There’s nothing quite as nice as waking up feeling healthy after a bout with illness, is there? A weekend of rest (made possible, unfortunately, by skipping an annual trip to the Jersey shore with my family) has allowed me to kick the wretched stomach bug that had afflicted me last week. I still have a bit of a lingering cough, but it doesn’t even bother me, considering how much better I feel today compared to last week. I had felt lethargic and nasty for a good 10 days straight, felt absolutely horrible last Wednesday, and really tired all weekend.
But I felt good enough Saturday and late Sunday to resume my Season of Completion, as I’ve come to call it. As I’ve mentioned earlier in this blog, I’m not overwhelmed by the fall releases this year. I’m sure there will be plenty of great games, but I wanted to take advantage of my less than jam-packed play schedule and fill in some major gaps in my gaming experience.
Some of the games deemed classics by pretty much everyone I had not played at length, before I started my autumn quest, include Super Metroid, Metal Gear Solid 3 and Fallout 3. I also wanted to complete a few titles laying around that I really enjoyed but just hadn’t quite taken care of yet for a variety of reasons. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, for example, was the most fun I’d had playing a Star Wars video game since those fantastic Rogue Squadron games for N64 and Gamecube came out years ago. But the game was a gift from my girlfriend of two years, and in the aftermath of our breakup the thought of running around as Vader’s Apprentice just made me think of her. That was the last thing I needed earlier this year, but time heals all wounds, I got over her, and I am more than ready to complete the final couple of missions that game has to offer. I also find myself actually looking forward to the Force Unleashed’s forthcoming downloadable content — “What If…”-style scenarios set on Hoth and in Jabba’s palace, with the player in the role of the Apprentice. Sign me up!
So with that in mind, I’ve made some nice strides in Super Metroid — though none since my health took a nose dive — and I’ve absolutely grown obsessed over Metal Gear Solid 3. That I haven’t played the game yet is one of those inexplicable scenarios that seem to crop a lot with me, and I suspect many others, in the realm of video games. I bought the “Subsistence” deluxe version of the game, which includes a vastly superior camera angle option not featured on the original MGS3, at least three and a half years ago. The original MGS is one of my favorite games ever. I bought PS3′s part 4 right at launch last year, immediately played it start to finish, and loved every minute of it (even all 45 of that one uproariously long cut scene!) But I somehow never played what many Metal Gear fans agree is the finest chapter in one of my favorite series.
I think gamers, even the hardcore ones like me, who are not game journos miss out on even hot shit, big ticket releases all the time. It’s not because we’re not interested. It’s just that games can take quite a while to play through, and there’s an awful lot of living to be done outside of video games that keeps our gaming hours limited. I’m better these days at making time for games than I have been for many years – there’s one upside to the single life! — but I still managed to go the last twelve months without Fallout 3, the game many believed bested both my beloved MGS4 and the equally awesome Grand Theft Auto IV to take last year’s Game of the Year crown.
Anyway, I am taking great satisfaction in re-visiting games that slipped through the cracks the first time through. Metal Gear Solid 3 is just AWESOME. There’s no other way to put it. A perfect blend of behind-the-scenes, cold war-era espionage plot, those MGS-patented over-the-top Super Villains, and even a little James Bond style thrown in for a nice nod for the spy movies so popular in the game’s late 1960s timeframe. The jungle environment Snake traverses in this chapter works extremely well — perhaps even better than the now legendary, snowbound Shadow Moses Island from part one? There also seems to be a much better flow between the action and the cut scenes — that is to say, there are not as many cut scenes after the first hour or two of gameplay, so there are fewer intrusions. Oh, and the bosses? Forget about it. Without question, some of the coolest, most intense bosses I have ever faced are in Metal Gear Solid 3. More on those in a future post.
I sunk more than 11 hours into this fantastic game over the weekend, and I cannot wait to finish this fight this week — maybe even tonight?
Hopefully I’ll have a chance to finish Super Metroid this week, too. Next up — I just placed an Amazon order for both Halo 3: ODST for Xbox 360 (the game has received surprisingly strong reviews, in my opinion, considering it’s really only a cash grab, *cough cough*, I mean, spin-off 
and the first Uncharted game for PS3. Yep, another great game I just haven’t gotten around to yet. Whenver they arrive, you’ll get my impressions right away.
DCG
Tags: halo 3: odst, metal gear solid 3, playstation 3, Super Metroid, uncharted, Xbox 360
