The greatest value one can harvest from the garden of history, is the fruitful lessons that come to bear when given a second glance.

Though we are often haunted by the mistakes of our shared history by those who refuse educational standard

There is something to be said of the worth of adversity, and the cultivation of spirit that the nature of it can breed within an individual. This reason alone likely contributes to why I usually prefer to play totally foreign experiences, and find less relative value in looking at already traveled territory. This very same notion similarly explains why I usually find myself at a bizarre standstill, when writing about a game I am quite familiar with, and when it is a game that is largely problem free…well, then I generally feel as if I don’t have a whole lot to add to the conversation. This has been the unfortunate reality involving the remake of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (MGS3), dubbed Delta, which gives the whole game a graphical overhaul, but alters little else about the core experience. If I bothered myself with recreating a traditional review experience, I would most certainly waste my time mentioning some extras like Snake vs Monkey, the online multiplayer mode Foxhunt, and other little bells and whistles in the form of unlockables, but…for better or worse, I rarely dabble in the traditional form of reviews, as I find their structuralism a little too restrictive for my tastes.

Avoiding the obvious, in terms of writing about games, helps to push me into unexplored territory, and when I am able to create multiple articles about a title during any given runthrough, that all pepper the spectrum of interest and subjects of focus, I’m delighted by the end. Truth be told, I’m surprised that among my many focuses this time around, not a one of them was a deeper dive into the existential threat of nuclear war, and or the hyper-normalization of the threat of the nuclear in this day and age, but when I sit down to write, my mind and heart simply take me, and it does not seem as if that was what they wanted to focus on after all.

To make explicit what underlines my current subject matter: I did indeed finish my first playthrough of Delta, and like most games I finish, I do always consider an immediate replay, time allowing, as I find the imminent reality of understanding helping to warp the title in real time, majestically so, around my new found perspective of what is now made abundantly clear to me. Sometimes, like as happened a couple decades ago when I immediately replayed Phantom Hourglass, it allowed me to accept the painful reality that what I had just finished, was in fact, and for the first time in my life, ended up being the first boring Zelda game I’d ever beaten. In the case of Resident Evil 4, arguably speaking, I was just getting started on my ridiculous journey of rampant repetition, in what would become the first of what seemed like a million playthroughs. Last month with the Silent Hill 2 remake, a reminder that some games are best enjoyed as works of art more than mechanical experiences. With Delta? I’m guessing a replay will be a reminder of the intensity within that grapples with a robust romance of all things stealth, in cutting out the classic codecs conversations and skipping the well done cutscenes, and just gorging on the glory that is the silky smooth stealthy sublime seduction that MGS3 brings to the table.

I suppose, to speak directly to one element of MGS3 that stood out to me more than it ever has in the past on this particular playthrough, is just how thoroughly the title seems to have been play tested, as so little of the game is anything but the leanest cut of meat one could possibly enjoy. This is overwhelmingly obvious to me during the grand finale, involving Eva and Snake’s iconic escape of Groznyj Grad and the Shagohad on the motorbike, as that sequence could have represented one of the most headache inducing sections in this game, and possibly the series. Many other games similarly get vehicle sections, chase sequences, and on rail sections terribly wrong, but the level of polish present in bringing the whole thing together in the vein of over the top fast and furious boadaciousness, is a sight to behold. This level of quality of life (QoL) refinement would go on to dominate the next installment in the series, as Kojima’s team continued on the same path, in bringing a sheen luster to MGS4, in shining the way it did, even though its shine paled in comparison to almost everything else the game had to offer, which is luckily a mistake MGS3 avoided making.

We obviously didn’t know this at the time, but MGS3 represented the apex of the series, and would mark the turning point of where the slow and extremely gradual decline for the series thereafter would take place. A seemingly insane thing to say, considering how lauded many of the titles that came after were celebrated upon their launches, MGS4, Peace Walker, and Phantom Pain were, though when I look at that group of titles, I have such an extraordinarily mixed feeling about the three, and in an unfortunate moment that will come off fairly harsh, almost a stomach churning whiplash of shock as a response to the bizarre tonal shifts that occur in the later half of the series. Inspite of that, I still tip my hat to the series for not just sticking to its guns, playing the hits ad infinitum, and always moving forward, never ceasing to try something new in the name of personal progress.

I’ve talked before about the queer notion that frames the idea behind nostalgia, and how it it a relative distance from an individual to a point in time that is accessed through a sensation, whether that ends up being a fragrance, a song, a place, or in this case, a game, is entirely dependant upon the relationship betwixt the two. Ironically, even though I started out this series of articles with a posit that MGS3 may be one of the games worthy of consideration for my own personal Mount Rushmore of gaming, after having played through it again, I feel neither a warmth of nostalgia about the title, nor a bizarre vindication towards my choice in quality, involving what boils down to the paradoxical conceit of an epic tribute to arbitrary standards. I think this is due to the fact that, more than twenty years later, and looking back on MGS3 from a mighty distance, and reflecting on myself, the game hasn’t changed, and I have, which is a good and healthy thing. People should always be changing, evolving, developing as individuals, cultivating their own outlook on life, and shifting their own personal value systems and perspectives all the time. Very much in line with the old adage “one cannot step into the same river twice”, similarly, no person is ever truly the same person from day to day, and hopefully over time, almost alienated by the memory of their former self. This sentiment feels right to me, as it relates to my own personal avowments of always striving to be better, and continually on a track of self-improvement in the name of perpetual progress, to avoid the rot that comes with getting comfortable, and the erosion that happens there after. One should never rest on their laurels, lest they run the risk of being ensnared by the tempting flora they rest on.

MGS3 reminds me, much like the Metal Gear Solid series itself, I wisely refused to make a cozy looking flower bed my final resting place a long time ago.

-Pashford