Awesome / Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is one of, if not the single most beloved game in the entire Metal Gear franchise, in part due to how awesome many gameplay sequences, action setpieces, and plot twists there are throughout the game.

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• At the very beginning, the man who would become Big Boss is told to douse out his smoke by an irate Zero, Jack flicks his cigar away after a wry smirk, before suiting up to para-jump out of FOX's Combat Talon above the forests of Russia. That was awesome in itself. But during the epic build-up to the actual HALO drop, he takes a single step towards the open hatch, extinguishing the cigar under his heel as it slides back along the floor due to the wind. Possible? Probably not. Awesome? You bet.
  • The first proper High Altitude Low Orbit jump is certainly a moment of awesome, especially with Jack's free-rolling skydiving acrobatics.
  • Anytime you see the usually grim or eccentric Snake's smile of badassery is a rare sight, but undeniably awesome whenever it crops up.
  • When Naked Snake takes down Ocelot and his four man, heavily armed GRU Spetsnaz squad by utilizing human shields with his CQC knife, one tranquilizer round, a pistol whip and an epic clothesline hip throw. He also displays some of his mentor's incredible foresight and combat instincts by knowing, (from his awesome smirk after said incident), that the young Major would stove-pipe his Makarov by utilizing an 'Israeli-Draw' too often.
  Ocelot: (His men lie insensate and he has just been disarmed and brought down to the mat. Twice.) Impossible...
  • Another for Jack, for the fact that he does take the most important of the Boss's three tenets to heart: mind, body/spirit and technique. Although outmatched by his teacher and her Sons, Naked Snake can defeat them primarily through trickery and inventiveness. Capturing the Pain's hornets in a nest, weakening the Fear by tricking him into his own traps or eating deadly Fly Agaric mushrooms, tracking down the End and holding him up, or subduing his spotter and rupturing the Fury's space suit with the humble but dead useful survival knife. He also grows stronger from all the injuries heaped upon him throughout the game, shot, burnt, lacerated, impaled, poisoned, bones fractured, beaten to within an inch of his life and then having a near-death experience by almost drowning. Big Boss doesn't give up despite all this hellish punishment and is forged into the Legendary Soldier through pure force of will.
• Just before Snake's first awesome CQC showcase, Ocelot quick draw kills five AK-wielding KGB soldiers of the Ninth Directorate in the same time it takes Snake to shove Sokolov down and out of the cross-fire.
  • The last soldier is, quite understandably, too scared to fight Ocelot directly after witnessing this, even with his elevated position on the roof of the factory. So the nineteen year old prodigy pulls off the first seen in-series ricochet shot off two old rusty girders that nearly dispatches the cowering Russkie with a bullet straight to the chest. But it's the subsequent fall that kills him.
• The gunslinger's half minute long demonstration of revolver spinning and fancy tricks.
  • How about him killing a swarm of Baltic Hornets by spinning those freakin' Colts?!
• Snake and Ocelot aren't the only two with awesome moments under their belts, every time The Boss appears is a Crowning Moment of Awesome for her, each one successively topping the previous.
  • For instance, while in MGS4, Big Boss prevents Snake from firing his Springfield Operator pistol at close range during the final graveyard scene, in MGS3 when The Boss and the future Big Boss (then Naked Snake) have their first confrontation on the Dolinovodno rope-bridge, during her weapon grab lunge she actually disassembles his modified Smith & Wesson 39, separating the release lever with one hand while flooring him with the other, and only after he re-sights it does he realize that she left him only the lower frame plus the grip and took the barrel, slide, firing pin and every other important internal component with her save the magazine. She then tosses the parts into his lap while he sits on his ass like a chastened toddler.
  • We learn where Big Boss got his power sprinting abilities prevalent in Ground Zeroes and the Phantom Pain, from when the Boss shows she is quite able to cross an entire clearing, (a gap of about seven meters wide), within a single second when Jack pulls a bead on her, she then CQC tackles him to the ground, destroying his first Colt M1911. And when the recently hospitalized Jack tries to attack her with his knife again, she trounces him soundly, two times in succession.
  • The Boss destroying the drone with her Patriot. Look at those bullets tumble! She then reveals that Jack has enough endurance training to run flat out for at least sixty miles, when she tells him to make for the border and abandon his mission.
  • Solving Ocelot's Russian Roulette juggling with impeccable finesse.
  The Boss: There's no such thing as luck on the battlefield.
  • An outstanding example of how much respect she commands, is when the gigantic sadist Colonel Volgin questions her loyalty, all it takes is her walking towards him mildly and questioning whether he distrusts her to have him reel back in fear and instantly deny such an accusation. That's right, folks; a Physical God of Thunder who can punch through steel and wipe out battalions with a wave of his hand is terrified of this warrior half his size, who is all but the epitome of Badass Normal if not for her nigh supernatural mastery of the martial arts. A true Lady of War if there ever was one.
  • Just some of her spine chilling speeches to her apprentice at Rokovoj Bereg, the music, the voice-acting and the visuals combine to create a truly breath-taking atmosphere.
  The Boss: The foibles of politics and the march of time can turn friends into enemies just as easily as the wind changes. Ridiculous isn't it? Yesterday's ally becomes today's opposition, and this Cold War... Think back, when I was leading the Cobras, America and Russia were fighting together. Now, consider whether America and Russia will still be enemies in the 21st Century. Somehow I doubt it. Enemies change along with the times, the flow of the ages and we soldiers are forced to play along. I didn't raise you and shape you into the man you are today just so we could face each other in battle. A soldier's skills aren't meant to be used to hurt friends. So then what is an enemy? Is there such a thing as an absolute timeless enemy? There is no such thing and never has been. And the reason is that our enemies are human beings like us. They can only be our enemies in relative terms. The world must be made whole again... The Philosophers must be reunited. I shall devote my skills to that purpose.
  • What's even more impressive than all of the above is that The Boss achieves her single greatest crowning moment of awesome posthumously, as the catalyst for the rest of the entire series.
• The battle against The End is a Crowning Moment of Awesome for the series in general. The first time you play against him, it could take hours of the two of you stalking each other through the jungle before you manage to win. Even after getting the hang of it, you'll spend half an hour, easy, hunting him, but it's never boring; it's a tense two-way hunt.
  • The series' use of Emergent Gameplay in aspects such as these boss battles leads to situations where, for example, you experience great frustration as The End bests you over and over, and in the final attempt you're almost beaten once again but you manage to whittle down his health or stamina. You're over an hour in, and you really do not want to lose yet again. Finally you track each other down once more, and in what feels like a Showdown at High Noon, you just barely manage to draw the MK22 before he sights you with his sniper rifle and triple tap him (the maximum amount of hits before a boss can invoke Mercy Invincibility and temporarily retreat) and finally put him down. Especially considering the hand cramp which can occur during this fight on handheld consoles, it is so very cathartic to finish him this way.
  • Or, you can just get a time-limited shot on him with a lethal sniper rifle when he's about to be wheeled away during his earlier cameo, comically requiring you to dodge an airborne wheel due to the resulting microbomb explosion and resulting in another opportunity to take on the Ocelot Unit in his absence at his boss arena location, in itself a welcome chance for more awesome given their Elite Mook status.
• Despite being a straight male, Big Boss's arguable CMOA was the Ho Yay Bromance between him and young Ocelot. He was so badass that Even the Guys Want Him. (Not coincidentally, when he left the Patriots, both EVA/Big Mama and Ocelot sided with him.)
  • Then again, that latter was almost certainly an allusion to the abject difference between those who coordinate military actions from a comparative emotional distance and those who actually fight in the field. No matter how much Sigint and Paramedic liked Snake/Big Boss, it wasn't the same as what the other two went through with him.
• The ladder scene. Not only is this an awesome moment for Snake, but for the player for lasting as long as they have and triumphantly climbing a ridiculously long ladder to the surface while Snake Eater plays quietly in the background.
• This exchange.
  Volgin: How could the legendary Cobras be beaten so easily?!
  Ocelot: (shakes head in wonder) He's good...
  Volgin: Fallen for him?
  Ocelot: (doesn't deny it)
• Snake surviving and not giving in under Volgin's frankly appalling torture. The sadist doesn't really care if he lives or dies and tries his utmost to char-fry Jack where he hangs but the once and future legendary soldier refuses point-blank to give in.
  The Boss: It's no use. He's not going to talk. He's been trained not to break. Trained by me.
  Volgin: (snarls and goes to town on poor Snake)
• Jack choosing to fight Volgin unarmed, even when given his gun and knife back by Ocelot, prompting the enraged GRU Colonel's immortal utterance: "YOU'RE MINE! SON OF THE BOSS!"
• The entire fortress escape. You ride in the sidecar on EVA's BMW motorcycle, gunning down countless soldiers (and pursuing bikers), all while Colonel Volgin chases you relentlessly in the Shagohod. And the boss battle against it that follows. It's a Crowning Moment for just about everyone involved.
  • Anything to do with EVA's bike is a crowning moment of awesome, particularly when she Wushu-flipped off a ledge onto said bike and then proceeded to drive it up young Ocelot's face and back-flip punt his balls with the tailgate so hard that he flies through the air, then she grabs his falling combat knife without even looking as it spins down from the sky due to its painfully disarmed owner. (And yes, Ocelot did end up with a muddy tire track on his face for the rest of the scene.)
• Ocelot gets yet another moment of awesome when he chases after Snake and Eva on his own motorcycle, doing a ramp jump over a barricade, using his freakin' spurs to drift around a sharp bend, trying to clobber the two with his skeleton stock while keeping control of his bike and maintaining his balance when Volgin deliberately ignites the Shagohod's rocket boosters in his face while he's right behind them. Then his VA, Josh Keaton, utterly nails the scene by screaming: "SON OF A - BITCH!!" With such vehemence that the final word of the line was used again in the Secret Theater.
• MGS3 was chock-full of intuitive and imaginative boss fights, but the fight against the Boss is the only one that makes you and your opponent feel equal in terms of skill and combat style. Did you have fun using CQC to insta-KO countless mooks? What about using the perfect camo to silently and invisibly give The Sorrow another spirit to talk to? Well, now you're going up against the very woman who taught you those skills in the first place. Have fun.
• At a certain point in the final fight against The Boss, "Snake Eater" begins playing, leaving the player in a momentous and epic confrontation set to a massive, zealously fun shout-out to stereotypical Cold War spy films.
• All of Ocelot's 'finger-gun, mano-e-mano, right at you bro! gestures.' Admit it. You pulled them off to other fans of the game, didn't you?
• Everything about the final duel between Snake and Ocelot aboard the WIG.
• From a game design standpoint; the final battle at the very end of the game. Ocelot. Russian Roulette. Two guns. One bullet. Didn't see that coming, did ya?
  • Bonus points if you 'win' the fight.
  Adamska: Till we meet again! ... John.
  • Another one if you do not pull the trigger even though you know you had the bullet... Even Ocelot is baffled. For one brief moment, Snake reached The Boss' level of awesomeness.
  • Also, bear in mind this is the only time in the entire franchise we hear Ocelot's real name. Since the series is about the dehumanizing aspect of war, it feels like a call to arms. "You're not a snake, and I'm not an ocelot. We're men. With names."
• Definitive proof for all of this awesomeness, how about the hidden R1 prompt when the newly dubbed Big Boss has just saluted to President Johnson and he offers his hand... That's right, a little to the left. Mind. Blown.
• Hold down the trigger on the M-63 for a second or so and Snake will start screaming like John Rambo at the end of First Blood part II.
• While it's also an affirmation that their relationship can't ever happen, the revelation at the very end that Naked Snake, just prior to becoming Big Boss once and for all, pulled a fast one on EVA by swapping the microfilm of the Philosopher's Legacy that she had intended to steal from the very start, using the fake The Boss and Ocelot supplied. Some have interpreted it to mean that he even realized she was a Chinese spy from the beginning, from the Mauser broomhandle to Ocelot, real name Adamska, never being too far behind. Despite the world assuming him an Unwitting Pawn of everyone's machinations, in the end Big Boss came out on top to finish his mission.