MGS3 was a game I remember playing the fixed camera version over a decade ago and absolutely hating but then when the Subsistence version came out on the HD collection, I loved the game but would try to play again and couldn't get back into, I played it again later and didn't really care for it and after me playing it yet again on the Master Collection, I still feel the same way now and I can articulate that better than I did before.
The Virtuous Missions is full of cutscenes and then the middle sections of the game lacks plot and the end sections have plot. It really made me come to realize that Kojima chose gaming as his career since he would never make it as a film maker, he's like the guy who makes long College and University lectures and he rewards you with free ice cream every time you listen to him. The ice cream in this case is something weirdly dumb and over the top. By the time, MGS3's Virtuous Mission is over, you could've already finished a movie like Escape from New York.
Most of the thought provoking writing about whose side people are on and how enemies change sides and they are determinded by the times happens at around around the begginning and towards the end of the game. Compared that to the middle point of MGS1 where Snake talks to Naomi or MGS2 where Raiden is learning about the Patriots.
The Boss' character is at her most interesting at the start, in the torture scene and most of her character is revealed through an exposition dump towards the end, she is complacement with everything she does, she doesn't feel bad for her cobras dying, nor does she ever take action on her own. Eva and the Boss' relationship is hardly if ever shown which makes the ending lack any impact. The Boss shows barely any remorse for the Cobra Unit slowly getting picked off. Ocelot plays with the Fear's crossbow and she is totally fine with it.
Ocelot being Adam makes no sense and Ocelot spends so much of the game being a goofball jobber and then out of nowhere he is able to take on Naked Snake in a fight. Plus, him just being a quadruple agent is just starting to get silly.
The Cobra Unit die the moment Snake fights them and barely have time to develop, Max Payne did this writing better and it had fewer cutscenes and the bosses involved the side character like Meryl better. The Cobras and Eva never interact with the other characters. Ocelot had interactions with Liquid Sniper Wolf and "killed" Meryl depending on the run you chose, Psycho Mantis used Meryl against Snake and the support team was involved by having Liquid be Miller in disguise as he gave Snake information about Naomi Hunter.
The support team compared to MGS1 barely gets any involvement. For example Zero and Paramedic don't get involved in the story in any meaningful way and Sigint appears late in the game for the first time and his "character introduction" is a name drop at the start. Compare that to MGS1 where Campbell and Naomi were active players in the plot and were involved in the story just as much as the characters who actually were on Shadow Moses Island were even Mei Ling's quoting was short to the point and didn't feel as dragged out or shoehorned as Paramedic and her movie refrences did. I stopped listening to the latter after a point since it provided nothing meaningful.
Volgin is a comically over the top villain that no one would ever want to geniunely follow. That and well he gets angry for Snake "killing" Raikov despite the fact that there never any scenes between those two to create investment. Why doesn't the Boss intervene and try to help out all the people Volgin is antagonizing instead of spending the whole game taking orders? Why not have the Boss tell Volgin to treat Eva with more respect since the latter has a heavy respect for the Boss. It would've had the soliders who fought Snake and Eva after Volgin's death make more sense if the Boss did in fact treat them with respect. Volgin is well acted, I'll give him that.
The ending is hard to buy since Eva doesn't even say any of this to Snake's face, it gets way too plot twist heavy for my liking. Eva is a KGB agent? Nope she is a chinese spy who looks american, Adam was really Ocelot and after a point I just stopped caring especially when most of the Boss' characterization was at the start of the game and at the end. Eva and the Boss could've desperately used more interactions to have much more fleshing out of the Boss and to have the ending of the game hold more weight.
The relationship between Eva and Snake is decent since they have enough screen and interactions with each other to be believable.
Story isn't as consistently written as MGS1 nor is it as thematically rich and thought provoking as MGS2. I know MGS2 wasn't really well liked at the time of release but nowadays I consider MGS2's story to be far more interesting compared to MGS3's weird approach of James Bond movie, 80s cartoon and also trying to take things seriously inbetween. It sort of feels like is harkening back to MGS1 but that game had more going on for it's story than 3 does.
The gameplay tries to be more ambitous and fails. I used to recall the lack of a crouch walk to be one big big issue I had with the game but there are so many more issues than that. Before I start criticizing, I actually think the lack of a crouch walk is the least of the game's problems, stalking mode works decently enough and the enemies move and turn slowly enough for me to grab them in time and the CQC controls work okay where I didn't slit enemies' sloat by accident as much this time around.
The big issue is the regen health partnered with how you can CQC slam most if not all enemies except for bosses makes me a judo throwing Wolverine with my regen health
Enemy AI is really stupid and using loud weapons is a viable tactic since getting caught means it's back to more CQC slamming. Normal difficulty is broken beyond belief.
In MGS2 close quarters combat was a bad idea since knocking out a guard with your fists meant doing a 3 hit combo twice and doing it the second time required you to wait for the guard to get up and having the combo land again while getting shot at, it was also easier to die in MGS2 by comparison to 3 since Raiden didn't take nearly as many bullets as Naked Snake did. Raiden from MGS2 primarily excelled at long range, in MGS3, Naked Snake excells at both long and close range.
To add insult to injury, in the off chance that you do die on Normal, you respawn in the last room you died in and with a resetted alert
Cutscenes cancel most alerts you already got before happening, if you need to get to caution just get to a lone position and CQC nearby unaware guards
Game feels like an 80s cartoon in how comically broken it is without self imposed restrictions. European Extreme is popular because Snake is just too versatile with his melee and taking that away geniunely forces the player to use stealth
Only time I ever want to use the cure system is during bosses because the healing factor isn't fast enough to heal against boss attacks. Or if I get hit by attacks that quickly drain stamina like leeches or the End's tranq darts
Camo index is a dumb system since it's just a bunch of menu fiddling, it doesn't do a good enough job at replacing the soaliton radar
Lack of soliton radar means it is easier to get randomly spotted out of nowhere. There isn't a whole lot of vertical services for me to hide behind and use the turnable camera to peak around corners and on top of that the game cuts to a first person camera when crawling in grass which is diorienting since the modern re releases of the game has the turnable camera and this was a carry over the fixed camera angle release. Since the game doesn't use the detection arrows from MGS5 or modern stealth games, it's easy to randomly bump into enemies and get caught from from far away places I didn't account for. Guards also have a knack of either being in their line of sight and the checking my position or have it be a straight alert when they see me, it all feels so random. As a result due to this, I would rather just play games with myself where I use loud weapons, eventually get caught due to an enemy placement and his line of sight I didn't account for and start CQC slamming every close by guard and occasionally rolling and bumping into them.
The stamina system is a pointless gimmick since it's just occasionally popping in a menu during the action, lack of real time use sucks away the tension, there will always be animals to kill and refill stamina. Here's an idea, every time I get shot or CQC slam someone, stamina gets depleted. The more I get shot, the more stamina get used to heal then I have to choose between either using up my healing resources or deplete stamina faster to heal and use up more food.
Bosses are dull outside of maybe the End and maybe the Fury even if the former was Sniper Wolf and the latter was Vulcan Raven. First person aiming makes it too easy and turnable camera makes it worse. The End was a geniune improvment over Sniper Wolf since instead of being in a 5 meter area, The End takes place over 3 zones and getting the drop on the End requires more effort by comparison to Sniper Wolf since the former isn't in you immediate line of sight.
Level design is mostly just the same copy pasted green areas, I had to use the map a lot because of this. In doors levels fared a bit better since they looked more visually distinct compared to the jungles endless amounts of copy pasted leaves, trees and endless green.
Overall, while I don't outright dislike MGS3, I consider the game to be very painfully average. The story never reaches the enjoyable character drama of MGS1 and it doesn't have the rich themes of MGS2. The gameplay tries to be more ambitious but it just comes off at a hollow attempted at innovating on the previous games, MGS3 is a game where you desperately need to have self imposed restrictions of any kind in order for the game to feel like it has any monicrum of a challenge. I would like to say the story carries the game but even that doesn't do enough for me.
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