Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater Review

What is Metal Gear Solid 3?

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (MGS3) is an action-adventure stealth game released in 2004 on the PS2. It was developed by Konami and Kojima Productions. It follows the character Naked Snake as he infiltrates a Russian jungle and nuclear testing base to rescue and escort a nuclear scientist trying to flee Russia. This game takes place in the 1960s during the height of the cold war and is chronologically the first game in the Metal Gear Solid franchise. I played MGS3 on PS5 through the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 which is also available on PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X&S, and Microsoft Windows. It took me around 13 hours to finish the story.

Game Review:

MGS3 is an iconic video game and is referenced in a lot of video game discourse as one of the best games ever made. Many video game writers have said that this game has the best story in the MGS franchise. I decided to play it for the first time this year in 2024 to see if it still holds up to modern gaming standards and to see what I was missing out on.

I’ll start by reviewing the story in MGS3 because that is one of its focus points as a game. I am going to review the story without spoiling it because these games rely on the fact that you won’t see everything coming. All the MGS games are transparent in their inspiration from big budget hollywood movies like 007 and Mission Impossible, but they take these movie formulas and ramp them up. Action sequences are bombastic in the most anime ways possible with people doing flips on motorcycles and twirling their guns on their fingers before they actually shoot. Sometimes this goofiness can pull people out of the experience and break the immersion. There is also a lot of content that just hasn’t aged very well such as a lot of objectification of women and a few offensive words used that were not considered inappropriate at the time the game was released. But if you’re able to look past these silly moments and remember the time that this game came out, then there’s a truly complex narrative with twists and turns hidden throughout. 

The MGS franchise loves to ground itself in historical fact and setting (the Cold War for example) but takes its own creative license to make an intricate fiction that invests the player in its world. Kojima and the writers take historical facts and twist them in ways that they can utilize to create their own unique story. For example, they alter the reason that the Cuban Missile Crisis both started and ended in ways that lend themselves to furthering the narrative. This layering of fact and fiction can muddy the waters though and make things so complex that it can be hard to follow, especially for a first playthrough. This also leads to long exposition dumps where they try to explain all of the complex layers at once which can hurt pacing. If this is your first MGS game I would encourage you to not get bogged down in every little detail because these games do have a tendency to explain themselves after the fact.

Thematically MGS3 tells an emotional story focused on self-sacrifice and loyalty. It commentates on the exploitation of soldiers at the hands of political figures and governments. All good art tends to have a point or a reason to tell the story that it tells, and I think MGS3 tries to communicate the atrocities of war and the commodification of soldiers into tools rather than treating them as the humans that they are. I think it’s a beautiful story, albeit one that I don’t necessarily have the best perspective on since I’ve never been a soldier. However, I still appreciate the humanity of it and what the writers were trying to convey.

MGS games always excel in gameplay variety and execution. MGS3 does not differ in this regard, and in fact adds more detailed mechanics to the already mechanically complex series. The shooting and combat still feels like a game from its time, it’s a little clunky and not as fluid as modern shooting mechanics. But for its time, it was good and I still enjoyed playing it today. The mechanics they added though from previous titles really added to the stealth and survival gameplay. MGS3 institutes a new camouflage system that lets you put on different camos and face paints to better blend into your environment. As you progress through the game you will need to change your outfits to be able to more effectively sneak through the areas. This game features a large variety of environments such as jungles, mountainous desert areas, and indoor areas. I love how the variety makes you adapt which camo you use. The game also instituted a hunger/stamina mechanic, hence the title Snake Eater, that requires you to hunt for wildlife and eat them to replenish stamina. If your stamina got too low you would receive some negative impacts such as not being able to steadily aim your gun. And finally they also introduced a cure system that lets you treat injuries/illnesses to Snake’s body as you progress through the game. This isn’t my favorite mechanic but it was more interesting than simply eating some health potion and magically being all better.

Characters and boss fights really shine in MGS games, which is super apparent in MGS3 as well. The named characters are all memorable and engaging; obviously being an MGS game the characters are a little goofy and weird, but the characters all stand out to me as great video game characters. Both the villains and the heroes form an ensemble that can create a great action-movie-esque story. Most video games, it’s really only the main antagonist and maybe a standout here or there that stick in your brain, but the MGS series has consistently provided many iconic characters in each game. The developers certainly have a way at creating characters with interesting backstories and quirks.

A nitpick that I have with most of the games in this franchise are the exposition dumps and the length of cutscenes. That trend continues in this game, unfortunately. It wouldn’t be so bad if players could pause cutscenes, but that’s not available even in this port to a newer console. The length of cutscenes can feel drawn out and like the writers want full control of certain aspects of the experience so they take it out of the players hands. 

Family Friendliness:

MGS3 is not a family friendly game. There are a number of scenes where there is objectification of women and partial nudity, including some scenes where people are groped. There are also a few overly violent scenes including a torture scene and a scene where a brutalized body is shown. I would not play this in front of my own kid.

Features for Parents:

MGS3 is not the most friendly to parents or people who need to play in small bursts. Like I said earlier, you can’t pause cutscenes and they can be pretty long. Its save feature is pretty good - you can save whenever, including in a boss fight, and it will load you back into the start of any specific area/encounter. The pause feature is great in non-cutscene portions of the game and there is plenty of information online to help players navigate and figure out its systems.

Final Verdict:

MGS3 is a masterpiece of a game. It has engaging and varied gameplay mechanics that create tons of options for approaching the game. It has an emotional and impactful story that sprinkles in moments of pure goofiness that can ease the tension. MGS3 is dated in some ways and that should be considered when playing but its overall message is a good one. If you want to revisit a classic masterpiece, this is a game that won’t disappoint.