A mediocre game that is further hampered by technical issues on the 3DS.
Let me reiterate on the plot: Set during the cold war, you play the game as a CIA operative named Snake, who is sent on a mission to a Russian jungle in order to rescue a scientist who the Soviets are using to create a secret weapon of mass destruction that they'll unleash on the world and possibly cause a Nuclear War. Unfortunately, Snake's long time mentor betrays him during this mission, and now it's all up to Snake to rescue the scientist, defeat the Soviets, find out why his mentor defected to the other side, stop a nuclear war from happening, do this, then do that and this and then fight that to solve this in order to rescue that then escape here blah blah blah etc.
And that's all just in the beginning portion of the game. The game is so overplotted that you'll practically forget what you're supposed to be doing halfway through it. It doesn't help either that the game relays all this to you through extremely long and draining intermissions between characters and cutscenes. Straight off the bat, the game begins with a 10 minute cutscene explaining what you have to do, then another 10 minute intermission between you and your boss outlining your mission, then another long cutscene explaining why you have to rescue the scientist, some boss fights are fought through cutscenes, when you want to save your progress a character will tell you something about their life story. The ending? Good Lord you might as well put down your 3DS and microwave some popcorn for the upcoming feature presentation.
Of course MGS3 does all this to try and tell you a deep and meaningful story, but there's so much stupidity and other BS in it that it's hard to take seriously. I'm not exactly a historian, but I'm pretty sure the Russians didn't have soldiers that could control swarms of Hornets with their mere thoughts or ones that could shoot lightning bolts from their fingertips. Even the main characters come off as far too eccentric for their own good. There's this double agent woman who loves stripping down to her bra and underwear for some reason and can ride a motorcycle in ways that defy physics, a cowboy wannabe who shows off his fancy gun slinging moves but always ends up embarrassing himself (hey genius maybe you should try putting some bullets in those guns). There's also this one cutscene in which the main villain grabs your crotch. Uhhh...okay?
This could have all been forgiven if the game was actually fun to play and didn't suffer from technical issues. MGS3 is a 3rd person shooter. You're loaded you with like a hundred medical items and stealth tools all that are a bunch of gimmicks and arbitrary. For instance you have two sonars, one for detecting animals and the other for movement. The thing is, the one that detects movement also detects animal movement and since the animals are moving all the time why would you need the other sonar for? Why would you need a cigar that sprays knockout gas at short range when you can just use your tranquilizer gun? Some interesting mechanics are also present but don't really make much of a difference in terms of gameplay. You have a stamina bar that slowly decreases over time affecting your movement and aiming though you could just eat almost any animal that you find (which isn't hard) to replenish it. You can also perform surgery on yourself but this is all done by going into the menu and choosing a medical item to heal you. So much for fancy operations because all you need is a knife to take out a bullet.
For the most part you'll be trying to fight/sneak around henchmen, who aren't entertaining to fight in the slightest thanks to the game's stiff controls and the fact that the enemies all seem to be about as intelligent as a boiled potato. They'll mostly follow their scripted paths and when they do see you they'll yell for backup before standing in the exact same spot shooting at you until you die, putting no effort into taking cover or trying to flank you. If you're spotted while you're going for a stealth route you'll have to hide and wait for a countdown to finish, in which the enemies will conclude that you no longer exist and return back to whatever it is that they were doing. And this is all when the game isn't suffering framerate drops, though I suppose this was more to do with the 3DS' limitations.
To be fair the game does have it's highlights. There's solid voice acting and some unique and colorful boss fights, but it's not enough to remove my regret of spending $65 (AUD) for this. I guess I was under peer pressure when my friends recommended I purchase it, saying how great it was. After playing MGS3, I can safely tell those friends to go jump in a lake.