Darwinian Difficulty in Metal Gear Solid 3

Photo credit: Benjamin Skelly

It’s your responsibility as a gamer to be as sadistic as possible. If you want to know what a character is made of, he must suffer intolerable cruelties. Don’t worry, he can take it; he’s designed to take it. But you — you twisted sadomasochist you — will have to endure as well, for you are not just the torturer but the tortured.

In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Naked Snake is told by his beloved mentor, “The Boss,” that he has yet to find the right emotion to carry into battle. He’s still a boy to the Cobra Unit — a vicious gang of misfits whose skills are legendary — and only until he learns to think like a solider can he complete his mission, for better or worse. Snake’s growth is achieved through the age-old story mechanic of placing him up a tall tree and throwing rocks at him. If the player is to truly emphasize with Snake’s plight, he needs to be in that tree alongside him. This, I hypothesize, is where the concept of Darwinian Difficulty as an agent of empathy and a motivator for thinking like a soldier comes into play. To test my theory, I threw myself into the black waters of Snake Eater on its most Herculean difficulty. As Snake and I descended from our record-breaking HALO jump into the harsh Russian jungle, we found Normal mode’s Motion Detector, Active Sonar and ammunition expropriated, exposing us as veritably naked in a foreign jungle full of stalking, yellow eyes

Thinking like a Soldier

The concept of a Darwinian approach to experiencing Snake Eater is best exemplified by the battle with Cobra member The End. Those who face The End on Easy may find themselves with their pants around their ankles, due in no small part to the lack of adversity leading up to the battle. Without challenge, abstract thinking vanishes. Without abstract thinking, game mechanics go unexplored and unlearned. If you can run and gun your way through every situation without a scratch, why bother trying anything else? Fighting The End without previously being challenged is like skipping boot camp and trading volleys with veteran mountain insurgents. What the hell do you do? The End is out there — waiting, watching. You’re handicapped. You know it and he knows it. Then you hear that whisper, softly resonating off the scope of a rifle hidden in any one of those heinous patches of green: “This…is the end.” That’s when you start to feel it – the battle-weary fatigue symptomatic of post-traumatic stress syndrome. Thank god it’s just a game. The fail-safe with The End is that you can bypass the fight altogether simply by saving the game mid-battle and setting the system clock ahead a week. The fucker dies of old age and you go on none the better for it. How could such an easy, corner-cutting playthrough make you feel even remotely attached to Snake’s plight? I can’t imagine those who played the game this way felt much enjoyment.

Beating The End on his own terms requires creative problem solving and a certain level of familiarity with your inventory. Compared to the soldiers Snake’s faced up until now, The End’s field of vision and sensitivity to sound is mind-boggling. You have to know how to conceal yourself, pace yourself. More importantly, you have to know how to hunt. A Darwinian play through fosters the necessary technical skill and creativity early and adequately.

He Who Makes a Beast of Himself Gets Rid of the Pain of Being a Man

The lack of Active Sonar — used for detecting nearby wildlife (the compulsory delicacy of our hero, Naked Snake) — forced me to hunt prey with my wits. This goes double for the lack of the Motion Detector — used for outing patrolling soldiers (the cannon fodder for our hero) — forcing me to employ abstract thinking to avoid detection and maintain mission integrity. The Anti-Personnel Sensor only works so well, beeping whenever a solider is within range, but leaving his exact location unknown: could he be from the left, right, dead center or, perhaps, behind? It only takes but so many careless deaths from uninformed decisions before concluding the AP Sensor’s optimal use is best reserved for narrow urban space rather than open forest terrain. For that, the Thermal Goggles prove effective beyond measure: I spot every sentient and insentient being’s heat signature with a thorough thermal scan of the perimeter. This baby even lets me track fresh footprints, should I ever find the need to hunt. I then plot a course in the map and progress to my goal — securing Nikolai Sokolov and assassinating my former mentor, The Boss.

Navigating through the dense jungle requires effective camouflage for blending in with different environmental nuances. Leaf camouflage, for instance, works best in underbrush, while my Tiger Stripe camouflage reads more effective while stalking in dirt and crouching against trees. Trust me; you don’t want to get caught wearing the most obvious camouflage in a foreign jungle when you’re all but totally disavowed by the United States government. A good soldier knows his weapon better than he knows himself. My tactical Mk22 tranquilizer gun is always by my side, with about half the allotted ammo Normal mode allows. The M1911A I find risky, as one botched headshot means all the difference in the world between life and death. But the most important weapon to learn early is, of all items in your weapons depository, not a weapon at all — it’s the Directional Mic. On Normal or Easy mode, the Directional Mic is somewhat of a mystery, and even useless to the player equipped with a Motion Detector and Active Sonar.

The lack of a Motion Detector or Active Sonar to do the scouting work for you means you must acquire certain proficiencies with the visual and audio equipment to effectively proceed through the game. These items are namely the Scope, Thermal Goggles, Night Vision, AP Sensor and Directional Mic. Thermal Goggles are optional, but irreplaceable if found. Laying belly down in the jungle’s tall grass, however, impedes your vision while using the aforementioned visual equipment, but the Directional Mic can orient the player to the general location of the enemy in a way the AP Sensor cannot, as well as tip you off to nearby wildlife. You’ll learn immediately, too, that patience is not only a virtue, but a skill as pronounced as any you’ll learn.

Making Darwin Proud

The amount of familiarity players have with the system controller and videogames (both in general and previous entries in the MGS series) doesn’t matter when playing Snake Eater at a difficulty higher than normal. The player’s previous training is thrown out of the window in favor of adapting to the at-hand concepts Snake Eater presents in terms of item selection and creatively applying problem-solving tactics to spatially diverse set pieces. The absence of two key items, the Motion Detector and Active Sonar, and a drastic shedding of ammo ensure a certain level of competence with the contents of his backpack, both in practice and theory. This is an example of fluid intelligence at work: the ability to adapt on the fly to new stimulus and counteract using the proprietary tools the system allows.

In the beginning of the game, The Boss tells Snake that the technique of a soldier can be taught but the ability to think like a soldier cannot. It seems, however, that it can be trained and improved upon through Darwinian Difficulty, as the necessary mastery of equipment and employment of creative solutions improves the fluid intelligence of the player. It is in these moments of fiendish difficulty where we find out what we’re made of, to adapt or die.