We bring our retrospective to a close with this final entry.

Hello once again kids! Sadly, this is the end of our Metal Gear Solid retrospective; tissues are in the corner if you need them. This portion will have us dabbling in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, the prequel of the Metal Gear Solid saga. More than that, it was also the game that changed the way we would play Metal Gear games, and made us wish that more games would be this inventive.

Snake Eater has us jumping into the Wayback Machine to the Cold War Era when America and Russia raced to supremacy of technology and space. The Cold War setting was the prime candidate for the beginning of the series, it was a time when nuclear war was just coming to fruition and the prominent worldwide focus on technology and information are key aspects of the Metal Gear games. Another key aspect of Metal Gear Solid lore is cloning, which made a major breakthrough in 1964 when scientists cracked the genetic code and started a tidal wave of genetic research. But enough with the history lesson, let’s talk some Metal Gear Solid!

The Virtuous Mission

Snake Eater is the tale of Big Boss before he was “Big Boss”. In that time he was Naked Snake, a highly skilled grunt who was about to embark on an historical journey that would impact the world’s future forever. With only the support of his mentor, The Boss, Commander of FOX, Major Zero, and PARA-Medic, Naked Snake awaits in an airplane high above the Russian jungle below, smoking a cigar, and thinking only of the mission at hand. Green light, time to go, Naked Snake throws out his cigar, steps to the platform and prepares to dive in what is about to be the world’s first HALO (high-altitude, low-oxygen) jump.

As he falls through the heavens, he reflects on his mission yet again, to extract a nuclear scientist by the name of Sokolov and bring him back to the West for political safety. Stealth is everything and failure means execution. Upon hitting the trees below, Naked Snake gets the run through from his support and undergoes the mission at hand.

Essentially, the Virtuous Mission that Naked Snake embarks on is a glorified tutorial that infuses hand holding, plot, and character reveal together. You might even call it a tech demo if you’re into that kind of thing. Major Tom will give Snake the basic commands while The Boss will remind Snake of the fighting technique they developed together, CQC or Close Quarters Combat.

CQC is a gameplay element that the series desperately needed since it relied heavily on stealth gameplay. When players would find themselves engaged in battles, they often died as a result of not having the quick take-downs CQC presented them. In the past it was mainly punches and chokes that made up your close combat options, but with CQC, Snake can effectively throw, slam, and theoretically disarm opponents using Judo-like moves. Doesn’t make since that this was not implemented before, but better late than never right?

Another element introduced in this game was the use of camouflage. By using different themed BDUs (Battle Dress Uniforms), Snake can blend in with the environment helping him stay out of sight. Of course, this is not stealth camouflage, if a guard was reasonably close, you would be spotted and have to resort to CQC and quickly re-camouflaging, but it was fun nonetheless. Of course, if you met the tedious requirement to get the stealth camo in the game, playing Predator on the poor soldiers is absolutely entertaining.

Nature was yet another thing introduced by this game. Never before was a Metal Gear Solid game set in a natural environment, due to the fact that systems just didn’t have the power at the time to render such a place. But now they have and Kojima wanted to push it as far as possible. He also wanted Snake to have to work his way to the enemy compound rather than just be placed there, something that would make the game a little more realistic, I mean, how many times are the enemies really going to let you just walk up to their door? But nature was more than just hiding spots and long treks, it was also a weapon.

Snake could use animals he had caught to his advantage, throwing snakes on an unsuspecting enemy is always fun! You could even throw out rations for the same effect of dropping an enemy’s guard by using naughty magazines. The game was even programmed to use time to depreciate the freshness of rations; making them a spoiled and deadly… err, hilarious weapon. Think Johnny, the poor guard that keeps getting sick in every game… his dad is in this one too!

Nature was also important because Snake was forced to resort to fruits and animals to recover his stamina, something else the game introduced. By using the stamina bar, players would have to keep an eye out to make sure Snake had enough energy. Failure to do so resulted in him passing out or not being able to hold a gun steady enough to make any kind of an accurate shot.