Metal Gear Forums

(09-09-2025, 12:03 PM)NateDog Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-09-2025, 09:01 AM)Aragorn Wrote: [ -> ]I'm playing on hard and the stalking mode isn't that much of a problem to me tbh. You can CQC most enemies before they turn around and mess you up once you get comfortable with gauging the distance. Slam these fools to the ground, wake them up, hold them up, call it a day - or you can straight up grab them most of the time.

If you're trying to go for direct hold ups rather than off of a slam; then that's where you do need to stalk.

That's where the problem is though. Sometimes I'll be fine with CQCing, sometimes I want to hold-up. It's annoying to feel like you have to do CQC each time, doing hold-ups this way makes it far more cumbersome and less enjoyable. Feels like I have to make a chore of the game in places instead of doing things in a more fluid manner.

Not really an issue for me because most of the time I want to hold someone to reposition them before I hold them up anyways. You can CQC hold without stalking most of the time, pull them somewhere safe, interrogate, and hold. Raw holds often leave enemies in the visual range of others.

What you're saying is a reason not to raw hold for personal preference Aragorn but surely the game shouldn't make it so harder to do regardless- especially if it's a "worse" option than CQCing. Players should be able to make the wrong choice at any given moment and have an enemy get spotted stood there with their hands up to make that informed decision about which they'd rather do the next time. Having to default to CQC because getting close enough to hold up is tedious just ruins the decision making process.

(09-09-2025, 12:29 PM)Aragorn Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-09-2025, 12:03 PM)NateDog Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-09-2025, 09:01 AM)Aragorn Wrote: [ -> ]I'm playing on hard and the stalking mode isn't that much of a problem to me tbh. You can CQC most enemies before they turn around and mess you up once you get comfortable with gauging the distance. Slam these fools to the ground, wake them up, hold them up, call it a day - or you can straight up grab them most of the time.

If you're trying to go for direct hold ups rather than off of a slam; then that's where you do need to stalk.

That's where the problem is though. Sometimes I'll be fine with CQCing, sometimes I want to hold-up. It's annoying to feel like you have to do CQC each time, doing hold-ups this way makes it far more cumbersome and less enjoyable. Feels like I have to make a chore of the game in places instead of doing things in a more fluid manner.

Not really an issue for me because most of the time I want to hold someone to reposition them before I hold them up anyways. You can CQC hold without stalking most of the time, pull them somewhere safe, interrogate, and hold. Raw holds often leave enemies in the visual range of others.

I don't disagree that CQC generally makes more sense, but there are some occasions with multiple enemies around that holding up would work better for me (quick hold up, transition to distracting another enemy/enemies or tranqing them then dealing with the one in front of you). Like Max said it's counterintuitive to make it so challenging in a stealth game but getting up close to physically hold an enemy is easier.

Not a hill I’m gonna die on tbh. It personally doesn’t bother me but I wouldn’t mind if they made stalk a little faster or a little less necessary.

Up to the EVA escort section. Hate it with a burning passion.

Another thing about holdups - besides the radius being too "close", it doesn't seem to want to activate all the time - gotta spam the "ready weapon" button. Doesn't seem to work from crawling position ever? Was that true to the original? All that Phantom Pain style movement, but with Snake Eater's ruleset is a mind-screw.

I'm glad legacy mode is there, but if they patched in a "Subsistence" mode that might be the best of both worlds.

I haven't had that issue with holdups, honestly. My method has always been just walk or crawl up to them, start stalking when I'm getting closer and hold them up when I'm in range. I'm playing on console though so I don't know if PC has had issues with that or not. I just finished my fourth run and opted to go with Legacy Mode for a single run on extreme difficulty. While I miss the ability to toggle from 360 camera to Vanilla that MGS3 HD has, I understand why they couldn't do that with this game. Legacy Mode is completely retooled beyond just the cameras.

Bullet drop is removed, so like in classic MGS3, your tranq gun has the reach of a sniper rifle, once again rendering the Mosin Nagant useless. The cover system is changed to feel like classic MGS3 (but way too sticky for my liking). CQC still has all the cool new animations but no longer zoomed in. Enemies drop more than one item now. You can run and gun again like in MGS3, but you have to lock on like MGS2 to aim directly at an enemy. You can't move when looking in FPV and of course, the camera is like it was in MGS3 back in '04. They put a surprising amount of effort into making this mode work, and it wasn't painful or anything to get through. Honestly, it still managed to be quite enjoyable, but I have zero intention of ever replaying Delta in Legacy Mode again outside of maybe a boss fight or two.

My biggest issues with Legacy was both the cover system and the camera jittering way too much. It felt like anytime I got near a solid structure, the camera would jerk around too much, and like I said, you're way too sticky, pressing up against any surface and having to actually pry yourself loose in a way you didn't need to in the default mode.

I'm doing one more run just for fun where I'm gonna try and bypass enemies instead of taking them down, then I'm gonna go back to playing DS2, but overall, I can confidently say that I really enjoyed my 30+ hours with Delta across four playthroughs. The fact that I was compelled to jump right back in right after the credits had rolled, to me, means that this game was doing something right. I don't know if it's gonna be my defacto go-to version of MGS3 since I still kind of favor classic MGS3 on the Master Collection, but I loved my time with this game from start to finish.

I've beaten it today morning. Being so removed from the series for so long, it's interesting how I felt about the game. In certain ways, I feel I was too harsh on Snake Eater, in others - I feel like my feelings have been validated. I haven't completed a playthrough of this game since around the time MGS V was coming out.

Story wise - certain things that used to bother me back then don't bother me as much, because they're only a problem when you look at Snake Eater's place in the canon rather than an individual game - and since that canon feels like a distant memory now, I was able to see things more on the scale of SE as a standalone experience.

For example, The Boss having this great deal of importance and how we're constantly told how incredible she is without seeing it; it works in Snake Eater because lens of the story is very personal between her and Snake. It only becomes a problem when suddenly everyone wants to fulfil her will (why the fuck does Sigint care about what The Boss wanted?! or Zero?! or Para-Medic?!) - she's clearly meant to be a messianic presence in the story, ethereal and almost mystical - maybe I'm on to something with the messianic allegories, and it's not something I have thought about before. Snake who is her disciple, and apostle, is named John after all - who in biblical history was the youngest of Jesus' disciples (in this case, Snake is the youngest son of the boss) and one of the primary figures who carried Jesus' teachings after his passing. The Boss' death pose looks like a crucifix too - Jesus died for our sins, and The Joy died for the sins of her country. I'm getting side tracked - but maybe something worth revisiting later.

Snake eater in general is actively hurt by the games that come after it.

If these characters that became so pivotal to the story had the ground work laid in MGS3, if we could see them slowly coming around to seeing The Boss' the same way Snake sees them in these codec calls, etc - it might have made for a more concrete story. But that requires foresight, and Kojima never cared much for planning.

The same applies to Big Boss' arc, in general. Snake as a character is decent - he's memorable, has his light hearted quirks, and he does have an arc with his relationship with Eva and how he expands his thinking beyond just ''the mission'' - I would have liked a little more introspection, but he's fine. The ending is poignant and honestly they could have stopped there; I do think there is something genuinely brilliant about reframing Big Boss' legendary status as nothing more than a politicized scam. It would have been easy to just have Snake succeed because he's so cool and badass and strong; and while he's still a borderline supernatural soldier - what he did would not have been possible without the whole mission being effectively rigged in the first place - but as a lot of other parts of the game, it's impact is retrospectively reduced by further game that tried to retroactively fit to this story.

Thematically speaking the game doesn't resonate with me as much but that's not because it's not thematically rich, just that my views on the world in general and specially on soldiers and where they sit in terms of moral and ethical accountability has changed a lot over the years. I'm cognizant that it's probably more poignant in 2004 hot off the heels of the Iraq War & Afghanistan war, but all in all it still holds up I suppose.

Gameplay wise - a lot of the issues I felt back then still stand tbh. The game is very menu heavy, which i'm not a fan of. The boss fights are a little less impressive in hindsight; The End is an absolute stand out, and I really like The Fear & The Boss. The Sorrow is a decently creative way of giving your lethality some weight, but the others are just kind of meh - The Shagohad is still a fucking nightmare. I'll always respect that MGS has constantly tried to do more with its boss fights; which can be relatively difficult in a military shooter like this.

I'm a big fan of almost all the changes they've made across the board with the gameplay - net improvement.

Overall, i'm gonna play through a few more times. Probably going for the platinum.

Some small changes to dialogue confuse me. Eva now says "overweight" instead of "fat" when talking about Calorie Mates. Sigint's nightmare conversation (the Guy Savage easter egg is back in the best way!) - changes "shit" to "crap". But The Boss still describes the Raikov mask as a "fairy disguise" (the game's words, not my own). I'm against censoring anything in general - it's an M-rated game with an extra "It was 2004 okay?!" disclaimer up front. The hypothetical priorities and rationale for these changes elude me.

Just beat Ocelot. The new aiming definitely makes him a lot easier. I also forgot Kerotan and GA-KO appear during boss fights so I’ve now reloaded an earlier save. Oops lol

I’ve accidentally caused the death of a couple of guards by knocking them into electric fences or having them fall into a swamp but the game doesn’t seem to count it as a kill. Was that always the case?

Don't remember, but I noticed tranq a guy that then falls into water also didn't counted as a kill. I heard somewhere thou, that someone tranq guys in the bike chase and smh counted, but didn't looked this up myself, played safe and shot none on the bikes.