METAL GEAR SOLID 3: Snake Eater - Master Collection Version

MGS3 was one of my favorite games on the PS2, up there with a handful of other games that marked my middle school years. Like much Japanese fiction, it combines an over-the-top and deeply intricate story with a big dose of comic-book silliness, together with astute reflections, too, on the nature of power, war, loyalty, and identity. To a kid who still saw the world in black-and-white terms, its story of betrayal and ruthlessness first pointed toward an understanding of power as altogether disconnected from to morality; of governments (even supposedly "democratic" ones) as eager to sacrifice their most loyal servants in the pursuit of their goals. Not bad for a story about bee-spitting villains, ghosts (?), and meowing cowboys. Having replayed it some twenty years later, I have found the story just as impactful (but much sillier) than I remembered it. What really stood out, however, is quite how unbalanced the experience of MGS3 is. Really, this feels less like a video game than a movie where you occasionally control the characters. I am pretty sure that, during my runthrough, I spent more time watching cutscenes than actually playing. This is especially stark early and late in the game - where you can be sitting in front of the screen for 90-minute stretches and barely be asked to walk across a couple of locations and shoot the occasional guard during that time. Replaying MGS3 felt like the best and the worst all at once, somehow. This feels like a game that really only becomes a game upon replaying (and indeed, I replayed it to the max back in the day): once you can skip the cutscenes (except of course for the really awesome ones) and focus on navigating creatively the handful of seemingly impossible situations you are presented with, then you have reached the core of what makes this a great game. (It should be a testimony to how awesome MGS3 is that I still enjoy it as a game even though I hate stealth - I have neither the patience nor the lateral thinking for it - and I hate it even more when a stealthy passage turns into Call of Duty halfway through, and suddenly I am rocket-launching enemies like there's no tomorrow.) This remains my only MGS (the Cold War setting intrigues me more than the techno-thrilly atmosphere of the others), and in spite of a few misgivings I still don't regret revisiting it. I just wish I'd stocked up on popcorn.