Almost Definitive
(My third playthrough of this port with circle pad pro in Japanese, both voice-over and text. 11 hours 48 minutes and 32 seconds clocked on the kill screen. “Jaguar” rank with 85 enemy causalities. Had to use the small window in both terms of both space and time for sniping the End so the whole playthrough only took up a weekend.)
Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater is regarded by many as the best installment in its series. I didn’t agree with that statement until July, 2018, by which point a circle pad pro was purchased by yours truly just to play the game’s 3DS port. Of course, the port is far from perfect. It got rid of features like cut scene viewer and first 2 Metal Gear games of the HD Edition. One playthrough has only one save file. And before you ask, yes, the framerate can be quite dicey at points including but not limited to the final boss fight. But Snake Eater’s already excellent level design and some modern day “orthodox” game mechanic is a match made in heaven. I still consider it the best way to play one of the best video games ever made.
Casting reshuffle
The desire of Snake Eater to be a back-to-basics experience is all the more apparent in its Japanese voice cast. Gone were most of the 90s Gundam All-star in Sons of Liberty, your old friends since MGS1 days were back and into their usual posts.
Akio Otuska was back as the player character after the double casting in Sons of Liberty. This Naked Snake in MGS3 is a commando suddenly thrown into the more treacherous water of espionage for the first time, so the naiveté Ostuka showed in the performance is more justified than previous mgs games. His “cannot stop looking at a lady’s tits” running gig is actually surprisingly tasteful here. For A MGS4 has a worse bit where an older grosser Snake trying to look up a lady’s skirt by deliberately drop a cigarette. For B, this interactive running ends with young Snake here looking said lady in the eye.
Houko Kuwashima was back as a regular after the mere cameo as Mei Lin in MGS2. She played Para-medic aka the young woman players radio if they want to save and turn off the game in Snake Eater. She still gives out hints about how to play the game, but with 1950s or 1960s genre films instead of Mei Lin’s Chinese proverbs.
Banjo Ginga was back as the Colonel Roy Compel replacement named Major Zero. Mr. “Galaxy” was the voice of Liquid Snake, so I guess he became the resident British accent parallel for Kojima and company. I am also inclined to think that this casting choice was why MGS4 plot went the way it did.
Speak of “good old” Roy, the Japanese voice behind him was back in MGS3 for just one long cut scene. Takeshi Aono chewed the scenery as the drunk Russian scientist Granin. The scene not only redefined “Metal Gear”, it also can be a bitter sweet scene straight of a cinematic classic titled Amadeus.
Aono was not the only one back for a different type of performance, Kikuko Inoue was back after playing the nagging girlfriend in MGS2. She played the final boss creatively named the Boss here. Action movie antagonist on the outside and deeply tragic character in the inside, this is the best performance Ms. Inoue gave in “A Hideo Kojima Game”.
There were new comers too. The example being Takumi Yamazaki as young Ocelot, but this old new friendmy of Snake seems more like Snake Eater’s effort to immediate the 1998 original. Mr. Yamazaki’s career in the early aughts was more about being the replacement of later Kaneto Shiozawa, the voice behind Frank Yaeger in Metal Gear Solid who died in 2000. His buttery smooth mustache twirling tone might just be a sign of things to come, since Kenjiro Tsuda, the Japanese voice of Sam Porter Bridges in Death Stranding, has Yamazaki’s vibe in contrast to Otsuka’s more booming present.
The six mentioned above are the more lively bit of this campy action triller set in the Cold War, there are stack characters like war monger Colonel Volgin, sex spy EVA and rogue galley Cobra Unit. Sadly, they are just there because the genre demands it.
Like a movie hero or something (else)
“It’s like one of my Japanese animes” is a line said by Hal Emmerich in MGS1 and a legit complain Japanese players had about MGS2. I could imagine a well-to-do Japanese person in 2001 playing MGS2 on PS2, hearing the long-winded dialogues thought “I can just turn off this console and watch Turn A Gundam on tapes instead.” Kojima and company simply extended the wrong aspect of things in MGS2 while they extended the right stuff in MGS3.
The right stuff I am talking about is, of course, gorilla warfare in the jungle. If MGS2 extended the talking bit to an annoying degree, then MGS3 extended the fight bit to an enjoyable degree. Of course, the cut scenes are still long here. But with interactive action bit quite long and very demanding, the noninteractive bits come by feeling like levity.
Gone are the all-sensing radar and flat grounds, jungle and wildlands in MGS3 are layered affairs. Prone in low grounds is among the most effective tactics to evade contacts, and evasion works both ways. Process with caution is the way no matter which version of this game you play. Though the Close-quarter Combat system does encourage some more daring, whether it’s to throw down for knockout or grab an enemy into the player’s mercy. Almost to confer that commando roll in those early MGS games are a form of attack, it is mapped to double-clicking the right trigger on the circle pad.
The 3DS port added the over-shoulder shooting and crouch walk of MGS4, it does make some bits of game easier. Bits like all the fights against Cobra Unit members instead the final showdown with the Boss, moving with guns ready to shoot does not make those fights trivial but it does make things slightly less challenging. It usually took me 2 hours of trial and error to beat the final boss with the other control skim, it only took me 30 minutes of trial and error to clear it in the 3DS port.
Though what this left-trigger and right-trigger affair offered is not all convenience. In the escape with no gear bit, Snake can grab and eat rats with a fork. In the other control skim, one can do so by simply pushing the left face button, while on the 3DS with circle pad, eating requires both triggers.
The home stretch of this game features an on-rail shooting bit that could have been straight out of Where the Eagles Dare, and it feels like a “proper” turret scene with the new control. But the game’s stealth focus is clear after all hell broke loose, since outside the boss fights, this control skim still does not provide satisfying fire fights against multiple grunts.
Modern action movies usually have their heroes always ready with their guns so they can shoot first, this 3DS port allowing player to move and shoot more precisely certainly mimic that power fantasy. Still, being the Predator is the ultimate goal this game has store for you,
Came full circle?
The whole Survival bit of MGS3, the curing and feeding thing, sounded to me like a suitable standalone release for Nintendo’s Dual Screen platform back in 2006. 5 years after that thought occurred to me, Metal Gear Solid Snake Eater 3D on 3DS was announced and somehow sounded like a monkey paw wish.
I finally pulled the trigger on purchasing a Circle Pad Pro after being spoiled by Switch’s twin-stick set-up out of its box. I am of the humble opinion that one cannot play polygonal extravaganzas since the mid aughts without both sticks. So, when it comes to playing this stone cold classic from 2004, the 3DS port is still the way to go. Now let’s hope that its replacement is not fake or fouled up by Konami…