Metal Gear Solid 3 : Snake Eater

[Ravon]

Im glad to see a few more people enjoying this.. im on my 6th time through now...not that im a kojima whore or anything...

[Izayoi]

Ah, but that's precisely what happened on normal. Running through the game without settling down in each area... no time to explore.

It was much more laboured and silent-kill styled on Easy. Which I personally preferred.

Easier then?

[Treble]

Resisting the urge to call you all a bunch of pussies
I asked this before and don't think anyone answered: are the people playing on easy people who haven't played the previous games much? I rinsed 1 and 2, and found 2 particularly easy. I think I did a run-through of 2 in about 3.5 hours, on Hard

I would certainly recommend playing the game on Normal after finishing on Easy. To be honest, though, if you aren't liking it now, I don't think you will at all. I disagree with you, Concept: I don't think the last third of the game will make up for you not liking the first 2/3rds; it's not that vast an improvement.

[JU!]

JU!: What made you get the Jap version? MGS without 'The Dave' just isn't MGS

I have an unchipped Japanese machine so i always buy MGS then Substance after. I do speak a bit of Japanese, but not enough to understand what's going on in MGS3. Mr Guyver AKA Dave= MGS3: Substance in Japan PS i play on Normal.

[Concept]

Easier then?

What possible difference does it make to you how I chose to play Snake Eater a second time through? It's that form of superior elitism which makes me often shake my head at this place sometimes.

[PeteJ]

I finished the first game pretty easily on Normal - and loved it. The second I enjoyed but found it far too difficult (and random...?). There are just too many buttons now that do completely different things depending on your situation, and combined with pressure making a difference it has just become far too complex. It's bad design in my opinion, rather than make a situation that is based around your skillset, they just map another skill on the already-packed controller.

Don't get me wrong, I am enjoying it - some of the touches are fantasticly cool as are some of the things you can do, but I'm finding it very difficult to settle into the game. Half the time I do not know what button to press, because I'm standing on a slight slope or Snake is facing East, or something equally daft.

[Treble]

I'm struggling to think of a single button that's context-sensitive, Pete. But pressure has a part to play, yes. Still, other than the firing mechanisms of guns, there's hardly a move going that forces you to have perfect analogue control.

Ah well, i'm not going to convince anyone, so why bother?

[Concept]

It's wonderful game. I don't think many people are neccessarily hating on Snake Eater - Just that it's mix of styles, genres, forms and gameplay are still a very personal taste. The more the Metal Gear series wears on, like Shenmue, the more it seems to be becoming gaming marmite.

Unlike PeteJ, I didn't have troubles with the controls, or keeping track of them. My problem was with spatial awareness, which I suffer from a lot with games that have restricted camera views. Lacking a map to fixate my position on (and those of others in the game), I found remembering and visualising where guards happened to be, and what they were doing, quite difficult. I think this could be due to the fact I have cerebral palsy though, and in everyday life, my sense of positioning with regards to spatial awareness is poor. Without possessing a comfortable radar I had to gauge on the fly where everybody was, which made concentrating on Snake as a whole rather difficult. I'd even go so far to say the lack of a radar impacts on the sense of player/character identity, because you have to tune your senses into becoming more aware of the varying elements of the jungle (traps/animals/humans/unclear environmental obstacles etc.) rather than where you strictly are yourself.

In that sense, the leaps in level design, and the intent of the game to get the player to think more spatially, had an impact on it's difficulty.

At least for me it did.

[Treble]

I have appalling map-reading skills, and get almost completely lost in FPS games without a very good map and lots of unique, individual points of reference.

Ergo, I hated DOOM3's repetition and loved Metroid Prime's individulaity.

So I suppose the way each of interacts with space, and our own spatial awareness, has a big, big impact on how we play and what we enjoy...

Should be more study done into this.

[PeteJ]

No context sensitive buttons? I could have sworn every action was! Perhaps not then

I do not feel confortable in the game world - I am frequently lost (when Eva opened the gate with her bike on your first meeting I spent ages wondering around the first area again because I thought she opened the lower gate), disorientated and confused. I never know what I can jump over and what I cannot, or what items should be used in whatever situation.

Unlike say Halo, I do not feel confident when I do this, that will happen. In a sense it feels too organic and evolving, and I'm finding it difficult to keep up with what I'm meant to achieve and how I'm meant to do it.

The thing with this game though, is that the things I'm not so keen on are the very things that make it special for others. MGS3 features some wonderful ideas, many of which are integrated to perfection, however for me the experience just isn't coming together as it should. I'm frequently 'pulled out' of the atmosphere, reminded that, at the end of the day, this is just a game. I like to get completely submerged in a game to the point that nothing else around me matters, but it just isn't happening here.

I am continuing however, as I do enjoy the game and seeing some of the ideas and setpieces. Also the story is quite funky - fairly realistic at it's core with fantasy characters and powers.

[Treble]

The whole just meshes together for me - it's hyper-real, definitely. It's totally Japanese: even when things have a realistic core or base to start from, you suddenly find there are super soldiers that can squirt wax from their ears or whose super-powered arse can be seen from orbit, or some such guff. Kojima isn't afraid to make his games some sort of OTT Manga that constantly fractures reality. I think it's just a lot more obvious in this game, as he's made the environments that much more reality-based. I say 'reality-based' rather than 'realistic', as they still really aren't realistic

And thinking about it, yeah, the 'action button' is context sensitive (jumping on to ledges, climbing trees, opening doors etc.) but I think that's the only one.

Shame you aren't being immersed in it all that much, but games have such a personal impact, you can't expect everything to click with everyone, I guess

[PeteJ]

I'm up to The End now, it's certainly a tense fight

Spent about half an hour getting confused as per usual, but I started to get into things after I found him by mistake (love the light reflecting off his scope, fantastic touch) and went from there. Unfortunately the biatch snuck up on me and shot me in the head. Couldn't be arsed to continue after that.

It's a shame the fight isn't in just one large area, I feel the loading points spoil it somewhat as sometimes I'm just moving about in completely the wrong place!

[ojlim]

The whole just meshes together for me - it's hyper-real, definitely.

Not to compare Kojima to Garcia-Marquez, but Metal Gear Solid does remind me of the magic-realism coin that has been attached to the latter. The game is set in a time period which we recognise and is grounded in history, but Kojima distorts our familiarity with supernatural and strange characters and settings.

Metal Gear Solid is such a contradiction in the fact that so much effort is put into the game to make us feel like we're immersed in this interactive movie and believe that we *are* Snake and then is as quickly happy to remind you that it's just a game after all. I think the contradictions in the game: film vs game, reality vs fantasy, seriousness vs comedy, stealth vs action is what makes the series so unpalatable for a lot of people.

It took me about a year to start properly playing MGS2 (which I played before MGS). From just the first hour I played, it didn't seem much different from something like Splinter Cell. Obviously I went into the game with no background whatsoever and when I finally started playing it, I was both mesmerised and bemused by what the game had to offer.

To me, the MGS series is total cult gaming in terms of direction and execution; the fact that the series has been pretty successful is credit to the excellent game design and gameplay.

[Izayoi]

What possible difference does it make to you how I chose to play Snake Eater a second time through? It's that form of superior elitism which makes me often shake my head at this place sometimes.

You can do what you say (silent-kill styled) on every difficulty, just that it's easier on Easy, like I implied. Keep your shirt on, or you'll lose stamina.

[Chadruharazzeb]

I started it on easy - the lack of radar and the new moves and environs were just too much to deal with at once.

More people need to play this damn fine game - it's always the same people talking about it in here

(Kudos to you all)