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.