LogFAQs > #951493107

#3 - Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence (PS2, my GotY for 2004)


The final of my unassailable top 3 from a decade ago. Its held up the best of them to me, on account of being the most replayable one, by far. Mainly because the game is just chock full of fun shit to do. Its also the best James Bond game ever made.

You play as Naked Snake, years before the events of any of the other Metal Gear games. Your mentor, The Boss, is on your codec, ready to help you on your mission to rescue an experimental weapons designer named Sokolov. You are able to get to him, but the plan goes awry when The Boss defects to the Soviet Union, bringing with her a few nuclear warheads as a gift. Prime Asshole Colonel Volgin decides to take one of them out for a spin, and nukes his own city. Then the real mission begins: rescue Sokolov, sabotage Volgins weapon development, and take out The Boss to establish The United States disinvolvement with the whole thing.

Along the way, you have a fantastic support team on your codec, with Para-Medic and Sigint, you get to meet a few younger versions of established Metal Gear favorites, like Revolver Ocelot, and some great new characters, like EVA. MGS3 has one of the strongest casts of any video game Ive ever played. The dialogue with the codec team in particular can get really wacky, and its great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COdkHuogVkw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqS18aj6Vis

The overall story for MGS3 is one of the best Ive ever encountered, too. The Bosss story is phenomenal. Its no wonder it spawned a sequel game on its own in Peace Walker. There are plenty of twists and turns, and of course, it wouldnt be a Metal Gear game without a half hour cutscene at the end to wrap it all up. Except this time, its arguably the best part of the game. I think it was the first time in my life that a video games story ever made me cry.



Meanwhile, the game is ridiculously fun as well. If you were to take the game completely seriously, it would still be a good time, but you would be missing out on the absurd amount of cheese they instilled into it that makes it truly fun. When I said before that Undertale is the game that has the most alternate dialogue, I would say MGS3 is a worthy contender for that title as well.

You can tranq snakes and rabbits and stuff, and then throw them on guards to attack them. Theres a secret minigame where you play a completely different hack-n-slash game if you save and reload at a certain point in the game. Theres a boss you can kill during a cutscene if youre really quick on the trigger, and completely skip his fight later in the game. If you go into your cure menu, you can spin yourself around, and if you do that for too long, when you return to the game, you will throw up. You can make yourself do this on a poor unconscious guards face, if you wish. You can get an alligator hat, and if you crawl around some cover with it on, then poke your head up, guards will get scared and run away. Punching guards in the dick is a OHKO.



Theres always something new that pops up every time I play. And I play it quite often. Its just a dumb game where everything came together just right to create the perfect Metal Gear experience. Well, after Subsistence came out anyway. I actually never played Snake Eater, but I read that it originally had like a MGS2 camera, and it made it really difficult to navigate the outdoors. It also tried a multiplayer MGS mode, but I honestly thought it was pretty meh. But the base game is so fucking good, it really didnt need it.

SECRET THEATER RANKINGS:
Payback > The Ultimate Weapon > Gotcha this time! > Metal Gear S > The Beginning of the End > Metal Gear Raiden: Snake Eraser > The Quick Version > Diehard > Close Call > the rest are all garbage, don't even bother watching

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Xbox GT/PSN name/Nintendo ID: TatteredUniform
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