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When Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater first came out on the PlayStation 2, I was rather disappointed. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty was all sleek, high-tech stuff and weapons and then we’re suddenly thrown back to the 1960s, running around in the dirt and messing with old guns…just like in Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater.
My opinion of the original’s not changed much since then. Though I grew to appreciate Naked Snake and The Boss (and even EVA), the locale and theme still struck out with me because they’re so different from Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2.
It’s a bit different for Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater because while the theme might not really resonate, there’s still nostalgia with the game.
What is Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater?
Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater is a third-person stealth-based shooter. It is a remake of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, completely redone in Unreal Engine 5. The game was developed by KONAMI (with Virtuos supporting) and published by KONAMI as well.
It is available right now on the PC, as well as the PlayStation and Xbox consoles.
Our review copy was provided by the kind folks at KONAMI! Thanks so much!
Since Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater is a PC game, I reviewed it on our trio of gaming hardware setups, as usual.
Here are the specs in case you’re wondering:
Desktop 1 –
– MSI B550M Mortar WIFI
– AMD Ryzen 9 5900X with NZXT Kraken X73 RGB Liquid Cooler
– MSI GeForce RTX 4090 Suprim X 24G
– Teamgroup T-Force Dark Z 64GB DDR4 RAM
– Samsung 980 PRO 2TB SSD
– NZXT C1200 Gold ATX 3.1
– Lian Li LANCOOL III RGB case
Desktop 2 –
– MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi
– AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D with Cooler Master MasterLiquid 360L Core ARGB cooler
– Sapphire Pulse AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX 24GB
– G.SKILL Trident Z5 NEO 32GB DDR5-6400 RAM
– Samsung 990 PRO 2TB SSD
– Corsair RM850x PSU
– Lian Li LANCOOL 207 Digital
Notebook –
MSI Raider GE78 HX 14V
– Intel Core i9 14900HX
– NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090
– 32GB DDR5 RAM
– 1TB SSD
The majority of the hardware above has been kindly sponsored by MSI (Desktop 1 and the MSI Raider GE78 HX 14V) and AMD (Desktop 2), and we’d like to take this opportunity to thank them for their support!
Unless you’re a Metal Gear Solid fan, you’d be wondering why KONAMI decided to remake the third game in the Metal Gear Solid series. Why not the first game in the line (Metal Gear Solid) or even the first game in the whole series (Metal Gear)?
Let me tell you the reason, young grasshopper.
It’s because Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater (or rather Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater) is canonically the first game in the whole franchise. This is the ground floor to everything else. This is where the legend of Big Boss begins.
In that light, it’s not really that much of a surprise to guess why KONAMI remade this game first.
After all, before you know Big Boss, wouldn’t you want to know his history? What made him into the greatest soldier that ever lived? A fighter so legendary that three different clones (that we know of) of him were made?
You’ll find that out (and more) in Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater. In fact, the game establishes more than Big Boss’ history. It also lays the foundation of the world to come – the formation of FOX, Big Boss’ disillusionment, Major Zero’s rise to power and of course, the Philosophers and the Patriots.
KONAMI has left pretty much everything intact when it comes to the plot.
No revisions, no backtracks from the original, despite the touchy subject of Hideo Kojima and his history with the company. This is pretty much the story of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, just redone with much fancier visuals.
To be fair, the plot was already decent enough back in the day.
Though a tad heavy-handed at times, it’s still one of the most emotional titles in the series. The themes of patriotism and sacrifice practically drip with every scene that has The Boss in it, with Colonel Volgin embodying all the aspects that Americans feared about Communism.
It’s a heady mix of fiction and non-fictional elements (like the other games in the series) that makes for a rollicking good time, especially when all hell breaks loose at the end.
That, and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater has one of the best endings (if not the best) in the series.
Like the plot, KONAMI also has left the core gameplay mostly intact.
Here though, they’ve done some overhauls, mostly optional. For starters, there are two new control schemes now – Legacy and New Style. Legacy has the game controlling like the original (boo!) and New Style makes improvements to the controls and camera.
I wholeheartedly advise you to pick New Style.
It makes movement and camera controls more in line with modern games. They’ve even added in the ability to crouch-walk, which was left out of the original game (and the HD remaster) and only available in the 3DS version.
Honestly, that was a monumentally smart move.
The controls in the original were a real pain in the ass. Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence improved on that somewhat with the third-person camera, but it’s not until KONAMI had the crouch-walk added in the 3DS version that everything came together.
KONAMI’s also added in a shortcut for camo switching.
Simply press the Up button on the D-pad and the game shows you a curated pick of camo, along with how much each camo adds to the camo index.
It’s too bad they didn’t do a similar thing for food too, because you’ll still need to be pausing and opening the menu to do so.
Another new addition is a closer camera for New Style.
While it’s much closer to the action, it can sometimes get too close in small areas. I wish it was adjustable because it works great outdoors but then is crap when you get indoors because it’s too close.
Speaking of cameras, you can now trigger a third-person camera when you’re crawling in tall grass. It’s still too close to the action just like the regular camera style but it has the benefit of a wider FOV than the first person view so you can see more of your surroundings.
Snake’s targeting reticle’s also gotten a bullet drop indicator but since there’s no rangefinder, it’s still guesswork to determine how much bullet drop you have to compensate for. I found myself going by feel alone (which usually works), instead of using the notches to help aim so this addition (while cool looking) isn’t that much of a deal.
One of the more substantial additions are the new outfits Snake has access to.
The Sneaking DLC Pack (which comes with the Digital Deluxe Edition) suits to be precise. It comes with the sneaking and battle suits from Peace Walker. Both are great, but the sneaking suit has the definite edge. It silences your footsteps, which makes getting into range of guards incredibly easy!
Snake’s body also bears the marks dirt and grime and of the injuries you received throughout the game. Supposedly, they’re all unique to each player, as Snake will get bruised and injured on the locations you get hit. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but I did notice Snake’s gear getting dirty in real time, which is really cool.
However, KONAMI has left certain archaic gameplay elements from the original intact.
That’s a puzzling decision.
One of them is the alert status mechanic.
Why not have the guards adopt the Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain alert style? In that game, you have a slim window between getting spotted and an alarm being raised to take out the guard that saw you. If you can react fast enough and take out that guard, no alarm.
Here, it’s an immediate alert as soon as you’re in their line of sight. It makes trying to get FOXHOUND rank on Extreme much more difficult than it has to be!
No warning, no chance to stave it off. It’s a frustrating mechanic, cheap and too unforgiving. The series has evolved past that, and seeing it back again for Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater is disappointing.
It’s also very disappointing that while the visuals have gotten a makeover, the video packages that accompany some of the cutscenes didn’t.
The footage used for them is blurry as hell, making it as if you’re looking at them through a lens smeared with Vaseline. They were fine back in the day when Metal Gear Solid 3 outputted at 480p on the PlayStation 2, but not now.
Thankfully that’s the biggest issue with the visuals. Most of the game is silky smooth on our gaming rigs, apart from some sections like Graniny Gorki. There are noticeable FPS drops and stuttering there on all of our rigs, leading me to believe this is an engine issue.
There’s also noticeable slowdown in the Snake vs Monkey mode. It’s definitely due to the number of monkeys in the stage, because performance gets noticeably better as you capture them and remove them from the stage.
The Bottom Line.
Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater is an insanely faithful remake. That’s great because Metal Gear Solid 3 needed no fixing. It is a classic game for a reason. It doesn’t need its plot changed, just updated visuals and quality of life fixes.
That’s what Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater brings to the table. Its new additions make an already great game, into a massively better one. Its improved visuals brings new life to familiar locales. It is, by all definition, an incredible remake.
It is, however, not a perfect one.
The game’s visuals, while incredible, taxes even the most hardcore of systems. We’re running the game on rigs with a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090, a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 (mobile) and an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX and there’s still slowdown in certain sections of the game.
There are also issues with the low resolution visuals from some of the videos and illustrations used in the cutscenes. On a 4K display, they’re a blurry mess. At the very least, AI upscaling should’ve been done to try to improve the quality of these.
Knowing all these issues exist, there’s still no reason to skip out on getting the game. It is tremendously good, even more so now than in the past. It’s packed with content, great gameplay and a great story. I really hope that Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater is just the first step in reviving the franchise and that we’ll soon get remakes of all the other games in the series, if not completely new instalments!
TLDR:
A remake done right, Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater is better than the original!
The Good:
- Incredible visuals.
- Faithful to the original.
- Great quality of life additions.
The Bad:
- Video quality for some cutscene footage blurry and low resolution.
- Technical issues with Unreal Engine 5.
- New version of Snake Eater theme isn’t as good as the original.
- Alert mechanics cheap and unfair.
Salehuddin Husin, EIC
Sal's been in the industry since the early 2000s. He's written for a ton of gaming and tech publications including Playworks, Hardwarezone, HWM and GameAxis. Recently, Sal served as a juror for the Indie Game Awards at Taipei Game Show 2020. A geek and hardcore gamer, Sal will play everything, on any platform.
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