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The Metal Gear Solid 3 trailer, as shown at E3 2003Until I played it for the first time, a few years after 9/11, I didn’t actually know that nukes do not just go away. That their rods and their fetid coolants remain thrust into the guts of this planet forever like bad cells—the fear of them freezes us all forever, leaves us counting our breath, lying there and thinking of our countries.It has a doomed Russian cosmonaut walking in systematic circles, immolated by his own memories, still wearing his space suit, counting grandly down to a takeoff that will never happen. That boss fight is such a fucking pain.MGS3 has secret frogs, and you get a special outfit if you shoot all the frogs in the whole game. From someplace in this dead-serious Russian wilderness, the frogs sway back and forth in response to your attack. Bleating loudly, they’re toys. Remember: Games are toys. MGS3 also launched with a brand tie-in to Sony’s Ape Escape. You can play a little optional mini-game where you catch cartoon monkeys. “Gotcha!” Snake gloats. “You’re mine.”MGS3 is a ridiculous parade, a silly and off-putting video game. It has interminable cutscenes and bad dialogue—detached jawing about the movie Godzilla, about microfilm containing the secret fortune of nations, about bipedal tanks that hurl warheads; nerdy sci-fi garbage. It has weak sex jokes, heavy-handed references to James Bond and Austin Powers alike in the same self-satisfied breaths. I couldn’t exactly tell you to play it. I couldn’t tell you to sit through it.
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