Moving On

At two points in my challenge, I have placed games on the back burner because there were multiple multiple games that would have had to be played in a row and I didn't want to go insane.

First it was Devil May Cry 1, 2, and 3. I played the first one and set the second and third aside for later. Also, the same thing happened when I got to The Legend of Zelda and I set aside Skyward Sword.

I decided to take care of this backlog in a creative way. My next three games will be Devil May Cry 2, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and Devil May Cry 3.

Let's get to it!

Final Impressions (Warning: Contains Spoilers)

There is one more thing I want to talk about from Metal Gear Solid 3, and that is the character of The Boss.

That's me

  

This is the third game in the Solid series, and there were also two for the NES. The original came out for the Japanese MSX2 computer and there have been other portable versions, as well as a MGS4 for the PS3 and MGS5 is in development. 

The main character is Solid Snake and sorry if I spoil anyone, but in 1998’s Metal Gear Solid we find out Snake is actually a clone of a man named Big Boss, a legendary soldier and all-around awesome warrior. The story is long and convoluted but suffice it to say that Big Boss is dead in the present. Metal Gear Solid 3 takes us back to 1963 and we get a chance to play as a young Big Boss. He looks and sounds just like Snake, cause they have the same DNA, but this is the original. This Snake is the real deal, the one who'll become the legendary warrior. Except, he's not quite Big Boss yet. He's just Snake the first. He won't be Big Boss while The Boss is The Boss.

This is going to be Darth Vader and Luke epic!

You see, Snake originally got his training from a woman codenamed The Boss. This has got to be one of the best female videogame characters ever conceived. 

Snake who? Oh, that kid?

The Boss is amazing. She's got nerves of steel and total dedication to her mission. The first time you see her in the game's first mission, you find out she's defecting to the USSR. Snake feebly tries to take her down and she effortlessly mops the floor with him, breaks his arm, knocks him out, and throws him off a bridge. You meet her a few more times, as your mission parameters now include killing The Boss along with her dangerous Cobra squadron, but every time you meet her, Snake consistently gets his ass handed to him by The Boss. She has taught you everything you know, but not necessarily everything SHE knows.

I can read you like a sentence. That's a burn on you.

There is a lot of pathos in the relationship. Maybe the reason Snake fails is that he can't forget years of fighting alongside each other and he truly can't beat her. He can't bear the thought of it. After The Boss throws Snake off the bridge, Snake grabs The Boss's headband. As he's curing his wounds and putting a splint on his badly broken arm, Snake silently puts on the headband, which he will wear till the game's end. When the boss sees him wearing her headband, she categorizes it as sentimentality and a sign of his weakness. Ouch!

Why didn't you just put on a dress?

Her facial features are those of a mature woman. She has seen joy and she has seen pain. She's got a look in her eye that tells you she means business.

She is dressed for battle. She is covered from the neck down in her uniform, a sort of white, silvery jumpsuit that she sometimes covers up with a hooded cloak. She is clearly a soldier. She's ready to do anything it takes to complete her mission.

Snake spends the entire game defeating The Boss's squad mates until he gets to confront her. In the end, they face off in a field of flowers. The Boss explains her motivations for her actions, and explains to Snake that after The Boss has taught him everything, there is only one thing left. Either Snake will kill The Boss, or she will kill him.

It is time

There are plenty more layers to the relationship. Multiple times, The Boss alludes to Snake's age and how she trained him for such a long time. There are no direct statements, but there's a serious implication that The Boss might be Snake's mother. Toward the end, The Boss explains to Snake that she once had a child. She once gave birth to a boy. She gave birth to this boy in an actual battle field, and this boy was taken from her. Her ability to bear any more children was also taken from her. While she's in the middle of a troubling confession, the implications of which we can only start to imagine, the game designers decided that this would be the perfect moment for The Boss to... ahem... alter her costume. For the final battle and the remainder of the game, she will look like this.

What? I didn't hear that. Wanna say that again?

You see, it was important to The Boss to show Snake the scar from when they took the baby out, so she opens up her suit. She says she sometimes feels the scar tingling and moving. The scar is shaped like a snake.

What? You've never seen a C-section?

The subtext is screaming in your face so loud that it just becomes text. It's just text now. It was imperative that she show Snake this scar that the game developers want us to believe is the scar of a cesarean birth. Or maybe not. Maybe it's just a scar from battle, but it is definitely a scar she got the day of the birth. I was really disappointed by this. I was disappointed that the game developers felt the need to sexualize such a complex character, a character that really needed no embellishment. She was picture perfect.

After the battle, Snake defeats her and he becomes Big Boss and he learns that The Boss had even deeper secrets and was even stronger and more amazing that anyone ever knew. She sacrificed everything for her country, even her legacy.

And still I was disappointed. So I want to know if I'm being ridiculous. I set up a poll. Please click below and let me know if this image changes how you feel about the character, like it did to me. I felt the character was unnecessarily sexualized. She was better than fine and this costume change does little more than cheapen her. Do you agree?

Ranking

So I finished MGS3 and I got my ranking.

Iguana. 

I'm Solid Iguana. 

I'll stealth-kill your ass

The iguana ranking means I got from 1 to 100 kills, from 81 to 249 alerts, and used from 0 to 40 continues.

I actually tried really hard not to kill anyone in the game. Of all the bosses, I used a tranquilizer gun on all of them except The End. Volguin you can use the tranq gun on him the first time (I did), but not the second, and the final character, The Boss: I defeated her through a combination grapples, punches, and the tranquilizer gun. 

I only started shooting live bullets until the escape from the Shagohod, and only after I realized I was not likely going to make it using the tranq gun. The total number of soldiers I killed was 46.

I recently found out there is a variant version of MGS3 that has a free-range camera, and that would have come in very useful. As it was, this game's camera made gameplay a lot harder than it needed to be. It was actually more unwieldy and frustrating than hard. Maybe later I'll get the free camera version. 

Victory

Last night I defeated The Boss and finished Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Impressions to come. 

Well Geez

I fought the evil communist colonel.

I had the epic escape.

I blew up the dangerous robot.

I destroyed it again (the monster never dies the first time).

And instead of the confrontation with the final target, what do I get in between?

An escort mission.

Boo, MGS3. 

Much Progress in MGS3

I'm happy to report that I've progressed considerably. I still think this is the hardest MGS I have ever played, but I'm chugging along nicely now. The game has some great action and character development, and one case of glaring, garish, poke-your-eyes-out ridiculous character design. If you think Kojima's Quiet controversy was bad, Eva was certainly a precursor.

Eva is a double agent and just walks around like that.

Quiet is a lady sniper. She snipes. In that. Even the torn fishnets.

I can say I have beaten the dreaded Cobras now. I beat The Pain, The Fear, The End, The Fury, and The Sorrow. I just have to beat Young Ocelot, Volguin, the Shagohod, and The Boss.

The odds are stacked against you in this game. Other entries in the series allow you a nice radar system that lets you see where the guards are and where they're looking. This game replaces each element of that radar with separate gadgets like a motion detector, a microphone, a sonar, and a proximity sensor, all of which have to be equipped separately and they all use up battery power (which thankfully is rechargeable.) Your gun has a suppressor, but it wears out and you eventually need to discard it.

I treasure these suppressors like gold. When I first started the game, I was playing pretty terribly and I had quickly run through my two suppressors (guards can quickly get you in trouble if they hear gunshots), but after some judicious use of the binoculars to line up shots before firing, my accuracy is high which makes the suppressors last longer. (You also find new suppressors. I have 16 now, not taking into account goodness knows how many I've actually run through. On a replay I'll try to keep track.)

Okay, time to get back to the game.

Well, I'm at That Point Now

I'm playing Metal Gear Solid 3, and now I've gotten to the battle with The End. This is pretty widely acclaimed as one of the greatest boss fights ever. I may be stuck here a while.