An amazing game, Snake Eater is the best in the Solid series. One flaw, though, keeps this game from "classic" status.
User Rating: 9 | Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater PS2
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is, obviously the third game in the Metal Gear Solid story arc. While the first game focused on Solid Snake, the franchise's main protagonist, and the second game focused on Raiden, a new hero with a rather interesting storyline but was widely criticized here in the US, Snake Eater follows the story of Snake. But, it's not the same Snake we've all known to love. This game follows the exploits of Naked Snake, a FOX unit operative sent to an old Soviet Union region known as Tselinoyarsk to retrieve a Soviet scientist known as Sokolov and bring him back to the United States. Suffice to say, things don't go as planned, and this simple mission grows into a much more complicated and emotional task that could very well spark a nuclear war between the Cold War era United States and Soviet Union. The game, overall, is much more gritty than the previous Solid games. Snake no longer has simple access to rations that will heal him up. Now, Snake has to worry about stamina and bodily harm, which can and will cause Snake's health to gradually deplete unless Snake can do something about it. Stamina will deplete naturally, as Snake obviously has to live. When Snake runs out of stamina, his actions become impared. Snake is shakier with aiming, his stomach will growl, alerting his location, and he will begin to starve to literally starve to death. Also, not patching wounds can cause Snake to potentially bleed to death. Therefore, it is extremely important for Snake to worry about eating native flora and faunae to replenish stamina and patch up injuries to his body from gunshots or high falls. Naturally, since the game takes place in a large forest environment, there is a large amount of things to eat, both plant and animal, and not everything is appealing to Snake's tastebuds. Therefore, much like a real life wilderness survival task, you have to watch what you eat, when you eat it, and ration your foods and meds! Another change from previous games lies in the new camouflage system. In the corner of the screen, you are presented with information about how blended Snake is with the environment. Wearing uniforms and facepaints that blend with the environment better will help your ability to stay hidden. Camo is IMPORTANT, as this game features NO RADAR AT ALL! You are left with 1960's military technology: sonar, directional microphones, and binoculars, to name a few gadgets. The game encourages you to be creative with your stealth, as being in an area as open as a forest does offer many possibilities for remaining hidden. You can climb trees, crawl through high grass, crawl in mud, even wear animal masks to scare enemies or throw captured poisonous creatures at them to let them scare or kill your adversaries. It is a very wide open environment and you quite possibly will never quite grasp on every little thing that you can possibly do. However, the sheer amount of creativity you can use in your gameplay experience is amazing! There is one design flaw, however, that keeps this game from truly being amazing. It's something that just doesn't make sense in the way it was implemented and really makes the game more annoying than it should be. In traditional Metal Gear style, the camera for the game follows Snake from above, tipping lower for areas when Snake is peeking from behind objects or going into a first-person view for crawling, for example. However, since the game takes place in such a massive environment as a Soviet forest, home to a tremendous amount of plant and animal life that requires constant observation of in order to remain hidden without radar in, the camera is simply far too close to the action. Sure, you do have the ability to move the camera with the right stick, a new addition to the game. But, it simply isn't enough, as you will often be spotted by guards that are off the screen that can see you, but you have no chance of ever seeing! The only real way of countering this camera flaw is to stop and look in first person, but since you can't move while in first person view unless during "intrusion mode", where you're crawling through something, this becomes a very annoying and broken process of moving a few steps, stopping, and moving again! It really doesn't make sense, as you are no longer in the claustrophobic and closed-in areas of indoor bases that defined the first two Solid games. You're in the open, in a large outdoor area, where visibility is not only crucial, but also simply more expansive, as you can and should see a lot more outside than you can inside. It doesn't kill the game, but you should expect to be spotted and have to defend yourself a lot more than you're probably used to on the first play through! Another thing to take into consideration is the game's "Survival Viewer" menu, where you actually access all of Snake's food, first aid, and inventory that you're not carrying on your person. To access this menu, you have to pause the game, causing a slightly jarring stop to the gameplay. It is a little annoying that, while fighting a boss that put a bullet in you, you have to suddenly stop all the action to patch Snake's wound, only to have it potentially happen again a few seconds later. Then again, the only other way to handle this gameplay aspect may have been to clutter up the L and R inventory menus, which would have also broke the gameplay aspect that if you carry a lot of weight, Snake will burn Stamina faster. Ultimately, it is a case of "pick your poison" that the developers obviously had to have noticed and chose a solution that minimized the problems. On the technical side, this game is brilliant. Graphically, it's one of the best PS2 games around, featuring very life-like and believable character models. But, the real star of the graphics show is Tselinoyarsk itself. This environment is amazing: dense, lifelike, full of life, and believable as an area that you could believe truly exists much like, say, Gran Turismo 4's accurate rendition of Times Square. Plantlife is lush, animals are believable, and you are always on your toes, as you never know when that movement in the grass is a toad or a poisonous snake... and the life, like in real life, blends in with its surroundings, so you don't have a canned snake model that you see in green trees and the same model in dark caves that just doesn't make sense in that place. Simply put, Tselinoyarsk is legit, and if it didn't work, this whole game wouldn't work. The audio is, as always, top notch. Returning is fan favorite and X-Men scribe David Hayter to voice Naked Snake. But, this game is populated with mostly new characters, the most memorable being The Boss, who was given voice by Lori Alan. The Boss, a woman, pretty much steals the show in this game, and, when you finally reach the conclusion of this epic, you will probably agree. The forest is, of course, filled with ambient noise that will hit you from all angles if you have the appropriate audio setup. A standout bit of music would be the actual Snake Eater theme song, which you won't actually hear until after a major plot point occurs in the game. It is very reminiscent of a James Bond theme, complete with strange video of colors and shapes being manipulated ala a Bond movie. Bottom line: this game is amazing! Is it the best in the series? Yes. Does it have its problems? Yes. Can you get past them? Yes. Should you play this game? Yes. A highly recommended game, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is an awesome production that furthers the argument that Hideo Kojima, the game's director, should be making movies.
