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Metal Gear Solid 3 : Snake Eater
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Game Name:
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Metal Gear Solid 3 : Snake Eater |
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Console:
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PC |
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Reviewed:
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Unknown |
This is a review of the PS 2 version of the game - I don't know if they plan to do a PC version like they did with MGS 2.
MGS 3 is the latest in the Metal Gear series and is actually set well before the earlier games. Instead of controlling Solid Snake or Raiden you control Naked Snake aka Big Boss. As well as being an entertaining game in it's own right it explains a lot of the backstory for Metal Gear - like why Big Boss turned on the USA and formed his own independant nation.
The setting for the game is different from the previous two versions. Instead of being mostly indoors or in manmade environments you spend a fair amount of the game outdoors in a wilderness environment like jungles, swamps and mountaintops.
Being set in the past you don't have all the fancy technology that was in the previous two games. The main differences are the lack of Soliton radar and the codec radio. Snake does have a radio, it's an external one strapped to his chest though. This is a bit strange though, unlike the codec radio which in undetectable - the external radio is clearly visible but it doesn't get taken away from Snake even if he is captured. The lack of the Soliton radar is more than a little annoying though. As with the earlier games, MGS 3 is a third person game with a fixed camera viewpoint. Except for one occasion the camera is always facing north. You can switch to a first person view but you can't actually move around in this view. The designers compensated by having you travelling north for almost the entire game. However, on the occasions where you do have to travel south it's quite hard to keep an eye out for enemy soldiers and traps. Snake does have a few gadgets to compensate - he has a sonar which can detects animals nearby, a motion detector and personnel sensor which alerts him when other humans are close by. The sonar picks up any animal though - even spiders, snakes, rabbits etc. so it's not that useful for finding hidden enemies. The motions detector only helps if the enemy is actually moving and the personnel sensor only triggers when the enemy is very close.
To help with his sneaking, Snake can use camoflague to help remain undetected. You can apply paint to your face and wear different uniforms. This, and your current stance affects your camoflague rating. Crawling for example gives you a fairly high rating, running gives you a low or negative rating. Different uniforms are good for different circumstances. A black uniform and facepaint is helpful when you are in the shadows. When you are in the grass you might be better going for a forest face paint and tiger stripe uniform. In each circumstance a uniform and paint will give a bonus or penalty depending on how well you blend in to your surroundings. Your camoflague rating affects how close enemies need to be in order to see you.
Health is handled differently from the previous two games. Instead of having the magical rations which instantly heal your wounds you have three parts - health, stamina and wounds. Your health bar is at the top of the screen. It shows how much life you have left at the moment. If depleted it will recover over time or can be quickly restored using a certain healing item. How fast it normally recovers depends on your stamina. Your stamina bar is below your health bar, the longer this bar is the fitter Snake feels. As the bar diminishes your health recovery slows and Snake won't fight as well - his hands will begin to shake when holding a weapon for example. To recover stamina you need to eat food. Snake can find various types of rations around the game. He can also kill animals and eat them. The tastier Snake finds them to be the more stamina they recover as a rule. If you keep eating something that he doesn't like he'll start to develop a taste for it though. Wounds are the final part of the equation, if Snake gets shot, stabbed, burnt etc. he'll receieve a wound. On the health bar this will show up as a red section, this section will take a lot longer to heal normally and you might lose some maximum health in the process. To avoid this you need to treat the wound. Snake has a variety of medical supplies to treat wounds - once a wound is fully treated the red section disappears and Snake can heal normally. The medical items are in limited supply though - you can find some in enemy bases or extract them from certain plants and animals though.
While the plot does help explain some of the Metal Gear backstory, there are some parts that simply make no sense. Part of the plotline is that groups from China, the USA and the USSR poured funds into R&D during WW 2 in order to beat the Axis. Supposedly the remaining funds where then seeded away after WW2 and were meant to be split back between the three groups. Instead only one man has all the funds - an amount totalling over $100 billion. This is rather absurd as that's an enormous amount of money today, let alone just after WW 2. And this was the money left after they R&D had taken place.
Snake has a lot of different tricks than from previous games. He can use his tranquilizer gun to stun animals and then throw them at enemies to surprise them. If you can sneak up on an enemy and grab them (or even grab them while they are alerted) you can interrogate them for information, choke them into unconciousness, throw them around or just cut their throat.
One oversight that still lingers from earlier games - when the game goes into a cutscene you can't pause the game at all. You can only skip the cutscene. This is a major pain when real life calls and you have to wait until you resume control. Xenosaga was a lot better in this respect - you could pause or skip cutscenes (of course there were a lot more of them in Xenosaga).
Another part of the game which had me really annoyed was during a boss fight against and enemy called The Sorrow who can invoke the ghosts of those you have killed. You can't actually attack him directly - instead you wade up a river and dodge the ghosts. Once you've passed all of them (the "fight" works chronologically from the start of the game, so if you went on a killing spree you can expect to see a lot of ghosts) The Sorrow appears to simply kill you and sends you to the game over screen. At that point you have to access your inventory and use an item called a revival pill that brings you back from a fake death. There is nothing in the game to hint you to do this, I had to check a walkthrough to find this out.
Despite these flaws the game is very engrossing and interesting to play. The plot keeps you moving and there are plenty of small touches which have made the MGS games as good as they are.
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