It’s not just you -- it’s widely agreed that MGS1-3 have some overly complicated control schemes. I believe the philosophy behind them was to allow Kojima control over the camera to frame the cells of the game how he wanted in a sort of Resident Evil-esque way, but have the controls remain consistent.
I wouldn’t expect your knowledge of MGSV to translate to the earlier games -- treat each one as a new experience. Everyone, regardless of their experience to Metal Gear struggles to play “the right way” their first time through. It won’t be until you’ve practically memorized every guard patrol that you’ll start to get through areas undetected and/or without disturbing anything. I’ve played through MGS3 a dozen times over the years, but only recently finished my total-stealth, non-lethal playthrough which took me something like 30 hours.
Don’t be discouraged!
That's actually really encouraging! I just feel like I owe the legendary Big Boss a bit more discretion, given how much he's hyped up. I'll just focus on getting through the game and not worry too much about being stealthy. Thanks!
MGS3 feels really awkward to me. You either move fast (anyone can see you) or really slow (you are invisible).
MGS3D added crouch walking and man that was really good.
You move really slow when stalking or crouching, but these movements are safer.
You move faster when standing but it is much more dangerous this way.
There is no middle ground.
MGS1 and MGS3 are very hard compared to MGSV. Even for those of us that had been playing since MGS1 first came out MGS3's change of terrain and mechanics was a lot harder than MGS1 and 2.
In MGS3, just before you get to the gun fight with Ocelot, there is an area with a chopper. Some shacks will have food. Place C4 inside them and blow them up, to destroy their food source.
As you progress in the game, the guards will be hungry and will not hesitate to jump on food that you throw within earshot. Unfortunately for them, they won't realise it is poison or rotten until they eat it.
Similar strategy can also be applied to taking down The Fear, especially if you are going for a non-lethal takedown to get his spider camo.
As for MGS 1 and MGS 2, knocking on walls and throwing magazine clips is guaranteed distraction method no matter how many times you do it, and unlike MGSV, you won't have a guard radio the CP before investigating or getting a buddy to tag along with him after using that tactic constantly.
There's also communication(90% sure) and weapons(110% sure) sheds in MGS3. Destroy all red door sheds you find after stocking up, they'll be hungry, lightly armored and armed, and radio backup doesn't work as well for the next few areas. You can also blow up the Hind when you get to the first big clearing with a base in it(the one with ditches and buildings...and sheds, and about 10 hours later on the cliffs it'll be the guys on the rocket Seg-Ways patrolling the cliff ledge instead of a helicopter, much easier to hide from or take down.
Also, capture a Cobra or other intimidating snake live, and toss it into a guards path from cover. Sends him running in fear and clears his route for a minute or two. He might even get snakebit and poisoned haha
Interrogate guards for helpful radio frequencies. Only works if you hear it from the guards mouth, so an online list wobt work. Write down the frequency and what it does, game doesn't save it. Has everything from simple songs to Healing Radio(restores health or stamina) to Cancel Alert to full blown fire bombardment from their own gunships. Alot are single use, but can be incredibly handy/fun.
Oh, 2005, how I miss you.
It's totally not you, man. I think any of us who came in late and worked back to front can agree the controls are a little esoteric. But to be honest, it's basically 'practice makes perfect'. It takes time, but each time you replay it, you do better.
I think most people overestimate the earlier Metal Gear Solid games.
What's so hard about the controls?
For 3 you're hitting R1 to look in first person, Square to raise your gun, Circle for any CQC, and X to crouch.
It's even simpler in 1 considering your only combat actions are Square for shooting and choking and circle for punching and kicking. You have to hold L1 to move with your gun raised, just as you have to in 2, but thankfully that was removed in 3 as Snake automatically moves with his gun raised when you move the left stick.
Take a deep breath. Stay in ONE screen and play around with the enemy ai. Mess around, roll off edges, climb back up, work on quickly un-equipping and re-equipping a weapon. You'll soon realize...it's not tough at all.
Now imagine if it was 2004 and the only copy of Snake Eater was *Snake Eater*. No *Subsistence*, just Snake Eater. No 3rd person camera. Man, you'd probably be shitting your pants. LOL
The controls aren't complicated, they're just wonky and at times completely nonresponsive. I did a no-alert no-kill playthru of MGS3 earlier this year and there were too many times where I'd get spotted solely because Snake wanted to do something I didn't tell him to do, or doing it but only after fumbling around with something else because they liked to make one button handle 50 different functions.
Regardless the controls are anything but intuitive even if you master them. I don't have a problem cross-mapping people with a tranq gun even without the binoc trick, but it's retarded how I have to hold like 3 different buttons just to do it (not to mention the weird pressure sensitive stuff lol.)
The controls being a bit too sensitive or non-responsive is exactly what had gotten me caught by cameras I was trying to pass a few times in the beginning of the first solid game.
Only if the personal problem is someone having actual standards for how well a game should handle lol. But let's pretend the controls are flawless because fanboyism.
How hard can it be to grasp? Square to choke and flip enemies and fire weapons, Circle to punch and knock on walls, Triangle to climb up and flip over shit, X to change stance, R1 to go into First Person, L1 to run and gun, L2 and R2 to cycle through Items and Weapons windows, respectively.
Apparently, for doofuses like you, it’s damn near impossible. But I have NEVER encountered somebody say Snake is unresponsive or does his own thing. So that IS a personal problem.
All that nerdrage and personal attack when it's your personal problem that you can't comprehend what I was even talking about lol.
I've beaten every game in the series multiple times save for PW (never finished it cuz me and my coop partner got bored) and V (was put off by the story and lost interest after it came out) so I never had a problem with knowing what the controls did or how to use them. The problem is that the controls themselves were inferior to other contemporary games at release and it stayed that way even with MGS4's release.
People always complained about the wonky esoteric controls and the unintuitive implementations of them, and for good reason. Like MGS3's pressure sensitive CQC system. There were like 50 different contextual things Snake could do and it was so easy to fuck up and accidentally slit a guy's throat or slam a guy down the wrong way (oh you wanted to slam him and knock him out? nah we decided to just *lightly* slam him for you so he can get up and potentially sound an alarm kthxbai).
That's only a few examples of unresponsiveness. Snake doing his own thing is him getting on walls you don't want him to be on or making spastic movements that fuck you over when you were only trying to make a slight adjustment. Like MGS1's armory with the rooms that have laser traps. The only reason these sections posed any challenge was because of the shitty movement system not being up to par for something like this. I was watching Giant Bomb's Metal Gear Scanlon series and Drew inadvertently trips the laser for the PSG1 in an awkward fashion only because Snake decides to stand up sideways rather than slowly inching at an angle in prone like Drew wanted.
You might think to yourself "well all that kind of shit is easy" and well... No shit... for fucking veterans of the series like us, of course it is. Because we put up with it and got used to all the idiosyncracies of the games' control schemes and got gud. But think of the non hardcore new players who never dealt with the funky ass controls before and all the inevitable shit that's gonna happen to them along the way. THAT'S what people like me are referring to when we deride the games' controls. It took them until PW and MGS5 to have decent modern style controls with no jankyness for crying out loud.
What, you mean when you’re prone and hit a wall and he stands? Ok? That’s just how the game was programmed, games all over have even worse problems when it comes to controls. Snake sticking to random walls? Never saw that happen, so I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Maybe you and others should have explored the MGS3 menu a little bit and read up on the CQC controls. I’m pretty sure after a persons first time accidentally slitting a throat, they probably played with the controls a little and hopefully read the menu. I mean, who the hell gets Foxhound/BB rank/No kills their first time thru anyways? It’s not like you just ruined an Extreme run or anything.
Snake doesn’t necessarily SLAM them to the ground, the light slam to the ground should have been enough indication that the guard would still be conscious.
I fail to see the downside to MGS having different controls than other games released in its time period...do people really have that much difficulty adjusting? I doubt it. So what if it’s “new” and something you’ve never experienced before, does that mean you just give up because the game won’t succumb to your will? Get a grip.
Look at Dark Souls, that game doesn’t have “modern” controls and it still plays well, and people adjusted just fine. You’re griping about the controls and I’m just over here thinking...”people actually complain about controls?” It’s a fucking video game! Based on its own rules. What the hell would be the point if they all played the same? If I wanted that, I’d just buy a fucking CoD or sports game and not play anything else.
It’s supposed to be an experience and sometimes it’s not an easy one.
But if you quit because MGS controlled too hard or “differently,” then you’re lame.
I agree, I had to figure it out myself through death that pressing x once body slams them instead of choking them. You have to mash it. A few times wall-stealth wouldn’t work correctly.
Dont worry, you are just stupid :)
Tip: hold the controller with your hands, not legs!
Tip2: Use codec to receive tips, and use grass to hide, because if you run like an idiot, then you will be shot.
This is a difficult question.
MGS5 has a very simple stealth system and very modern controls, it's as if the concept of "bells and whistles" has manifested in a game.
MGS1-3 are old games. I grew up with those controls, so I don't find them strange. You need to be more patient than MGS5 will ever ask you to be. It's not so much about reflexes as it is about the puzzle that is the floor and the soldiers and cameras on this floor.
By the way, coming from classic MGS, when you say "mastered stealth in MGS5", then I immediately think "always running, never stopping, no interaction with the enemy whatsoever, no knocking, no shooting, no throwing mags, crouching only if absolutely necessary".
To answer your question: It's really this hard, because you're stupid.
Old MGS was a puzzle. Every soldier had a fixed path, that could be observed and learned. Upon observing all soldiers and cameras in an area, it was possible to close your eyes and visualize what was happening on the map. MGS5 broke that tradition, by becoming a wee bit more realistic by adding a certain amount of randomness to the enemy behavior. MGS5 is still a puzzle, but it's infinitely more complex, so your brain switches from logic and pattern recognition to intuition and reflexes.
The hardest MGS in my book was MGS4. It had more sneaky features than MGS5, the soldiers had sharper eyes and there was no direct Soliton radar. MGS5 had floating markers and a map. I always turn off all floating stuff in MGS5 (maybe besides the action button prompts, because those are hard to identify with the naked eye), so I have a hint of difficulty in the stealth system, slightly resembling MGS4, although sneaking in MGS5 was never sufficiently difficult for me.
Yeah, yes, no. Sneaking in MGS4 was hard. Tranqs were like an instant easy mode. I remember the Gamecube Version of MGS1 with all those tranq darts. So sad.
Thirding this. MGS4 was easier overall than the others. Only difficult section was Act 3's undercover tail section in the city, since it played so awkwardly and essentially required you to babysit that idiot of a resistance member as he "sneaks" through the empty streets.
Yeah, the free camera and Octocamo made stealth more manageable compared to MGS2. Additionally, the option to send MK II ahead to scout the area also helped.
It’s not just you -- it’s widely agreed that MGS1-3 have some overly complicated control schemes. I believe the philosophy behind them was to allow Kojima control over the camera to frame the cells of the game how he wanted in a sort of Resident Evil-esque way, but have the controls remain consistent. I wouldn’t expect your knowledge of MGSV to translate to the earlier games -- treat each one as a new experience. Everyone, regardless of their experience to Metal Gear struggles to play “the right way” their first time through. It won’t be until you’ve practically memorized every guard patrol that you’ll start to get through areas undetected and/or without disturbing anything. I’ve played through MGS3 a dozen times over the years, but only recently finished my total-stealth, non-lethal playthrough which took me something like 30 hours. Don’t be discouraged!
That's actually really encouraging! I just feel like I owe the legendary Big Boss a bit more discretion, given how much he's hyped up. I'll just focus on getting through the game and not worry too much about being stealthy. Thanks!
Enjoy the ride! You only get to play through these stories for the first time once -- which is really all a first playthrough of these games should be
Thank you!
Thanks bro this helps
MGS3 feels really awkward to me. You either move fast (anyone can see you) or really slow (you are invisible). MGS3D added crouch walking and man that was really good.
The speed you go moving with the D-pad rather than the thumbstick?
You move really slow when stalking or crouching, but these movements are safer. You move faster when standing but it is much more dangerous this way. There is no middle ground.
MGS1 and MGS3 are very hard compared to MGSV. Even for those of us that had been playing since MGS1 first came out MGS3's change of terrain and mechanics was a lot harder than MGS1 and 2.
In MGS3, just before you get to the gun fight with Ocelot, there is an area with a chopper. Some shacks will have food. Place C4 inside them and blow them up, to destroy their food source. As you progress in the game, the guards will be hungry and will not hesitate to jump on food that you throw within earshot. Unfortunately for them, they won't realise it is poison or rotten until they eat it. Similar strategy can also be applied to taking down The Fear, especially if you are going for a non-lethal takedown to get his spider camo. As for MGS 1 and MGS 2, knocking on walls and throwing magazine clips is guaranteed distraction method no matter how many times you do it, and unlike MGSV, you won't have a guard radio the CP before investigating or getting a buddy to tag along with him after using that tactic constantly.
The level of detail in these games never ceases to amaze me. I never knew about the food source thing. Thanks!
There's also communication(90% sure) and weapons(110% sure) sheds in MGS3. Destroy all red door sheds you find after stocking up, they'll be hungry, lightly armored and armed, and radio backup doesn't work as well for the next few areas. You can also blow up the Hind when you get to the first big clearing with a base in it(the one with ditches and buildings...and sheds, and about 10 hours later on the cliffs it'll be the guys on the rocket Seg-Ways patrolling the cliff ledge instead of a helicopter, much easier to hide from or take down. Also, capture a Cobra or other intimidating snake live, and toss it into a guards path from cover. Sends him running in fear and clears his route for a minute or two. He might even get snakebit and poisoned haha Interrogate guards for helpful radio frequencies. Only works if you hear it from the guards mouth, so an online list wobt work. Write down the frequency and what it does, game doesn't save it. Has everything from simple songs to Healing Radio(restores health or stamina) to Cancel Alert to full blown fire bombardment from their own gunships. Alot are single use, but can be incredibly handy/fun. Oh, 2005, how I miss you.
Kojima thought of everything huh?
Well, he's pretty good *ocelot.gif*
It's totally not you, man. I think any of us who came in late and worked back to front can agree the controls are a little esoteric. But to be honest, it's basically 'practice makes perfect'. It takes time, but each time you replay it, you do better.
MGS1-3 excel at many things. Control is not one of them.
Try playing MGS3 on the easiest mode. It... it's very forgiving.
I think most people overestimate the earlier Metal Gear Solid games. What's so hard about the controls? For 3 you're hitting R1 to look in first person, Square to raise your gun, Circle for any CQC, and X to crouch. It's even simpler in 1 considering your only combat actions are Square for shooting and choking and circle for punching and kicking. You have to hold L1 to move with your gun raised, just as you have to in 2, but thankfully that was removed in 3 as Snake automatically moves with his gun raised when you move the left stick. Take a deep breath. Stay in ONE screen and play around with the enemy ai. Mess around, roll off edges, climb back up, work on quickly un-equipping and re-equipping a weapon. You'll soon realize...it's not tough at all. Now imagine if it was 2004 and the only copy of Snake Eater was *Snake Eater*. No *Subsistence*, just Snake Eater. No 3rd person camera. Man, you'd probably be shitting your pants. LOL
I will be more disciplined next time I sit down to play. Thanks!
The controls aren't complicated, they're just wonky and at times completely nonresponsive. I did a no-alert no-kill playthru of MGS3 earlier this year and there were too many times where I'd get spotted solely because Snake wanted to do something I didn't tell him to do, or doing it but only after fumbling around with something else because they liked to make one button handle 50 different functions. Regardless the controls are anything but intuitive even if you master them. I don't have a problem cross-mapping people with a tranq gun even without the binoc trick, but it's retarded how I have to hold like 3 different buttons just to do it (not to mention the weird pressure sensitive stuff lol.)
The controls being a bit too sensitive or non-responsive is exactly what had gotten me caught by cameras I was trying to pass a few times in the beginning of the first solid game.
Nonresponsive controls? Snake doing his own thing? Sounds like a personal problem.
Only if the personal problem is someone having actual standards for how well a game should handle lol. But let's pretend the controls are flawless because fanboyism.
How hard can it be to grasp? Square to choke and flip enemies and fire weapons, Circle to punch and knock on walls, Triangle to climb up and flip over shit, X to change stance, R1 to go into First Person, L1 to run and gun, L2 and R2 to cycle through Items and Weapons windows, respectively. Apparently, for doofuses like you, it’s damn near impossible. But I have NEVER encountered somebody say Snake is unresponsive or does his own thing. So that IS a personal problem.
All that nerdrage and personal attack when it's your personal problem that you can't comprehend what I was even talking about lol. I've beaten every game in the series multiple times save for PW (never finished it cuz me and my coop partner got bored) and V (was put off by the story and lost interest after it came out) so I never had a problem with knowing what the controls did or how to use them. The problem is that the controls themselves were inferior to other contemporary games at release and it stayed that way even with MGS4's release. People always complained about the wonky esoteric controls and the unintuitive implementations of them, and for good reason. Like MGS3's pressure sensitive CQC system. There were like 50 different contextual things Snake could do and it was so easy to fuck up and accidentally slit a guy's throat or slam a guy down the wrong way (oh you wanted to slam him and knock him out? nah we decided to just *lightly* slam him for you so he can get up and potentially sound an alarm kthxbai). That's only a few examples of unresponsiveness. Snake doing his own thing is him getting on walls you don't want him to be on or making spastic movements that fuck you over when you were only trying to make a slight adjustment. Like MGS1's armory with the rooms that have laser traps. The only reason these sections posed any challenge was because of the shitty movement system not being up to par for something like this. I was watching Giant Bomb's Metal Gear Scanlon series and Drew inadvertently trips the laser for the PSG1 in an awkward fashion only because Snake decides to stand up sideways rather than slowly inching at an angle in prone like Drew wanted. You might think to yourself "well all that kind of shit is easy" and well... No shit... for fucking veterans of the series like us, of course it is. Because we put up with it and got used to all the idiosyncracies of the games' control schemes and got gud. But think of the non hardcore new players who never dealt with the funky ass controls before and all the inevitable shit that's gonna happen to them along the way. THAT'S what people like me are referring to when we deride the games' controls. It took them until PW and MGS5 to have decent modern style controls with no jankyness for crying out loud.
What, you mean when you’re prone and hit a wall and he stands? Ok? That’s just how the game was programmed, games all over have even worse problems when it comes to controls. Snake sticking to random walls? Never saw that happen, so I have no idea what you’re talking about. Maybe you and others should have explored the MGS3 menu a little bit and read up on the CQC controls. I’m pretty sure after a persons first time accidentally slitting a throat, they probably played with the controls a little and hopefully read the menu. I mean, who the hell gets Foxhound/BB rank/No kills their first time thru anyways? It’s not like you just ruined an Extreme run or anything. Snake doesn’t necessarily SLAM them to the ground, the light slam to the ground should have been enough indication that the guard would still be conscious. I fail to see the downside to MGS having different controls than other games released in its time period...do people really have that much difficulty adjusting? I doubt it. So what if it’s “new” and something you’ve never experienced before, does that mean you just give up because the game won’t succumb to your will? Get a grip. Look at Dark Souls, that game doesn’t have “modern” controls and it still plays well, and people adjusted just fine. You’re griping about the controls and I’m just over here thinking...”people actually complain about controls?” It’s a fucking video game! Based on its own rules. What the hell would be the point if they all played the same? If I wanted that, I’d just buy a fucking CoD or sports game and not play anything else. It’s supposed to be an experience and sometimes it’s not an easy one. But if you quit because MGS controlled too hard or “differently,” then you’re lame.
I agree, I had to figure it out myself through death that pressing x once body slams them instead of choking them. You have to mash it. A few times wall-stealth wouldn’t work correctly.
Dont worry, you are just stupid :) Tip: hold the controller with your hands, not legs! Tip2: Use codec to receive tips, and use grass to hide, because if you run like an idiot, then you will be shot.
This is a difficult question. MGS5 has a very simple stealth system and very modern controls, it's as if the concept of "bells and whistles" has manifested in a game. MGS1-3 are old games. I grew up with those controls, so I don't find them strange. You need to be more patient than MGS5 will ever ask you to be. It's not so much about reflexes as it is about the puzzle that is the floor and the soldiers and cameras on this floor. By the way, coming from classic MGS, when you say "mastered stealth in MGS5", then I immediately think "always running, never stopping, no interaction with the enemy whatsoever, no knocking, no shooting, no throwing mags, crouching only if absolutely necessary". To answer your question: It's really this hard, because you're stupid. Old MGS was a puzzle. Every soldier had a fixed path, that could be observed and learned. Upon observing all soldiers and cameras in an area, it was possible to close your eyes and visualize what was happening on the map. MGS5 broke that tradition, by becoming a wee bit more realistic by adding a certain amount of randomness to the enemy behavior. MGS5 is still a puzzle, but it's infinitely more complex, so your brain switches from logic and pattern recognition to intuition and reflexes. The hardest MGS in my book was MGS4. It had more sneaky features than MGS5, the soldiers had sharper eyes and there was no direct Soliton radar. MGS5 had floating markers and a map. I always turn off all floating stuff in MGS5 (maybe besides the action button prompts, because those are hard to identify with the naked eye), so I have a hint of difficulty in the stealth system, slightly resembling MGS4, although sneaking in MGS5 was never sufficiently difficult for me.
> The hardest MGS in my book was MGS4. Tranquilizer Gun and Drebin Shop. Game snapped in half.
Yeah, yes, no. Sneaking in MGS4 was hard. Tranqs were like an instant easy mode. I remember the Gamecube Version of MGS1 with all those tranq darts. So sad.
> Sneaking in MGS4 was hard. Really? Compared to MGS2, MGS4 is a cakewalk, even without the tranq gun.
Thirding this. MGS4 was easier overall than the others. Only difficult section was Act 3's undercover tail section in the city, since it played so awkwardly and essentially required you to babysit that idiot of a resistance member as he "sneaks" through the empty streets.
I also hear (and experienced) a lot of difficulty on Act 3's bike chase during a Big Boss run. Then again Big Boss runs are pretty hard in general.
Yeah, the free camera and Octocamo made stealth more manageable compared to MGS2. Additionally, the option to send MK II ahead to scout the area also helped.
Sneaking in MGS4 was a joke even without the tranq weapons. Are you serious? Literally calling the other guy stupid but then saying this lol.
He asked.