Hah, you beat me to it; Hideo Kojima would be proud. Sounds like DARPA needs to start feeding old stealth video games into their robot's training data :)
Hilariously enough, Kojima is enough of a technothriller fabulist that DARPA is explicitly part of that franchise's lore - too bad they didn't live up to his depiction.
Back in the day I beat MGS2 and MGS3 on Extreme. The box shouldn’t be your plan for sneaking past any guards. It’s for situations where you are caught out without any cover and you need to hide. Pop in to it right as they are about to round the corner. Pop out and move on once they are out of sight. The box is a crutch. You can really abuse it in MGS1, but it’s usually easier and faster to just run around the guards.
Your mention of "Extreme" reminded me there's a "European Extreme" difficulty level, I only made it halfway through MGS3 on that (attempting no kills at the same time)
The only strategy that somewhat worked for me was perfect accuracy tranquilizer shots, to knock them out instantly. That's probably the hardest game mode I've ever played.
I also completed MGS3 on euro extreme, and was about an hour from the end of MGS2 on euro extreme (the action sequence right before the MG Ray fight). I was playing the PC port, and let me tell you: aiming the automatic weapons without pressure sensitive buttons is nearly impossible. I gave up eventually and decided that my prior run on Extreme had earned me enough gamer cred. Finishing euro extreme wasn’t worth it.
On the other hand, I loved MGS3 on euro extreme! It really required mastering every trick in the game. Every little advantage you could squeeze into a boss fight was essential. Escape from Groznygrad was hell, though. By far the single hardest part of the game.
after MGS 2 and Death Stranding that's one more point of evidence on the list that Kojima is actually from the future and trying to warn us through the medium of videogames
He's one of the last speculative-fiction aficionados...always looking at current and emerging trends and figuring out some way to weave them into [an often-incoherent] larger story.
I was always pleased but disappointed when things I encountered in the MGS series later manifested in reality...where anything you can dream of will be weaponized and used to wage war.
And silly as it sounds, The Sorrow in MGS3 was such a pain in the ass it actually changed my life. That encounter gave so much gravity to my otherwise-inconsequential acts of wanton murder, I now treat all life as sacred and opt for nonlethal solutions everywhere I can.
(I only learned after I beat both games that MGS5 and Death Stranding implemented similar "you monster" mechanics.)
> That encounter gave so much gravity to my otherwise-inconsequential acts of wanton murder, I now treat all life as sacred and opt for nonlethal solutions everywhere I can.
Hold up just a sec, do you make a living in organized crime or something?
No, I was alluding to my previous Rambo playstyle of gunning down enemy soldiers even when I didn't need to.
But it carries into reality...a spider crosses your desk; most people would kill it. Rats? We poison them, their families and the parent consumer on the food chain. Thieves? Shoot on sight. Annoying CoD player? SWAT them. Murder as a means of problem solving is all so unnecessary.
We all have a body count. Most of us go through life never having to face it.
It's more than that. It changed my outlook in reality too.
The experience forced me consider the implications of taking any life-- whether it be in aggression, self-defense or even for sustenance. Others may try to kill me, but I can do better than responding in kind.
As a result, I refuse to own a gun and reduced my meat consumption. I have a rat infestation but won't deploy poison or traps that will maim them (losing battle, but still working on it). Etc.
