still against the surface for like a second or so and the suit would automatically adjust once you've got on the best possible uniform for your current surroundings your camo index goes up to the point that you become near invisible and enemies are often just going to walk right past you and as Aragon said in The Lord of the Rings to disappear entirely that is a rare gift so yeah it's a pretty big new addition that has a profound effect on the overall gameplay and the amount of exploits and perks on offer here with some of these uniforms and these other tricks is pretty staggering damn it oh it's also one of the main reasons you're better off playing this game non-lethally I'm ignoring the fact that it's the proper way to play the game but more so because beating all these bosses non-lethally is gonna have them drop their own unique uniforms which offer up some of the best benefits now you will go to sleep or I will put you to sleep oh dear the camera you get from beating ocelot for instance removes the hand sway when aiming and the Sorrows camera removes the sound of your footprint entirely you can even find a prototype stealth suit near the end of the game which is pretty much an earlier version of what snake would wear in mgs1 so collecting all of these uniforms like their Pokemon cards and hoarding them across playthroughs is a definite factor in the longevity you get out of the whole experience and then combine all of this with those various ways you can mess around with the AI and you can see how it becomes so addictive and again it kind of Harkens back to what I said before how the whole thing is a borderline immersive Sim early on you're taught that shooting hornets nest will cause them to attack whoever's standing nearby and that's a tactic that works throughout the entire campaign if you blow up any of the food storage buildings and then head into a nearby area you'll hear enemy soldiers commenting on how hungry they are and even hear their stomachs growling [Music] in fact it actually Segways pretty well into one of the most important new mechanics and that's the game's entire namesake which is being able to find and eat food you can't just rely on eating magical ration packs anymore to restore your health instead Health restores slowly over time and be part of spending that process up comes from eating everything that's not nailed down in the mgs2 about the only time that stamina ever came into play was during the boss fights we're using that M9 pistol would knock down a boss's stamina bar instead of their health but now in mgs3 it's something that not only affects the boss fights but also snake with this ever dwindling stamina bar that drops over time depending on the weapons you're carrying and also what even kind of injuries you've got yes son take too many bullets or fall off something too high you'll get too close to any open flames and you'll have to treat your wounds accordingly you can even get bitten by spiders snakes or scorpions or catch food poisoning from rotten food that's sat in your inventory for too long poison in fact I still remember the first time I took a break from playing mgs3 all those years ago to go off and I think win the sex world championship if I recall correctly only to come back a few days later and find all of my food had gone about as rotten as the inside of a teenage boys gym sock that was that was poison one of the best new player traps in the game is early on when you're swimming through a crocodile and leeches infested swamp and it's easy to not even realize that afterwards your cupboard had to tow in the ladder which drains your stamina faster than your mum drains nut sacks on a Friday night is that too far there's even a certain Infamous streamer who goes a good couple at hours without realizing he's done this stamina gets too low it starts to cause your hands to sway when aiming weapons and you'll even hear snake's stomach growling and grumbling foreign so all the various bits of food you come across from animals like bats snakes rabbits and fish through to fruits and vegetables all restore your stamina along with having some funny responses from snake when you eat them pretty tasty honestly it's not that much of an issue on normal or even hard mode but on very hard enough is when it becomes an actual thing you need to take care of because at that point it's so much harder to get your health back in a pinch I'm gonna puke one of the best dairies in the game that shows how all of this stuff comes together is a bit about halfway through the campaign where you have to climb up this Mountainside to reach a cabin on the top there's centuries patrolling around as well as a chopper doing laps around the area to really keep you on your toes but then you've also got a really good eye line to see off in the distance and the verticality with the Cliffside offers up some really fun ways to mess with the AI there's even a machine gun placement in certain spots in case you want to go guns blazing and shoot down that annoying Chopper and if you kill someone in this area nearby vultures are going to swoop in and start pecking at the carcasses I feel like it just highlights every mechanic in Metal Gear Solid 3 at once the concept of being aware of how visible you are to your enemies while you're moving up the mountain monitoring your stamina as you make the climb plus the choice the player constantly has between going for stilt or combat and even if you are seen in this game it's often more fun just to try to shoot your way out of things and see how long you can last I will admit that I do miss that more tactical squad-based day I from the second game though one of the coolest things in mgs2 was the way that the enemies would search and clear a room that they thought the player was hiding in you'd see these guys giving each other hand signals and other little signs to communicate without making any noise and the way they check every little nook and cranny showed off a lot of realism and intelligence [Music] just kind of felt like when you were finally spotted that they were really sending in these elite units to deal with you specifically get a guy in the front with a riot shield and then another with a shotgun for Close Encounters and these guys meant [ __ ] business in comparison the attacking enemies in mgs3 just kind of seem to come out of nowhere and that Squad of reinforcements is often just a couple of guys with right Shields who run right towards you guys who also keep their kneecaps laughably exposed you could probably argue that being the 1960s and all that stuff that military tactics weren't as advanced as they were during mgs2 but either way it always kind of stuck out to me and the AI in this game really does become pretty damn easy to exploit and a big part of why that's also the case is the sheer amount of weapons and toys you get to play with here where does he get those wonderful toys now despite non-lethal really being the Patrician way to play the MGs games mgs3 sure has a lot of different weapons to let you kill things with and this might be the most combat-oriented lineup of guns outside of mgs4 for the pacifist you're limited to either the mk22 pistol which you will spend the vast vast amount of time using and then eventually the ends most in Nagin if you can get it during those short stints when your undercover as a scientist or an officer or something you can put Q Brands to good use there and knock people out silently with sleeping gas or a handkerchief doused in the Bill Cosby cocktail but these are much harder to use out there in Jungle so you'll mostly be using that mk22 pistol which may as well be a goddamn rifle because it's about as accurate as one for combat though well there's a whole heap of explosives you've got two assault rifles and AK-47 and an M16 there's a scorpion submachine gun and RPG a dragon off sniper rifle and even a goddamn shotgun which is really one of the most underrated boomsticks in all of gaming I mean check it out shotgun foreign obviously and if that enemy is given enough time they'll call them those reinforcements for backup but it gets to the point where if you kill too many of them the game just stops sending anyone else to attack you like they've just run out of disposable people which really shows you that it caters for gamers who really want to take that Rambo approach [Music] in fact here one of the weapons you get is a belt-fed machine gun and when snake fires it for too long he even lets out a bit of a war cry which is in no way inspired by a certain 1980s Action Hero and then once you've been in the story for the first time you unlock the boss's Patriot Gun an assault rifle that just happens to have unlimited ammo which completely breaks the game but even without this thing I feel like murder solar 3 absolutely allows for combat and in one of the best improvements you no longer take segmented damage from automatic weapons yeah it was like in the other games if you ever got hit by any weapon you'd always get interrupted from whatever you were doing be it firing weapons or running away here though automatic weapons do damage over time which makes it much easier to fight back without having control constantly taken away from you just a much more sensible approach to being undergun fire which was something that was long overdue for an update what I would always do is make a new save file when I was ready to stop playing but then I just go on like a murderous Rampage until I was finally killed most of the time I just have to turn off the console instead because of how easy it is to bully the a iron but it really showed you how much fun the combat can be and a part of me has always wondered what it might be like if Konami ever made a proper first person shoot up considering that first person aspect of the controls has always been so tight and refined in fact that's actually probably another reason why the HD Collection is so much better because it makes it objectively easy to see enemies off in the distance and get those all important headshots now when I look back at MGS one and two they're the kind of games where you can break them down into segments instead of looking at it as being this one over rocking experience because they've all got those key moments which makes them so memorable for mgs1 you've got the shootout with Meryl you've got fighting ocelot fighting Vulcan Raven in the tank repelling with the Rope the stealth guys in the elevator and so forth mgs2 has the entirety of the tanker diffusing the bombs fighting fat man escorting and protecting Emma and then that batshit insane finale inside Arsenal gear much in the same way mgs3 just feels like you're going from one mini set piece to the next and like the members of foxhound and dead self a lot of this comes from those really great boss fights seeing as this is said before the idea of foxhound was even a tickle in someone's throat this Main Road gallery of bad guys this time at the Cobra unit those former Special Forces soldiers who fought alongside the boss and these guys are all meant to represent emotions that the soldier feels on the battlefield do you hear me snake would have been pain the fear the end the fury and the sorrow yeah man with the real sorrow there being that dude's unfortunate receding hairline and as someone who's also rapidly losing his own day by day that's the emotion I relate to the most like with sadness right now some people have also theorized that they reflect the emotions that snake goes through having to deal with the Betrayal of his former Mentor which is why only after he's able to overcome all of them is he finally able to beat her in the finale I don't know either way though it's the usual collection of freaks and Weirdos you'd expect in a game made by hideo Kojima the first real Combat encounter comes just after snake meets Eva for the first time when he's ambushed by the ocelot unit and this one is memorable because it's the first real said piece but also because it really expects you to think outside of the box to succeed you probably think you're better off holding them off from the room itself but a trapdoor lets you sneak out underneath the building which then opens up this whole world of opportunities and it's a philosophy to the gameplay that flows across all of these ensuing combat sequences after that your first proper boss fight is with ocelot in a shootout which is like something out of a western complete with the right music and even rolling Tumbleweed and you can beat this guy in numerous ways from distracting him with Hornets throwing out stun grenades up just shooting it then the first Cobra you encounter is the pain who admittedly is one of the easiest because he stands on what maze will be a goddamn pedestal making himself an easy target but then you notice that he's got this small army harness to protect him from every attack so what you got to do here is scatter those Hornets using the shotgun or grenades at which point he becomes vulnerable but even then for a first time player I mean that's not something that everyone's gonna instantly recognize the next one you fight is the fear a dude who has a serious hard-on for spiders and really seems to have based his entire personality around that slow down Egghead and as for fighting him well you can simply track him as he jumps from tree to tree and shoot at him something which does become insanely easy with those thermal goggles you can also drop poisonous food which he'll run up to and eat when he's stamina runs low or what's without a doubt one of the funniest tricks in the entire game and how you can pretend to be dead using a fake death pill death already which leaves the guide wide open for one of the fastest and lamest exploits and again you know not something everyone's gonna figure out on their own and surely on their first playproof the end however is the apex of the whole experience and is without a doubt the most interesting one out of the bunch it's a really intensive one-on-one sniper battle with this decrepit old veteran Marksman who's hiding out in different areas of the forest and I'm not even sure if I'd say this guy's a villain I mean he's just some poor old grizzled soldier who wants to die against someone who can actually put up a proper fine you have my thanks he was the best guy around what about the people he murdered what murder and he's even nice enough to use tranquilizer diet instead of actual bullets but this fight right here man this fight right here it absolutely stumped me the first time I played it and I reckon I would have spent maybe two or three hours trying to figure out how to beat him there is just so much stuff going on during this fight having to track this guy across multiple areas and the rumor that Kojima originally wanted this fight to last for weeks really doesn't seem that far-fetched when the likelihood of people taking weeks to beat him anyway doesn't seem that far off what's even funny though is that when you know what to do he's probably one of the easiest bosses in the entire game basically what you need to do is first find his location on the map and track his position and that can be done in a few ways if you've got those thermal goggles you can follow his Footprints again showing just how important those things are and if you've got that directional mic you can even listen in for his breathing to ascertain what Direct he's in as well this is the end you can even just keep an eye out for the glare from the Sun hitting the scope of his rifle and if you hit the direction the data hit your body is more or less like a compass marker so there's just so many little tricks which make this guy so memorable and fun to engage with and even something simple like leaving the area and coming back has him welcome you back to the fight like he's talking directly to the player welcome back I've been waiting for you it was the best guy around probably the most famous trick is just killing him earlier in the game and bypassing The Showdown entirely which is the kind of tactic that only people whose parents don't love them would ever use and then even more of a [ __ ] movie Saving the game moving your console clock forward like a week at which point the car just dies of old age though that does feature one of the best walking away and not looking at an explosion moments of all time when I complained about the baby unit in my mgs4 video this boss right here is the reason I was doing it because the point of comparison to the baby unit is a guy like this a seemingly demigod with a sniper rifle who talks to birds and uses photosynthesis to recover his wounds going from the Cobra unit in mgs3 to the baby unit in mgs4 is like watching a deep purple concert and then following it up with Taylor Swift anyway after that is the fury a boss who at one point I found to be the absolute hardest one in the game but now what kind of find to be pretty easy this guy is the absolute personification of gamer rage embodied in a boss fight he's a former astronaut who suffered what I can only imagine is some pretty heavy duty trauma and now walks around in a flight suit welding a goddamn flamethrower Fury he's the closest thing we've got to Darth Vader in this game outside of maybe snake because when his ship re-entered her's atmosphere it burst into flames giving him third degree burns across his entire body now he has to wear this suit to survive and yeah I get it that'll piss me off too so during the fight he runs around the arena talking a bunch of [ __ ] while slowly getting more and more pissed off as he realizes he's losing sounds familiar [ __ ] getting sick of this [ __ ] [ __ ] it's just another really memorable sequence that reminds me a lot of the Vulcan Ravens showdown in mgs1 putting you in a kind of similar looking area only now with the added tension of a jet pack wearing psycho path who's got the ability to get from one end of the room to the other in literal seconds yeah they'll do that and not only again can use the environment to your advantage using darker uniforms to remain hidden but also quite literally cut that suit to pieces with your knife which does insane damage then finally we've got the sorrow and this guy isn't even a boss fight in the traditional sense instead he confronts you in some kind of dream state with the tormented spirits of all the people you've killed so far and I dare say that if the message boards on game FAQs didn't exist all those years ago well I don't think I would have ever possibly beaten this guy in a series that's always found a way to work in the short horror based sequences this encounter with the sorrow is a definite highlight along with the image of seeing a naked man cartwheel while cupping his balls with his hands I'm sorry sorry to bring this up during the mission so all up in the annals of MGS boss history along with the likes of foxhound and dead cell the Cobra unit definitely earned their place amongst those ranks and that's not even including the boss or volgin what also makes them memorable I think a lot of ways is that they really do foreshadow snake's ultimate transformation into becoming big boss and his eventual Turning Point into becoming a private Soldier I mean all the members of the Cobra Union are literal war heroes they help the Allied Forces fight back during World War II even turning the tide of the fight at Normandy so as far as the history books are concerned these guys are legends but they're legends that their country disowned and discarded even going so far as to plant bombs in all of them in case they were ever captured for all intents and purposes despite their skill set and success rate they were still treated as Expendable people and snake's realization of that also plays a big part in why he also loses sight of what it means to be a soldier by the end of the game we see him as pretty much a Broken Man someone who has become completely disillusioned with not only his entire country but also his own existence and yeah how do I talk about mgs3 without mentioning that ending are you crying what's that are you crying am I crying no am I crying you're crying the ending for Metal Gear Solid 3 is absolutely up there as one of the toughest most emotional endings in any form of media and when you learn the real reason for why the boss did what she did it becomes even more heartbreaking cry people cry the boss even serves as the final boss when everything else is said and done and this final encounter is a test of absolutely everything you've learned so far plus also in pretty stark contrast to what you've just gone through from a literal war zone to a quiet Serene showdown in a field of white flowers in a fight to the death against your old Mentor if you take too long here an instrumental version of the main theme starts to kick in and a part of me almost wishes like this would play from the beginning because it really makes the whole experience even more immersive thank you [Music] then once everything is done and dusted you spend the next 15 minutes or so finding out the truth about what's really going on and to say it's a gut punch is an understatement there is nothing left Inside Me Now nothing at all no hatred not even regret now look there's only a few times in a man's life when he's allowed to cry one of those is during the birth of his child another one is during the ending for Iron Giant and another one of those is during the ending for metal geostola three and if the sight of one of the most manliest badass super soldiers to ever grace the medium breaking down into tears at the grave of someone who's more or less his mother doesn't reduce you to a quivering wreck well you might not actually be human [Music] thank you what is this salty discharge it even hits harder than watching snake and ocelots settle the score in mgs4 or the final graveyard scene big boss which fondly enough also has a very similar backdrop this is good isn't it oh my God you're crying and that's the reason why whenever I see Kojima doing something stupid or I hear more disappointing news about a project he's working on or not working on I just keep telling myself that this is the guy who wrote the ending for Metal Gear Solid 3. the best video games are the ones that linger in your head after you've stopped playing the ones you still think about when the console is off unplugged and Gathering dust the ones you end up coming back to time and time again to try and recapture that magic you've felt all those years ago and the ones that inevitably hit all those highs and lows pretty good people still talk about how much they love mgs3 almost two decades after it first came out and they're still going to be talking about it another two decades from now as well the series might have lost its way in the recent years and become orbit abandoned by Konami for a while there but to deny the cultural impact this stuff has had on the industry is just ignorant I'm glad to hear that with the upcoming remake no doubt doing his best to recapture that same magic it'll still never change just how good and influential this original is from the riding the characters the music and the backdrop through to the Tactical Espionage action as a total package it's wildly unrivaled and it's again the toy me that sometimes you just need to feed on a tree frog foreign [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: GmanLives

Views: 626,071

Keywords: metal gear solid, metal gear solid 3 review, snake eater, metal gear solid 3: snake eater, james bond, big boss, metal gear solid 3 snake eater, hideo kojima, metal gear, metal gear solid 3, metal gear solid 3 remake, metal gear solid 3 gameplay, metal gear solid 3 theme, metal gear solid 3 retrospective, snake eater theme, snake eater intro, james bond movies, metal gear solid 3 ps2 review, metal gear solid 3 walkthrough, gmanlives, gggmanlives, metal gear solid 3 ending

Id: 8zYY7OhKx0Y

Length: 50min 55sec (3055 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 09 2023