Metal Gear Solid 3D: Snake Eater

Metal Gear and its successors, Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Rising. These are Konami’s espionage infiltration based games, created by the world famous Hideo Kojima. Debuted on the Japanese computer MSX2, and later entered the West through the NES, Metal Gear was an unusual hit from the 80’s, promising a new way of playing through a game, which was spying around as a secret agent.

Today, I won’t cover the rest of the timeline, instead, I’d like to review the recently re-released port of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, now also for the 3DS. As it is the first story to tell chronologically, new players to the series shouldn’t be afraid of spoilers from other games, because many things are set in place here for future games to talk more about.

You play as Naked Snake, a member of the FOX unit who is tasked with the top secret mission to rescue Sokolov, a military scientist who has created a new type of a nuclear carrier, a large tank called the Shagohod that is set to inspire future designers of the Metal Gears. He has been forced by the Russians to finish his work on this dangerous project, and is heavily guarded by the KGB.

This is the basic story as you begin the game. However, there is much more than meets the eye for every object I just talked about, and thus, I barely gave a briefing of the whole thing. In any case, you can expect dramatized action, suspicious conspiracies, serious emotional conversations and crazy characters.

And the characters stole the show. As you slowly get to feel that Snake Eater plays like a James Bond movie, suddenly Snake must deal with the infamous Cobra unit, a group of 6 legendary superhuman soldiers from World War II. A lot of things has been said about them already. You can expect a long deal of diversity between them, and as their code names suggest, a lot of emotional conflict as well. They are quite possibly Kojima’s most creatively designed bosses in the franchise.

Next to the stars of the game, there is of course tactical espionage action during the mission. And the gameplay was fun, especially the new features implemented such as using camouflage to hide, food to eat and treating wounds to survive. They all added up to the established formula of earlier games, giving you more options to play around with, vital options.

Granted, the way of shooting and the A.I. of the enemies feel outdated, but the emphasis isn’t entirely on taking out the enemies, rather it’s about avoiding and disabling them foremost! It’s also too bad that the game can take hits because of lag appearing. It’s not a problem of the 3DS, but of the game itself, that’s for sure.

Still, don’t get scared of these issues, because they are minor compared to the way of storytelling this game offers, alongside its hectic music, extra content and of course the new controls provided by the 3DS. With the Circle Pad Pro, it’s comfortable to play. 

Meanwhile, the 3D effect gives a feeling of being even more blended in with mother nature than earlier versions of the game, resulting into a richer experience. Speaking of which, the setting is adorable, with its Russian landscapes of forests, jungles, mountains and snow. The backstory relies heavily on the Cold War during the 60’s, but the best thing to endeavor is to be touched by its compelling story as it uses this backstory.

Which I won’t touch furthermore for this game, as it is fun to experience it for yourself, rather than reading about it or someone else explaining it to you. Now that I have beaten the game on Normal Mode, I am sure that I will pick a higher difficulty someday. However, that won’t be the Alert Mode then, because that seems almost impossible for me to beat. If you are seen only once while doing this mode, it is an instant game over for you! No thanks for that amount of stress. But as the ultimate challenge? It’s something worth trying for those looking for it.

Metal Gear Solid 3D is a very solid investment for new time players such as me, but if you happen to be able to obtain the HD collection, then that has most likely the definitive version, although there are some differences between the two.

Rating: 8.4

Mass Effect 3

BioWare's futuristic space trilogy called Mass Effect has been a massive hit around gamers, critics and sci-fi enthusiasts, and recently I have beaten the final part of the trilogy. It takes the cake for bringing closure to a deep space lore full of complex events happening, however, not everyone will like the way the game will most likely end for most of us.

The original game had some serious issues such as crappy vehicle controls, long loading times and empty dull planets, but rewarded players with it's storytelling and a combination of FPS and RPG gameplay. The sequel improved upon pretty much everything, took care of my critique and continued to envelop a strong story, still allowing you, the player, to choose the decision for many important events.

Mass Effect 3's conclusion as it stands is determined by the choices you have made in part 1 and 2, granting for a bigger impact during this, unless you decide to start with a new Commander Shepard and choose the most important decisions which have happened during past events before the game even begins.

The game feels largely the same as 2, offering little new input other than an available multiplayer mode. Naturally, I'm used to ignoring newly implemented multiplayer modes when single player modes take so much time to finish already, so you will have to look elsewhere for how good that aspect is. 

The dialogue, voice acting, lore and story are still superior towards many modern games, and moral decisions and watching the consequences unfold remained interesting. It may annoy some that everyone is able to speak English and that so many beings look much alike, but it's hard to get angry over anything else covering the interaction with the players. 

Personally, my concern this time is that many of the main missions felt the same, and that there was a scarcity of party members accompanying me towards defeating the villains. Perhaps that is the huge consequence I made during the end of part 2, where I lost all of my party members except for 2 and the protagonist. Perhaps BioWare intended players to recruit most of the members in previous games already, as this presumably wasn’t the focus in here.

The loading times are noteworthy minor, the shootouts are the most chaotic in here and there was plenty of content and things to do, and I am sure that I missed out on a good amount of stuff. Navigation has become more conventional, showing clear signs where to go next, plus being able to locate key people. 

Next to the familiar Paragon and Renegade options, as well as being able to take a neutral line, your Reputation will rise, for better or worse, depending on the definite choices you make. Become tolerant or intolerant, good or evil, virtue or vice, it's your call.

The galactic races are all still present(excluding extinct ones), such as turians, krogans and asari's. My favorite 2 races happen to be salarians and geths though, the former for their tendency of speaking fastpaced and scientific, and the latter for being engrossing synthetics with their own tragic background of abuse and the possible change they can bring towards organisms.

Potential romantic interests can still be developed here, and this time I successfully created one here. I tend to think that it was difficult to achieve this previously, but maybe I was being naïve and too conflicted with myself, maybe I was getting too emotionally involved, hah!

Also, each part of the trilogy doesn't necessarily have to be played in order so that players can understand them better, since major events will shape in the way you want them to be by the use of determined choices at the beginning. However, if you have played and beaten the trilogy in order, you are rewarded with being able to migrate your save file towards the next part and thus, see the major consequences of major events which have already happened. Such as, did you either destroy or "collect" the technology of the Collectors at the end of Mass Effect 2?

It's an interesting distinctive feature unknown to many video games that brings many different experiences from the games separated for tons of gamers. But the Mass Effect games are much more than that. Most of all, they offer a rich experience of interaction, gameplay, cinematic and galactic exploration that is sure to keep anyone intended to invest time and money in them intrigued long enough in order to be satisfied.

Rating: 8.5

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On a rather large sidenote, should you be interested into finding out why there is so much controversy about Mass Effect 3's endings, consider reading this remarkable written article with it's 5 in depth reasons as to why expectations towards a grand finale where shattered for many: 

Five Reasons

Do note that I was content with the ending I acquired either way, and thus, I disagree with the article. The choices you made through each game had a lot of impact already during the games and if BioWare decided as of now that this should not be reserved for the several endings available then I won't complain. 

Here's a hint, most if not all of Mass Effect 3's endings are linear and are not a happy ending, nor the most plot filled(the opposite of plot holes) or affected by the major choices of the players, but once again, I didn't get bothered by them.

Actually, the controversy surrounding them feels like an entertainment show to me, where I would easily be glad to grab up a bowl of popcorn and enjoy the debates.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

From the Swedish director Tomas Alfredson(who directed Let the Right One In(2008), an awful horror movie) comes this British espionage Cold War based story. With an impressive cast to follow up, including John Hurt, Gary Oldman and Tom Hardy amongst others and first impressions of the plot and the movie poster being at the right spots for me, I would think that this would be a quality of a film to remember.

Unfortunately, continuity errors, chronological confusions and identity crisis’s disallow any redemption at retaining my interest back into this world of spies and moles. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’s way of directing is at times, even more mysterious and ultimately obnoxious than trying to figure out who the mole is at the top of the Circus, also known as MI6, as I later found out outside of the movie. Not that it would be essential to make this clear to the audience, but it would had helped a bit for this particular case, what with all of the confusion.

It was confounding to keep up with each of the character's identities and their code names, the pace felt slow wrongfully and the direction of the events was unappealingly bland. Whenever the characters would discuss their current problems and the fact that a mole is active, I didn't even care enough by the way it was presented plus how the movie's pace went.

It's too bad, because this looked promising to say the least. I went back and watched it a second time, and yet again, I was unable to keep my interest even after uncovering how the story works with it's bad way of directing the time events and the continuity errors accompanying them.

Perhaps the original television series or even the novel are better products than this, but I am not in the mood for any of that at the moment. TTSS's premise felt promising, the cast is impressive and the setting plus the story should sound good on paper, but the execution, performances and flow of it all was pretty much missing for me, resulting into a quite dissapointing movie.

Rating: 5.5