I had completely missed the heyday of Metal Gear Solid when I was a kid. Sure, I remember the ads in gaming magazines declaring that it was ‘the greatest Playstation game ever made’, but it looked too grown up and bleak for me. I was from a military family – so looking at screenshots just reminded me of all the time I’d spent hanging around the Richmond Air Force base, waiting for my dad to finish work after my weekly art class.

After my encounter with Resident Evil, I got caught up in the idea of playing all the ‘mature’ games I had missed out on when I didn’t have a current console. I forget how I stumbled upon it exactly but on one of my classic Wikipedia journeys, I ended up on the entry for Metal Gear Solid and completely lost my shit over the fact that you could disguise yourself in a cardboard box. Suddenly the dreary Alaskan base and army of short-sighted guards sparked my interest. I watched a few cut scenes on Youtube (though they were from the Twin Snakes remake for Gamecube…whoops) and at some point found myself watching a longplay of Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, but it was a video from the last quarter of the game in Tikhogornyj. I was overwhelmed by the colours, the freedom of movement and most of all – the hunting and gathering of food and supplies.

I had a friend who hadn’t been playing his Playstation 2 for a while, and offered to lend it to me for a few months when I defected from college due to stress (though my dad maintains it was solely to play video games). The first game I picked up for it was Resident Evil Code Veronica X, but that’s an entirely different story in itself. About a week before Christmas, I found myself in an EB Games staring at the last copy of Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence on the shelf marked down to $59. I was really short on money as I wasn’t working at the time, but this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. So I decided that I would rather survive off plain pasta than miss out on Metal Gear. Funnily enough, this same situation has happened to me multiple times since, and always in regards to a Metal Gear related purchase.

Say what you want about David Hayter’s tendency to overact, but I still believe Metal Gear Solid 3 was his finest moment. The opening line ‘After the end of World War II, the world was split into two – East and West. This marked the beginning of the era known as the Cold War’ still sticks with me, intonation and all. In fact, all the performances in Metal Gear Solid 3 really are top notch. Even Volgin’s overenthusiastic Bond-villain eccentricity feels in line with the rest of the overall tone. I’ve always loved the 1960s, particularly the early half of the decade. Especially Cold War espionage. The not-quite James Bond style Metal Gear Solid 3 has is excellent. Snake is the anti-Bond who gets beaten to a bloody pulp, tortured, absolutely mentally anguished and doesn’t even go for the Bond girl-like EVA until the very end. Even then it blows up in his face, along with the reel-to-reel recording she leaves him.

Coming from Resident Evil 4, I was becoming increasingly comfortable with third person controls. But I hated that the camera in Resident Evil 4 wasn’t entirely rotatable, as you could only really swing the view from hip to hip. While the original release of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater maintained the classic overhead view camera from the earlier games, the Subsistence re-release gave the player complete control over camera views in addition to the first person view and it was wonderful. The jungle that had previously obscured your vision and the majority of enemies gave way to multi-level terrain and really helped the maps open up.

The degree of control you had over Snake was insane. Crouching, rolling, standing on your tip toes, leaning around corners…not to mention all the CQC moves! I remember looking at the manual and being completely overwhelmed with the controls. The same thing would happen with Metal Gear Solid 4, in which I thought maybe the gameplay had progressed beyond my abilities. I proved myself wrong of course.

I would happily spend ages lying in shallow streams with a bunch of Kenyan Mangrove Crabs crawling over me, or simply try throwing snakes at guards to watch them wrestle. Or luring vultures out to feed on corpses on the Krasnogorje mountains. Or planting TNT on a guard’s back and sending him flying into a room of other guards. Or the savouring the sweet schadenfreude of destroying ration bunkers and listening to guards complaining of starvation.

I love the attention to detail, and if there’s anything Kojima is good at – it’s inane details. He doesn’t care if it will make a difference in gameplay, he wants the player to experiment with their surroundings and seek out hidden extras. From the gaming magazine covers on the scientists desks in Graniny Gorki to the Kero-tan quest for stealth camo – these tiny details helped the game feel even more massive than it already was. There was even a hidden Devil May Cry-style Vampire mini game you could unlock if you saved and restarted after the torture sequence. Don’t even get me started on all the ways you could defeat The End! I’ve played Metal Gear Solid 3 in a variety of ways, on several platforms at least twenty times and I’m confident that I still haven’t seen all there is to see.

People can complain about the cut scenes all they want, but they’re good. Real good. I still think the cinematography holds up today, and everyone knows that Metal Gear is constantly setting the benchmark for cinematic games. After playing a few games in the series, you’ll notice that each Metal Gear has a distinct colour palette and is pretty much colour graded the same way throughout. In Metal Gear Solid 3, there’s a lot of rich greens and towards the latter half of the game – red and white. It really makes the game stand out in a time where ‘brown and bloom’ was synonymous with Playstation 2. Not saying that Metal Gear Solid 3 didn’t go crazy on the bloom too, but it at least tried to use in a realistic way. Then again, what’s a game developer to do in 2004? Bloom was king until normal mapping made its way into console gaming.

I finished Metal Gear Solid 3 for the first time on Christmas day, and as I fought The Boss for the last time, I cracked open a bottle of wine. It was the first game where I felt utter remorse after the final boss fight. Forcing you to pull the trigger was gut wrenching. EVA’s final recording about The Boss’ sacrifice was so moving I found myself in tears by the time Big Boss salutes her nameless grave. I’m sure I’m not the only one who cried. Oh, and then that Starsailor song over the credits just cuts through me like a knife. I was a sobbing, drunk mess. My chest still tightens when I play the ending, even after all the times I’ve seen it.

I’m really glad that this was my first Metal Gear game that I finished, and while it’s not a perfect game…it sure comes close. I still haven’t found a game that has made me feel as many emotions as Metal Gear Solid 3 did. If there was any game that I could attribute my desire to enter the games industry to, it’s this one.