About a third of the way in now, I'd estimate. A few thingS:
I'm enjoying it more now.
1) The levels are more interesting (and less drab. One level is set in a sepia-toned city at night in a trenchcoat as you tail a resistance member. It's almost film noir, and I liked that), and the cut scenes are further between and generally shorter - I've gone for perhaps an hour without one at least once, now. They're still about six times longer than they need to be though, largely because of frequent lengthy, gratuitous pauses in dialogue - apparently sneaking past an entire army and talking to a vital hostage is a great opportunity to sit around relaxing for a minute or two, and not for example demand the information you need and get the hell out of there.
3) Some of the cut scenes, however, are even more ridiculously long than before. Nothing at all happens for about 40% of them - it's people walking slowly around, fiddling with props, failing to answer questions and sighing (you'll hear Snake's all-purpose "hauuwh" sigh/grunt approximately 76 times), and while the plot is so far fairly comprehensible (if you've played the second game through. Good luck if you haven't), it spends far too long telling itself.
2) A note about the graphics: they are very good indeed, particularly the faces, the textures are convincing and don't do badly for movement. The dead eyes are less of a creepy thing than usual.
3) I've fought one boss, and it was mostly non-annoying, although I did get stuck in a deadly stunlock at one point, which annoyed me a lot.
4) There's a section where you're on the run and it's clear you need to get past a particular thing. I attempted to roll by and got hurt. I attempted to blow this thing up, but for some reason my unguided rocket took a 90 degree turn into the sky to avoid hitting it. Evidently it was impassible, because when I got killed (I was under heavy fire and exposed the whole time), the game went ahead to the next cut scene. However, I got killed because I'd used all my medkits up and thought I must have taken a wrong turn, so decided to kill myself to reload. This means that I had to play on with no medkits and no rockets. This pissed me off a great deal. Make a "you will die" situation by totally changing the rules of the game so that one thing is arbitrarily invincible? Fuck you, Kojima. Fuck you.
5) You can get "money" for guns not only by taking enemy guns, but by getting decent stats - few kills (ie: avoiding/knocking out guards), few alerts, that sort of thing. This I like. However:
i) Stats aren't divided by 'chapter', so if you went kill-crazy in the first chapter, but decided to play painstakingly carefully and stealthily in the second, you'll still get shitty stats and no money. So, there's basically no chance at all that I'll get any bonus money for playing 'properly', even though I like playing 'properly', unless I play the whole thing from the start again. Fuck you, Kojima.
ii) "continues" are counted as a stat - more than a certain number and you'll get no bonus. This means that if you're playing for stealthy fun and it all goes pear-shaped, your normal recourse (grenade yourself to death and try again - you can't reload games from the menu without quiting to the titles first) will fuck your stats up anyway. It also means that screwing around with the AI and experimenting with props and weapons will fuck your stats up. Fuck you, Kojima.
6) Stuff about a major character:
ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view! They've turned Crapden, the whining, androgynous twat from MGS2, into a preposterous - even by MGS standards - anime ninja supercliché. There's a bit where he fights in a cut scene an insultingly stupid - even by MGS/anime/videogame standards - fight with a bunch of enemies that starts off being daft and a gets progressively more needlessly ridiculous and somewhat boring for about four full minutes. Examples? Okay, he breakdances with a sword that can cut effortlessly through rocket-resistant armour plating held with his heels. Not even his toes. I'm all for over the top silliness, but it tries to do this and a lot of other stuff seriously, and it just comes off as wearying and embarassing. It doesn't help that Raiden is such a witless cunt that I was hoping he'd get surprise-killed throughout, either.
Non-spoilery summary: Stupid anime clichés, "look at all the cool stuff you everyone else can do in this game!"
7) Snake goes karate-mental against five or six guys! In a cut scene. You wish you could do this, player! Now, back to the three punches you can throw until the next cut scene, peasant.
 When Snake is not making you look bad by being awesome in cut scenes, he is making you look bad by being a tactically inept moron in cutscenes. There are six of them standing in a tight formation, snake! Throw one of the fifty (yep) grenades I picked up and kill them all in... oh, okay, fire uselessly in their general direction and hide, then. They're piling into a helicopter and preparing to take off, but yo uhave the drop on thenm Snake! Quickly, use the silenced sniper rifle to kill the pilot, then throw one of our twenty-eight stun grenades, neutralisi... oh, okay, fire uselessly in their general direction, allowing them to drop a bunch of soldiers and take off, then. This sort of thing happens in all games, but it's still fucking irritating. If Snake hadn't been such an unreliable cretin, this whole series could have been wrapped up two games ago, I reckon.
9) "Hi! I'm the other woman in the game, and this is my open-to-the-navel shirt. What's a bra?*"
10) Snake for some reason always has a pistol out in cut scenes. He points it menacingly at unarmed hostages and forty-foot armoured robots alike. This would be fine - easier on the clearly busy cut scene team, I'm sure - except that when the cut scene is over, you're always equipped with this near-useless gun, and a random gun from your inventory is placed in your backpack, so you have to dick around with the weapon settings to use the gun you had equipped earlier (and take three or four hits while you equip it). Fuck you, Kojima.
11) You can throw empty magazines to distract guards, grab guards from the front and hurl them to the ground in an instant stun (if you get the drop on them), play dead, fire or throw grenades from the floor after you've been knocked over, commando roll into a firing position, then roll back into cover, use people as human shields, grab people and mercillesly slit their throat, etc, etc. It's fun, it really is, and while so far I've been fighting with generic Arabs and generic Central Americans, they all have american voices, making it feel somehow charmingly silly instead of borderline racist. And, as their conflict is ultimately nothing to do with your mission, you really don't care or even know what they're fighting about, so can freely ignore them or take advantage of the rebels as diversions or walking supply dumps. It's quite amusing hearing them thank you for the help after you shell their enemy's gun nest, then a few minutes later you casually beat up one of them because you liked the look of his gun.
12) Air burst shotgun rounds. Finally, a stealth game where I can use a (pretty funky) shotgun but not ruin my game by killing everyone! Stun grenades are good, too, as is the stun knife. As a knife it's pointless - it's too slow from the front, and from behind it's easier to grab them and slit their throats, which is an option regardless of what gun you have equipped - but its secondary function is a taser. Zap! Hee hee! Zap! Hee hee! Maybe it's just me, but I never get tired of it. The weapons and doodads are by and large entertaining and useful.
13) You're not funny, Kojima. You're really, really not funny. Stop it.
14) While we're at it, stop doing that fucking fourth wall breaking shit. The "on the back of the CD" thing from the first game was novel and kind of clever, and I could forgive that it broke the illusion. Once. Doing it twenty times in every fucking game I will not forgive. It does not make you revolutionary and postmodern; it makes you an artless, contemptuous prick.
15) I just had th most irritating chase scene ever. Look how cool the angles and slow motion and explosions are! Never mind that you're being constaly shot at by unseen enemies and even when you have an idea of where they are, the camera changes so often, and turning to aim takes so long that it's nigh on impossible to shoot half of them anyway! Also never mind that that fucking cheating bullshit with the invincible medkit-depleting thing earlier left you with too few medkits to survive this regardless of how many you shoot!
I sense a boss fight coming next. If it's one of those that's designed to be nothing but a test of how much ammunition and health items you can stockpile, I'm going to deduct 45% on principle.
In conclusion: It's a weak 5/10 so far, despite my whinging. Without the cutscenes, it would be closer to 7/10.
*Oh yeah, that reminds me. One of them has her braless tits all over the place, but a few minutes later leaves her bra lying around so you can tail her properly. Is this supposed to be funny? I really can't tell anymore.
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You're weak, dude, plus you already bought everything else. Gotta catch 'em all! Although I should point out that if you are specifically going to go buy a bad game just to get angry with it, well, we already have the Canuck for that.