When I was writing up the MGS1 entry, I had a moment of doubt, because despite a few issues I have with the title, I still consider it a fantastic entry and the nostalgia is certainly the strongest with that entry than many of the other titles in the franchise. So I sometimes wonder if I may be pouring more love into certain entries that I feel may fall short of it, but when I started collecting the images for this entry, it became clear to me why this entry was ranked so high for me. MGS3 is a fantastic game and I feel it's the Magnum Opus of the franchise and possibly for Kojima as well. There are many reasons why I love this game but I'm getting ahead of myself.
MGS3 takes place in 1964, making it the chronologically first entry in the series, and taking place not long after the Cuban Missile Crisis which marked the closest moment during the Cold War where open war may occur between the two major super powers. You play as Naked Snake, the field agent for the new FOX unit which was developed in the U.S. and masterminded by Major Tom. Operation Virtuous Mission is a clandestine operation involving sending an agent into Soviet territory to rescue a rocket engineer named Sokolov who wished to defect to the U.S. but was instead traded by the government with Russia as a way to prevent the Cuban Missile Crisis from turning into open warfare. The mission is a test for the new organization and is being overseen by Snake's former mentor The Boss, a heroine of WWII whose Cobra Unit helped bring down the Third Reich making them all legendary soldiers in their own right. The mission is going smoothly until The Boss appears with two Davey Crockett class Nuclear Warheads which she trades with the GRU Colonel Volgin as an offering to defect to the Soviet Union along with the rest of her Cobra Unit. Volgin uses one of the warheads on his own facility to test it and Snake is badly beaten by the Boss and barely survives.
Now the U.S. government is in a bit of a crisis. A U.S. nuclear weapon was used within their territory and the Russian Premier Khrushchev is in the midst of a political coup, which Volgin is spearheading thanks to his financial influence and having the Boss. The U.S. ultimately blames the Boss for the incident and gives the FOX unit an ultimatum. Be charged in her stead, or go back to Russia and stop Volgin and assassinate the Boss. Thus Snake finds himself back in Russia for Operation Snake Eater, but can Snake kill the only person who ever mattered to him?
After the bizarre twists and turns with an unsatisfactory ending that was MGS2, it was refreshing to come into MGS3 and face a more down to earth plot based on Cold War spy thrillers of yesteryear. More importantly though is the game's more human elements at play within the story. Raiden was a guy the game mindsmurfed along with the player for ten or so hours, but Naked Snake, much like Solid Snake in MGS1 faces more personal issues while undertaking the mission that will change his life which adds a better emotional connection to the events. Of course this is Metal Gear so the game is still rife with wacky villains, government conspiracies and plot twists that change the whole premise of the story on it's head, but thankfully MGS3 shows a bit more restraint than MGS2 did. More importantly to me though is that MGS3 is one of my favorite types of stories, a start of darkness tale that details the events that led to the creation of MGS's most memorable antagonist, Big Boss. Once people saw the dates for the game's time period, most fans realized we were going to play as the man whom the Snake triplets were cloned from and the guy you've spent two games dealing with every bat trout crazy terrorist trying to keep his vision alive, so it was pretty cool to finally explore the life of a character most players probably only knew by reputation except for the small amount of fans who played (more like suffered) through the original NES version of Metal Gear. It should be noted that Naked Snake kind of splits the difference and meets in the middle between the series two previous protagonists. On the one hand, Naked Snake is still quite patriotic and naive like Raiden, but on the other hand, he's no green horn either and was personally trained by one of the greatest soldier to live which makes portrayed as a total badass out of the gate like Solid Snake in MGS1. It's a nice combination and serves as an interesting contrast to the original MGS1 where we witness Solid Snake's journey from bitter PTSD rattled killer into someone who once again learns to want to live and finds new meaning in his life, punctuated by the game's main theme of The Best is Yet to Come" whereas MGS3's Naked Snake is traumatized and broken down by betrayal and heartache in the course of his mission which turns him from his idealistic self to a broken and bitter man who will eventually wage war against his homeland, again punctuated by the game's ending theme Way to Fall. Course nothing quite hits you as hard as having to pull the trigger on the Boss yourself which may be one of the most brilliant uses of gameplay interface to ell a story in gaming.
Another element MGS3 does which hearkens back to MGS1 over MGS2 is the return of the quirky support crew. Where I differ with most fans is that Naked Snake's crew is easily the best in the franchise. From laughing at Major Zero's love of James Bond, Para-Medic's film obsession which leads into one of the most bizarre Easter eggs in the series, to only sane man Signit chastising Naked Snake for the series staple cardboard box. There are so many fun little conversation pieces with the crew that it didn't take long for me to warm up to all of them. They may lack the drama of Naomi or social commentary of Natasha, but the whole crew is personable and fun, and I found myself constantly checking back with them to hear what they had to say. It's a damn shame the series never got it right after this game.
Course this leads us into the heart of the whole thing, the gameplay, and MGS3 has my favorite gameplay of the "classic series" and while I feel MGSV blows this game out of the water on the gameplay front, MGS3 is still a strong second, especially if you play the more user friendly Subsistence version that finally dropped the overhead camera view the series has had since it's inception. Part of the reason why I love the gameplay is the addition of the Camo system and CQC. CQC finally resolves one of my biggest beefs with the previous two entries, which was the lackluster hand-to-hand combat the series had. As epic as fighting Cyborg Ninja and Liquid is in the first game, I could have done without the funky combat controls. Raiden getting a sword is cool and all, but again, the controls are hardly intuitive. CQC kind of resolved all of this for me, granted, they have a high learning curve, but once mastered, CQC opens the possibilities in gameplay so much more than what was possible in earlier installments. In fact it's so powerful and unfortunately convoluted in execution that the series has powered it down and overly simplified it with every new installment. Still, nothing beats taking down an enemy soldier who thought he got the drop on you, only to force information out of him to call in an airstrike to wipe out all of his buddies in the area and then finish it off by slitting his throat. Hell, if you haven't tried to beat The Boss with just CQC, you are missing out on one of the best final boss battles in the series.
Camo is the other new mechanic, and I love what it brings to the table. The move to a more literal organic levels made it interesting to switch around camo to hide in plain sight. It does everything a stealth title should do, it makes you think more about your surroundings, rewards you with proper use of tools at your disposal, and it adds the tension of hiding in plain sight and being only a few inches from a guards path and possible discovery as you slowly inch your way through the jungles to your next destination. Having to jump to the menu to switch out can be a bit annoying but I feel the rewards outweigh this very minor inconvenience. I also love the fact it really gives Big Boss that old school special forces vibe. Helping matters is the enemy A.I. still being pretty sharp after their intelligence boost from the last game, so you really need to rely on these tools to make your way through the game unmolested by constant alerts and the army of guards coming at you. Other new features I loved besides calling in air-strikes is the ability to sabotage weapon and food storage facilities to weaken the patrols around you and let you hear their stomachs growling to alert you that they are close by. Hell you can even get info to call off enemy alerts. The hunt for food is also a pretty neat mechanic, and while some fans hate the whole deal and stamina maintenance, I actually found it fun trying to see what new animals I could catch and conversing with Para-Medic on the new species only for Naked Snake's inevitable "but how does it taste?" line. It made the environments feel a bit more alive, made you have to be a bit more wary of animal threats, and feeds back into the games excellent Codec crew.
Course the crown jewel of this for me is that MGS3 has hands down my favorite boss battles in the series. From humiliating a young Revolver Ocelot, the most intense sniper duel in the series, the sheer horror of being chased around a dark tunnel by a guy with a flame thrower, and the epic hand-to-hand battle against the Boss herself; MGS3 outdoes itself in the boss arena for me and while many of the bosses can be cheesed pretty easily with the right strategy, I urge you to try to fight them fair and square at least once to see how exhilarating most of them can be. I still have fond memories of trying to take down The Fear without the Thermal Goggles, actually trying to take the End on in a fair sniper duel which involved several times of me getting sneaked up on and being sent back to Granin's facility.
My other love of this game is it's historical element. Most of the series always took place "20 minutes into the future" or so to speak but this was the first game to actually be placed within a real historical context and I love how the plot twists those real world events into the narrative. I was born in the tail end of the Cold War, while I was too young to really understand it at the time, coming from a military family and a family that loves it's history, I grew up on Cold War films and talking about it. It's honestly the most fascinating part of the 20th century to me with the possible exception of the Communist/Socialist/Anarchist movements of the first few decades. So having the game take place in this fascinating time period and giving heavy fan service to the films of the era made this game a real treat since I grew up watching these types of things. More importantly, I liked the interesting themes placed on the game since the story is a Cold War tale but written in a post-Cold War era which entails certain hindsight that actually feed very well into Naked Snake's fall from grace. Current enemies can become future allies, and current allies can become future enemies and this is something you see a lot of in real world history and politics, which is why the very notion of an "enemy" seems silly since the circumstances may eventually change that. It's amusing that future Big Boss entries show that all of his allies from this game become his enemies and his biggest supporters are the ones he either fought against or betrayed him in this title. I feel like this is an important life lesson for people who sometimes get swept up in the notion of a "forever enemy" that propagandist like to use to get people on their side. I always find it interesting to talk politics with my Baby Boomer parents just so I can witness firsthand the extent of control the propaganda of that time still holds over them and paints their views on certain countries and political ideologies.
MGS3 is just a fantastic title from beginning to end and easily my favorite entry in the franchise. I can tell you now that one thing all of the top ten have in common for me are that they are all titles I almost immediately started up again as soon as I finished it. MGS3 alone was a game I think I played through three times within two weeks of getting it for Christmas. It has the most emotional ending of a video game I've ever seen and is probably the only game to come close to making me actually tear up a bit when you watch the end. The game is embodies the best the series and gaming itself can offer, and you owe it yourselves to play it and experience one of the greatest games ever made.
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