Hideo Kojima, it is thought in many gaming corners, slightly lost his way with Metal Gear Solid 2. His tale of double-crossing clones and computer programs that secretly ran the world was as preposterous as a Bond film, and badly directed to boot. A shame, as the action (when the player was finally able to pull the reins from the designer’s grasp) contained some great additions to the core MGS experience. Snake Eater arrived on the scene to little fanfare - partly due to Kojima keeping the hype machine quiescent, and partly due to low expectations from the public. Snake now has a lot to prove in his third polygonal outing.

The plot is introduced, in characteristic Kojima style, in a lengthy cutscene: set in 1964, two years after the Cuban missile crisis, a scientist trying to defect from the Soviet Union must be extracted from deep within Russian territory in a covert operation. The mission is unsanctioned, meaning you must go in alone – deep into the jungle – and extract the prize. The fate of the world hangs in the balance. Naturally, the early Cold War setting means it’s impossible (unless Kojima decided to throw time travel into the MGS mix) for you to be playing as the Snake we know from MGS 1 and 2. Anyone familiar with Foxhound, Big Boss and the general themes from these games will soon put the pieces together.

As an avatar, though, Snake remains ostensibly the same as ‘before’: silent infiltration is your speciality and your remit and, to this end, you have a whole heap of new gadgets and abilities to hand. Being the Sixties, you no longer have a radar display sitting in the top-right corner of the screen that diligently picks-out enemy patrols and indicates their field of vision. In its place you have three detection devices (or ‘toys’, to the layman) to compensate: a sonar device, a motion tracker and an anti-personnel detection unit. All three of these gadgets must be used wisely and appropriately (as no single one is a complete detection solution), and all consume battery power. Although the batteries recharge when not in use, this does mean they cannot be on constantly.

The weapons roster (in spite of the time period) remains essentially unchanged – with a couple of exceptions – and the main innovations are brought about by the inclusion of stamina and camouflage. As before, Snake has a health meter that decreases when damage is taken. Stamina, though, is reduced over time regardless of injury, and must be replenished through feeding. Animals discovered in the undergrowth can be consumed: shoot the animal/reptile/bird, collect the resulting box of vittles, and chow down when your bar is low. A low stamina bar results in poor reflexes – your hands visibly shake when holding a weapon in first-person mode, for example, making aiming difficult.

Camouflage is the most significant and satisfying evolution, however. Snake carries a range of fatigues that help him blend-in with his environment, their effectiveness represented by a percentage on-screen. As you move between steamy rainforest, concrete- and brick-walled urban areas and forested jungle, the right wardrobe choice is vital. Snake can also cure wounds and infections in Snake Eater: a First Aid kit (that must also be replenished) can be used to suture cuts, salve burns and counteract toxins. A much greater range of close quarter combat moves are available, too, emphasising the ‘Tactical Espionage Action’ of the subtitle. What is brilliant about these changes to the gameplay is how much they compliment the MGS lineage, then improve it: none of them are hollow crowd-pleasers, and all have an unmistakeable feeling of progress about them. Boss encounters have always had a major part to play in MGS’s success, and MGS3 has, incontrovertibly, the best set of opponents yet seen. Encounters with The Pain, The Fear, The End and all others can be tackled in many, many ways – more than were possible before due to the inclusion of enemy stamina and the vagaries of climate and terrain. Suffice it to say, you can bring down your foe in any way your armament, abilities and imagination will allow.

Taking place, for the most part, in natural environments, Kojima has freed himself from his trademark military grey colour scheme and made use of Mother Earth’s actual topography. This is where MGS3 shows its excellence. Not only does distance from target matter, but you must also consider tree cover, sunlight, rain, contours, rivers, darkness, grass cover…geology and geography, flora and fauna in all its guises. Blend this brow-raising variety in physical situation with the need to feed, the use of camo and the range of accessories Snake has to hand, and you have the most complex MGS in the series. What’s so impressive is that all of these options are so easily accessed, utilising the same methods seen in the previous games but expanded and adapted.

Graphically, there is barely anything to touch MGS3 on PS2. Kojima has painted his canvas with a great deal more artfulness than in parts one and two, so along with the gratifying (but expected) refinements in character modelling, particle effects and the like, he has excelled himself in representing nature. The beautifully diffuse glow of the evening sun, the blue-black depths of night, and the muggy closeness of rain and mist are so tangible, you want to climb-in and experience them along with the characters. The (Pro Logic) audio is peerless, with effects such as the crunch of footsteps and the chirping of frogs enhancing the atmosphere, as well as proving vital to progress. With your environment so much more alive – literally – than before, sound can be used as another weapon in your kit bag.

MGS3 is both artistically and functionally gorgeous, but Kojima hasn’t stopped there. The storyline is much more coherent and involving than in the previous games (possibly due to its historical setting; possibly due to Kojima listening to his critics and tightening things up). David Hayter (as Snake) chews the scenery with as much gusto (and unintentional hilarity) as ever, but most performances are well acted and quite layered. Humour crops up in the script, with some nice in-jokes as well as general funnies, and there is a fantastic (and fantastically hilarious) James Bond credit sequence pastiche. Mercifully, codec sequences are a lot briefer than before, distilling the necessary info down to key points rather than rambling disjointedly for countless boring minutes.

Kojima has successfully married cinematic technique with compelling gameplay (the game's ending, particularly, is wholly satisfying both in terms of action and plot) but, unfortunately, has retained a few of the flaws that hold back his opus and dilute his message. Cutscenes still aggravate with their interruptions, and can last up to (and sometimes over) twenty minutes at a stretch. The length of time spent watching still (un)comfortably exceeds that of time spent playing. Similarly, if Kojima wishes to convince us that Snake represents the Spirit of War – constantly in flux, never sure of moral position, prey to treachery and deception – he needs to integrate context with subtext more intellectually. Snake is often just a wittering moron, endlessly repeating dull lines of dialogue spoken by other characters, so that (Kojima believes) the gamer can keep-up. This is the director underestimating – infantilising – his audience and (let’s face it) renders many of the lines melodramatic and idiotic.

It is in the depiction of conflict as a state of being where Kojima wins-out, though, with his character’s movements on-screen depicting the strain, horror and (sometimes) glory of war. The crawling king Snake embodies all these ideas, and is the elegant distillation of Kojima’s ideological stance on war. The best MGS game yet, Snake Eater will draw you back into its green Hell over and over, as you strive to perfect your infiltration skills, constantly rewarding (as it does) innovation and viciously expedient wetwork.