Let's begin with some brutal honesty: pressure-sensitive buttons were a bad idea, and building a combat system around them was a worse one. The control scheme here is generally a bit of a mess, and the boss fights that ask you to engage with it at speed are fairly infuriating. I was never able to hold someone up on command, I couldn't reliably get a silent takedown even by the end of the game, and I'm grumpy about it.
But that's pretty much my sole complaint about this otherwise magnificent game. The stealth sections are classic high-quality Metal Gear fare, Kojipro's signature mechanical crunch is toothsome and often hilarious, and The End is an all-time excellent boss fight.
But where the game really shines is its writing, plot, and characterization. Metal Gear Solid has always been famous for its signature combination of intense historical fiction with larger-than-life goofiness, but it's never worked quite as well as it does here. Because MGS3 is a prequel, it's forced to be a little more grounded both in its technology and its themes. This helps it rein in its complexity and focus on developing the core motivations that drive the rest of the series and add depth and clarity to the previous entries.
It's also hard to overstate just how fun the cutscenes are here. Every moment Ocelot is on screen is a screaming delight, setting up his gunplay romance with Snake and setting sky-high expectations for his characterization that are frankly not quite lived up to in other games (except *V*). The Boss is the glaring exception to the rule of thumb that Kojima can't write women, a deep and fascinating character who fully earns her place as the moral heart of the entire series. Even the sequences with Eva are fun, even if it's impossible to believe for a second that Snake is heterosexual.
But that's pretty much my sole complaint about this otherwise magnificent game. The stealth sections are classic high-quality Metal Gear fare, Kojipro's signature mechanical crunch is toothsome and often hilarious, and The End is an all-time excellent boss fight.
But where the game really shines is its writing, plot, and characterization. Metal Gear Solid has always been famous for its signature combination of intense historical fiction with larger-than-life goofiness, but it's never worked quite as well as it does here. Because MGS3 is a prequel, it's forced to be a little more grounded both in its technology and its themes. This helps it rein in its complexity and focus on developing the core motivations that drive the rest of the series and add depth and clarity to the previous entries.
It's also hard to overstate just how fun the cutscenes are here. Every moment Ocelot is on screen is a screaming delight, setting up his gunplay romance with Snake and setting sky-high expectations for his characterization that are frankly not quite lived up to in other games (except *V*). The Boss is the glaring exception to the rule of thumb that Kojima can't write women, a deep and fascinating character who fully earns her place as the moral heart of the entire series. Even the sequences with Eva are fun, even if it's impossible to believe for a second that Snake is heterosexual.