With the announcement of both a remake and a rerelease of Metal Gear Solid 3, I thought now would be the best time to replay it after a while. This has been my sixth time playing the game though only the second time where I've actually watched all of the cutscenes and even listened to a ton of codec calls. The first time I thought the story was just ok, and the next times I replayed the game I only felt like watching the first and last cutscene. But I knew one day I would give it another shot and I'm here to report on how I feel about this game as a whole. I'll divide it into two sections:

Gameplay

You might have already heard about certain details like skipping The End's boss fight by waiting 1 week in real life or killing him in a previous section. MGS3 is full of these moments and while they certainely give the game some charm, I think the best part is that even if you don't care about experimenting with the mechanics, the game is still fun.

I think it all comes into level design and pacing. When skipping the cutscenes a playthrough usually lasts 4 hours in contrast to the usual 10-15. But those 4 hours are left with a minimal amount of annoying sections. The bridge in the Virtous Mission, the camp with a Hind D, the labs where the game suddenly turns into Hitman, Groznij Grad... There are a ton of zones in the game but most of them are recognizable from a first glance. The cool part is that almost every zone has alternative paths. Combined with the different gadgets and ways to approach each enemy, it's fun to come back and try a slightly different approach.

The boss fights are also very fun except for The Pain since you can only beat him in one repetitive way. But every other one... I think I have more appreciation for The End and The Fury than before. At first I had to use the Konami Code to know where The End was located but now it's cool that you can just run around, get familiar with his hideouts and chase him. Same thing with The Fury, you'll get burned a lot but it's fun to beat him using just cqc.

Along with The Pain, the only parts of the game I don't really like are the cave and the Eva escort part. Though they aren't very long so it's not something that bothers me too much. Same with the survival, camouflage and food menus.

Also, I love the Ape Escape minigame which sadly is only available in the PS2 versions. Seeing 2 of my favorite game franchises collide is awesome and seeing the funny monkeys next to a realistic human is fun.

But yep. It's obviously aged in some ways (the usual complain I see from newcomers is that the controls are a bit clunky and I can see why), but in others it's still impressive for a 19 year old game. Pretty good.

Story

Btw, from now on I'll be mentioning a couple of spoilers. I'll cover them though, so you can still read my general thoughts.

The story is set in the year 1964. Naked Snake (later to be known as Big Boss) must rescue Sokolov, a Russian scientist who is forced to build a giant weapon that can fire missiles anywhere in the world called Shagohod (basically, the grandfather of Metal Gears). The mission seems to be going well until Snake is betrayed by his mentor, The Boss who allies herself with Coronel Volgin who is the main villain of the game. So they kidnap Sokolov again and Volgin fires a missile to a russian base that doesn't leave the US in the best position. Snake's mission is trying to rescue Sokolov again and kill The Boss to prove that the US had nothing to do with that missile.

So where do I start? I guess with Volgin. I don't know what people think about him but for me, he's one of the blandest MGS villains. His character is summed up in "I'm a saddist who throws lightning". In fact that might be the word in which I can describe most of the game. Bland. Trust me, I don't think it's bad. But watching most of the cutscenes I feel either nothing in particular or I'm just slightly entertained. Maybe it's because most of the dialogue is just talking about the plan or the robot. And I don't know about you but I don't think I need a longer description than "It's a big mech that can launch nukes to the US". My favorite example of this type of situation is when you fight Volgin and he literally says "Very well. I'll explain it (his plan) before I kill you".

Ocelot on the other hand is a great villain in this game. There's something about him growing (or trying to appeal Snake in a definitely no homo way) as the game progresses that's very fun. Easily the best incarnation of Ocelot and not because we might already know him from previous games.

Eva feels pretty monotonus and you can see how Snake doesn't care at all about her>! until the last cutscene!<. In fact I find it funny that there's a codec call where you can hear how Snake is very angry at the fact that Eva took his food and that causes a bigger reaction on him than looking at Eva half naked. That leads into my biggest surprise with this playthrough: the Codec Calls.

I usually don't bother calling my partners in any Metal Gear game unless I'm stuck or I already know there's going to be an interesting interaction. But this time I thought "Why not" and every time I caught a new animal or a new event happened in the story, I called either Zero, Paramedic or Sigint. And wow. There are a ton of great conversations about anything. Movies, Wild Life, the characters themselves... It's funny how Snake always asks how each animal tastes and it's not so funny how some of the converstations foreshadow a plot point in Metal Gear Solid 4. It's fascinating the amount of conversations there are, even more than Metal Gear Solid 2.

But now let's get to what seems to be the central point of the story: Snake, The Boss and their relationship.

I don't really care about it.

It's not that I don't believe they have something special that can't be classified as love or maternal things. Or that they aren't interesting characters. It's just that their interactions are pretty bland. Except for the first codec conversation and the final one this is how dialogue between these 2 go:

"Snake is doing his things of sneaking when suddenly The Boss appears out of nowhere."

Snake: Boss! Why are you doing this?

"The Boss beats the shit out of Snake."

Boss: You can't do this. Give up.

That's it? That's the whole relationship between 2 characters? Couldn’t we have more scenes with more meaningful conversations or even flashbacks of Snake’s training? What bothers me the most is that not only with The Boss, but in most cutscenes Snakes has the syndrome of just standing there while another character infodumps about subjects that don't have that much depth in the first place. That's why I was very surpised with the codec calls, because it felt like that was where his personality had gone. There and the ending which is the other part of the story I thought was excellent. But I'll keep that in spoilers.

So, first of all, the atmosphere is amazing. That flower field has something iconic to it and you can definitely feel things while listening to her backstory. I also think it's reallly cool how her voice somehow sounds maternal. It helps with that empathy. Anyways, the battle is good, you get to eat Liquid Snake, and then shoot her. Great, we've saved the day! It's not the most lighthearted scene for obvious reasons, but Ocelot appearing for one last round of being so silly and Eva doing her things makes you feel that hey, at least you saved the world and not everything is bad.

Until you realize everything is a lie.

The Boss never betrayed the USA. The goverment used Snake and The Boss for their benefits. And it turns out both Eva and Ocelot were spies on different sides. There's a line at the beginning of the Snake Eater mission where Snake says he doesn't know if he can trust anyone. And with this twist, it's more clear. You can see in his facial expression how the title of Big Boss doesn't mean anything to him if he's lost everything else that matters to him.

And it's at that point when he sheds a tear in that graveyard that I remember the reason we are living this story. Before Metal Gear Solid 3, Big Boss was a character we didn't know much about. He was the villain in the MSX games and Liquid's obsession in MGS1 but who knows why this guy in particular is the villain of the series. It makes sense to explore why he became what he became, and how you can perfectly understand his motivations. That scene plus the Way to Fall song just leaves me sad. MGS games usually end with a hopeful note, but both MGS3 and The Phantom Pain want to show the other side of the coin. The one where the only road you can take goes to hell.

Conclusion

I don't want to make this post longer so I'll try to sum all of this in a couple of sentences. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is a great game with amazing level design and mechanics that can be more deep that some games released today while having a story I don't personally click with, but that doesn't mean it lacks moments or characters I really enjoy. I'll continue to replay in whatever device I have at the moment and you should give it at least one chance. Do it to see a hungry mercenary wearing a crocodile cap.