The fine line between realism and idiocy gets completely obliterated in Kojima's latest offering.
The problem here, of course, is that Hideo Kojima is under the erroneous impression that what is good for the goose is just as good for the gander, and the duck, and the swan, and just about anything with a bill -- and that includes the platypus. In his "Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater," he attempts to prove exactly that, and, sadly, succeeds only in demonstrating that too much creative juice can, in fact, be an unintentionally, humiliatingly hilarious thing.
Now, most of you who read my reviews know two things about me. One, I am a very critical, harsh examiner; and two, I almost never pay attention to anything but the most cleverly crafted plots, seeing them as somewhat akin to the plots of pornography movies. It is the latter of these that I'd like to concentrate on in this next segment, as story is a huge and central aspect of "Metal Gear Solid 3." Going under the exceptionally questionable subtitle "Snake Eater" (note: yes, I know what that stands for given the game's context, but that doesn't make it any less ridiculous), the game once again puts the player in the shoes of Snake, a genetically-engineered American soldier whose objective is to infiltrate enemy territory alone and carry out dangerous missions, while the United States government plays the plausible deniability card. Snake's latest caper takes him to the jungle (!) of the Soviet Union (?!), where he is to rescue a captured Soviet turncoat rocket scientist. Aiding him in this mission is his superior only referred to as The Boss, who is the mother of America's special forces (?!?). The mission goes awry, resulting in the discharge of a small nuclear weapon in the midst of the Russian jungle, leaving Snake hospitalized with minor injuries and under suspicion of treason.
If you aren't laughing on the floor by this point, you haven't read the above paragraph carefully enough. Let me recap quickly: jungles of Soviet union, mother of America's special forces, a nuclear blast leaving Snake hospitalized with minor injuries. It's almost like Kojima was continuously one-upping himself on how ridiculous the plot of a techno-thriller can be made while using absolutely no reference to reality whatsoever. If, on the other hand, you are not amused because you think this is nothing compared to other, substantially more idiotic storylines, let me put a smile on your face with two simple words: "bullet bees."
Going further into the story would be pointless, as it never gets any better than this. As a matter of fact, it keeps getting progressively worse all the way through to the final boss who, in addition to wearing a Soviet army coat in conjunction with bright red go-go boots, is able to fire live rounds with his hand by igniting the gunpowder within the chamber by way of discharging lightning bolts from his fingertips.
The natural question to ask at this point is: why am I making such a huge fuss over the story of this game? Shouldn't this be an excusable offense considering its other features, such as visuals, audio design, controls, and gameplay? After all, these aspects are just as crucial, if not more so, to determining the overall quality of a title.
The answer in this case is as logical as it is unsparing. Just as ridiculously bad plot can get in the way of the otherwise perfectly enjoyable, ahem, action in the aforementioned B-movies, so can bad plot turn a videogame on its head so as to make it virtually unplayable. Never mind that the introductory sequence is unskippable and, despite the liberally sprinkled playable tutorial, still takes roughly 45 minutes to get through. Never mind that the overall visual aesthetic of the game feels like something cobbled together out of the caffeine-fueled dreams of a 16-year old gun fanatic on dopamine. Never mind all that. Bizarre visual aesthetics and unskippable cutscenes are by far not the worst one could do to a video game to render it unplayable. It is by far the earnesty with which the game's absurd story takes itself that will force even the most resilient gamer uninitiated in the ways of Kojima's storytelling ability to throw his controller to the ground in disgust and proclaim: "I quit!"
Now that I got that part of my rant out of the way, I'd like to spend what is left of this review discussing how the production values of "Metal Gear Solid 3" fit in with the laugh riot that is its plot. From a visual standpoint, the game is about what one would expect from Kojima's boys at Konami, which is to say it looks just about spectacular, were it not for the triteness of some of the locations (note: someone should really remind game designers that having warehouses in jungle is far from practical, not to mention original.) The models are animated extremely well, and the surrounding milieu is more than up to the task of creating the illusion of a living environment, with living things galore to dress up the swamps and forests. Where the visual design is concerned, everything is top-notch. The same goes for the audio design, which is of unquestionable quality.
The gameplay is, sadly, yet another department where "Metal Gear Solid 3" suffers. While the previous MGS titles placed Snake into the confines of industrial complexes, rife with geometric shapes and right angles against which he could comfortably lean to peek around corners and sneak past the enemy, "Snake Eater" calls for a different tactic altogether. Since the game takes place predominantly in the outdoors, geometrically accurate angles, boxes, and walls become a luxury Snake cannot afford. He is thus forced to rely on stealth using his surroundings, that is by blending in with them by way of camouflage and subterfuge. This, in and of itself, is a fantastic idea, especially considering the realism of this approach. It is, however, once again the execution that turns a good idea into a bad one, as the camouflage system is hopelessly contradictory to everything the game otherwise requires of the player. The different camouflage types blend in differently with the variety of surfaces Snake comes in contact with, so the player will have to switch between camouflages on the fly. The realism of this mechanic is, however, undermined by the fact that it takes roughly 2.2 nanoseconds for Snake to change his camouflage -- you know, just like in real life! Doing this requires going into a separate menu in order to manually swap the camouflage, which will conveniently tell you how compatible it is with the surface you are leaning against -- again, just like in real life!
Another borderline stupid mechanic is the need to supplement yourself with nutrients while in the field, as well as take care of wounds and combat injuries by way of performing field surgery on yourself. The former requires that Snake hunt, kill, and ingest the various wildlife available throughout the game world -- snakes, birds, monkeys, crocodiles... wait. Crocodiles? That's correct! You will have to kill crocodiles. And eat them. This will, in turn, replenish your stamina meter which will cause your health to recover. I'm not even sure how this made sense to the game designers, but seeing as it made it into the game, someone out there must have thought this to be a fantastic idea. The health mechanic is just as arcane, with Snake having to use a variety of improvised tools, including sutures, splints, ointments, and his trusty cigar to treat such afflictions as broken limbs, gunshot wounds, and leeches. While this seems like another good idea, I'm sure you've picked up on the pattern by now and are guessing: "Yep, this one's going to be broken, too." And you would be right.
The health system, similarly to the camouflage and food system, also takes you out of the game into a set of menus, where you play a kind of mahjong minigame by matching the healing substances to the types of wounds Snake has. There's really no other way to describe it besides "inane." It's not functional, it wastes time spent in the game, and it is, from a purely realistic standpoint, absurd that anyone, even a hardcore action hero genetically enhanced soldier type, would be able to make himself a splint under a barrage of small-arms fire, and do it in under 2 seconds.
To bottom-line this review, I would like to remind all readers that there is a reason we play videogames. We do it for the purpose of abstracting ourselves from reality, for the purpose of suspending our disbelief, and for the purpose of being entertained at least on some level. While there are different levels of realism available to use through a variety of titles ranging from the Super Mario games to the ultra-realistic Operation: Flashpoint and ArmA, it is almost always an unspoken agreement between the game designer and the player that you cannot overlap these levels of realism and expect good results. "Metal Gear Solid 3" attempts to do just that, and the results are fairly predictable. So, Mr. Kojima: either you make a highly realistic tactical simulator were the survival becomes a critical element of the gameplay, a la "Pathologic", or you make an action game where health packs are liberally sprinkled around the levels. Either you make a game that adheres mostly to a somewhat historically accurate plot, or you go the opposite way and play it for laughs in a mostly fictional universe. Trying to eke out both from a game does not appear to yield stellar results, if MGS3 is any indication.
Overall, although the production values attached to this game are remarkably high, they almost seem to be wasted considering the absolutely inane story and shoddy gameplay. In so many ways, MGS3 will appear to be somewhat similar to a Michael Bay movie: extremely flashy, but devoid of any real content due to the ridiculous mechanics and shoddy writing.