MGS3 Chat Topic

/MG/ Metal Gear Discussion /MGS3/
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Let’s talk about one of the best games of the saga.

I really fucking love this game, in case my username wasn’t subtle enough. I replayed it 4 months ago (with all other MGS games in chronological order) and it’s still fun times for me 17 years later. Fuck I’m getting old.

The camo system is a bit outdated by today’s standards (MGS4 fixed that) and The Cobras did not have some sort of connection to Snake compared to the bosses from MGS1 and MGS2. But still I think this is a fantastic game that deserves all of the praise it gets. Even if you never heard of MGS before it’s a great standalone espionage narrative that anyone can get into.

Honestly Kojima didn’t really need to make MGS PW and MGSV after this, because what we got with the relationship between The Boss and Naked Snake was enough to explain his motivation for going rogue and becoming the evil Big Boss from the original MG.

Volgin is kinda generic but The Boss makes the whole thing infinitely interesting. It was also interesting seeing how Ocelot came to idolize Snake.

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I know alot of folks do seem to rag on the camo thing but as time goes on I appreciate it more. The goal of the game is sneaking and outsmarting the enemy. Enter a new area, get a rough lay of the land. and put on the best camo for the moment, if you enter a firefight that wan’t meant to be triggered, story wise, you aren’t playing the game like snake (thank you @Orca). Iconic weaponary of the era, XM16, M37, 1911, Stoner Light machinegun, VZ scorpion. The jungle was big enough that it wasn’t a slug, more along the line of “stealth puzzles” I enjoy the story too yes but to me it’s the set pieces. I can’t tell you how freaked out i was on the river of SIN! the necks i slashed and the FUCKING RUNNING ON WATER soldiers freeaked me out.

I just hyped myself up for this game again and i got to replay it with my more recent apprection of the era, weaponary and soviet gear. Bald and Bankrupt did that to me!

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I’ve always had a difficult relationship with 3. Every time I’ve tried to replay it I’ve found it hard to get much further than completing the Virtuous Mission. I really disliked The Boss and felt the impact of her relationship with Snake on the player felt too forced, and I guess in hindsight (regarding MGS4 and PW) I’ve felt for a long while that MGS3 is actually where things began to unravel for MGS instead of MGS4. I do still think there is a lot to enjoy in it and I will try to play it again at some point soon but I just seem to struggle to with this one.

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I still love this game after all this time. The original PS2 version of the game is a little dated at this point and I can’t play it very easily at all anymore because of the static camera angle. Subsistence is a huge improvement on that though and the details in all of the games still amaze me. Volgin is a pretty bad villain but I do really like his seemingly insignificant superstition of “kuwabara, kuwabara” throughout the game and then in the end he is too distracted by the fight to say his charm against lightning, therefore dying in the way he always knew he would. There is no other game where you can get take a stack of stun grenades into a cave and come out loaded with live snakes to throw at enemies, at least not that I know of lol.

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I’m not proud of my first few reviews of the MGS series, but if you ever wanna know my general thoughts on MGS3 and why I love it despite thinking its story and writing kinda suck, here’s why:

(And yes, I’m going to be shilling my reviews in every MGS section because I’m a shameless whoor.)

The long short of it is that story has absolutely nothing to do with how much I like or dislike an MGS game. I’m skipping cutscenes after any first playthrough, and I love having 3+ hours of mostly consistent stealth action paired up with ten wholly unique boss battles, eight of which are some of the best in the series. Honestly, it is the boss fights of MGS3 that make it worth coming back to all these years later. Minus Sorrow and Shaggin’ Wagon, all eight of the other ones are mechanically robust with tons of attacks yet tons of different strategies for taking each one down. The fact that stealth applies to just about all of 'em, even Ocelot and Pain, is even better. Though, the stealth was best implemented with the Ocelot Unit, The End, The Fury and Boss Lady.

I hated the camo index and survival stuff but the beauty of MGS3 is that those features can be mostly ignored. I just go all game long in tiger stripe and only occasionally eat a ration to keep going.

The only parts of MGS3 that are painful to come back to are the set pieces. I hated that giant jeep chase, the caves with no guards, or that goddamn escort mission at the end. If The Boss’ final battle weren’t one of the best bosses in the series, I’d never play anything after Volgin’s boss fight.

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I recently replayed this game and you really notice some things at a different perspective when you grow older.

I thought about the role of the Boss and her sacrifice, was the cobra unit in on her plan too? I assume that some of the members of the cobra unit were from the Soviet Union, would they fight for American interests of securing the philosopher’s legacy? The cobra unit didn’t really have much backstory so there is no definitive answer I believe. The Boss certainly had the authority and loyalty of the cobra unit. But it still feels a bit contradicting for her to sacrifice her comrades and lie to them about her true motivations.

Or would this be associated with theme of the game, ‘‘scene’’; that enemies and interests change with the times. Still it feels like a low blow for the cobra unit.

Edit: Maybe the boss shouldn’t be thought of as an absolute hero with no vice. War is dirty and maybe just throwing the cobra unit under the bus had to be done.

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this is the crux of my problem with mgs3. While I am not as violently mad at the game as I used to be in my younger years, I just have never been able to truly love this game (outside of how wonderful and enjoyable I found MGO1…even with the 2004 internet!). I find the story to be super linear and just…dull, for lack of a better word. I never felt that any sort of emotional attachment to the Boss that we were clearly being told we should feel.

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This game has interesting features and gameplay moments to list.

  • Intriguing and unique boss fights (particularly The End, The Sorrow and The Boss).
  • CQC was such a good mechanic that every game since then has it. You could still grab and drag enemies before MGS3 but now you can interrogate, use your victim as a human shield or simply throw them on the ground for a quick KO.
  • Silencer durability prevents players from being too trigger happy and encourages to make evey shot count.
  • While the animals might be just less efficient versions of the rationsthat players were used to, some of them can be directly used against the enemy, like throwing snakes/spiders at enemies or shooting a hornet nest.
  • Destroying the enemies’ supplies (food and ammo) with TNT will significantly weaken them, so it might be a good idea to do so in areas you might return to, like the Warehouse you need to get into after beating The Pain.
  • This is nothing new to the series but you can beat bosses in other less orthodox ways besides just shooting 'til they’re dead.
  • Same logic goes for most most items and weapons in the game. They can be used in ways you wouldn’t normally think of, e.g. using the Raikov mask against Volgin to get a free hit, or using the sonar to scare the bats away.
  • The fucking Zombie Camo.
  • And many other stuff…
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Ah yes, the best one.

I don’t know about anybody else, but I can never be bothered fighting The End on repeats of this game. The first time, yeah sure, but I simply can’t be arsed fighting him on repeat playthroughs. I thank Kojima every day for the PS2 internal clock trick. Feels like heresy to say it, The End is such an iconic boss battle, not just within Metal Gear but in Gaming in general.

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yeah but most of that stuff is just fluff, lets be real. you can play through the game without ever eating a single animal, thanks to how you find rations and ramen noodles a plenty

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I was just writting stuff I thought were interesting about that game, but fair enough.

And yeah you can easily do that but in harder difficulties it’s not that reliable. Specially in E.E. since you burn stamina faster and can carry less food. So unless you’re a speedrunner and use the Animal Camo all the time to nullify the effects of low stamina you have to do some hunting now and then.

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very true, but I tend to value gameplay features based on how useful/needed they are through a normal playthrough. when you have to play a game certain way to “need” to utilize the options then they arent as impressive to me.

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I think the reason why MGS3 HD is my favorite linear MGS game is because, while it’s true all that stuff is mostly superfluous, at its core, what the game does have to offer in its more bare bones, to me, still plays phenomenally well.

The level design, even if you don’t use camouflage, which I never do, provides several cover spots and means to bypass guards. And most tend to have multiple routes to the next corridor. And key outpost areas are just designed to have save spots reserved for them, because they play like micro MGSV missions, where you can tackle them any number of ways and create these situations that are more hectic and entertaining than any jeep chase will ever be.

There’s just something so deeply gratifying about going full Rambo on an outpost, juggling from assault rifles, heavy machine guns, shotguns and rockets all at once. But the fact that you also have all these additional elements that you don’t have to go super far outta your way to utilize makes it even better. In a firefight, for instance, the amount of fuel drums present makes shooting them out to kill multiple guards at once a natural gameplay inclination.

The boss fights tended to give you a lot of immediate opportunities to get creative. But even when you ignore ‘em, the core of each fight just feels good, thanks to the boss’ attack patterns, the arenas, and your means to evade attacks and retaliate.

Ocelot’s fight is a great example of that. Like even if I don’t use the bee hives, shoot his favorite goat, his hat off, or hide in the bushes so I can attack Ocelot when he isn’t looking, just the act of rolling around and shooting at Ocelot himself feels fun. And his attacks do enough to keep me hopping around to evade his Deadshot trickery.

It is more of a “play it your way” sort of game, hence its immense open-endedness, and a lot of that can feel very superfluous when you got an Mk22 that’s got the range and stability of a sniper rifle. But for me, if the core gameplay loop is entertaining, I’m mostly set. My mindset has always been to go with what makes the game more fun than what makes it harder because I’m more likely to wanna replay the former than the latter. I just dunno how you make the game hard enough to really force the player to actually utilize its mechanics without making it feel as restrictive as a GTA game, y’know?

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once i learned the mk22 svd glitch i never equipped any other weapons

  1. look down svd sights and aim for a headshot
  2. open weapons menu, switch to mk22 without letting go of fpv button
  3. tap square, instead HS

kind of breaks the game and takes no skill /:

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I think that works for Binoculars, too.

MGS3 holds a lot of memories for me. My apex was a Knife-and- AK-47-only playthrough on E. Extreme. About 2010 or so. It got to the point where I was holding up sentries with an empty AK in order to get them to shake out more ammo. Stalking and using the knife to clear areas is an exhilarating way to play the game. Very tactical/Rambo. It escalated to the point where I relied more on the knife than the AK-47. Staying out of sight became second nature; camo was more or less negligible after a time.

What a thrill.

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Do you guys remember how game changing it was when you finally played subsistence WITH the free camera. Changed the experience completely. FOlks forget the first iteration of that game was classic over the top. To this day i have yet to replay it from the bird’s eye view.

Ocelot’s fight is soo fun, he’s such a show off for Snake. The whole sequence in the cave as well, first time i played it I found it a lil spooky in there. I’m surprised koj didn’t put anything at all creepy in there…well beside The Pain.

Damn, even being able to snipe the end early to avoid the fight later, makes me rememebr why i replayed it soo much.

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Honestly, minus Shagohod and Sorrow, all of the boss fights in this game are spectacular. I actually really liked the fights with Pain and Fear too, because even if Pain is stationary, he has such a wide variety of attacks. I also wish that Kojima went the original plan they had for the caves, where there were actually gonna be guards seeking you out. The unused combat music for that sequence was way too good to never be used.

That was one thing I was glad to see return with Eli’s fight but wish MGSV did more than once. Because with Eli, you could take him out any number of ways to skip his boss fight and treat it more like an assassination mission. I really wish there were more bosses like that. Where you can get the drop on them and bypass the boss fight entirely. It lends so much more replay value to have all those options.

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WHat i’ve never heard it, what’s the name of the track? If there were gonna be flamethrower guards down there it would have changed that Vibe completely!

Yeah like dropping ammo crates on quiets head to knock her out pretty quick lol. I actually do love unconventional ways of beating bosses. Is the deathpill>stungrenade>ak47 in the fear fight a glitch or an actual tactic?

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I’d have loved to have fire guys show up in the caves too. Imagine how tense the narrow areas would get knowing it could be a chokehold for getting scorched.

As for the track:

Exactly. MGS3 and to a lesser extent, MGSV, made the bosses work so well because not only did they all have a wide array of attacks, but you had an even wider array of methods for besting them. Though, obviously MGS3 beat out V in that regard in a ton of ways.

What I would’ve loved is having that but also being able to locate bosses before their actual fights, like using alternate paths to get the drop on them so you can either fight them ahead of a cutscene, kill them immediately, or just skip them completely. That way, not only does the fight itself have mechanical depth, but if you’d rather skip the fight completely, the options for doing so are about as robust as something like, say, the Raikov sequence in Grozyj Gradj, which was basically MGS’ first “assassination mission” before V ran with it.

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I’ve decided to try speedrunning this game a few days ago. It’s a fun game to from what I’ve heard and there are some neat tricks you can do, like precise loops to defeat bosses faster, quick headshots and manipulating enemy AI. I’m obviously not a good speedrunner yet but it’s quite interesting dissecting the game in ways you’d never think of during a casual playthrough.

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