OK, so I'm only just past The Pain, but so far 50% of MGS3 is Ocelot spinning his revolvers, and the other 50% is futzing around in menus. I am only slightly exaggerating.

I just watched a cutscene where Ocelot put one bullet in one chamber of three guns, then said he'd pull the triggers six times. Then he juggled the guns and pulled triggers. I mean.. this went on about six times longer than it needed to practically by definition, and the sheer ridiculousness of watching this guy juggle his revolvers made it lose any sense of tension it might have had. I thought every cutscene in MGS2 (which I played for the first time ever last year) was at least twice as long as it needed to be; MGS3 is taking it to insane levels. (I've never played MGS4 but from what I've heard that game takes it to the absolute limit.)

To be fair, there's a lot I like about MGS3. But I like it best when it's grounded in real human emotion and behavior. The Pain doing ridiculous karate moves, shouting "tommy gun!" and shooting bees at me was too much. Ocelot's revolvers are too much. MGS2 had its share of craziness, but I feel like it didn't go as far over the top as often as MGS3 has so far.

Just my 2 cents.

Duh

Nah

MGS 2 was disappointing at the time for numerous reasons, although these days I can appreciate all the great, risky stuff it did.

MGS 3 got me back into video games when college made me think I was done. I learned to sleep less because I absolutely love the story, and the two weeks I spent with it felt like an epic journey. The gameplay was a precursor to the wide open areas of V. The graphics were quite impressive, and the boss battles were also super creative (despite the silly cast).

So personally, 3 will always be superior to me. But I can see why these days, 2 may outshine it because now we know what Metal Gear really is.

Hmm. I played the games because of Metal Gear Scanlon, so they're pretty fresh in my mind as well. My general opinion is that MGS2 is the best video game story ever and an important and impressive artistic work (the Infinite Jest of video games, if you will), but that MGS3 is the best in the series from a pure video game/gameplay perspective. Also, yeah, MGS4 is basically a movie that you sometimes play.

Stop it, you.

Ehh, I dunno I love all the games for different reasons. I've never been able to assign a hard and fast ranking.

MGS 2 has always been the best and MGS 3 has always been the not best. You know why people praise MGS 3 so much? They think the last ten minutes is the same quality as the ten hours that came before.

If you can get past raiden, mgs2 is the best Metal Gear game... Tied with 4, of course. MGSV is the best Metal Gear "game" but not the best Metal Gear.

In fairness, Metal Gear is just great. People have their preferences, but they are all classic games.

i pray there is a 10 episode mini series that is dedicated to mgs3. that story so damn good! plus that ending. if you dont know it your in for a treat in that last act. Yes the bosses have an underwhelming background as most do in the series after 1. but i really have grown an appreciation for 2 over the past year. But 3 is still the best in the series.

but to each their own. if you enjoy mgs then im glad. I know too many friends who do not know mgs saga and to explain it is too much and i could never do it justice. real shame on how the series is dead or dying out and i shall never forgive konami.

Kojima 4 PREZ

This is a compelling argument for how MGS3 is the best game in the entire franchise.

Rose is, perhaps, the worst written woman in the history of video games. Rose is not present at any point during MGS3.

It is an inherently superior game.

MGS2 is the best one in the series because of its real life mind-fuckery combined with its in-game mind fucker.

It's by far the ballsiest, most thought provoking, and interesting game in the series. Fucking love that game. That one section in particular gives me chills.

Jack, do you know what day it is tomorrow?

Metal Gear Solid 3 is one of the greatest games ever made.

I played 3 before I played 2, so I have the exact opposite feeling. I didn't like Fortune or Vamp, and I hated Otacon's sister.

Still a good- maybe even great- game. Being overrated doesn't mean it's bad.

Fission Mailed

I'm currently in the midst of writing my senior paper on MGS2. I love MGS3 too, but MGS2 is just an inherently more interesting game because of the risks it took.

MGS2 is much better.

If only there was an MGS game that cut down on all the forced stupid cutscenes and had a more serious tone that focused more on good gameplay.

Unlike MGS2 half of MGS3's story isn't told through codec calls so if you're arguing based on the merits of the way the story is delivered you're dead wrong. MGS2 is really good as a post-modern deconstruction of sequels but as far as the surface level story goes MGS3 blows it out of the water. With a grenade made out of bees.

If you're just past The Pain you've barely even seen any of the game's story anyway, you're like partway through the first act.

Jeff has terrible opinions, I thought we all knew this by now.

MGS2 isn't as over the top as MGS3? Was I the only one who read that line?

Also this is in light of you thinking MGS2 cutscenes are too long? Surely you meant not long enough.

Sir, what kind of opinion is this! :P

In all seriousness it kind of just sounds like you don't love either? Sounds good I guess. I love both, prefer 3 for gameplay and characters and 2 for its bananas plot.

Yeah, but does big boss have posters in his room? If rose was there we'd have an answer at least, now we will never know. :-(

A broken clock can still be right twice a day! .

In all seriousness, 2 and 3 are the only MGS games I genuinely like and 2 is only a few steps above 3. You may ask "What about The Phantom Pain?" Oh, well that's a great video game, but it's kind of a shitty Metal Gear Solid game.

I think Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence just might be the best video game of that entire console generation. (That includes the Dreamcast, Xbox, Gamecube and PS2.)

Needless to say I completely disagree with you.

@yummylee: Hard to argue with the man who chose SiN over Half-Life.

@geraltitude: In all seriousness the first time I played these games, without knowing anyone else's opinions, I thought they were serious military/espionage games with mild sci-fi overtones.

I was about to come in and be like those people who say your wrong, but ill be reasonable internet person and say i see what your saying. as MGS3 is my favorite, but the moments when it shines the brighest are the human and grounded drama moments in the story.

In retrospect, I think MGS3 is the only one I legitimately like. MGS1 is pretty good, but held back a bit by its dated design.

MGS2 and MGS4 have too much garbage surrounding the moments of good.

Depending on the days of the week I would probably put 1, 3, or 4 for top MGS with 3 maybe edges out the rest. MGS2 isn't bad, not at all, but I find 4 to surpass it in too many ways.

3 is actually very grounded and human in many ways, perhaps the most of all. The menu fumbling is less than fun, and to honest when it was announced I was a little disappointed, but it definitely exceed my expectations.

I like all of the games but 3 is the reason I'm a Metal Gear fan and not just someone who enjoys the games but doesn't think about them that seriously. MGS1 and 2 do some amazing things but 3 was the only one that got everything down: gameplay, setting, story, characters, music, atmosphere, even humor. From top to bottom MGS3 is just an incredible video game.

You're not even that far into the game man, keep going. :)

I played 1,2 and 3 in sequence and 3 is my fave of them all.

Except V. V is the greatest MGS. But 3 has the best story and characters of them.

MGS3 I love a bit more than MGS2 because I loved the characters and their interactions a whole lot more. Your supporting cast was tight-knit, full of personality, very helpful with gameplay tips (Paramedic alone was amazing for telling me all about the food I could eat), and in general reminded me about what I loved from the first MGS support crew. All the dialogue your support cast gives you in MGS2 just felt like either ham-fisted daytime drama scenes or exposition dumps.

The Cobra Unit was little more than Boss fodder, but I loved them because they were so extremely campy and fit the 1970s spy movie theme that I didn't care. They felt like actual bosses, also, instead of Dead Cell where you only fought two of them and had to waste time with the other. Not to mention they were some of the more memorable fights in the series (how are you going to forget a guy that makes a tommy gun with bees?). Speaking of bosses, The Boss is probably my favorite MGS character ever.

I really just feel like everything MGS2 did, MGS3 did better. Better villains, better story, better dialogue, better crew, better gameplay. You can argue that managing your inventory or camo is too time-consuming, but there's really only a few spots where I felt like I needed to switch camo constantly (The End being a situation where I micromanaged the hell out of my camo index). One thing I really loved about MGS2 that I feel like docking MGS3 on is the urban/industrial environment. I really missed sneaking through enclosed spaces in MGS3 and it felt like there was so much to do and mess with in MGS2.

I still love the hell out of MGS2, though. It was one of my first major PS2 games and I played the hell out of the demo disc that came with Z.O.E. That story was so good, too. For me, it's very similar to the "Oblivion vs. Skyrim" argument. I love both and have fond memories of Oblivion, but I think I enjoyed Skyrim a whole lot more. Same goes with the MGS series.

You're not even 1/4 way through the game yet. Keep going it gets better.

MGS 2 was... Good and had some amazing moments, but as a whole was kind of a mess. The Jack/Rose story line was insufferable, as was Raiden as a character in general was just bad (and still is, IMO).

I know people like to shit on The Twin Snakes a lot, but that game solves pretty much all the design problems of MGS1. People bitch about the anime-as-hell cutscenes and the re-recorded voice acting, but as a game it still holds up and plays much better than MGS1 ever did. MGS2 had a lot of issues as mention above, and MGS4 seemed like Kojima and co. just trying desperately to sew up every plot line and plug every plot hole (Nanomachines motherfucker!). It's a perfect example of Kojima without a filter.

mgs3 is still the best in the series i think. everything about it was pretty damn close to perfect. mgs2 is also pretty damn good, but things like the big shell being a way less cool environment, inferior controls and mechanics, playing as raiden, the terrible swordfighting mechanic, and less funny codec calls than mgs3 which is loaded with them hold it back.

mgs2 is definitely the most challenging of the modern games, though (metal gear 2, which is on the mgs3 disc, is so insanely hard i ragequit three screens in)

i rank them mgs3, mgs5, mgspw, mgs1, mgs2, mgs4.

MGS3 is my least favorite game in the whole Metal Gear saga. When I think of Metal Gear (for a majority of the Solid entries), I expect the weird but the third Solid game was more silly than anything. Surely the 60s film context does apply but it felt forced.

The weird narrative path felt turned me off a good amount. Like the ladder sequence which creates the environmental shift made me hyped that I will have to face a new area from here on out. I originally imagined it as sort of a MGS2 scenario where I was excited and asking myself what will I face ahead. While the first escape leads Naked Snake back into the jungle, implementing brief gameplay to it outside of The Sorrow boss fight felt unnecessary. The end does bring you back to the common environment but its final test-style gameplay implementation outweighed my personal gripe. Even the escorting part didn't feel bad.

Excluding the great boss fights with The End and the rest towards the last third, the major fights didn't feel interesting from both a gameplay and narrative perspective. Especially with the latter, I wasn't able to establish the connection like with the first and second Solid games. You see the Cobra Unit in one cutscene all grouped up like buddies and then when it's time to fight, you fight em and kill em. Sure they have their stories but it's just there. Honestly I don't even remember what The Fear does besides poisons you like a chump. Even Fatman was more interesting because of his revelatory nature said by Ocelot. Before MGS4, I honestly didn't care for a majority of the characters except for Naked Snake, Ocelot, EVA and The Boss.

David Hayter voicing Naked Snake was bad. I will take into account that he isn't acting as Solid Snake but when sounding more higher pitched with MGS3 than any other game, I was not convinced that he was trying to be a young elite soldier struggling to complete his mission.

Also I hated hearing "What's Wrong?" in the most monotone way from every enemy. No cause for concern apparently.

The gameplay though was well designed and improved when Subsistence came out. The camo system was ahead of its time especially with how it can affect enemy perception. MGS3 is probably the best example of stealth mechanics outside of hiding somewhere dark. The gunplay could have been better but for a Japanese developer trying to do that in that age, I forgive the more static design. The alert system changes were nice too since it's not as simple as it previously was.

MGS2 was a game that was disliked upon release but then a few years later people realised 'Wait guys, this game is some deep shit'. The fact is that at the end it has a story the ultimately does not mean much to the wider MGS-verse (in fact, most of it is a rehash of 1, very deliberately so), and it's value instead lies in just how much is actually going on underneath.

MGS1 deserves a place in a video game museum because of what it did with regards to how video games were presented and put together for the player. MGS2 deserves a place in a video game museum for being perhaps the earliest example of post-modernism in video games and how it deconstructs 1 and the expectations surrounding its own existence. Sorry if I got a bit '2deep4u' and pretentious there, but I genuinely believe MGS2 to be a thought-provoking game.

@thephantomnaut: The "what's wrong" in MGS3 is much better than MGS2's weird sissy-sounding version with an exaggerated inflection; that's not how a trained solider should sound. That doesn't sound like the voice of someone who can make a good war face.

@falling_fast My first three are the same as yours, except my last three I'd go MGS2>MGS4=MGS1.

It most certainly is not. MGS3 has by far the best stealth sandbox in the series outside of Phantom Pain, is the most standalone entry story-wise outside of MGS1 and it has a more satisfying story than 2 by far. MGS2 is only better if the only thing you like about Metal Gear Solid is the weirdness, and as a huge MGS fan...I am long since past caring about the weirdness, or Hideo Kojima's needlessly perverse meta-narrative. For me, MGS3 remains the best Metal Gear Solid game even ahead of Phantom Pain as while the stealth sandbox is at its absolute best in V, the story there is so brain-meltingly stupid that even though you can ignore it, it drags a lot of the game down with it (most notably, the switch from Codec/radio to audio tapes is incredibly disappointing).

The sentries, almost every time, don't seem surprised that their buddy just fell to the ground when they were tranquilized. I am ok with the occasional off-sounding and unimpressed reaction. When I am trying to do a no kill run or at least one where I don't enjoy all the killing, there is the breaking point where I am thinking the voice direction got lazy. Gimme a "Hey! What's wrong?" damn it!

Mgs 2 is the only bad mgs game. The overall story and mindfucks are great but the gameplay, characters and presentation is just dull and uninspired.

Its also technicaly super impressive but that wears off after the tanker part.

I want to agree, but it's been about two years since I last played 2 and even longer since I've last played 3, so I'll reserve judgement.

But in any case, Rose is so fucking annoying.

@lylebot: I think MGS2 was a real watershed moment for gaming at the time. The jump in technology was insane and that game offered so much freedom it was like jumping from Baldurs Gate to Skyrim all of a sudden. So in a way it's really hard for me to judge these two games side by side. Snake Eater frustrated me to no end because when it was initially released they didn't include the freelook camera which made a lot of the jungle sequences a total slog since the default camera was still top-down-view but there was no longer a radar.

By all means MGS3 is a better game, but I can't help but think back on MGS2 more fondly, even though I played the XBOX port which had some serious slowdowns and that controller was just not designed for that control scheme.

Rose, Raiden, Vamp, Fortune and Emma were annoying characters. The shell wasn't a very fun enviroment to run around in. Solidus was... weird. He's the third clone of Big Boss and somehow made president but then never mentioned in the rest of the series beyond his corpse being used as a fake Big Boss "corpse"? And the fact that the president of the United States rammed a huge battleship in to Manhattan is also completely ignored? I feel like the only plot points from MGS2 that mattered in the series at large were that Ocelot had Liquid's arm and that the Patriots were dead and that combined with annoying characters and uninteresting setting kind of makes it a really uninteresting entry into the series for me.

I always liked MGS2 more. I thought the gameplay was better, I liked the setting of it a lot more and I liked the mechanics a lot more.

All MGS games other than V are bad games.

All MGS games other than V are good MGS games.

(I went back to replay the rest after V, and holy shit I am completely unable to hang with MGS 1/2's controls anymore, I can't stand the menu bullshit of 3 anymore, and what little you actually get to play of 4 isn't as bad as 1/2 but might as well be in comparison to V....but I might be willing to deal with it for just how much fun their stories are.)

Nope.

this and like mgr as well.

They are two of the greatest games ever made and are both insanely creative as sequels.

My personal preference is 2, but you could make a strong case for either.

I played through MGS 1 through 4 for my first time ever last year and 3 came away as the clear superior game to me. Gameplay, story, mechanics, atmosphere. I can't think of a single thing the other games did better than 3. Obviously not every moment of three is better than every other moment of every other game; they're all special in their own way, but 1, 2 and 4 feel more flawed than 3.

1 suffers from being a PSX game and those games have not aged well. Not to mention some janky shit that's just not fun. ie the climb up and down the tower. That section sucks.

2 is still a great game, and still looks surprisingly good (I played the PS3 re-releases) but it also still suffers from some old control conventions that make it a bit difficult to handle. It has a lot of the old get-spotted-and-you-might-as-well-kill-yourself sections. I found myself one time too often just sitting there waiting for an enemy to kill me so I could start over at the last checkpoint because there wasn't much point going forward after being spotted. Its plot also crawls just a little too far up its own ass. The ending almost completely lost me. That penultimate boss fight (multiple MGR) is also garbage.

4 is more cutscene than game. It also tries way too hard to do too many things. It starts out excellent, then quickly falls completely apart. I probably played through the first third of the game in a couple of sessions, then spent the next three months slowly and painstakingly finishing it. I just completely lost interest at more than one point.

My complaints about 3 are few and far between. A stupid puzzle-boss fight and OP CQC aside, I love just about everything about it. In a series of characters who typically go a little too far, The Boss stands out to me as probably the only genuinely affecting character of the lot.

MGS is at its worst when it is grounded in reality. All that shit about the cuban missle crisis and *insert fmv* because realism was just excruciating. The part where the game turns into Ninja Scroll meets Rambo 2 was pretty good though. (you know, the stuff that makes Metal Gear Metal Gear)