The Greatest Video Game Ever Made
My review of Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater
Metal Gear Solid 3 is my favourite video game of all time and has been since I was 12.
Throughout my childhood, I wasn’t allowed to play the real thing so instead I replayed the PS2 demo disc over and over again, which contained most of the prologue Virtuous Mission and I would watch my brother play the full game. This all changed in 2012 when the 3DS port released, I happened to be on holiday in Scotland at the time and begged my parents to get it for me… it worked. This game that had achieved almost mythical status to me: this game that I had so desperately wanted to play for so many years was now finally mine… and it was amazing.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve played through MGS3.
When visiting cousins and extended family, it became a communal game where we would crowd around the 3DS and turn random T-shirts and socks and hoodies into camo using the camera and see which one worked the best, later, I got the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection and there was a point around 2013-2014 where I played this game so much that every evening after school, I’d finish the entirety of Snake Eater in one sitting under some new self-imposed challenge. Non-lethal, lethal only, hardest difficulty, easiest difficulty, tuxedo only, CQC-only, everything.
I love this game to death.
Ever since the announcement of Metal Gear Solid Delta, I’ve chopped and changed my mind over and over again, at first, it felt blasphemous for Konami of all people to remake the game, then I was excited by rumours that it would be a Fox-engine reimagining of the original, then indifferent to discover it would be a 1-1 remake… and then excited again once I saw how good it looked! My point is that this game is absolutely sacred to me so the lead-up has been quite tense.
But has this remake turned out well? Let’s find out.
Let The Legend Come Back to Life
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is an almost 1:1 remake of the 2004 original; the voice performances, music, game layout, story, bosses, all of it is the same bar a few differences which we’ll get to later.
Metal Gear Solid 3 opens in 1964 with FOX operative Naked Snake despatched to the fictional Soviet jungles of Tselinoyarsk to extract a gifted scientist named Sokolov from under the noses of the KGB. This so-called ‘Virtuous Mission’ meets a calamitous end when a rival faction of the Soviet intelligence services, the GRU, attack the facility, Snake discovers a deadly new Soviet tank with nuclear capability that could end the Cold War is nearing completion and his mentor: The Boss goes rogue, stealing Sokolov back for the GRU while she snaps Snake’s arm in two and throws him several storeys off a bridge into white-water rapids and leaves him to die; in the chaos, the head of this rebellious faction: Colonel Volgin detonates an American-made nuclear device on Russian soil sparking a new Cold War crisis.
A week later, under threat of execution, with the Soviet Army clamouring for payback and threatening to unseat Khruschev, Snake is inserted back into Tselinoyarsk, still wounded physically and emotionally with an impossible mission: recover Sokolov, destroy the experimental Shagohod nuclear-equipped tank, eliminate Volgin and kill The Boss: his old mentor and her famous Cobra Unit.
The ensuing 10-12 hour campaign sees Naked Snake suffer horrendous physical injuries, struggle through doubts and questions about his mission, himself and the nature of being a soldier, like any Kojima narrative it isn’t afraid to deal with big questions but remains refreshingly coherent compared to previous entries, it twists and turns like a Reticulated Python and by the end this story will probably have you shedding tears or at least staring blankly at the screen with a deep sense of injustice. The reveal of who’s origin story you’ve been playing and the events wherein recontextualised the then already 17 year old franchise forever.
This is the greatest narrative in the history of the medium.
Play this game, for the love of God. If you only take a single recommendation from my many reviews and posts, let it be this one. If you’ve never played MGS3, this is your sign to do so; it’s the first in the Metal Gear timeline so you can safely jump in here with zero prior knowledge.
Of course, no narrative is complete without a memorable cast of characters with strong dialogue and this is one area where Metal Gear Solid 3 shines especially bright; Snake has always been a deconstruction of the Hollywood action-hero: he has Kurt Russell’s looks, Clint Eastwood’s voice and Rambo’s bandanna and yet he relies on the psychological, emotional and technical support of his team of handlers, doesn’t crack one-liners and believes in the immorality of his killing while following the greater good of the mission.
Snake’s commanding officer and senior among the radio handlers: Major Zero is a stereotypically stiff upper-lipped, stoic British SAS officer, he cuts through Snake’s negativity, doubts and whining and refocuses him on his mission.
In-charge of saving Snake’s mission data and monitoring his physical and emotional wellbeing is Para-Medic, an intelligent and plucky lady who’s banter with Snake and geekish love for classic films provides much of the game’s comedic relief.
Also in regular contact is Eva, a double-agent embedded within the enemy’s ranks, she is a tribute to Bond girls and classic femme fatales and her closeness with The Boss, her dedication to the mission despite being a defector and the allure of her cup size fuels a lot of Naked Snake’s internal conflict and when she brings his feelings to the surface, the player is updated on Snake’s emotional state.
Last and to be honest, definitely least we have Sigint. Sigint is the DARPA Chief from MGS1 but decades earlier in his career, his job is to provide Snake with information about enemy equipment and weapons technology, he’s a little bit like Natasha from the first game in the sense that he’s almost entirely optional and I never remember him saying anything that memorable.
These are all character tropes that have been played out earlier in the series but it is the voice talent that elevates these roles to legendary status in MGS3. David Hayter, who’s voice often sounded like Kurt Russell at home in the first two games (and in MGS4 and Peace Walker becomes cartoonishly gravelly) finds a perfect balance with his performance here, being given the freedom to express a wider variety of emotions and tones while also finding a sweet-spot that feels distinctly Snake: Naked, not Plissken. If I had to pick out another star performance it would be Neil Ross as Colonel Volgin. In a game with a centennial, photosynthetic marksman and a spider-man with dislocatable arms, Volgin still manages to be the most intimidating and deranged looking villain of the bunch through his sadistic torture of his own personnel, intimidating appearance and a voice performance that veers from malicious glee to white-hot fury.
Metal Gear Solid 3’s cast is beloved, so it’s been with great scrutiny that the Metal Gear Solid fanbase has been poring over their new faces, especially given Unreal Engine 5’s less than stellar reputation. Having put just under 20 hours into Delta now, I’d say the positives far outweigh the negatives but I do have some complaints.
From the beginning, Ocelot has been a bit of a magnet for criticism with some people saying he’s ‘looksmaxxed’ which is absolutely hilarious, well, it seems botox was a part of his looksmaxxing along with the mewing because he seems to be unable to move his face; this is a problem that The Boss herself suffers from too. They wear the same expressions throughout save for a slight bit of eyebrow mobility. In general, a lot of the cartoonish smiles and exaggerated expressions have been toned down in Delta in favour of a more photorealistic look, some will disapprove of this, others will prefer it but the bottom line is I think this is a point of personal preference so I’m going to put some screenshots below of the new faces and you can decide for yourself whether they are better, worse or inconsequential; I will continue to play versions of this game both old and new going forward so for me? It’s not exactly a deal-breaker.
Back to a more clear-cut complaint, they seem to have toned-down a lot of Volgin’s lightning effects in Delta, no longer do you get the bright blue flashes when he flexes his arms and the blue aura that would radiate from him in certain scenes is a lot more muted as well. I’m not a fan of this.
Age Hasn’t Slowed You Down One Bit
The 2004 original pushed the PlayStation 2 hardware to its limits, to the point where it almost ended up as an early PS3 game instead; MGS3 is easily one of that generation’s best looking games and its heavy use of coloured filters give it a distinct look and played an unfortunate role in ushering in the brown-grey graphics trend of the mid-2000’s. It’s fitting then that Delta: itself likely to be considered a game from the final quarter of the PS5’s life in future, is absolutely gorgeous.
The slithering snakes and hopping frogs of the jungle: all modelled on real species have their elaborate scale patterns and colours rendered in immaculate detail, water shimmers and ripples with every raindrop and reflects light sources in vivid shades, that same rain creates a thin vaporous fog over the environment and turns muddy slopes into boggy slides; I can’t emphasise enough, this is a graphical transformation even more impressive than the one for Oblivion earlier this year, in fact, comparing it to the jump between Resident Evil 2 on the PS1 and the 2019 version seems more fitting.
You’ll notice a lot of something in these images: colour! Listen, I’ve played the original a number of times well into the double-digits and given that Konami made the very respectable choice not to bury the original game by having this remake share its name, I don’t feel we’re in any danger of old MGS3’s aesthetic or style being lost to time, so I opted not to turn on the classic Breaking Bad Mexico-orange and cartoon puke-green filters myself but they’re there in the settings if you want to recreate the original’s appearance more faithfully.
Everyone is rightfully gobsmacked by the graphics at the moment and who can blame them? Still, I’d also like to draw attention to the much-appreciated updates to the game’s animations and user interface.
In classic Snake Eater, the 3-hit CQC combo finished with a really goofy looking kick and there was no animation for Snake turning while crouched, giving him the appearance of a spinning top while you repositioned yourself, this has all been remedied and at least in New-Style gameplay, the smooth look and feel of stance transitions from MGS5 has been carried over; the new CQC animations for countering bosses look incredible too. Furthermore, actions that once had you constantly opening the Survival Viewer menu like swapping camo and using the radio have now been mapped to the D-pad for quick and easy access; not only does this look good but it is easily the greatest quality of life update.
It isn’t all sunshine and rainbows though, Metal Gear Solid Delta so far has had some technical issues on console and while Konami have already fixed a lot of the biggest complaints in the scant few days since early-access players got into the game, I have stumbled upon some problems. Firstly, I don’t know whether this is DLSS (which I’m slowly starting to dislike) Unreal Engine 5 or a quirk of the game but around certain patterns of colour and shadow: particularly anything white with a distinct border, I’m seeing a lot of horrible, crackly looking visual noise, the worst of which is on the X-ray screen but I also have noticed it around puddles and Major Zero’s hair of all places.
Secondly, when I was inside the lab run by a certain person with nice shoes I suddenly began to experience violent frame rate drops: from a crisp 60 down to 30, even 20 at times. The fact that this was happening in a small, indoor environment after perfect performance points to a glitch or technical fault being the culprit, I hope this gets caught and patched because with a 5070 and an i7 12700KF I shouldn’t be seeing even a single frame below 60. I will say, as always on PC you should seek out anecdotes from those who have hardware that matches yours since Intel vs AMD can make a huge difference in how much a game ‘likes’ your PC (Tekken 8: another UE5 game famously has had issues with AMD CPU’s) and my rig is seriously beefy so for all I know, might just be shouldering the burden of poor optimisation without me being aware; I hear these framerate issues are more pronounced on console too, so be sure to research based on your model and platform of choice.
Added in Delta too is this Call of Duty-esque, tinnitus sound plus bloody border around the screen when you get low on health and as always, this is the most annoying thing ever. Luckily though, the other changes to the injury system are fantastic. Snake’s body will now scar and wound accurately, meaning you will carry the evidence of your battles until the credits roll; that tranq dart to the face I showed earlier? That was a bloody scab that I wore for the rest of the game and I came out of the final boss fight into the epilogue cutscenes looking like I’d been eating tomato soup.
The injuries during a certain late-game sequence are more graphic now too with horrendous looking bruises and blood, so I see why the age rating was bumped up; I was also blown away when the bruises to Snake’s face actually turned yellow and faded with time, such an incredible detail.
I mentioned earlier that Delta is an almost 1:1 remake of the original and part of that ‘almost’ comes in with the radio conversations and some cutscenes. Sprinkled throughout are a few extra lines and some new pieces of dialogue, unfortunately bits of it are created by some seriously choppy sentence mixing, it’s crude but doesn’t persist beyond the Virtuous Mission prologue.
From a presentation standpoint? I think Konami did a phenomenal job with Delta but once we wade into the gameplay changes the swamp water becomes a lot more murky.
You Don’t Have What It Takes To Kill Me
The foundations of Metal Gear Solid 3’s gameplay were always stellar.
For those who’ve not played this game before, the stealth system works on a mixture of line of sight and a camouflage gauge. In essence, the camouflage gauge determines how far away an enemy has to be to spot you when you are in their line of sight, generally? At 0% camouflage an enemy will become cautious when they see you in the distance and alerted immediately upon moving closer, at 50%, you likely won’t be spotted from a distance but if you cross into line of sight while moving, they’ll become cautious and go to investigate; at 75% camo or above, you’re virtually invisible unless a guard physically steps on you, or you’re right beside their legs. Guards can also hear you and become suspicious when they encounter evidence of an intruder like wet footprints, damaged equipment and so on.
One of the defining characteristics of Metal Gear Solid gameplay since the beginning has been alert levels and on the back of its upgrades in Metal Gear Solid 2, that game won a Guinness World Record that it retains to this day for being the first stealth game where the AI can communicate with each other. MGS3 follows a similar system: at no alert, the AI is completely unaware of Snake’s presence and follows predictable patrol routes, at ‘Caution’ usually triggered by the AI discovering a corpse or hearing a gunshot, the enemy will radio for reinforcements and sweep the area; if Snake is caught, the guards enter full Alert where you are in full-view and they will actively engage you in combat. The final alert state: Evasion is more of a transitional phase where the AI are converging on your last-known location but you are still out of sight.
This isn’t strictly on the topic of gameplay but I just want to say that the Jungle Caution theme is one of my favourite pieces of music from any video game.
I love this theme. It almost feels as if it’s written from the guards’ perspective. You get the initial chill of stumbling across a body and slowly the procedure and protocol springs into action, meanwhile you have the thematic jungle instruments and that guitar ‘twang’ that’s pure Bond, I love it. It’s stylish and funky but has the undercurrent of an anxious gut feeling: that feeling you’re being stalked from the grass. In-general? Since the story and gameplay were so influential, I find the Metal Gear Solid soundtracks don’t get mentioned a lot besides the vocal themes like Snake Eater or Heavens Divide, which is a damn shame because they are fantastic.
Probably my favourite piece of 8-bit music ever.
The second pillar of Metal Gear Solid 3’s gameplay is the stamina and medical system. Since Metal Gear Solid 2, playing the game entirely non-lethal had become an option but Metal Gear Solid 3 improved on it massively. Both Snake, bosses and guards have a health bar and a stamina bar, attacking with melee, tranquiliser darts or gas depletes the stamina gauge whereas damage dealt with Snake’s knife, standard firearms or grenades deplete health. Metal Gear Solid 3 uses the fact that you and the bosses are essentially playing by the same rules to great advantage; The Fear will get hungry mid fight and hunt for food just like the player, meaning you can throw down something rotten and give him food poisoning, the longer you fight The End non-lethally, the more tuckered out he gets and his position will be given away by his raspy breathing, the amount of creative gameplay this system enables is staggering.
As I alluded to, to restore Snake’s stamina bar you have to hunt for food which can also be caught alive; if you kill a snake, it’s just a meal and eventually goes off but if you capture one alive, it can be thrown at guards to scare them and even kill them if it’s something deadly like the Coral Snake. The stamina and food system is intertwined with the wound mechanic too. During battle, you have a chance to sustain various wounds and some animals and food items can poison or envenomate Snake necessitating medical care; until this is done, your maximum health will be decreased.
I have to say, this is one of my favourite mechanics in any game. I’m someone with over 900 hours in the mil-sim game Arma 3 and a big part of that is the MGS3-inspired medical system included in the (honestly mandatory) ACE mod pack.
Back on topic, you’ll be digging out bullets, applying ointment to burns and popping pills throughout the game with Snake’s stamina bar fuelling the recovery of the life-gauge; the more you’re hurt, the more you need to recover, the more you recover, the less stamina you have and the more you will need to eat.
The third pillar of the gameplay: combat is where I feel Delta has messed around too much and most of the ‘improvements’ have backfired, making this part of the experience (which was already its most-dated) feel irritating and imprecise.
My first issue is that, for whatever reason, they went back into this 21 year old, single-player only game (unless you took the convoluted steps to play online with the PS2) and completely changed the ballistics system. Now, this was likely done for balance reasons as the handguns in the original had near-infinite range meaning you could practically snipe with them on full-stamina and with good enough aim but… who cares? It’s a single-player game, what, were they afraid the AI wouldn’t reprise their roles if the game wasn’t fair on them again? My preferred way to play Snake Eater is non-lethal and since the MK22 Hush Puppy suffers from the worst bullet drop in the game now and seems to lose all effectiveness beyond about 15 metres (16.4 Ft.) all this balancing has done is made my favourite way to play my favourite game ever less fun. Seriously, I can’t stress enough how annoying this is, even the lethal weapons get more bullet drop. It makes certain areas like the wharf outside the warehouse in the swamp way more difficult than it needs to be.
On top of this, the hit/damage detection in general seems to have some issues. The boss fight with The Fury took me forever because despite hitting him square in the body with my tranq. Mosin-Nagant, I was getting the stamina damage I’d expect from hitting him in the limbs and there came a really frustrating moment where I was prone, leaning out from behind a barrel and despite not shooting said barrel (it wasn’t even in my sights) and making sure I was a good bit clear of it, the thing still exploded as I took my shot at a nearby guard, inflicting a burn and bringing every Ivan, Dmitry and Anton straight to my location.
The frustrations don’t stop there, MGS Delta also has a worse camera system than the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection: a now 14 year old version of Metal Gear Solid 3.
The original Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater had 2 versions: the original release which featured MGS2-style fixed camera angles and MGS3 Subsistence which came out a year later and included Metal Gear Online and some bonuses along with the ability to use a more modern, fully 3D camera. In the HD Collection version of MGS3, you could swap between the fixed and 3D camera at the touch of a button, giving the player more options in difficult stealth sections but in Delta? If you’re playing Classic Style, you’re locked to the old camera and controls and New Style is locked to 3D and new controls.
Why? Why give me less options in what’s supposed to be the definitive version of this game? How about I decide what camera and controls I use, not you, Konami? I wanted classic controls with the modern camera: like the HD Collection but as far as I can tell, this isn’t possible.
Last but not least, the movement in this game feels awful.
Moving around this world as Snake feels somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 and I mean that in a negative way. Quite often, you’ll be walking around a pillar or a stack of crates and Snake will glue himself to it using the MGS5-style cover system (itself implemented in a half-assed fashion because you can’t grab guards while using it) at the same time, doing an about turn or getting out of tight spots can feel like parking a bus because Konami have gone the Rockstar route of movement where everything is meticulously animated and modelled, to the extent where it harms the speed and ease of control. There came a point where twice in a row Snake glued himself to the wrong place and got spotted, prompting me to yell “Fucking move then!”
Metal Gear Solid Delta makes quite a lot of small changes that add up to a bigger picture I don’t like. They implement a lot of new ‘improvements’ on top of the original that don’t actually enhance anything.
What Do They Call You Back At Tsentr?
I just want to take a moment to acknowledge that they changed the Russian in Delta and not always for the better.
I’ve mentioned it before but I recently got a big surge in subscribers so in case you’re not familiar with some of my past work or background, Russian is my second language and I like to keep an eye on localisation/translation quality in games where Russian features heavily since I was training for this line of work at a university a few years ago.
In a lot of the area names now, the word ‘лес’ (lyes) has been added, which is the Russian word for forest. This is quite inconsequential but unfortunately, they haven’t changed the English phonetic translations to fit the change; the image above doesn’t say ‘Lazorevo North’ anymore, it says ‘Lazorevo Forest, North.’ Or if they wanted to translate it phonetically as they often do it would be ‘Lazoreviy Forest.’ This also makes ‘Dremuchij Swampland’ incorrect too, now making it ‘Dremuchij Forest, Swampland’ which itself is quite convoluted. My point is that I don’t see why they changed the old names, in my opinion they sounded a bit more natural.
Here is one of the old names that has been ruined in my opinion. Dolinovodno was obviously cobbled together from dolina (valley) and vodno which is an adjective derived from the word for water: voda. Dolinovodno sounds like it could be a real place and this ‘Water Valley’ happens to be an area where a rope bridge crosses white-water rapids. It’s a great name. But they changed it in Delta and added an ‘e’ to make the name Dolinovodnoye, which is closer to ‘Water-y Valley’ and it just doesn’t sound great compared to the original.
There are also names that just look and sound awkward as well. Chyornaya Peschera means ‘Black Cave’ in English, so this place is literally called ‘Black Cave, Cave.’
Still In A Dream
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is a much better looking but worse playing version of the greatest video game ever made.
If you’ve never played Metal Gear Solid 3 (or really, any Metal Gear Solid) before then this beautifully remade entry of the first game in the Metal Gear timeline should be your entry point into the series, from here you could move on to the sequel: Peace Walker and then Metal Gear Solid 5 or play the rest of the series chronologically which will enhance your appreciation of this third entry.
If, like me, you’re a seasoned Metal Gear fan with many playthroughs under your belt then I’d recommend waiting for a sale before you dive in to Delta. It looks beautiful, you may prefer some of the changes and it’s another excuse to play a classic again but let’s face it: £70 isn’t cheap and it’s a stacked calendar, maybe too stacked to buy a £70 PS2 game again.
There’s a lot of talk about the franchise continuing with more remakes or perhaps even a Metal Gear Solid 6, whatever happens next, expect more Metal Gear Solid reviews in future and let’s hope the MSX games can be reimagined for 3D, playing that original Metal Gear is a miserable experience today.
Thank you very much for reading my review of Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, if you enjoyed the article and want more retro articles and contemporary reviews in your inbox every Wednesday and Saturday, please Subscribe to Scanlines’ Journal and as always, I really appreciate your likes and am happy to chat in the comments below.
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I confess that I didn't resist and bought the physical copy. It arrived this morning, and I was itching to put it on my PS5 and give it a go.
At the same time, I got an invite to participate in the Marvel Tokon beta. I was strongly considering skipping the beta to play MGS since I'm a big fan of the original, but after reading your review, I think I'll stick with Tokon for the weekend.
Shame, this one could have been special. Here's hoping that Konami fix some of those issues in a future update. If they done it with the Master Collection a year later, they can do it with Delta as well.
I'm glad an original MGS fan is reviewing the latest MGS. And I'm glad that they've been able to retain a lot of the quality of story and mechanisms that made the first 2 so beloved. I have not played mgs3 yet, as I am now drawn to Death Stranding, which I am itching to play. David Hayter was a gem, still is and there's so much magic about the original first 2 that I'm glad it's lived up to its name. I'm a notorious story-player - I play for story but was amazed by the technical brilliance of the game. It's fabulous. Glad to see someone write it up!