Games like this don't come around to often!

Metal Gear Solid is a very renowned game series. It's director and producer Hideo Kojima is an action game specialist for sure. Sons of Liberty doesn't quite compare to this game and MGS one hasn't aged to well to even compare. For any gamer looking for a good outing on a great stealth action title with great story, gameplay, character developement, and graphics then look no further than Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Honestly in my opinion this game is easily in the top ten games of 2004 no question. Not only does it surpass the quality of the first two games but adds even more to the storylines of both. You get to see some of the MGS characters as they're younger selves. Like Ocelot and Snake. Also new to this game is the survival aspect in which feeding of the jungle inhabitants is the only way to keep up stamina. The game takes places in the 60's after John F. Kennedy's assasination. The Cold War is currently putting the world under the pressure of a nuclear war. For those who don't know much about history then know that the Russians and America are in a power struggle trying to scare the other with making nuclear weapons. Currently the Russians have Sokolov. He is a weapons scientist and is the head of the Shagohod project. It's basically a tank that can go really fast and then launch a nuclear missile anywhere in the United States. So in Snake Eater it is Snakes job to get Sokolov out of there which then would result in the Shagohod not being completed. Snake is an expert and stealth and CCQ (close quaters combat) who is sent in to rescue the poor man. Snake also gets reunited by codec with his old mentor the Boss who is a lendendary women soldier who taught Snake everything he knows. So that's the wrap for the story aspect because this game is highly story oriented and that means lots of lenghty cut scenes which sometimes get a little irritating and other times they just feel rewarding.

For the most part this game takes place the jungle or somewhere outdoors. But usually you are in the jungle to get someplace inside to advance the mission. Survival and stealth are the key. Well at least survival. Snake has a health bar and a stamina bar. Stamina keeps him active and recovers health. After loosing health it will slowly come back but with high stamina it will come back even faster. The stamina bar goes down as well and to keep that up you must eat. Any wild life you can find is fair game. Birds, mushrooms, snakes, goats, scorpions, vultures, frogs, rabbits, rats, alligators, and fish. The captured food can either be stored in a cage or just killed. Some food tastes bad and some doesn't. The whole food system works well and its not to complicated and fits right into the gameplay.

The other half to survival is the brand new healing system. Healing is neither to hard nor to easy. All healing is done through the survival menu and you go in and pick the wound which you want to operate on and then pick the supplies. They range from bandages to disinfectant, to stiching kit, to syptic and ointment. The list goes on a little longer and surprisingly going about healing yourself is pretty easy. You can tell when Snake is mortally wounded is he has red in his health bar. Without properly fixing your wounds Snakes health bar will never go all the way up. Curing doesn't interrupt the gameplay to much and it's just another one of those things that really makes you feel like your in the jungle trying to survive all it's terrors.

Beyond keeping alive with the healing and curing comes the new camoflauge index. It lets you know how well you are hidden. The index is a number between 1 and 100. 100 is obviously the best but I don't think it can actually get this high. If Snake is in the 80's then he is pretty well hidden. Along the course of the game you will receive new camo that helps better to each specific environment. Most of them are something to do with nature. You also can dress up as a scientist to get by guards in a building and eventually you get a soldiers outfit too. Some camo is just for fun like the fly camo which looks like little terds all over Snakes clothes. New camo can also be downloaded of the internet through the PS2 online hook up. Getting these is very unessesary and it won't really matter to beating the game by having these. It's basically a fancy gimic. Another pointless addition would have to be the Snake versus Monkey game. In this mini game the monkeys from Ape Escape are littered throughout a jungle and Snake must catch them all in a certain period of time. I found this mode very pointless since it's too easy to just shoot them all down with the gun you are given. The best part about this mode is the briefing Snake gets from a commander and he gets convinced into doing this bizzare mission. Highly gimicky. Monkey mode really doesn't even help hone your stealth skills anyway because it doesn't really resemble the actual game play too much.

Stealth is really something that makes the game more fun but in parts of the game you can go through without it. On easy or lower difficulty setting stealth is not needed. But for the harder difficultys don't even attempt to play without using Snakes CCQ moves. The controls work out very well in this game and I'd say the PS2 controller is still the best out there. Using first person view helps out making one hit kills but other wise Snake doesn't really lock on to enemies like he did in MGS. The array of weapons is very vast from the pistol to a sniper to a missile launcher. The knife is by far one of the coolest weapons though. It makes for slitting throats possible. After getting a guy in a choke hold and can push down harder on the button to slit his throat. The other option is to just knock him out but what's the fun in that. The game overall is quite gory. Not in the dismemberment way but the blood is very present. There are three stages to which the guards will search. Normal means the guards have heard nothing and are just patroling like usual. Caution means someone may have heard something and they become more alert. Evasion means that they are looking harder because they know you could be nearby. Full alert means they are after you and are on the prowl, they will be littered through the area until this alert goes away. If Snake gets into this alert he is usual being shot at or is on the verge of death. The character physics and animations in the cut scenes also add the realism. Guards are pretty smart as usual like the other games. They will call in for backup upon finding you and they like to close in if lots of them are present. The guards themselves have some descent camoflauge so don't get to hasty. This game makes great use of all the stealth options. One thing that I did find annoying was if you were to close to a wall he would rather back up against it than worry about the gaurd impalling him. Also when crawling there are two button presses you have to make to get up. It doesn't sound bad now but in the heat of battle you may end up paying the price for it.

Story is really big in all MGS games and Snake Eater is no exception. The characters are all very involved and the cinema's which are very frequent and lengthy will get you to care about them alot more. Snake will eventually get into a little fling with EVA who is a spy on the Russians side. The story doesn't take to many twists but at the beginning the game starts out very history based and it ends up being more character involved more than anything else. The historical and political backround help make all the crazy things seem more believable. The boss battles are a little wacky and some of their powers are kind of supernatural but it makes them more fun. The difficulty of bosses isn't too bad besides the End who is a sniper who will hide and you have to find him first which ends up being a real clock absorbing fight.

The graphics are of the best that a Playstation 2 can produce. The jungle environments look very realistic. The details like moss on trees the intricate leaves and the vast array of colors and textures make the whole experience seem real. Even the animals look just like they were stripped from their home to take part in the game. The characters in the cut scenes look esspecially life like. The character faces are very detailed. One notable blemish is that the lip sinking of the mouths to the voices in the cut scenes don't really appear to match up. At least the mouth does move when they talk but so far no video game has really been able to do this. As for the other visual effects like fire explosions, rain, and fog they all look like the real thing. More so than in other games anyway. The true visual accomplishment in this game is with the cut scenes and then the gameplay follows closely behind.

The sound of Snake Eater is very stunning. I really liked all the musical bits in Snake Eater except the irritating theme song which sounds like one for a James Bond movie or a carbon copy for that matter. The in game music is fantastic though. The best example of this is when the pace changes with the action. This part really adds to the suspense. The weapon sounds and the voice acting are all above par as well. The voice of Snake is nearly the pure reincarnation of the original in MGS and MGS 2. The way he goes about his conversations is the same too. All the bosses have some pretty spine tingling vocals too.

I couldn't stress anymore how much of a innovative leap this game is. The cure and survival aspects pump up the real factor and the gameplay and graphics follow suit. Rolled all into one and you get Hideo Kojima's third Metal Gear Masterpiece. Fans of the original two can not miss this. I just jumped on the band wagon and boy was I glad I did. This game was so good I had to go out and get the Twin Snakes for the Gamecube so I could delve even deeper into this great series. Snake Eater is probably the best PS2 game available now and it's not worth passing up. While playing this game the fun you have is followed with suspense passion and even some emotion for some of this games doomed and faulted characters. Konami and Kojima have truly delivered.