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DISCLAIMER - The following post will contain story spoilers on the Metal Gear(Solid)-series as a whole, as well as a lot of text and a lot of pictures. You have been warned.
Anyone who knows me on this site knows that I am a massive Nintendo-fan. My top 5 best games of all time, and even my top 10, may well be all Nintendo. But there is one game I want to give some extra attention right now, that has absolutely nothing to do with Nintendo. That game is Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. I'm not sure exactly what the differences beween Snake Eater and Subsistence are, since Subsistence is the only version I played, but I will from hereon out list a few of the reasons why Metal Gear Solid 3 is so great. (Not ranked in any specific order.)
Point #1 - Naked Snake
We've all played as Solid Snake before. We all know Solid Snake, we all love Solid Snake. So when I learned that in Metal Gear Solid 3 we'd get to play as Big Boss - you know, that guy who got killed in the first Metal Gear - and who also was the base for the Les Enfants Terribles-project which gave us our beloved Solid Snake to begin with (along with Liquid and Solidus), it's safe to say that I turned giddy with anticipation. We got insight into this man - this man we know is dead in the current MG timeline (until MGS4 came along, I guess). So basically, you get to play as a guy you know turns bad (until MGS4 came along, I guess) and you also know is dead. Despite this, you feel for him after playing the game for less than an hour. How did this guy turn bad anyway, one begins to wonder?
Don't get me wrong, I think Solid Snake is great. Hell, I even like Raiden. But Naked Snake is so many notches above both of them that it's not even funny. Playing as him was quite possibly one of the best experiences I've had in gaming, simply because of who he was. What he was. And also, what he would eventually become. (... Until MGS4 came along, I guess. I'll just pretend like MGS4 doesn't exist for the rest of this entire thread.)
Point #2 - Enviroment/Atmosphere
While I did think that both of the previous Metal Gear Solid-games were really cool, the enviroments were somewhat stale at times. Less so in the first game than the second one, but still, most of the time you were inside and the hallways and general areas felt pretty much the same. Sure, you could discern the difference between them, and it wasn't easy to get lost, but there wasn't much variation to look at. In Metal Gear Solid 3, there were a few areas like this. But you also got to traverse through cliff areas, jungles and swamps. Which was just incredibly awesome. I've heard complaints about the camo usage in the game from some people, but I thought it was fantastic.
When I first heard about it I felt "Huh, that's probably going to be really tedious", but right after I started playing any such worries melted away and it became second nature. So much so that if I went back and played the earlier games, I'd probably lament over the fact that I couldn't try and find the bets camoflague to fit any given situation. Camo rocked, pure and simple.
Point #3 - Eating and Healing
This is another instance of something that sounded incredibly tedious on paper, but became second nature in practice. Healing your wounds, mending broken bones and having to eat added a sense of realism to the game. Now, realism isn't always good. But in this case it sure was. It meant that you can't just walk away after falling from a high height. If you got shot, you had to make sure to treat the wound or suffer the consequences. It made it all the more important to be careful - to be a spy. The eating was great simply because, finding food was never hard. Sure, it wasn't good food, but hey, you didn't have to eat it. Snake did. And it's always fun making video game characters suffer.
Point #4 - EVA
I have no idea what the general consensus about EVA is among fans, but personally, I loved her presence. I liked her in the game so much that I got worried when she got severely wounded near the end, and I felt a strong sting of betrayal during the ending. It's truly remarkable that in such a game as Metal Gear Solid 3, which mixes implausible spy flick-stuff with guys who control bees and shoot lightning, somehow they managed to make the characters feel more real than any other game I've ever played. EVA was a prime example.
Point #5 - Ocelot
If it weren't for the next point I'm going to list, this would without a doubt be the most important point of them all. Ocelot. When you see him in the game, you realize "Hey, I know this guy! It's the old dude from the other two games!". Indeed, it's the very same Revolver Ocelot that Solid Snake would be facing a few decades later. To me, he'd always just been some old guy who liked to shoot people. Sure, he was a bit more interesting than that, but I never felt like Ocelot was someone I really cared about. I cared about Liquid Snake, but Ocelot was just kind of there to set stuff in motion, I never really reacted strongly to his character in it's own right.
Until Metal Gear Solid 3. Hell, any Ocelot-fan should've gotten wet from playing this game. We got so much insight into him, his rising rivalry with Naked Snake and we even got to see both of his parents. Pretty much any scene with Ocelot in this game was as close to perfection as anything last-gen ever got. This game made the character, atleast for me. This game put Ocelot on the map, and solidified him as one of the greatest antagonists (if we can even call him that) in video gaming, to me. Now, for my final, and most important point of all...
Point #6 - The Ending
Beginning with the face off against The Boss amongst all of the white flowers, I was on the edge of my seat. Everything just took my breath away. I can't explain it in words, but this ending perfectly wrapped the entire game up for me. I practically never cry, much less when playing video games, but this made me shed a tear. The entire thing was just so masterfully done that I couldn't help but feel like suddenly, everything had more meaning. It was beautiful. This was not just a mere video game. This was art. Everything that happened from the moment I defeated The Boss had me feeling an immense sense of so many different things. Satisfaction, sorrow, wonder, fulfillment, anger... I can without a doubt say that this was the best ending I have seen in a video game, and quite possibly the best ending I've seen in anything.
There you have it. And that's not even all of the reasons I love the game, I just decided to pinpoint the ones I deemed the most important and share with you all. This game gets a lot of love, but it deserves even more. Long live Metal Gear Solid 3. I know that through my entire life, I will never forget my first playthrough of this absolutely spectacular game.
(For anyone who is wondering, I did not complete it recently. I just got the urge to write this tribute to a fantastic game I played and cleared quite some time ago.)
