Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (Shadow

Well, the MGS have all been good games. It's had it's
disappointments (coughRaidencough), sorry i have a cold. But now they have moved the story back to the 60's. Which kinda ticks me off, because i want to know what happens after MGS 2. Well at least this game is good. Not only do you have to play a game based in the 60's but your in the jungle (WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE!..sorry, couldn't resist.) Surprisingly you still have a lot of high tech stuff to play with . I mean what do you expect? You're a secret agent of the US government!

There are a few tough spots in the game, so luckily you still have the codec to get advise from the lazy people that are sitting back safe in a nice cool building, while you risk your life in a hot jungle with poisonous animals, guards that will pop out of absolutely nowhere (and you don't have your radar anymore, so that makes things even more... um well interesting and difficult at the same time.) But not to worry you still have all kinds of stuff to help you out. There's a motion tracker (not as useful as the old radar), thermal goggles (maybe the most handy gadget in the game), the old AP censor (i never really used it), and they are all ran by batteries! This is one of the many realistic things they added to the game. The battery does take a long time to deplete, but it just means you can't use an item through the whole game.

In all the Metal Gear Solid games I have played, there have introduced tons of memorable characters, and this game makes no exceptions. Every character (other than normal guards) in this game has a personality that you can see and make you like or hate them, as if they are a real person. You can respect them, totally loath them, think their just plain cool, or just to love them.

Now to another great thing they have added, is a camouflage system that allows you to blend in with the environment so the enemy can't see you. But that doesn't mean that you don't need to hide, the camo doesn't make you completely invisible, it just makes you more difficult to see (just like in real life). It's a nice touch and gives a better sense of stealth in the game. Your not the only one that uses stealth neither, lots of bosses use it to (another great use for the thermal goggles) and it can be pain sometimes, but if the boss's didn't use camo the fight wouldn't be as interesting.

Now in most games you find health as food and it's just laying on the ground ready for you to eat. Sorry but there is not food lieing around waiting for you to pick it up. You are in the jungle so you have to hunt for your own food. You kill snakes (i wonder how they got the title), rats, alligators, crab, plants, and basically anything that lives (except for trees, and people), there's a wide range of things to eat, and it doesn't all taste great, Snake even tells you what he thinks of the taste of everything he eats. I hope the food hunting catches on into other survival games. But all this eating doesn't recover your health, that would be to ordinary for a game. In real life you eat food to have energy so you can do stuff, and guess what you have an energy bar that is right under your health bar. It goes down slowly as you just sneak and walk around, but when you swim or do something that would tire you out it goes down very quickly. I never ran out of energy, but I'm guessing you pass out and get game over if it depletes. It gets annoying having to feed your Snake all the time, but hey if you want it to stay alive you must feed him. So remember to eat regularly children.

In the video game world if you get stabbed or shot you lose some health and you go on. Again not this time. This time if you get injured you have to treat it (wow , thats just like in real life)! So if you get shot for example you have to get your knife and dig the bullet out (i bet that feels good), and patch it up with a bandage and disaffect ant. You can also get broken bones in various ways, get poisoned from snakes, and even get a stomach ache from food that you have been holding on to for to long. I really learned some things on healing an injury by having to do these things. But you do get injured and sick a lot from being in the jungle and fighting multiple boss's with all kinds of ways to cripple you.

Like the other MGS games this can be mistaken as an interactive movie with all the long cut scenes. I really don't mind them, but other people seem to do. I mean yes you play games to play games, and watch movies to watch movies, but I enjoy cut scenes because the explain the story very well (and yes it's one of the best video game stories of 04) and they sometime have some really cool fighting scenes in them. They also look great like the rest of the game.

So what we have here is another great MGS game. It's good challenge, more memorable characters, a cool story, a very realistic system to take care of yourself, an interesting camouflage system, and cool cut scenes make this one of the many great game to come out in 2004! I'm going to give this game a realistic 10 out of 10.

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