Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater Review

Game_Name: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater Review
Platform: PS2
Developer: KCEJ
Publisher: Konami
Genre: Action Adventure
ESRB Rating: Mature
GamePlay Rating: 8
Graphics Rating: 9
Replayability Rating: 7

---

He's back

Solid Snake returns (for a much longer stay) in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, the latest installment in Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear franchise. If you were turned off by Sons of Liberty’s convoluted storyline and lack of Snake, have no worries about this one. This is the popular series at the top of its game.

Your mission, if you choose to accept it

The game begins in the Soviet Jungle during the time of the Cold War, and more specifically, the Cuban Missile Crisis. A brilliant Russian scientist -- who was developing a top secret project that could turn the tide of the war -- has been kidnapped. As Snake, you para-drop into the jungle a few miles from where the scientist is being kept with orders to locate and extract him. As per usual action fare, things don’t go quite as smoothly as planned. Soon enough you find yourself in the middle of lies, betrayal, and heavy machinery. This is Hideo Kojima at his best. My biggest problem with the Metal Gear series has always been the overwhelming and annoying amount of exposition, but I found myself so immersed in the story and its characters that at times I just wanted to get through the gameplay and get to more cut scenes.

New Stuff

While the basic gameplay mechanics remain the same, there have been a few significant changes. You now have a stamina bar that directly affects your health bar. Low stamina will cause your health to deteriorate while a full stamina bar will allow you to regenerate health. When your stamina is running low (and thus your health is dropping), you can eat various animals and vegetation as well as your trusty rations. Rations give you a tremendous amount of stamina when eaten, so they're pretty rare. Most times you’ll find yourself shooting fruit out of trees or sneaking up on wildlife. Each thing you consume gives you a different amount of stamina, as well as an often hilarious remark from Snake. You’ll find yourself constantly munching on little things along the way to keep your stamina full. It helps to have food on hand, but before you run off and fill your backpack with tasty forest creatures, be warned that food does spoil. And eating spoiled food has ugly consequences.

Your mission, if you choose to accept it

The game begins in the Soviet Jungle during the time of the Cold War, and more specifically, the Cuban Missile Crisis. A brilliant Russian scientist -- who was developing a top secret project that could turn the tide of the war -- has been kidnapped. As Snake, you para-drop into the jungle a few miles from where the scientist is being kept with orders to locate and extract him. As per usual action fare, things don’t go quite as smoothly as planned. Soon enough you find yourself in the middle of lies, betrayal, and heavy machinery.

This is Hideo Kojima at his best. My biggest problem with the Metal Gear series has always been the overwhelming and annoying amount of exposition, but I found myself so immersed in the story and its characters that at times I just wanted to get through the gameplay and get to more cut scenes.

New Stuff

While the basic gameplay mechanics remain the same, there have been a few significant changes. You now have a stamina bar that directly affects your health bar. Low stamina will cause your health to deteriorate while a full stamina bar will allow you to regenerate health.

When your stamina is running low (and thus your health is dropping), you can eat various animals and vegetation as well as your trusty rations. Rations give you a tremendous amount of stamina when eaten, so they're pretty rare. Most times you’ll find yourself shooting fruit out of trees or sneaking up on wildlife. Each thing you consume gives you a different amount of stamina, as well as an often hilarious remark from Snake.

You’ll find yourself constantly munching on little things along the way to keep your stamina full. It helps to have food on hand, but before you run off and fill your backpack with tasty forest creatures, be warned that food does spoil. And eating spoiled food has ugly consequences.

Another new addition to the game is a more in-depth healing system. If you sustain an injury and don't treat it, it will gradually reduce your stamina, thus lowering your health. To treat an injury, you go into a special menu screen that shows Snake's entire body and where he's sustained injuries. You then treat the wound step by step. However, this feature is hardly interactive. It involves choosing the actions from a menu in the right order. The whole thing feels pointless. While it's not cumbersome enough to take away from the game, it definitely doesn't add to it.

The other big new feature is the addition of camouflage. You can choose which style of camo to wear and how to paint your face, and the game will give you a percentage based on how visible you are. You start with a handful of select camo sets and acquire more as you proceed through the game. This feature was implemented beautifully and really elevates the stealth action to another level.

Graphics and Sound

The Metal Gear Solid franchise on the PS2 has always looked and sounded beautifully and this is no exception. The graphics are some of the best that the system has to offer. The sound effects are very realistic, backed by an excellent score by Harry-Gregson Williams. The stellar audio and visuals only deepen an already immersive experience.

Overall

It’s clear that what Kojima was going for in Snake Eater was a more realistic feel and he succeeded with flying colors. The stamina system is a great addition and really amps up the survival feeling. Camouflage is awesome to wear and even cooler to see in action. On top of this, we get gorgeous graphics, wonderful sound, and a great story with top notch characters. And with various unlockables, there’s plenty of reasons to play through more than once. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is a cinematic masterpiece that every gamer should experience.