Name : Metal Gear Solid 3 : Snake Eater Age Rating : 15 Price : £34.99 Format : Playstation 2 Players : 1 THE REVIEW : You dash around the fiery labyrinth, stopping to catch your breath and heal your wounds. You hear him cackle, taunting you. You hear footsteps. He's coming. You grit your teeth, and, with your Mk 22 tranquiliser pistol drawn, you swing yourself around the corner to face him. "THERE!" he cries, and sqiurts white hot rocket fuel at you. You scream in pain and fire off a shot, making him flinch. You seize the opportunity, and fire again, and again. As he flies off, you heal your wounds, and prepare to do it all again... Metal Gear Solid 3 has the best Boss Battles in gaming history. Just ask anybody who's duelled with Ocelot, fought the end or even tackled the Boss. They are absolutely legendary, and the battle I have described above is The Fury, the Flame Soldier as he is so aptly titled. But The End is by far the most technically amazing, as you face off against a seemingly invisible sniper who IS ACTUALLY THERE. You can look for him for literally hours with no success : it took me two hours to beat him on Easy Mode! But The Boss is incredible too, as the arena you do battle in is a field of ACTUAL 3D flowers, and there are millions of them. They start off white, but they don't stay like that for long. The game brings a lot of new things to gaming, one being the stamina bar. Situated under your life bar, the stamina bar goes down if you don't eat your greens, or in this case your wild animals. If it's low, your aiming is shaky, you move slowly and your rumbling stomach will alert guards (seriously!). But to counter this, Konami have added ANOTHER new element to the game : hunting. Yes, you read that right. You can actually hunt for food, so if, for instance, you see a rabbit, with just a quick shot of your Mk 22 and a dip into the pause menu (or 'Survival Viewer') you can have yourself a tasty, rabbity treat. Hey, it beats KFC! If you get shot or burnt or bitten or fall or anything that the human body doesn't exactly live for happens, then you can cure yourself instantly. Again, just go into the 'Survival Viewer', select Cure and you will see an X-Ray of Snake's body. Ahem... But, anyway, you can cure yourself by highlighting the damaged area, then selecting things like suture kits, bandages and ointments to stitch up the wound. If you DON'T cure yourself, however, then you will oh-so-slowly lose health until you do. How's that for an incentive, eh? Now, after explaining all of the game's mechanics, it's onto my favourite thing about all of the Metal Gears : the plot. This one is actually a prequel to all of the others, set in 1964 and the Cold War. You do play as Snake, but not Solid Snake. No, you play as Naked Snake, more commonly known as Big Boss. Yes, Metal Gear fans, Solid Snake's father, and Liquid's and Solidus'. Anyway, even before the actual gameplay starts you know that you are playing something special. In the cut-scenes, the controller vibrates at even the smallest movement, the sound sucks you in as do the amazing visuals and, possibly the strangest thing, you are INTERESTED. Normally in games you just skip everything to get straight to the action, but here you want to know EVERYTHING. The characters are truly spectacualr, with the evil Colonel Volgin being the second best bad guy EVER (after Darth Vader : duh!) and Eva being, well, Eva being Eva... The Boss is really a story of her own, as are the Cobras, and Ocelot is certainly not all that he seems. Seriously, within a week of playing this I was scouring the net for Metal Gear sites as I vowed to suck up all of the knowledge about it that exists, and Metal Gear was my new obsession. I spoke about it non-stop, and was hated for it. But I didn't really care. And now, as my interest begins to wane, Metal Gear Solid 3 : Subsistence looms on the horizon, and that is sure to set off the Metal Gear luvvin' for me once again. And don't worry about how long this will last you. I completed it in a week after playing for about 2 and a half hours a day on Easy mode, and I pl,ayed throught it literally about twelve times again before I got bored. And there is the Stealth camouflage to unlock (which I STILL haven't done) the elusive Tsuchinoko to catch (which I have) and all the different bits of camouflage to find (which I've nearly done). So, if you can find it goingh relatively cheap on Amazon (like I did), then you have an oincredibly good game for your money. If you can only find it at the RRP, the you STILL have an incredibly good game for your money. So, that brings me on to... THE BEST BIT : Oooooh, so many! But if I HAD to pick, then I would probably choose the fight with The Boss at the end. So sad... *sniff* THE WORST BIT : The fact that the game has to end. Seriously, there is basically nothing wrong with this. And now, finally, I give you... THE VERDICT : One last score change for this game. It went from 98% to 99%, and now finally to... 100% Yes, this game is perfect. It is truly one of the greatest experiences you will EVER have if you are intelligent enough to not look at it for thirty seconds and go "This is SO boring". Give it time, and you will see that underneath it all lies one of, no wait THE GREATEST VIDEOGAME OF ALL TIME! Now go buy it!