tapevulture
SuperEffective
My most recent playthrough of MGS3 was much more leisurely than the 3 or 4 times I’d previously gone through it, and it was the best time I’ve had with it yet! On previous playthroughs I would always kind of rush through for some reason—gotta finish the game and move on to the next thing! But if you take your sweet time with these Metal Gears they’ll love you back. :)
Definitely right about that wealth of details: every room in MGS3 (and 2, and 4, but the specifics for those are different) seems to have some little secret buried in it, something to experiment with (wildlife, items, secret passages, enemy behaviors, codec conversations). I called Sigint basically any time I picked up a new piece of equipment, and Para-Medic whenever I found some new food or got hurt in a new way. I saved often to hear all the movie descriptions. Sometimes I’d call Zero just for the heck of it, to see if he’d have something to say about whatever just happened in the story. Lots of extremely missable radio conversations.
If you’re nervous @tapevulture I’d suggest playing on a lower difficulty until you get so comfortable reading enemy behavior you don’t even have to think about it (maybe this isn’t what the problem is, though, don’t want to presume). I get being anxious in stealth games, so I don’t mean to downplay that, but the fact that you can take things so slowly in Metal Gear makes things easier for me, I find. Gives you more time to mess around with stuff.