Metal Gear Solid 3 Review

You'll find yourself mastering CQC through necessity

Thankfully, once these initial hurdles are accepted, Snake Eater more than makes up for the slow start. The new elements, such as Close Quarter Combat (or CQC as it is referred to in-game), rationing, stamina and camouflage, don't feel like the gimmicks that you may have expected. Rather than standing alone and compartmentalized, the new elements bleed into one another to create a far more solid and interesting framework.

Stamina, for example, is directly related to rationing; if you don't kill or tranquilise various animals to feed upon then your energy will steadily decline. While running, jumping, fighting and other strenuous exercise depletes the bar more quickly, it will still gradually decline even if you avoid these activities. The best part about this is that your enemies can become exhausted as well, destroy one of their food stores with C-4 and not only will their performance in combat be affected but it makes it far easier to tempt them off patrol using rations as bait.

No more endless reinforcements during an alarm period, no more bosses with perpetual energy

The same goes for ammo dumps. Wreck one of these and enemy soldiers will become far more reluctant to pin you under a barrage of now precious bullets. With these two elements alone Kojima has taken a significant step closer to justifying that familiar tagline 'Tactical Espionage Action', and they are just the tip of the iceberg. No more endless reinforcements during an alarm period, no more bosses with perpetual energy, no more everlasting silencers or chains of drab industrial mazes. Nope, no more.

After the Big Shell of MGS2, enthusiasm towards Snake Eater was dulled significantly. The gaming public had forgiven Kojima's excesses in MGS1 simply because the rest of the game held together so well, yet for many MGS2 failed on two accounts: The Gaming world and Codec.

Vampire bats? But of course

Although it could still be argued that the jungle presented in Snake Eater is very linear (usually two paths out of an area, with foliage penning you in every other way), it presents a vibrancy which brings to mind the first time Snake stepped out of that elevator in MGS, snowflakes drifting down and surrounded by long stretches of brilliant white which crunched under your combat boots. The environment is your enemy as much as the soldiers you face; diving into knee-high grass to avoid a patrol and finding yourself face to face with a coiled Python makes you realise Snake can't afford to take anything for granted, and by extension, neither can you.

Wisely, Snake Eater plays to the PlayStation 2's strengths (or tricks, for the cynical out there), avoiding the rough edges of earlier times by making extensive use of 'bloom', a more advanced version of the technique used on so many N64 titles. This works very well here, giving a feeling of heat haze and humidity, and Snake Eater doesn't slack in the areas of character detail or draw distance either. Although the PAL version doesn't feature 60hz support, the bordering is hardly obtrusive and Snake Eater retains the Dolby Pro Logic II of its U.S equivalent.

Crucially, Codec now functions just as it should

Crucially, Codec now functions just as it should. After being harassed by many transmissions in the first act, your advisors scale back their attentions and only report when something important has occurred. It works far better than ever before. You'll find yourself calling up Paramedic to enjoy more of her knowledge of seminal 60's movies, to get information on a species you've just killed or caught, or contacting Sigint to get more technical details on a weapon you just picked up.

Voice-acting is mostly very good, with Lori Alan in particular putting in an excellent turn as Snake's mentor 'Boss'. David Hayter returns and although he 'is' Snake, it has become difficult to tell whether he's playing the role tongue in cheek or unintentionally hamming it up, with much of his delivery frequently being too amusing for the kind of grim messages Kojima is trying to convey.

That isn't to say the creator himself is without humour, Kojima plays with the 1960s setting and recreates it in his own image, suspiciously high-tech devices exist next to pivotal events like the 'world's first H.A.L.O jump', and Snake is as much existing in a pastiche of a Bond movie (as the introduction demonstrates) as he is a tale of global espionage. Snake's role as the straight man in conversations, having had his funny bone surgically removed, provides much of the game's levity, and his Codec conversations with others who mercilessly rib him can draw out laughs from even the most jaded gamer.