A bottle of Guinness and the last hours of Snake Eater

Tonight I poured myself a Guinness and sat down to finish Metal Gear Solid 3. The beer was nice and creamy and the ending of the game was equally pleasant. Metal gear works best when there is as little gameplay as possible and the last hours of the game mostly consisted of cut scenes, so it worked very well.

It really is the story in combination with Kojimas sense of detail and quirky gameplay ideas that make the games worth playing. The basic gameplay is average at best and I recommend turning the difficulty down as low as possible so that one can focus on the truly great parts of the game. I played it on easy and looking back I regret not playing on very easy.

It feels like Metal Gear 3 is an attempt to build a great game upon an outdated foundation. With that I mean that the controls and the underlying gameplay is still that of a very early 3D game. A ton gameplay mechanics and beautiful graphics have been added on to it but it doesnt work well since the foundation is still flawed. It sounds like they have completely rebuilt the game from the ground up in the 4th Solid game. If that is true it has the potential to be a truly great game unlike the good and very good games that preceded it.