Going into this game, I half expected it not to live up to all the hype. From everything I had heard, this is universally considered the best game in the Metal Gear series, and I had just got off of playing MGS2, which I personally adored. So I had the bar set pretty high for this game. And honestly, it was not as good as I thought it would be: it was somehow better. I am still amazed with this game, several days removed from beating it. I'll start with the gameplay. Good lord is it fun. Every Metal Gear game up to this point has just been getting better and better in terms of the gameplay, and this is so far the cream of the crop. It takes everything from MGS2, and just makes it better and adds so much more. From the camo system which is a lot of fun to play around with, to the system where you have to manually heal injuries, to the even more improved CQC from MGS2, to camera not being fixed anymore, this game is a treat to play. The bosses are the best in the series so far, with many of them having so many different ways to take them down, and all being a great, fun challenge to test your skills. Now, for the story. This game has the best story in the Metal Gear series thus far. I love the setting of a jungle in the 60's and while the plot of Naked Snake having to stop basically a proto-Metal Gear is pretty repetitive at this point, what really holds it together are the characters, namely Snake, Volgin, and especially The Boss. The Boss, in my opinion, is the most interesting, well thought out, and just straight up best character in the Metal Gear series so far, and I don't know how they could make a better character, especially given this series' tendency to have characters that kind of annoy me(Meryl, Liquid Snake, Emma Emmerich). It's hard for me to talk about this game, because I truly believe that it is damn near perfect.