by MiTT3NZ » Wed Dec 30, 2015 8:43 pm
Metal Gear Solid 3. After about a five month break I returned to it determined to get to grips with the controls. I did, and I found it slightly more enjoyable, but still very frustrating. Especially the boss fights. The one against The End had the potential to be a truly great boss fight. Unfortunately the controls, again, let it down.
Throughout the entire playthrough, I was constantly conflicted... Is this a game that I appreciate for how it was at the time? I do admire a lot of the small little details and some of the general ideas. Then again, is this something of a missed opportunity? Unfulfilled potential? It certainly feels like it. A video game that aesthetically seems content with just being a video game, but then the story comes into play and it seems to want to also be halfway between a TV film and a radio drama... that is then adapted into an anime or some shit.
Yes, the story is just straight up fucking ridiculous, along with the dialogue. The plot itself is fairly straight-forward enough, but it tries to be too meta in it's presentation and execution. Be it the "hey, isn't this dead charming like an old B movie?" message that Para-Medic tries to tell you post-savegame or the mind-numbing over explanations in the dull twenty minute cut scenes (seriously... the same peeps who had a go at TDKR have the audacity to turn round and say that Hideo Kojima's a great storyteller or the MGS lore is rich or some shit? Piss to fuck)
The entire thing feels forced and a complete mismatch between Japanese manga cheese and western action/spy stories like James Bond, Rambo, and even Splinter Cell at times (regardless of it's younger birthdate) The relationship between Snake and the Boss seems like it's supposed to be some big emotional plot point. Now, I dunno if it's because of the laughable casting choices, the direction, the lack of backstory outside of the frankly insulting ending where - what feels like an hour long monologue - takes a handful of sentences and paraphrases them as many times as possible to pad out what is essentially a short game if you're not ghosting or attempting on the highest difficulty... But the point is it's difficult to give two shits about Boss as a character. "She's my mentor, wahh!" "You're like a son to me, wahh!" You tried to kill me in the opening level, why the fuck do you think I'm gonna care that I have to kill you?
And what the fuck is with the other bosses? The wannabe cowboy who wants to kill you then doesn't want to kill you but will kill you if it's during some played out juggling Russian Roulette circus act. The roid raging BDSM-obsessed bisexual nympho that fidgets with bullets as he embraces the eternal orgasm of shoving a Pikachu up his arsehole. American Shun Di with the dislocated eyeball who reckons he's Snow White, and of course the lovechild of Chai and Toad from the X-Men.
I wouldn't mind, but sometimes during the radio comm convos, it seems like Snake's on your side. He realises how ridiculous everything is, and makes havin to sit through it slightly less awkward, but then he has that crippling role of being the protagonist so instantly starts takin shit seriously when peeps start displayin superpowers. But wait... he may take it seriously, but not in the "holy fuck, did you see what that guy just did?" sense, but more in the "Wolfenstein 3D is this story's account of how WWII went down" sense. Then again, I could see that happening considering what lengths they go through to tie the story into historical events. I mean, fuck me, the Boss' three hour history lecture prior to her penultimate speech was bad enough that I skipped it. And considerin the fact I never skip scenes - even in a game such as this one - should speak volumes of how awful it was. "Then in 43, then five years later, but three years before that... Some shit happened irl, but what really happened is a government conspiracy that I'm the last remaining survivor of n I'm also not who you think I am" (those last two things applied to too many characters n'all.
Oh, and can someone tell me what this obsession is with having the female characters - the only two besides the almost comm-exclusive Para-Medic btw - half gettin their tits out and being the typical mother/lover type? I don't get it. Unless the entire thing's just a parody n I've been had, but it just doesn't feel like it.
The best way to sum up the game is a fairly decent stealth game with shite controls, an incomplete survival system, typically cringey Japanese humour, and ludicrously long cut scenes in between each level segment that masquerades as a story that you'd enjoy more by skipping and using your imagination to fill in the blanks instead.
Still gotta get through Peace Walker n'all before I finally land on Ground Zeroes/The Phantom Pain. Better fuckin be worth it.
MiTT3NZ has received 2 thanks from: Axm, Mr357