Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is, without any doubt, one of the best games in the entire series. It debuted on PlayStation 2 way back in 2004, and since then, it has remained a cult classic title, the subject of many memes, and the target of re-releases and remasters. It features a collection of boss fights, each one as memorable as the other, and all of them unique in their own way. In this list, we’re breaking down all the Metal Gear Solid 3 boss fights, ranking them in order of how awesome they are to behold.
Metal Gear Solid 3 Boss Fights – Our Ranking
It’s mostly subjective, right? For one man’s trash, there’s another man’s treasure – and that’s the same thing with these boss fights. They’re all special in their own way, but some of the Metal Gear Solid 3 boss fights are so iconic that they’ll stick in our minds forever.
9. The Pain
The Pain is the first member of ‘Cobra’ that we get to fight in MGS3: Snake Eater. As such, his fight is relatively plain and easy to overcome, and his abilities are rather weak and not all that impressive. He can control bees – that’s about it.
8. The Shagohod
You wouldn’t think that going up against an enormous, nuclear-capable tank would be a boring boss fight, but that’s just what it is. It’s memorable because you’re fighting something so massive, but it’s an on-rails scene followed by a repetitive mechanism that sees you bring the behemoth to its knees relatively quickly.
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7. The Sorrow
The Sorrow’s battle is one of the cleverest Metal Gear Solid 3 boss fights, as it’s built around how you’ve played the game up until that point. If you’ve killed lots of enemies, your battle here will be ‘longed out’, but if you’re on a no-kill run, it’ll be over quickly. It rewards users with a nice camo suit, but ultimately, this fight is a walking simulator – but a smart one.
6. Ocelot
Ocelot is cool – he’s one of the best Metal Gear Solid characters of all time and a memorable one at that. He and Naked Snake clash three times in Snake Eater, but the most exciting fight with him is his first one, when he is using his dual revolvers across a crevice – it’s the scene from which a few memes surfaced over the years.
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5. The End
Fighting The End can either be an intense slog riddled with jumpscares or it can be the easiest battle in the world. Originally, users could trick the game, setting the time/date on their PlayStation 2 forward by a week once they’ve met The End, and he’d die in-game of old age… Clever, right? Otherwise, players could take part in a thrilling cat-and-mouse sniper battle across several regions of the game.
4. The Fear
The Fear lives up to his name by basically offering up the creepiest Metal Gear Solid 3 boss fight in the game. He’s a strange, fork-tongued man who can dislocate his limbs at will, scramble up trees like a spider, and strike at Naked Snake with a crossbow in relative silence. With his remarkable camouflage, players are left to rely on sounds to track him, and he leaves traps everywhere to trip Snake up.
3. The Fury
The Fury is a phenomenal boss that fights the player in a suffocating battle backed up by an overwhelming flamethrower and a whole lot of anger. He’s not insanely difficult to kill, but he can devastate the player very quickly in the close-knit, phobia-inducing environment in which the fight takes place. At the end of the fight, he basically supernovates and explodes in a brutal, cataclysmic eruption.
2. Colonel Volgin
As the big baddy in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Colonel Volgin makes for a fantastic opponent. There are plenty of secret tricks the player can use to turn the tide of battle, but his abilities alone make his face-off one of the best Metal Gear Solid 3 boss fights in the game. He’s a powerful fighter with electromagnetic and lightning powers, and visually, he’s one of the most impressive bosses in Metal Gear history.
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1. The Boss
If there’s a more emotional boss battle in gaming, I don’t know what it is. At the very end of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Naked Snake must fight his mentor – The Boss. She means a huge amount to Snake, but still, he must do away with her, and that means an intense battle between the master and the apprentice must take place. It doesn’t help that the soundtrack to this fight is incredible and the setting is nothing short of beautiful. It’s such a dramatic battle, it’s absolutely the best Metal Gear Solid 3 boss fight on record.
