Metal Gear Solid 3 is a damn fine game. The soundtrack that accompanies it is of expert craft, and the cutscenes are straightforward enough that they don’t overstay their welcome. From a purely interactive standpoint, this is a metaphorical box of chocolates masking dozens upon dozens of miniature interlinkages of gameplay systems. This is a love letter to 60s exploitation spy films, and while there is little to hate, there have always been small things to dislike.

The beginning is extremely slow, specifically with regard to the pre-virtuous and pre-snake eater mission briefings which are so overexplained they almost pass into self-critique territory. In general, I don’t have a problem with the codec system since it can easily be skipped, but a new player might feel forced to listen to all of the calls since they sometimes provide valuable story dialogue, and with some of them being either extremely unwarranted and disrespectful of the player’s intelligence, or just indulgently long, I find that the codec calls hamper the experience more often than they benefit it. Also, for all the skippable cutscenes, why can I not skip the end credits?? I mean it isn’t like SNES games where you save before the credits and then just turn off the game; there are special items you can only get after sitting through the entire credits, even on repeat playthroughs. Admittedly this is a little nitpick since the credits aren’t very long but it bothered me more than usual on this go.

I’d also be remiss if I glossed over the male-gazey aspects that seem only to rise in misogyny as the series progresses. What started as a few sexist dialogue lines and some leering camera shots in Metal Gear Solid 1 quickly became the offensively bad Quiet in The Phantom Pain. Snake Eater doesn’t go over the line with this, though the famous “look at boobs” interactions are cringeworthy, to say the least. At least Eva is an actual character with her own motivations and motives, that result in a neat little character arc. The Boss is also a wonderfully characterized mentor to Snake, as the former essentially catalyzes the plot. There are other things like Volgin’s weird groping thing (this also happens in Metal Gear Solid 2) and the boss referring to Snake’s Raikov outfit as a “fairy” disguise, which is so 2000s it makes me laugh more than anything else. Suffice it to say, by 2004 the series had not yet reached its status as straight male fantasy cringe.