MGS3 Discussion

[CHW]

People seem to want to talk endlessly about this game, so here's a thread for that.

Incidentally, I recently finished wrote up my own "little" opinion blurb on it, so if anybody's interested:

Snake is back in the latest episode of the long-running, genre-defining “Tactical Espionage Action” Metal Gear series — but all’s not well. The game takes the series a few steps forward, but not without making a few missteps along the way, with regards to both its gameplay and storytelling aspect. Nevertheless, Snake Eater is a technically impressive game, a decent entry in the stealth action genre, and the light Snake Eater sheds on the series origins will be particularly interesting to Metal Gear fans.

The previous chapter in the Metal Gear universe was Sons of Liberty, which detailed the Big Shell incident, a chain of events that began with the terrorist takeover of an offcoast oil refinery and – in typical Metal Gear fashion – develops into something far more bizarre and complex. Sons of Liberty actually puts the player in the shoes of Raiden, an inexperienced, effeminate character instead of the series’ usual hero, Solid Snake, an unprecedented move that was perceived by many fans as one of the biggest outrages in gaming history.

MGS3 puts you back in Snake’s shoes, though in many ways he’s not really the same man from before. That’s because Snake Eater is actually a prequel, taking place before the events in the previous titles. The year is 1964, and Cold War tensions are at their highest. A rogue Soviet colonel is developing a nightmarish weapon of unimaginable power deep in a hidden base in a Russian jungle, and it’s up to you, as Snake, to put an end to it.

If that sounds pretty clichéd, it’s because it is. Sons of Liberty was often criticized for having an over-convoluted plot, and as a result, the story has become considerably more straightforward this time around. For the most part, there are no grand revelations; no spectacular shifts in allegiance – it gets to the point where it almost doesn’t really feel like MGS anymore. It’s nice to have a little constancy, but it also seems to make for a disappointingly dull and predictable story. To its credit as a prequel, Snake Eater does throw a few interesting twists on existing characters and established Metal Gear canon, but more often than not you’ll just scratch your head and wonder how we ended up with a MGS storyline with a largely absent sense of urgency.

What’s more, most of the characters Snake encounter in his adventure are shallow and boring this time around. Your usual bunch of charming radio support pals from the previous games aren’t around yet in this era, so we’re introduced to a bunch of dry, unlikable stock clichés ultimately with little bearing in the overall Metal Gear canon. Every time you save your game, you’ll get a character insisting on blathering to you about trendy 60’s movies in a self-referential, tongue-in-cheek way that just seems like the writer’s wants to show off. Another regression compared to the previous instalments: the game’s assortment of boss characters are visually formidable, but feature a disappointing lack of depth, with little reason to exist other than to provide some interesting opposition for Snake.

Snake Eater’s pre-release promotional trailers seems to summarize the previous two MGS games with single rhyming words “MEME” and “GENE”, for the first and second game respectively. This game’s buzzword is apparently “SCENE”, which is strangely a propos –- sometimes it feels like the like the entire story was conceived with the emphasis first and foremost on memorable scenes at the expense of actual overall cohesion. And just like other games that sandwich in extravagant action cinematics between difficult gameplay segments, MGS3 begs the question: if Snake can really kick so much butt, why does he have to spend tireless hours hiding and dodging enemy patrols?

Not that these cutscenes aren’t excellent, because taken individually, they feature incredible production values, camerawork, cinematography, and action choreography to rival even Hollywood’s most intense and over-the-top action derring-do. Here’s where Snake Eater’s graphics really shines: wispy lighting creates an ethereal atmosphere and textures are crisply detailed. But the real stars of the show are the characters, who animate realistically (thanks to extensive motion-capture work), have detailed facial expressions, and sync-up to their uniformly excellent voice actors. Hollywood veteran composer Harry-Gregson Williams’ excellent score compliments the action perfectly. The action itself is stylish, unique, and supremely memorable. Too bad it all just adds up to a whopping load of style and not a whole lot of substance.

Before its release, there was a great deal of ballyhoo about Snake Eater’s “survival”-themed new gameplay features. The biggest change is the new Russian jungle setting, which swaps MGS’ usual metallic colour palette for something greener and organic. The jungle looks stunning, sounds lush, actually feels alive, and is generally a lot more immersive than environments in previous games. It also allows for Snake Eater’s new gameplay innovations in the form of the camouflage index and food system.

Snake now has different uniform patterns and face paint he can wear that make up his total camouflage index, a numerical value on the screen that indicates how detectable Snake is to the enemy. The index changes depending on his camouflage’s compatibility with immediate surroundings, his stance (running, crouched, prone, etc.), and it can also temporarily drop when making noise, like when firing a gun. This is probably the best of MGS3’s gameplay additions.

The food system comes with Snake’s new ability to hunt from wildlife, forage fruits, or collect rations from enemy warehouses. It’s not as fancy at it sounds, because all it takes is shooting the animal/fruit and picking up the item. Different types of food have different effects, and for the most part they go towards some measure of refilling Snake’s stamina bar.

The stamina bar is another new feature in Snake Eater, constantly depleting slowly that weakens Snake the lower it gets, making it more difficult to aim, or improving his health regeneration speed. The abundance of magic insta-cure rations of Metal Gear tradition are gone, so there’s no easy way to refill health except for downing tasty munchies and waiting around for a bit (alternatively, you can actually save, shut off the Playstation 2 and do something else for a few hours). It’s really not such a major change, though, because in most cases the stamina bar really takes awhile to deplete, and there’s always wildlife aplenty scattered around the jungle. In the end, hunting and eating feels like a novelty more than anything else.

The least successful of Snake Eater’s new gameplay elements is the possibility of getting injured and having patch Snake up on the field. In many cases, when Snake is hit with a severe blow, a chunk of his health bar will turn red, which indicates an injury requiring medical attention. Pressing START and going into the Cure menu, you can extract bullets from wounds, apply burn ointment, administer antidotes, sew up gashes, or set splints, but likely a combination of several of the above, because many injuries require you to execute several procedures before Snake’s 100%.

It’s a cool concept, but it’s not executed all too well, firstly because it’s grossly unrealistic, even considering all allowances provided to Metal Gear’s patently goofy video-game take on realism. Being able to pause a firefight to instantly yank a few bullets out of Snake’s leg is pretty silly, without wondering how he was able to run around with them lodged inside in the first place. Secondly and worse, it’s incredibly jarring to have to constantly pause the game, wade through a series of menus, perform the necessary cures, exit the menus and resume the game. You’ll have to plow through a myriad of screens with the camouflage and food systems too, but you’re much more likely to find yourself using the cure function during a heated battle, so it ends up really hurting the pacing and tension.

Snake Eater’s archaic camera system also makes sneaking around quite difficult this time around. Since a great deal of action takes place in outdoor environments this time around, you’ll find yourself wanting to see farther than the 5 meters radius that the top-down camera offers. This hasn’t been so much of am issue in previous titles because you had the radar to rely on, but MGS3 takes place before the Soliton radar system is invented. And since enemy soldiers are now able to see beyond the old 3-meter vision cone (this in itself is definitely an improvement), this makes for constant toggling between the stationary first-person view, and many frustrating instances where you get the unwanted attention of the enemy patrols that you didn’t actually see.

When faced with dangerous situations, Snake has plenty of ways to defend himself. During his journey through the jungle, he’ll come across a wide array of enemy munitions ranging from tranquilizers to grenades to assault rifles. He can fire in third-person view, switch to stationary first-person for greater precision, and can even use the iron sights on the guns to manually line up shots for the best accuracy. When shooting in first-person, his aim will sway depending on his stance and his stamina. In MGS3, Snake’s also an expert at CQC or close-quarters-combat, which is just a fancy name for the introduction of a few new moves in his melee arsenal. In addition to the basic punches, kicks, and grabs we’ve seen Snake do before, he can slam enemies to the ground to instantly knock them out, hold hostages while still wielding a pistol, interrogate captives at knife-point, and so on.

Though Snake Eater does have a steep learning curve and requires a good measure of patience, all these gameplay elements of disparate quality somehow still manages to come together as tense and terrific during the sneaky stealth bits. It’s immensely satisfying the first time you discover the tactical utility of overhanging beehives, or when you successfully dodge your way through an guarded area like a shadow without a trace.

Sadly, the magic stops working as soon as the enemy spots Snake and the game goes into full-on shooter action mode –- streams of endless enemies start piling in from all directions, the camera flinches back and forth as you struggle to get your bearings, Snake takes entire magazines’ worth of lead in the face and keeps on chugging, and you wonder if you should give up the tactical approach entirely and start mindlessly charging ahead, blasting anything that moves. Disappointingly, this ends up being more effective most of the time, and you end up with a MGS game where stealth is so oddly unnecessary.

If this review was a lot to take in, that’s because Snake Eater itself is a big game. Not in terms of length or scale, but in the sense that the gameplay has faceted nuances and the narrative chronology convoluted. To its credit, Metal Gear never stops being ambitious, and though the technical aspects are a resounding success, the overarching story is a let-down, and many gameplay elements don’t work nearly as well as they should have.

Yeah, I was amongst those disappointed with it, but I still don't think it's nearly as bad as some people seem to say it is... RE4 or KotOR, on the other hand...

[wipeo]

Why must this board be so insistant upon beating a dead horse?

More importantly, didn't you start a thread about MGS3 back when it first came out?
Why are you trying to start up the same thread now?

[CHW]

Because people seem to be insistent on discussing it about it, and it's better than having it sidetrack the other thread.

[Mavilu]

Right, well, if this one is a success, I'll be following it, maybe I'll get better at the game, that way.

[Darth Howie]

Originally Posted by wipeo

Why must this board be so insistant upon beating a dead horse?

More importantly, didn't you start a thread about MGS3 back when it first came out?
Why are you trying to start up the same thread now?

Why do you go into a thread that doesn't interest you just to question the purpose of the thread? If you don't want to talk about the topic, leave the thread alone.

As for something legitmate to say, I wish the MGS games would stop preaching philosophy at me. If it just stuck to the goofy, cold war era spy madness I would've enjoyed it a lot more. Instead I get to listen to hours of the Boss spouting moral relativism at me. Shut up and die, bitch!

[Mavilu]

You don't like the Boss and I don't like the girl that lets you save, babbling on and on about movies, if I git tired of her and I didn't make it past the first soldiers, how annoying it is going to get during the entire game?
X(

[Reido]

Well, Mav, you don't have to listen to the movie chick for the most part. Very little of what she says is actually important.

[wipeo]

Originally Posted by Darth Howie

Why do you go into a thread that doesn't interest you just to question the purpose of the thread? If you don't want to talk about the topic, leave the thread alone.

It was a viable question. I merely asked why we have to keep discussing a game that's been out for years, I didn't read the "Your dark gaming secrets" thread so I had no knowlege of how much it was discussed there.

As for the game itself, stealth not being a necessity in this game really killed the game for me. Just run across every map and you'll advance to the next stage of the game. The cutscenes weren't bad but the story's simplistic plot just makes me want to skip through them all whenever I want to play this again.

all-in-all, a nice bit of backstory for some characters in the MGS universe but pretty unnecessary with goofy game mechanics.

[Sturm]

The sneaking in the game got really old, I just blew everyone's brains out.

[Reido]

Ditto. It was a run-and-gun for me. They all are, for the most part, once I get used to playing them.

[Seelas]

I liked the plot and they actually did a pretty good job of keeping the cutscene-to-gameplay ratio manageable, compared to the other Metal Gears. But the gameplay itself sucked ass. All of the new "survival" elements were just annoying instead of immersive, and the loss of the radar, which was the only thing that made the gameplay in MGS1 and 2 work, made sneaking unmanageable unless I stopped every 2 seconds to go into first-person mode so I could see more than five feet in front of me. That, coupled with the fact that Snake can just Rambo his way through the guards in every screen anyway, made the sneaking elements of the game almost seem to disappear entirely at times. I much preferred MGS1 and 2, where sneaking wasn't particularly challenging but at least it was essential. You get caught, and you're likely to die. Not so in MGS3.

Very occasionally, there were sneaking segments that were really good and didn't require me to spend ages crawling in the grass or switching my camouflage 5 or 6 times. These were by far the best parts of the game, much better than most of the boss fights, which, aside from the Boss and Ocelot, felt pretty tired. (Some, namely The End, were just infuriating.) Overall the game felt a lot like Xenosaga to me; I enjoyed every aspect of it except the gameplay, which just pissed me off to no end. (To be fair, I did not hate the gameplay nearly as much as Xenosaga's. I wouldn't use such a cruel comparison on anything or anyone.)

[Vegeta X]

Originally Posted by Seelas

which, aside from the Boss and Ocelot, felt pretty tired. (Some, namely The End, were just infuriating.)

Aw dude, the end fight may very well have been my fav. part of the game, aside from the ending of course (which is the best ending in VG history as far as im concerned). Ive never played a game were i got to take part in an epic sniper battle and i thought this game did it wonderfully. Kinda reminded me of the movie Enemy at the Gates. I dunno, I think the creators of the game were expecting players to be very patient and methodical which is something i had no problem with but it seems alot of people here did have problems with.

What exactly didnt you like about the the fight though Seelas??? I loved the fact that i was constantly in danger and surveying the land extremely carefully with the sniper rifle. Made for a really tense atmosphere. The first time i fought him it took like 45 minutes, but now i can do it in like 2. And did you use the directional mic by any chance??? Its a life saver cause it can pick up on The Ends breathing thus making it much more easier to find him

[Seelas]

Originally Posted by Vegeta X

What exactly didnt you like about the the fight though Seelas???

The fact that I had to open up the main menu and pry out a tranquilizer bullet every single time I got hit, for starters? Not to mention that, well, I just don't find 5-10 minutes of setup just to get in one shot to be my idea of a good time. The fight bores the everliving hell out of me when it isn't busy pissing me off. Even with the directional microphone and the ticks on the map, his location is often ambiguous, and he frequently spots you even when you're crawling through grass with a high camo level, or from across the whole map as you're looking around with your sniper rifle. I honestly found actually sniping him to be almost undoable, I think I ended up chasing him with a shotgun.

Oh, and the little bit about him being in any one of three entire screens at any given point in time? Pardon me if I didn't feel like spending all day lurking through grass just in case he MIGHT be nearby.

And did you use the directional mic by any chance???

Yes.

[hitandmiss]

Okay, I held it back earlier, but I just need to say...

If you're disliking a Metal Gear Solid game for its un/sur-realistism, then you're missing the point. That's like saying "I hated Mario for its unrealistic physics." I mean... seriously. The unrealistic physics are the POINT of Mario, and the ridiculous, awesomely-over-the-top plot is the POINT of all the non-gameplay aspects of Metal Gear Solid.

Next you people will be telling us that you avoid Spyro because it violates the laws of thermodynamics.

I mean... come ON... that's meaningless pedantry. If you don't like Metal Gear Solid, it's cool. I can understand hating either the plot or the gameplay, but citing lack of realism in videogames that aren't designed to be realistic is just silly.

It's also worth pointing out that there's a military advisor credited in the Metal Gear Solid games, probably there so he can point at stuff and say "you DO know that's ridiculous, right?" and Kojima can say "yep, I know; it's going in there anyway." So it's not as if you can complain that they're being ignorant, either.

Well so as not to choke up the secrets thread, I'll attempt to justify why I felt MGS 3's technical aspects are contradicting and therefore, a valid complain.

Did you know the some of the moves the final boss uses are in fact, authentic aikido hand reversal techniques? Score 1 for realism. MGS 3 went out of its way to explain the Shagohod (a mobile Nuclear device) and even showed us the difference between revolver and pistol techniques. That's fine, the only thing they seem to forget with all that technical mumbo jumbo was, soldiers don't yap to each other in a life or death situation, less even to tell your opponent who is holding a gun and commanding a squad of special forces that can rip you apart with their guns in just about 101 ways his fucking weakness! I'm not a paratrooper (infantry trained) but I know the basics of NOT smoking prior to a jump. You really don't want a cigar to blow up that oxygen tank at 40 000 feet in the air - that's basic chemistry everyone knows. Further, MGS IS set in a realistic setting, unlike Mario or Spyro. We are thrust in the unseen conflict of the Cold War setting, this isn't anything like a fantasy setting yet it purports fantasy boss characters with 10 year old names "Pain", "Fury" etc. At some instances it seems to want to get the realism bit right; at others it falls apart spectacularly. Which is it Kojima? Either you are telling a realistic story with good technical points or you are not. Not when it suits the situation.

[Seelas]

Originally Posted by hitandmiss

Did you know the some of the moves the final boss uses are in fact, authentic aikido hand reversal techniques? Score 1 for realism. MGS 3 went out of its way to explain the Shagohod (a mobile Nuclear device) and even showed us the difference between revolver and pistol techniques. That's fine, the only thing they seem to forget with all that technical mumbo jumbo was, soldiers don't yap to each other in a life or death situation, less even to tell your opponent who is holding a gun and commanding a squad of special forces that can rip you apart with their guns in just about 101 ways his fucking weakness! I'm not a paratrooper (infantry trained) but I know the basics of NOT smoking prior to a jump. You really don't want a cigar to blow up that oxygen tank at 40 000 feet in the air - that's basic chemistry everyone knows. Further, MGS IS set in a realistic setting, unlike Mario or Spyro. We are thrust in the unseen conflict of the Cold War setting, this isn't anything like a fantasy setting yet it purports fantasy boss characters with 10 year old names "Pain", "Fury" etc. At some instances it seems to want to get the realism bit right; at others it falls apart spectacularly. Which is it Kojima? Either you are telling a realistic story with good technical points or you are not. Not when it suits the situation.

While I dislike MGS3 as a game, I think that you did miss the point a bit. The simultaneous realism/absurdity is the whole point of Metal Gear Solid; Kojima skillfully crafts this immersive, high-tension, extremely serious covert ops scenario and then makes it go to shit more and more through the course of the game. The extreme unrealisticness of certain parts of the game is hilarious precisely because of just how realistic other parts attempt to be. MGS wouldn't work as a straight comedy, nor would it work as a straight-up legit action drama. The coexistence of the realistic and unrealistic bits isn't laziness, it's the entire point of the game.