Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence

The Good
One thing that has begun to aggravate me about the Metal Gear series is how reminiscent each game is of the previous one. Both canon and non-canon games have all followed the same structure; infiltrate an enemy base, rescue hostages, defeat members of an elite team, and prevent nuclear war. While I haven’t fully grown weary of sneaking through corridors patrolled by nearsighted guards, I’m certainly ready for a change. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater represents the greatest shift the series has seen, moving all the action outdoors and into the jungle and re-focusing on new and exciting mechanics. Yet despite this, what Snake Eater proves most is that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Snake Eater represents a radical shift in narrative. The story follows the series’ future antagonist, Big Boss, back in the early days when he carried the codename Snake. He’s tasked with the mission of covertly infiltrating an enemy facility, rescuing a civilian scientist, and destroying an enemy super-weapon to prevent nuclear catastrophe. Nope, wait, my mistake. I’m beginning to see a pattern here. Okay, so it’s still the exact same plot as the previous games, only now it’s set in 1964 against the backdrop of the Cold War.

While the story structure remains the same, when it comes to the smaller details, Snake Eater is a completely different beast than the previous games. This time around, the narrative has taken a lot of influence from 1960’s spy fiction right down to a musical interlude in the style of post-Goldfinger James Bond movies. With the change, the story takes a subtly more light-hearted tone, mostly dropping melodramatic elements such as long death monologues and drawn out dialogues about a character’s tortured past. The support characters who you remain in contact with over the codec seem less worried about unloading their emotional baggage on you and more interested in fun banter and in-depth detail about the items you’re carrying. The game hasn’t completely been exorcised of heavy-handed character drama, but the shift in narrative focus has made it less obstructive and slightly more enjoyable.

But it isn’t the story that has been given the biggest shift; the gameplay is almost entirely different than any of the previous titles. Rather than being dropped off at the front door of a compound and left to accomplish his mission, Snake starts off in the middle of a jungle and has to make his way between multiple camps and bases. In a way, it’s a lot like the NES port of the original Metal Gear. While the game’s world is quite linear – more so than even the previous Solid titles – there’s a nice bit of exploration to be had as risk is weighed against reward when searching the undergrowth for new gizmos. Certain areas can be easily traversed, but everywhere holds the possibility of extra gear being tucked away in a corner, should you be willing to risk discovery to get it.

With the shift in terrain come a lot of new elements in the shape of survival mechanics. Rather than simply chowing down on rations to heal, health returns gradually so long as you keep your belly full and your wounds stitched up. New to the game is a stamina bar that dictates not only how well your wounds heal, but also smaller things like how steady your aim is. To keep it topped up, you have to eat food which can be found in storage sheds, on guards, or by hunting animals and snatching certain flora. First-aid must be applied to specific wounds to keep Snake from bleeding out, and while field surgery is pretty simple, the supplies must be obtained from the environment. The survival mechanics really aren’t as deep as they may sound, but they do add a nice bit of character, as superficial as it may be. The field surgery in particular I wish was used more frequently in video games, as it lends a greater feel of interactivity to what is otherwise typically instant.

Finally, there’s the addition of camouflage. Since Snake is no longer wandering the corridors of a grey-blue facility, he can use various camouflage patterns and face paint to try and blend into the environment around him. The soliton radar didn’t exist back in 1964, and the motion detector and sonar you’re provided doesn’t really work the same way. The enemy field of vision is much greater than it was in previous games, and without the soliton radar, you can’t see when you’re entering a guard’s line of sight. To make up for this, a percentage is displayed onscreen to tell you how well you’re blending into your surroundings, and it may be necessary to swap wardrobe to better conceal yourself. With the right outfit, guards may not see you until they actually trip over you.

The Bad
The problem with all of Metal Gear Solid 3’s many new mechanics is that they feel like they belong in a much longer game. Snake Eater was the lengthiest Metal Gear game at the time of its release, but even with it, the opportunity to use some of Snake’s new tricks doesn’t come up often. Survival just isn’t that difficult when there’s so little ground to cover. Certain terrains are only seen once for about two areas each, so many of the animals only exist in small pockets. Food is extremely easy to come by to the point where you might as well not bother hunting since rations, instant ramen, and Calorie Mates can be found in just about any shed and never go rotten. You can get first-aid items from various plants, but these too can be found lying around in large quantities. Larger stretches of wilderness where supplies are less frequent would have been more ideal since at least then you’d be forced to scrounge for everything you can get, rather than always being loaded up with items.

The issue of wasted potential pervades a lot of the game. You practically trip over new gizmos and healing items every few steps, and while this provides a great deal of flexibility in how you approach the game, it lends to a feeling of superfluousness. You have a myriad of options on how you get through the game, but whether you sneak through unnoticed or mow down everyone who gets in your way, it basically all feels the same. The game just isn’t dynamic enough to support all methods of gameplay in a satisfying manner. It has the bizarre trait of being too deep, but not broad enough, and just ends up feeling cluttered.

Despite these minor problems, for most of the game I was practically in love with Snake Eater. Then, during the concluding three or four hours, it falls back into old habits. Boss battles and action setpieces are suddenly sandwiched between tremendously long cutscenes that are absolutely packed with horrendous dialogue and borderline incomprehensible exposition. The final stretch of story that concludes the last boss battle is monstrously long, something like 45 minutes in total, going over who double-crossed who, and how everything was set up from the beginning to play out exactly as it did. It’s bad enough that this gets spewed all over the concluding chapter, but this is the exact same kind of plot twist that has been used in every other Metal Gear Solid game. Not only is the series severely long-winded, it can’t stop repeating itself.

The Bottom Line
While Snake Eater made an attempt at the end to sabotage my enjoyment of the game by dropping a metric tonne of weapons-grade exposition directly on the concluding chapter, I have to remind myself that everything leading up to that was pretty near excellent. The many new survival mechanics that have been layered on top of the series’ standard stealth really makes the experience shine like never before. On top of that, the boss battles are immensely memorable and the 1960’s aesthetic is utilized in many extremely stylish ways. However, it’s become too difficult for me to ignore the tremendous deficiencies in the series’ writing. It’s GOOD enough, but what should have been an outstanding game is dragged down by its inability to fully shed its flabby exposition.