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.
It's definitely got some issues and part of me wonders if it was even enough/necessary, the HD collection is already playable a Resident Evil 2-style reimagining/restructuring could have been amazing
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!
Really glad you enjoyed the review! I appreciate your sentiment too, it feels today like most MGS fans are coming from Phantom Pain, there's nothing wrong with that and it's a great game but I'll always prefer the classic-style MGS games.
David Hayter is one of those few famous people I think I'd say hello to if I saw him on the street, every convention, interview and media appearance I've ever seen him in as had him being an absolute treasure, what a legend.
I've always said I'm a Metal Gear fan but not a Kojima fan. I liked the original Death Stranding but felt it was a deeply flawed game, I might play the sequel someday but not really looking to buy a PS5.
I think that's always been the magic of Metal Gear Solid 3: the first 2 games had outstanding production value and decent gameplay with a strong but sometimes incoherently delivered story; MGS3 knocks the gameplay out of the park, is a lot more coherent on a first playthrough and of course, both now and back 20 years ago, it pushes the tech to the limit.
I've been thinking recently that I should go back to Metal Gear games. I've only played MGS2, so I think I should one day get around to Metal Gear Solid and then MGS3 since I've heard both are the highlights in different ways. With news of the Delta release and how it seems generally positive, I think this might be the version I end up going for.
It's absolutely worth going back and a strength of this trilogy is that they're all quite distinct.
MGS1 is a technical marvel for the PS1, has a really kind of noir atmosphere and the more simplistic gameplay and stealth mechanics give it pick up and play appeal.
MGS2 is of course a wonderful mindbending existential crisis and yet again it looks unreal for its age, improves on the gameplay and you can replay it for a lethal only run.
I've made my love for MGS3 known in this review but it's a great starting point for those inexperienced in the series, it's a shame Peace Walker isn't on PC yet but if you want to play that game after (it's the sequel to 3) you could always get a PSP or hunt it down for PS3/360.
FWIW, I thought the Russian localizations were overall done well. I watch out for these like a hawk in any media, mostly because incorrect/ham-fisted ones really stick out. Russian names in the game sounded natural to me, except for the redundancies that you pointed out, like "пещера, пещера" (ЛОЛ).
I think they did a good job too overall, especially for a Japanese game from 2004 where they usually didn't do English very well, let alone Russian. I think they really picked up on how Russian place names work in the sense that it's usually named after a person or a piece of geography, another area later in the game: Krasnogorje (Красногорье) being another name I thought sounded really authentic.
Ah good point about it being a Japanese game, that makes it even more of a job well done. Красногорье was great, and I also liked Долиноводное, actually, - the addition of the "e" at the end made it sound like one of a hundred stops along a railway line named after tiny villages you won't ever hear about otherwise.
I was already planning on just playing through the Master Collection this year anyway, and while I'm glad it appears Konami didn't completely and spitefully ruin one of the best games ever made, I'm not surprised they tinkered with it unnecessarily and tried too hard to 'improve' a legend. Agree with Campassi that I hope they take the opportunity to add in some of those features and maybe even an option to revert to OG ballistic models, but in the meantime I'm probably not jumping on this version for a while.
I don't blame you, I was expecting this to be the definitive, end-all version of the game but I still see myself returning to the HD Collection in future, especially since MGS2 is right there on the same disc. I'd say it is ultimately worth playing but probably not at full price; if I wasn't writing this blog and had played the game recently (this was my first time in about 5-6 years) then I might not have bought it.
The only big 'overhaul' rerelease I've genuinely appreciated more than I expected was the Demon's Souls remaster, and you know what 99% of the reason was? It cuts the load times by an order of magnitude. If a remake's not making similar gains in the playability department, I'm not going to be sold on better textures and more technologically impressive lighting - especially when those rarely look much better. Although Delta does look very good in general, and the wound persistence is exactly the kind of cool I'd expect from Kojima himself.
The gold standard of remakes for me will always be Resident Evil on the Gamecube: it's the only RE remake that adds more than it removes, even the most hardcore RE fans agree it blows the original out of the water and I play it every single year; I hope the rumours of it getting remade itself aren't true because Capcom keep removing large parts of the games with these, RE3 being the worst example.
My biggest fear is that they make a Metal Gear Solid 6... it just doesn't need to exist. The story is finished, the timeline is entirely filled in and I've always respected them for not milking it (although Metal Gear Survive's vitriolic reception will be part of that.)
I think MGS6 is a sort of inevitability, and will be far too late and far too watered down to make any sort of sense from any perspective outside the boardroom. Every month it doesn't get announced is more of a credit to people with clear heads at Konami doing heroic work convincing the suits that it would be an unavoidable disaster than anything else.
The only way I think it should be done is if they do it MGS5 style but based upon the MSX games and retcon the whole thing, the trouble is, MGS5 is quite popular among Gen Z; I played the others first but for a lot of Gen Z my age, Phantom Pain at age 15 in 2015 was their first exposure to the series, I'm not sure they'd take to non-open world, non-management system laden MGS that well
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.
It's definitely got some issues and part of me wonders if it was even enough/necessary, the HD collection is already playable a Resident Evil 2-style reimagining/restructuring could have been amazing
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!
Really glad you enjoyed the review! I appreciate your sentiment too, it feels today like most MGS fans are coming from Phantom Pain, there's nothing wrong with that and it's a great game but I'll always prefer the classic-style MGS games.
David Hayter is one of those few famous people I think I'd say hello to if I saw him on the street, every convention, interview and media appearance I've ever seen him in as had him being an absolute treasure, what a legend.
I've always said I'm a Metal Gear fan but not a Kojima fan. I liked the original Death Stranding but felt it was a deeply flawed game, I might play the sequel someday but not really looking to buy a PS5.
I think that's always been the magic of Metal Gear Solid 3: the first 2 games had outstanding production value and decent gameplay with a strong but sometimes incoherently delivered story; MGS3 knocks the gameplay out of the park, is a lot more coherent on a first playthrough and of course, both now and back 20 years ago, it pushes the tech to the limit.
I've been thinking recently that I should go back to Metal Gear games. I've only played MGS2, so I think I should one day get around to Metal Gear Solid and then MGS3 since I've heard both are the highlights in different ways. With news of the Delta release and how it seems generally positive, I think this might be the version I end up going for.
Thanks for the review Scanlines!
It's absolutely worth going back and a strength of this trilogy is that they're all quite distinct.
MGS1 is a technical marvel for the PS1, has a really kind of noir atmosphere and the more simplistic gameplay and stealth mechanics give it pick up and play appeal.
MGS2 is of course a wonderful mindbending existential crisis and yet again it looks unreal for its age, improves on the gameplay and you can replay it for a lethal only run.
I've made my love for MGS3 known in this review but it's a great starting point for those inexperienced in the series, it's a shame Peace Walker isn't on PC yet but if you want to play that game after (it's the sequel to 3) you could always get a PSP or hunt it down for PS3/360.
You're welcome!
FWIW, I thought the Russian localizations were overall done well. I watch out for these like a hawk in any media, mostly because incorrect/ham-fisted ones really stick out. Russian names in the game sounded natural to me, except for the redundancies that you pointed out, like "пещера, пещера" (ЛОЛ).
I think they did a good job too overall, especially for a Japanese game from 2004 where they usually didn't do English very well, let alone Russian. I think they really picked up on how Russian place names work in the sense that it's usually named after a person or a piece of geography, another area later in the game: Krasnogorje (Красногорье) being another name I thought sounded really authentic.
Ah good point about it being a Japanese game, that makes it even more of a job well done. Красногорье was great, and I also liked Долиноводное, actually, - the addition of the "e" at the end made it sound like one of a hundred stops along a railway line named after tiny villages you won't ever hear about otherwise.
That puts a new spin on it, I like it a lot more when you put it like that. Wooden cottages and babushkas haha
I was already planning on just playing through the Master Collection this year anyway, and while I'm glad it appears Konami didn't completely and spitefully ruin one of the best games ever made, I'm not surprised they tinkered with it unnecessarily and tried too hard to 'improve' a legend. Agree with Campassi that I hope they take the opportunity to add in some of those features and maybe even an option to revert to OG ballistic models, but in the meantime I'm probably not jumping on this version for a while.
I don't blame you, I was expecting this to be the definitive, end-all version of the game but I still see myself returning to the HD Collection in future, especially since MGS2 is right there on the same disc. I'd say it is ultimately worth playing but probably not at full price; if I wasn't writing this blog and had played the game recently (this was my first time in about 5-6 years) then I might not have bought it.
The only big 'overhaul' rerelease I've genuinely appreciated more than I expected was the Demon's Souls remaster, and you know what 99% of the reason was? It cuts the load times by an order of magnitude. If a remake's not making similar gains in the playability department, I'm not going to be sold on better textures and more technologically impressive lighting - especially when those rarely look much better. Although Delta does look very good in general, and the wound persistence is exactly the kind of cool I'd expect from Kojima himself.
The gold standard of remakes for me will always be Resident Evil on the Gamecube: it's the only RE remake that adds more than it removes, even the most hardcore RE fans agree it blows the original out of the water and I play it every single year; I hope the rumours of it getting remade itself aren't true because Capcom keep removing large parts of the games with these, RE3 being the worst example.
My biggest fear is that they make a Metal Gear Solid 6... it just doesn't need to exist. The story is finished, the timeline is entirely filled in and I've always respected them for not milking it (although Metal Gear Survive's vitriolic reception will be part of that.)
I think MGS6 is a sort of inevitability, and will be far too late and far too watered down to make any sort of sense from any perspective outside the boardroom. Every month it doesn't get announced is more of a credit to people with clear heads at Konami doing heroic work convincing the suits that it would be an unavoidable disaster than anything else.
The only way I think it should be done is if they do it MGS5 style but based upon the MSX games and retcon the whole thing, the trouble is, MGS5 is quite popular among Gen Z; I played the others first but for a lot of Gen Z my age, Phantom Pain at age 15 in 2015 was their first exposure to the series, I'm not sure they'd take to non-open world, non-management system laden MGS that well