I LIVE MY LIIIIIIIIIIIFE
NOT FOR HONOR BUT FOR YOUUUUUUUUUU
AND WE'RE STILLLLLLLLLLL
IN A DREAMMMMMMMMM
SNAKE EATERRRRRRRRRRRRRR

The game has a lot of great ideas: stamina, camouflage, and the cure system are all inventive and interesting ideas. They aren't a problem, at least until it becomes clear that all the cure system and stamina does is provide a huge inconvenience that gets more and more annoying as the game progresses. Get hit during a boss fight? Time to, in the middle of the boss, open 3 separate menus, do shit in a correct order, then go back to the boss having all its pace and intensity ruined by the fact you are practically forced to go into the menu and spend 3 minutes doing surgery on yourself. Stamina isn't a bad system except for the fact I can never quite figure out how the fuck the game decides when to deplete it fast and when to slowly. It starts to get in the way of gameplay and creates tedious sidetracks where you shoot a snake every few minutes and open another 4 fucking menus just to eat the fucking thing. I grew to hate these systems that were pretty good ideas. Surely the system would be better if say, you only had to choose what you needed to heal the injury the first time you receive it then you could bind a button or two to performing that surgery once you've gotten it again and it uses the supplies and takes some time to do while not forcing the player to pause. There, its easier, doesn't get in the way of gameplay, and actually increases the intensity since the player needs the time to heal. Was putting it under a bunch of menus really the best way to execute this?

The game story-wise is great, characters are great (especially para-medic), the scenery and level design is mostly fine. It even has some of the highest highs in the series like The Sorrows boss fight(?), the ending, and the motorcycle sequence. It's far from bad and while I don't think it even touches MGS2's quality; it still feels like the ideas and concepts presented in 2 were expanded upon and there was at least clearly an attempt to improve upon the games formula. The problem doesn't come from its ideas, but how they were implemented. There were also some very annoying hitbox issues and sometimes the level design got confusing but I can live with that. It's the poorly handled cure and stamina systems that dampened what was otherwise a great game.

It's not a bad game, far from it. It's not even the worst MGS. But is it the best? No. Not even close.

Writing: 5/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Art Design & Visuals: 4/5
Voices & Sounds: 5/5
Atmosphere & Immersion: 4/5

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is a masterpiece. It shows strength in all areas of gaming, graphics and uniqueness included. I've lost count of how many times I've beaten it. Every time I play it, I discover something new about the game play or story. It is one of those games that you can never really get tired of.
The game is close to achieving perfection with amazing graphics, terrific game play, awesome boss battles and compelling storyline with some of the fantastic cut scenes that surpass the ridiculously insane level of Rambo films and others like it. It is impossible to be moved by the ending, but this game did for me. The epic scope of the game is a clear case that sometimes playing a video game is better than going to the movies at a certain time period when there are too few good movies to see. Metal Gear Solid 3 is an incredible achievement in video gaming from the standpoint of my experience playing the game from beginning to end.

The storyline has its fair share of twists and interesting side-plots, making the game more fun to play. The way the codec system is done makes for a lot of potential suspense, and the developers didn't fail to take advantage of this. The only shaky part of the storyline is the dialogue, which usually fits, but the emotion put out by the voice actors isn't always... correct. That leads me to my next subject.
The music in the game is very well done. Though it's not the stuff you'd listen to on a long car trip (or maybe you would, who knows), it is very fitting of the situation. Like the graphic attention-to-detail, it really serves to help you feel like you are in the jungle fighting/sneaking past enemies. The ambient sounds also serve the same purpose, when you aren't getting chased by enemies the music is usually either really dim or not there, leaving only the many sounds of the jungle, and many sounds there are. Birds chirping, frogs croaking, grass rustling as hissing snakes slither through the underbrush, all of these sounds are present in Snake Eater.
Though MGS3 is really meant to be a game that excels in the area of storyline, much action is present. Boss fights are where most of it happens, but if you are frustrated about having to sneak everywhere, and you wanna go Vice City/San Andreas on someones ass, all you have to do is whip out your handy-dandy... sorry, not notebook, but AK-47. Feel free to waste away your enemies while the realistic movement of the gun and flashy effects of explosions and gunshots give you some real eye-candy. Though the game is meant to be mostly about sneaking, with some forced action involved, you can go crazy with your guns if you feel like it, and many times it is just as effective, even if it does get you a little more chewed up than sneaking does.

Hideo Kojima never ceases to amaze me, besides the fact that Snake (A.K.A Big Boss) looks amazingly like Kurt Russell from "Escape From New York" in this game, the characters look and feel more realistic than anything ever attempted with video games. Since video games where invented they have been shrugged off by the other media's as inferior and childish, I have a feeling that that time is quickly coming to an end.

The definitive metal gear experience for me, this game refined the gameplay of 1 and 2 adding mechanics that feel as though they were necessary from the beginning such as the excellent cqc system and the first person aiming from mgs2. Mgs3 is a great addition to the mgs plot and its internal story has the cheesy metal gear solid plot formula with a few twists and a more down to earth and sentimental message than metal gear solid 2. It's setting is stellar and it's main theme godlike definitely worth a play. Other than a few areas that feel tedious and controls that aren't quite perfect this game is a fantastic stealth game and ahead of its time on the ps2.