Been a hot minute since my last review, but if you know me then you should know I have been busy with midterm exams recently. Previously we covered Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, which was a major step up from the original Metal Gear Solid and contained themes far ahead of its time. Now we’ve arrived at Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Considered by many to be the best in the Metal Gear franchise and one the greatest games of all time. Much like the original it evolved the stealth formula in an extraordinary manner. Pushing what the basic mechanics can do while also being an artistic thinkpiece that got you to reconsider real world conflicts, events, and beliefs. Metal Gear Solid 3 is beloved for good reasons and honestly I can just end the article right there. It’s timeless, that’s all I have to say. For a game made more than twenty years ago it still plays very well as if it was made today. It’s more technically impressive than other games that released around the same time, has killer presentation and cinematography that rivals that of film, and of course one of the most infamous songs in video game history. Literally named after the title of the game, and being played on three separate occasions in the main story.
Metal Gear Solid 3 is great. I don’t think it’s perfect and some aspects have shown its age, but it is my favorite entry just like a majority of other fans and it’s surprising the series hasn’t reached a high point like this since. Yes, both Guns of The Patriots and The Phantom Pain are two highly praised titles but as time passed people have raised criticisms against them. Whereas Snake Eater has remained undented. Untouched by the cruel passing of time, so what gives? I don’t know, but before we can dive further into this masterpiece of stealth tactics we first must discuss what was put into it. Shortly after the release of Sons of Liberty, the mad mastermind Hideo Kojima began directing Snake Eater. A prequel to the franchise thus far that would explain why things are the way they are while also answering a handful of other questions raised by the previous two titles. He kind of made Snake Eater t’s own thing seeing as it’s a prequel. It’s the beginning of the timeline so even if you haven’t played the first two games you can still go in and enjoy the story and topics on offer. If you did play the sequels then this elevates the experience further as you get to know certain things they reference or what would inspire events later in the timeline.
Kojima also wanted Snake Eater to have a more exotic setting compared to the other games. The first two entries took place in modern day industrial complexes, but Snake Eater would place the player into the cruel vast wilderness. Seemed like a good way to make Metal Gear Solid a more survival focused game especially with some of the new systems at play, but what it really did was take stealth in a whole new direction. Giving players more freedom on how they stealthed around, dealt with enemies, the way bosses played out, and much more. It’s more limited when you compare it to video games now, but back in the day Snake Eater was a stealth playground. A game that allowed you to go crazy as long as you played thoughtfully at the same time. Top that with a story that criticized patriotism, servitude to one’s country, how greed can fuel a nation, and despite evolving each passing decade they also get involved in some war where more lives are taken than needed. I’m not exactly sure if that’s the main theme of Snake Eater, but that’s the fun of interpreting games under a new light. Snake Eater could’ve been the end of the franchise, but Kojima was pushed to make new entries seeing how the series was rocketing towards the stars. So he did and that’s how we ended up with three more mainline entries, a hack and slash spinoff, and eventually Kojima leaving Konami. Leaving the franchise in their hands to do f*ck knows what. Like making a survival crafting game nobody asked for.
Looks like there’s some hope for Konami though. We all thought the Silent Hill 2 remake would be a total bust seeing how they got a team who makes walking sim horror games. Then it turned out to be one of the best Triple A games of 2024. Now a remake of Snake Eater is in the works, and instead of looking like hot garbage it actually looks damn good. Lacks the artistic style of the original, but I guess it can’t be a one on one. Just don’t compare it too much. So to celebrate the eventual release of the Snake Eater remake and end my Metal Gear Solid binge, let's cover the third entry in this critically acclaimed franchise. A game filled with action, stealth, conflict, war crimes, anger, sadness, and love. Which is convenient because today is Valentine’s Day. While everyone is out spending time with their loved ones I’m here talking about a video game and stressing out on whether or not I did well on that midterm exam. My life is f*cking awesome.
Anyways, let’s sky dive right into this nightmare. I’m still in a dream, snake eater.
Story
The game is set during the 1960s within the heat of the Cold War. The two biggest countries in the world, America and Russia, are at an arms race with each other. Whether that be who shoots a man into space first or who possesses the most nuclear weaponry. America suspects Russia is up to no good and may be hoarding more nukes than they should, and recently they get a mission to save a Russian scientist named Sokolov. A man who's been helping the Russian army develop a new weapon had never seen before and may just lead to Russia dominating other countries with ease. Off the fifty star nation goes to save a scientist who won’t surely piss himself once you run into him, and thankfully they send the best soldier they got. Naked Snake, second best soldier in America right behind his mentor The Boss. He’s assisted by Major Tom and Para-Medic who’ll provide him aid along his journey. He sneaks into enemy territory, disarms some Russian troops, and eventually locates Sokolov. There he learns more of what is going on and what Sokolov was helping the Russians develop. A heavily armored mechanized tank named Shagohod. A beast which can traverse miles within seconds, easily transport nuclear missiles, and fire them from a distance with high accuracy. The Russians can use this weapon to turn the tides of the Cold War, and Sokolov doesn’t want to witness his work used for sinister plans.
This is why he wishes to escape the country. To halt progress on the Shagohod and reunite with his family in America. Both Sokolov and Naked Snake sneak their way out of the encampment while also facing off against Commander Ocelot who leads the Ocelot Unit in the Russian forces. As they make their way to the extraction point Snake runs into The Boss. She’s carrying a case containing a powerful nuclear armament, and rising alongside the bridge they’re standing on is a chopper. Within the chopper are the Cobras, an elite unit once led by The Boss, alongside electric fist Colonel Volgin. He got word Sokolov tried to escape, and the way he did so was through The Boss. The two of them are working together and the reason for it is unknown. Snake tries to talk sense into his mentor wondering why she would betray her country. The two fight only for Snake to get his arm dislocated, thrown off the bridge, and lose Sokolov. The chopper flies off with the colonel firing a nuke in the distance. Destroying the countryside and causing commotion in the news. Word gets out about the nuke and Russia suspects America did it as they saw an American aircraft, that being the one Snake took, was the area to drop off and rescue him.
Not wanting the Cold War to get any worse and kickstart World War III shortly after the events of World War II both countries made an agreement. America tells Russia that The Boss had gone up and betrayed them, and that she is sorta responsible for the nuke. Russia wants them to hand over or kill The Boss, and if they don’t do so within a week they’ll declare war. With little time and no options left they do the best thing they did a few days ago. Send an American aircraft into Russian territory with Liquid Snake inside it. Drop him back into the wilderness, locate where The Boss lies along with the rest of the Cobras and Volgin, figure out where the Shagohog lies as well, and put a stop to all of it before everyone has to deal with the bullsh*t that is World War III. Snake will make unlikely allies and foes in this journey, and learn the truth as to what is truly going on. The secrets lying beneath the surface and why the Boss betrayed the country she loved for all these years. The country she fought viciously for, and what they did to her in return.
Gameplay
Where the first two games were simplistic top down stealth action games with the occasional set camera angle, Metal Gear Solid 3 makes use of Playstation 2 tech and creates an experience that is more flexible and fluid to control as other games at the time.No longer can Snake move in four directions or a combination of the four. Now you can run around freely and with it comes being able to control the camera on your own. You can activate a set top down camera by pressing the right joystick down, but if you don’t want that you can always control it like a third person game. Move it around, see everything around you, and try to gaze at what lies ahead. Series mechanics return once more like the typical stealth. Hide behind cover, crawl along the ground, and try to stay out of enemy sight. Getting spotted by an enemy will alert them, and if you let them scurry away they’ll call in every other enemy in the area alongside reinforcements to kill you. That’s why it’s important to knock them out once you get spotted, but make sure no other enemy can see you. This can be done by either using a silenced tranq gun, a knife, or the newly added close quarters combat. This allows you to grapple an enemy and throw them on the ground. Knocking them unconscious, but if you do this out it might alert some guards.
Another new system to Snake Eater is the camouflage system. Change your face paint and your uniform to blend in with the environment. Better camouflage increases your camouflage number, and the higher it is the less likely enemies will be likely to see you even if you’re crawling out in the middle of the open. You’ll also have to manage your wounds and stamina as compared to the previous games you sustain wounds from battle and can only run around so much. Stamina can be replenished by eating food, and food is everywhere. You either kill animals in the wild or find rations stashed in storages. Some food is tastier than others refilling for stamina, and sometimes you don’t want to carry around just fresh meat as it rots. Leading to less recovery for stamina or food poisoning. Injuries can be treated in the cure tab alongside poisons. Para-Medic packed you a ton of supplies to stitch up wounds, and each supply can help with specific conditions. If you need more medical supplies you’ll have to find more of them in the wild. Everything you need can be found through exploration such as food, new guns, and equipment.
As you progress further into the game you’ll run into a boss. Henchman working under Colonel Volgin such as Ocelot and the Cobras led by The Boss. These bosses contain unique mechanics and skills that test you in different categories. Some require you to evade until they’re open or unaware, and others require you to be observant. They all have gimmicks to them, but the thing about gimmick based boss fights is figuring out how they work and how to overwhelm them. It’s like a puzzle. Unravel it and you can strike the core. Besides that there’s nothing much else I can say about Snake Eater. It’s an evolution of previous game formulas and a pretty nice one at that. Hopefully you can deal with the Cobras, stop Volgin, destroy the Shagohod, and face…the Boss. This last part was confusing seeing how we’re talking about bosses and a character named Boss.
Thoughts
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is the best Metal Gear Solid game. The amount of thought put into improving the gameplay mechanics and crafting an engaging narrative that stands on its own without prior knowledge of previous entries is a testament to what Kojima and his team can do. It’s a timeless masterpiece that still plays wonderfully to this day and any criticisms I have with the game are mainly nitpicks or outdated elements. The gameplay is the most refined amongst the older Metal Gear Solid titles. Mainly because it plays like any third person game at the time, but it still maintains a lot of the core mechanics. Sneaking around, crawling on the ground, using the first person mode to see what’s up ahead, the radar to track enemies off screen, accumulating a mass arsenal by exploring, and how selecting weapons on hand works. It’s more of the same, but better and more refined. A lot of people say this when it comes to Snake Eater, but the jungle setting does add to the stealth experience. Blending in with your surroundings, using the terrain to your advantage, and trying to stand out too much. The game makes it clear from the start that you are alone out here. You must adapt, learn, and scavenge in order to survive. A lot of the new systems at play would be seen as annoying nowadays, but I personally believe they add to the core experience and avoid some of the problems the first two games ran into.
You can’t just run away from every encounter even if you do get spotted. You have stamina, and that stamina must be managed through the consumption of food. Regularly getting the player to explore or look around their surroundings in search of an animal they can eat. You learn this and think you can just hoard a bunch of food early in the game, but you can’t. Scavenged meat can rot in your inventory and there’s only so much you can carry. I learned this when reaching the mountaintop area. I had killed a bunch of crabs I found in a cave before the first Cobra fight, so I thought I was set. Then I ate the crabs later on and they gave me food poisoning. Snake Eater is teaching its players they can’t just cheese their way through every system. You can’t overly rely on the radar to see enemies as every electronic object now uses a battery. The battery drains and you have to either wait for it to refill or… I don’t know. The game told me this and instead of using it occasionally I chose to not use it. I conditioned myself to play without the radar compared to previous games, and honestly the game was more engaging this way. I had to sneak around more carefully, look up ahead using my binoculars, play slowly, and take my time with any section that contained too many guards. Building my sensual awareness of what could go wrong. Also your silencers degrade with use so you can’t just tranq everyone often like in Sons of Liberty. Nice way to help balance things out as the tranq was the go to gun back in Metal Gear Solid 2.
The camouflage system is Snake Eater’s greatest addition and I’m surprised not a lot of stealth games feature a similar mechanic. Changing your appearance to blend in with your surroundings and decrease the chance of being spotted even when lying out in the open. The closest I can think of is the disguise system in Hitman or a small handful of RPGs.You can change the color of your uniform and face paint easily, and while it can be immersion breaking at times it allows you to adapt to situations more easily. It makes sense why they allow you to do it easily here because the game is one continuous journey in a condensed playground. If they were to use this in a more linear stealth game with mission based progression like Dishonored or Hitman they’d probably have you choose your starting camo and make use of it for the rest of the mission. Sounds cruel but I can see it working as it means you have to plan ahead, or play a mission until you fail to go restart and reconsider the camo you want. Speaking of linear based progression I keep describing Snake Eater as if it’s this sandbox game, but really it’s a linear set of small fields to play around in. The game is flexible, but it’s always pushing you forward to the next objective. I kinda prefer this over the previous games, because while the maze-like level design encouraged careful play and exploration it got annoying to backtrack between the same areas over and over again.
Snake Eater feels more like a more concise and focused experience, and I appreciate it for doing so. Guns feel better to use than ever and the boss fights as well. A lot of the gimmicks they use this time around are fair and you can instantly guess how to defeat a foe based on their starting cutscenes. The Pain uses swarms of hornets to attack his foe and in an earlier cutscene you learn they can’t be shot to death. However, to get to his boss fight you had to swim through water and the whole arena is submerged in water with a few standing points. So when things get too busy you duck into the water. Swim to another safe spot and wait until he is open, because you can’t fight while in the water. The Fury is a flamethrower wielding who stomps around, can fly, and sprays vicious flames at you. His arena is vast, containing pillars you can duck between, and so it’s a fight all about hiding, memorizing where he is, and shooting when he is unaware of where you are. Even if a boss fight contains a mechanic that annoys you I wouldn’t say it’s frustrating like previous games. You can still tackle them with the equipment you have and don’t need to run back to get an item to make the fight viable. I think Kojima and his team learned a lot from past experiences and created what is the most streamlined Metal Gear Solid game to date. Sure it’s a bit linear, but I’d rather replay a game that feels focused and precise rather than a game where the good bits are good but highlighting the bad bits is easy and obvious.
Graphically this game aged very well despite coming out on the Playstation 2. The setting like I said is nice, everything feels on point to what it should be, and while Snake Eater contains what we call the piss filter it uses it to its advantage. Creating this cool cinematic look similar to that of old action movies. Shame games from the Xbox 360 era didn’t learn this as now every action heavy military shooter had it without considering what made something like Snake Eater good. It’s good I bring up the old action movie comparison, because the game has this one character who keeps asking you if you’ve seen these old films whenever you try to save the game. Goes to show how much of a movie geek Kojima is. I love it. Final thing I want to gush about is the story. Just like Kojima's other projects, the story is the main reason many people come to play his games. Snake Eater is a game about a lot of things. The five main Cobra bosses I find symbolic as they further reinforced the game’s main theme. Pain, Fear, End, Fury, Sorrow. This game sees you carrying on what is basically a revenge plot against your mentor. Someone Snake sees as a mentor and at times motherly figure. Someone who raised him to where he stands now, and to go against her is the biggest thing a person can fear. The pain of having to either let them go and go into a world without them. Watching it end, the fury that runs through your veins when trying to either let go or move on, and the sorrow of passing time comes. The first two Cobras are a bit comically evil, but it’s around The End you start to questioning things.
The End is an old man literally waiting for his time to die. He’s lived on too long and the only reason why his body is still holding on is to fulfill one last promise for The Boss. The Fury was formerly a spaceman. He talks about how he stares down at the world and all he sees is madness. Rage, guilt, and sin boiling within mankind and mentally he can’t process it all. He cannot take in what the world as he becomes, so this leads to fury and he wants to burn it all away so it can start from a clear slate. The Sorrow is the point in your journey you wonder if you’re doing the right thing. Marching through a river of all the enemies you killed up until this point. Hearing their cries and watching them march through what is basically hell to them. Then we have The Boss. The one you came to bring down. A person who fought for her country because she truly believed good things could be achieved by the people. Only to be used by politicians and strip of all that made her human. Having to endure radiation poisoning and burns to help America get far in the space race. Being forced to kill her lover because he went against America in the hope of being free. Having to give up her child, because America didn’t want her to settle down. Then when she tries to leave she’s punished. Labeled an enemy of the country despite all she did to aid and protect it. To be forgotten of the good she did and instead remembered for all the bad. That’s why killing The Boss is such a memorable moment in this franchise. You did all this work just to finally face her only to realize you don’t want to. She doesn’t deserve this, but if you let her go you’ll be labeled as an enemy too. It’s a cycle of violence and it’s one we cannot control. Fueled by those on top and it seems like it won’t stop any sooner.
This game is beautiful. I don’t think I did it well enough, but I enjoyed everything it had to offer. While it’s my favorite Metal Gear Solid game I won’t say it’s perfect. Some aspects like I said are outdated. Walking into a new area triggers a loading screen and after a while it starts to feel disjointed. Depending on how many weapons and ammo you accumulate this can either be one of the easiest or hardest Metal Gear games you played. Yet again, that’s what makes these games fun to progress through as you get stronger near the end compared to the beginning. There’s a motorcycle section later on and the way you control Snake’s position while not aiming is a bit clunky. EVA, a character I barely talked about, always has her breasts out and I’m not sure why. It just feels off in a game about a professional infiltrator, but I’m sure Kojima and the writers are aware of how silly this was and have matured since then. I said they tried to balance out how the tranq gun was overpowered, but eventually you accumulate enough silencers and the whole thing runs into the same problem Sons of Liberty had. Hunting for food also becomes a bit useless as if you explore enough you loot enough. Food that never rots and restores a lot of stamina.
Overall I’d say Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater was a superb game. There’s very little wrong in this game, and after playing it I’m now a bit concerned with the upcoming remake. I’m fine if it does the same thing again, because everything Snake Eater is built off of is good. Just reinforce the mechanics the best and you got a perfect remake. Again though, not much needs to be fixed and I’m already seeing people complain how the remake removes some of the art direction the original had. Hope it doesn’t run into the trouble of being a game made for the purpose of being made, because we’ve seen that often recently and it does look like love is being put into it. I strongly recommend Snake Eater but I’m not gonna say it should be your starting point if you had not played a Metal Gear Solid game. Play the first two then this one. The Snake here is the one who would eventually become Big Boss, and seeing how he eventually would while also seeing hints towards major plot elements in future games is exciting. I love Snake Eater. It is a timeless masterpiece, and that’s why I’m gonna give Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater a 9.5/10 for being superb.
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