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Genre:	Action
Players:	1
Release Date:	March 14, 2006
Rating:

The Metal Gear Solid series was the one that started the whole stealth-action genre. After Metal Gear Solid came out every subsequent game for the next two to three years forced a rather flawed stealth mechanic into it. The only other games to pull off stealth action in a superb fashion are the Splinter Cell games. For some odd reason, there is a rivalry between the two fan bases that I wish would stop, but that’s a topic for another story.

Gameplay:

Late in 2004, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater was released, and earlier this year they re-released it. It's called Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence and it fixes most of the problems of the original. Before the changes are discussed, let me give you an overview of what they are. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater ushered in several new playing mechanics to the Metal Gear Solid franchise. One of them was the ability to change your camouflage uniform. This allowed you to blend in better with your surroundings to keep you from getting spotted by the enemy. The other was the inclusion of a stamina gauge. It controls your energy recovery, endurance, and how well you aim. Another inclusion was being able to heal specific injuries; like cuts, leeches, broken bones, etc.

The final inclusion was the ability to eat animals, and this is tied to your stamina gauge. Every so often, your character known as “Snake” has to eat. Since you can’t just waltz into a restaurant while sneaking around in a Russian jungle, you have to eat the surrounding wild life. Now shooting animals has more of a purpose than just to satisfy your sadistic tendencies. There are two ways to go about it: you can kill them, or you can tranquilize them. If you kill them, they will stay fresh for a certain amount of time.

Say for instance you kill a snake and you don’t eat it, you save the game and you don’t play it for about four days. That food you have will be rotten. If Snake eats it, he will get sick and then you have to cure him. In order to avoid this, you have to put the animal to sleep. When you do this you put them in a cage, but you are limited to only three animals.

For veterans of the series, they will have to get used to playing without radar. The reason for this is that it takes place in the Sixties and the radar technology hasn’t been invented yet. Which made the game a lot tenser; especially because the camera angle never let you see directly in front of you. The only way to remedy this was to use the sniper rifle. After I got that thing, I killed everything that had the unlucky misfortune of stumbling into my crosshairs, but there is a huge problem with this. In the middle of the game, you fight this psychic that makes you walk through a lake, with every enemy as a ghost walking towards you. You have to avoid them or they will take some of your energy. By this time I probably killed 200 people and this whole ordeal took a half hour.

One of the new changes Subsistence made is a new camera system. You are able to rotate around your character so you can see what is around and in front of you. So now you can sneak around and get close enough to at least knock the guy out. Which reminds me, I forgot to mention the CQC (Close Quarters Combat) moves. It allows you several interesting ways of disarming and killing your enemy. My personal favorite is the throat slash; you sneak up, grab him and slice throat with your knife. But as you can see, that's why I had that previously mentioned problem. You get a tranquilizer gun, but obviously it’s up to you to actually use it.

Just like in the past games, you have to fight boss characters, and of course they are weird. Metal Gear 1 had Foxhound, its sequel had Dead Cell, and this one has the Cobra Unit. They are “The Pain,” “The Fury,” “The End,” “The Sorrow,” and “The Boss.” They are all entertaining to fight and there are a couple of different ways to take them down.

Graphics:

This is one of those games that technically shouldn’t be possible on the Playstation 2. It surpasses Metal Gear Solid 2 and that is still a nice looking game. The jungle setting is definitely what the franchise needed. When you’re in a firefight you get a sense where the enemy is shooting, by seeing which direction the blades of grass part. There is not one bad effect in this game. The game has a rather nice looking thermal goggle effect, which allows you to see the enemy’s body heat. That’s useful because your enemy tends to blend in to the scenery. The character models look great; the only bad thing is during the movie scenes they use close-ups and then the edges get rather blocky. Aside from that, the game is gorgeous. The prettiest scene in the game is at the end. When you fight the boss, you do it in a garden of white flowers. At the end of the fight the flowers turn red and blow away. You almost don’t find a prettier scene than this.

Story:

The franchise does away with the techno-babble laced, acid trip-out that was the story of the second game. It made sense, but you had to take notes, and boil a pot of coffee so you could pull an all-nighter just to make sense out of it. Number three’s story takes place during the Cold War, mid-Sixties to be exact. A scientist by the name of Sokolov is spearheading a project for a nuclear-armed tank. If he completes it, the world will spiral into World War III. It is your job to rescue him, but before you can complete your mission your old teacher “The Boss” stops you. She is a hero from World War II and she defects to the Soviet Union and takes a couple of nuclear warheads with her.

When she defects, she sides with the testicle grabbing, lightning shooting, bi-sexual Colonel Volgin. When “The Boss” defects, she takes her Cobra Unit with her. Once again the Cobra Unit is weird and I’m not spoiling them for you. You’re not in this alone; there’s a spy in Volgin’s rank that he isn’t aware of. Her name is Eva and she has the bad habit of walking around with shirt unzipped. To round out the cast of non-playable characters is Revolver Ocelot, before he became Revolver Ocelot. He’s in his early twenties and he is quite arrogant and brash.

The character you play is Snake. He’s not the Solid Snake of the previous games; he’s Solid Snake's genetic father. In this game you find out how he got the title of Big Boss. If you haven’t played the first two games, you will be a tad on the confused side. Don’t worry; they’re easy to find, and they’re dirt cheap to boot. Snake was a student of “The Boss.” She taught him his CQC skills, but their relationship is a lot deeper than that. It’s kind of like a mother and son relationship.

The story takes a lot of twists and turns and it’s expertly told. There are a lot a movie sequences and they take a while, but unlike Metal Gear Solid 2, you don’t mind watching them; and if you kept up with the series, you’ve come to expect them. All in all, this is one of the best stories to grace a game.

Replay:

One of the most notable extras is the new camera system. I mentioned this earlier so I’m not going to beat a dead horse. Luckily there are a bevy of extras. The other major upgrade is an online multi-player mode, this can be found on the second disc. I really didn’t play this because I don’t have network adapter so I can’t give my opinion of it. And since Konami is going to be discontinuing it, it's not really a factor anymore. From what I read though, it’s quite fun. Also on the second disc are funny parodies of certain movie sequences. I recommend you watch them after you finish the game so you know what they were really like.

The next things to look out for are the first two Metal Gear games. These shouldn’t be confused with the first two Metal Gear Solid games. The first two Metal Gear games are from the Eighties and never made it to America. I believe the first one did, but definitely not the second. They share a lot of similarities to the modern ones, but they aren’t as intuitive. The only thing is that they should be played because they fill in a lot of Big Boss’ story.

Sound:

Harry Gregson-Williams once again astonishes the gaming community with an excellent musical score. The soundtrack has style oozing out of every note. The title track “Snake Eater” has a little bit of a classic James Bond feel to it and is surprisingly catchy. The in -game score does a superb job of creating tension accentuating the action that goes on in the game and the movie sequences as well.

When you’re just playing the game the sounds are beautiful and capture the jungle realistically. You’ll hear birds, monkeys and snakes moving around the environment. You’ll hear a snake hiss just before it’ll bite you. Gunshots and explosions sound fantastic. The voice acting is expertly handled and make the movie scenes less of a chore to go through.

Overall:

They took a great game and made it better. If you already own it, you should get it for the multi-player and the new camera angle and the funny extras. If you don’t own the prior release and you like stealth games, this is a must buy. I guess if you hate this series and prefer the Splinter Cell games because of its realism, there will be no convincing you. I like both the franchises, so hey, more fun for me and the people that like them both.