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Good: Story, production value, stealth gameplay, action gameplay, new camera, online play, ports of original MSX games, Secret Theater, characters, music, sound effects, amazing attention to detail

Bad: Cure system can get somewhat tiring, underdeveloped Cobra Unit

Without question: The greatest ending of any video game

The fact that the original Metal Gear Solid 3 lived up to all my expectations astounds me to this day. Ever since I saw the first leaked trailer before E3 in 2003, I scoured the internet every single day to get as much information about the game as I possibly could. I read every crazy theory (Snake goes to space at the end! Snake travels through time! Snake is doing a VR simulation of Big Boss's mission!), I watched each trailer daily and I posted constantly on MGS message boards.

In all honesty, I hyped myself up for MGS3 more than I've ever hyped myself up for anything. When I normally devote that much time and anticipation to something, it tends to disappoint when it's finally in my hands. Not so with Metal Gear Solid 3. As I had hoped, it ended up being one of the greatest games ever made.

Somehow, someway, Hideo Kojima and his team have made the series better. MGS3: Subsistence takes everything that was great about Snake Eater, adds a boatload of bonus features, an entertaining online mode and a camera that makes it feel like a completely new game. The main game and the demo theater are on Disc 1: Subsistence, while the MSX ports, Snake vs. Monkey, Secret Theater and online mode are on Disc 2: Persistence.

Snake Eater's story starts off with semi-standard action fare. Snake makes a dramatic HALO jump behind enemy lines, and is faced with the task of retrieving the scientist Sokolov and taking him back to America. Early in the game, you'll become familiar with the most important character in the game The Boss. She is Snake's mentor and master, and has apparently defected to the Soviet Union. After this initial Virtuous Mission fails, Snake is sent in once more to destroy the Shagohod (essentially the first Metal Gear) and assassinate the woman that raised and trained him. The Boss was a WWII hero who was commander of the Cobra Unit, who you'll face one at a time in various excellent boss battles.

My only complaint with the story is the fact that the Cobra Unit lacks the depth of MGS1's Foxhound group and MGS2's Dead Cell. Whereas boss battles in MGS1 ended with dramatic cutscenes detailing their backstory, their life and beliefs (Sniper Wolf, Psycho Mantis, etc), the members of Cobra Unit basically just scream their name and explode. It seems that all the character development in Snake Eater has been spent on Snake, The Boss, a young Revolver Ocelot, the spy Eva and the insane Volgin. All the events of the story lead up to what is the greatest ending I've ever seen in a videogame. I don't want to ruin anything, but the last hour or so of the game is more powerful and well-produced than about 95% of films I've seen.

Even if you've played through the original Snake Eater tons of times, you owe it to yourself to play through it again with the great new camera. While the top-down angle has generally worked well with the MGS series, it became annoying in Snake Eater due to the jungle environment and lack of radar. Subsistence adds a brand new camera system that the series has never seen, and it improves the gameplay experience dramatically. It's so much easier to get a sense of where guards are and which way to sneak undetected.

I can't overstate how much the boss battles with The Fear and The End have been improved thanks to the new camera. It changes MGS in the same way that MGS2's first-person shooting opened up the way we view the game. The only good thing about the old camera was the fact that it provided a sense of direction. You always knew that "up" was generally the way to advance through the jungle. Thankfully, you can switch back and forth between the old and new camera with a simple press of the R3 button.

The jungle environment is brought to life thanks to the superb graphics and excellent environmental audio. With surround sound on, it sounds like a living, breathing, realistic jungle is all around you. One of my favorite aspects of the MGS series has always been the amazing Harry Gregson-Williams soundtracks and his work for Snake Eater is the best in his catalog (surpassing even his Hollywood work).

Metal Gear Solid games have always featured some of the best voice acting in the business, but Snake Eater unfortunately features the weakest acting of the three. While David Hayter still delivers the same famous Snake rasp, Sokolov is drenched in cheese and The Boss simply sounds bored.

Graphically, Subsistence stays at a steady 30fps as opposed to Sons of Liberty's 60fps, but it stays steady even during the most frantic of firefights. Every character has a distinct and impressive look to them, thanks to the excellent design work of Yoji Shinkawa.

Yes, Metal Gear Solid is a stealth/action series. Other than the story, the other thing that makes it so much more than that (and superior to the Splinter Cell yawn-fests) is the attention to detail and its undeniable personality. There are countless ways to approach each situation. For example, I was in a mountainous section of the map that was crawling with guards. I could have tried to sneak up on all of them and slit their throats, I could have tried to snipe them all, I could have tried to simply sneak past all of them or I could go completely Rambo on them. I did none of these things. I slowly crept up behind a patrolling guard and attached some TNT to his back. I then placed a girly magazine in another part of the area. I threw a grenade on top of it from a far away area, making all the soldiers in the area move there to investigate (including the one with the TNT on his back). When they got there, they all got distracted and crowded around the girly magazine. I then pressed the circle button to detonate the TNT, and 5-6 soldiers were completely taken out.

In another section of the game, two guards were walking across a rope bridge. Instead of stealth or merely shooting them, I decided to get creative and shoot the ropes on one side of the bridge. The bridge tilted dramatically, causing both soldiers to plummet hundreds of feet to their deaths. Moments like these happen with great frequency in MGS3, and it's a new gameplay experience every time you play it. The entire Shagohod sequence could be my favorite gameplay segment of the entire trilogy, and the boss fight with The End easily makes it into my top 3 boss battles ever.

My only complaint about the gameplay is an extremely minor one. When Snake gets hurt, you must go into the Cure menu to extract bullets, disinfect wounds, put splints on broken bones, etc. It's a very cool idea and adds a dose of realism to the game, but by the end of the game, you get tired of going to the menu every time you get shot.

As if the standard single player mode wasn't enough to warrant an immediate purchase, Disc 2: Persistence seals the deal. It features perfect ports of the MSX versions of Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (the latter of which was never released in the US). Hideo Kojima calls Metal Gear, Metal Gear 2, and Snake Eater to be the "Big Boss trilogy," with MGS, MGS2, and MGS4 being the "Solid Snake trilogy." It's great to get the entire Big Boss trilogy in one package, as the story in the MSX games is hugely important to later entries in the series. You'll play as Solid Snake, and realize Big Boss's true nature and eventually kill him. Fans of Grey Fox (the Ninja from MGS1) will be happy to see him in his human form in these older games.

Snake vs Monkey is also on Disc 2, and again makes for a fun distraction. The Secret Theater features a series of funny cutscenes that were produced for the Konami website after the release of Snake Eater. Some are semi-disturbing, some are downright confusing, but they're all funny in their own way. Metal Gear Raiden: Snake Eraser should be a fun watch for anybody who was upset about the MGS2 main character switch.

The biggest addition to the entire Subsistence package is the new Online Mode. I wasn't too excited about this mode, but it was a pleasant surprise. There are several different game types, and they're very entertaining and add even more replay value to the game. My favorite mode was Capture, which features two opposing teams fighting over a Kerotan frog (basically a Kermit-esque toy). Each time tries to retrieve the frog and then guard it at a specified location for a certain amount of time.

Deathmatch is self-explanatory and Sneaking Mission features one player as Snake and seven others as guards. It's Snake's mission to retrieve a microfilm and return it and the guards are all on the hunt for him. Several weapons are at Snake's disposal and you can attack this mode with either stealth or brute force. The online lobby system is excellent and I was always able to get into games lightning-quick. When creating a game, you can queue up several different games, so that your party will just advance to the next mode after the current one ends. Matches are filled with MGS-style humor, allowing you to hide in boxes and distract enemies with girly magazines.

There is absolutely no excuse for this title to be absent from any gamer's library. At only $30, you're getting one of the greatest gaming experiences of all time, along with a ridiculous amount of fun extras. A videogame has never come as close to perfection as Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence.

Graphics: A+

Sound: A

First Play: A+

Last Play: A+

Gameplay: A

Overall: 99% A