Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater

Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is a remake of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, sometimes it feels like a from-the-ground remake but other times it feels like a remaster. Doing a remake of 3 makes a lot of sense in some regards, in terms of the chronology in the series it is the first story that takes place and it is a fan favourite especially considering it followed on from Metal Gear Solid 2, which at the time had very mixed reviews, so this game going more back into the roots of the series definitely hit well.

If you jump into this as your first Metal Gear Solid game, it does at some points assume that you’re familiar with the franchise and it’s story up to that point- considering that at the time this was a prequel that was basically designed to answer the question of ‘how did Big Boss become Big Boss?’. Since this is very faithful, I really won’t be commenting too much on stuff that has been retained, most notably the story which has received no changes and even has the exact same voice lines repurposed for this one. The story is great, I personally don’t think it’s as good as Metal Gear Solid 1’s story, which I think is the best in the series, but as a whole, Metal Gear Solid 3 is very strong in its narratives, especially since at this point the team couldn’t really write a story which didn’t have to be fantastical since they had to meld real world history into the narrative. In this case, it basically acts as a massive epic about the tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War.

This review is mainly going to focus on what is new here: the new gameplay as well as how the game looks and sounds. Considering that the original is very easily accessible thanks to the Metal Gear Solid Collection that was released on modern platforms. 

PROS

• Classic Gameplay

While most of my playthrough was done with the new style of gameplay, I did try the classic gameplay out, and if you want some nostalgia, it plays out well and it will be as you remembered it from before. Much of it has been retained for the new style of gameplay, for example, the medicine system of healing yourself is still the same and hasn’t received much change in that department. 

• Cutscene Quality

I played most of the game in Performance Mode, and I’ll say that I don’t think it’s a massive leap from the PS2 especially since we got those HD remasters to compare it to, but once you get into those cutscenes it becomes apparent where Unreal Engine 5 has been put to good use. In those moments, the game looks fantastic. I will stress however that it isn’t as impressive of a leap as the Silent Hill 2 Remake that came out last year, which I feel is a fair comparison as they’re both remakes of PS2 games that received iconic status and both were announced around the same time and both released on PS2 within a few years of each other. 

MIXED

• New Style of Gameplay

I have my thoughts on the new style of gameplay, I personally think that on some levels it’s better and in other ways, it’s worse. Since we’re not playing from the traditional perspective of a Metal Gear Solid game or a third person perspective of most action games, there is a bigger amount of scope that comes into planning your stealth missions. I think it also makes you appreciate the different forms of camo to make yourself hidden. 

The downside for me is that I think the camera makes it more difficult to spot enemies, and as a result I ended up failing a lot of stealth missions simply because I didn’t have the ability to tell where an enemy was. It hasn’t helped that because there are no new changes in the game that in this mode you don’t have access to a radar or much of a detailed map of where the enemies are, so planning out your stealth isn’t exactly easy to do. 

Still, I would still say that it provides a challenge for returning players and I did enjoy my time since while I do think it makes the general gameplay harder, it actually made the boss fights easier. While a couple of the bosses still retain their difficulty (particularly the later ones) a couple of them were easier- the Fear didn’t take me too long to beat, but I have been told that in Hard Mode he lays out way more traps, and the end was unbelievably easy, I beat him on my first attempt, I didn’t even had to do the old trick where you turn the clock forward and he dies of old age. 

• Use of the Voice Cast

Personally I’m glad on some levels that they didn’t get rid of the old voice cast, but it’s not as if these are new lines that have been recorded. These are iconic performances, and I stand by that the cast are all excellent in their roles, but I do think that there are occasions where it’s very easy to tell that these are voice lines that weren’t meant for this game in particular, and it can be noticeable. There are sometimes where they struggle to get the models to match up with the old voice lines.

• Difficulty

On one hand, I am kind of glad that the difficulty was retained, but if this is your first time playing a Metal Gear Solid game, put it on Easy Mode. This game is hard, and you have to make your difficulty decision at the start of the game, you can’t change it halfway through. 

If there’s one issue I do have, I think that it doesn’t allow players to get a feel for the game and adjust it to their taste, especially considering that the impact of difficulty can’t be felt until partway through, and if you of course want to see it through to the end. Unlike the other Metal Gear Solid games, I would say that there is a lot less drops and items for you to pick up, and of course, that is for you to thematically feel the mission, you are doing jungle warfare. 

There are a couple of items that I felt were unbelievably scarce, which I don’t remember from the original. I didn’t play the HD version from the collection to prepare for the release of this one, so I could be completely wrong, but I swear most of the medicine items dropped a lot more than they do in this version, which can be a big problem when you’re fighting the End and the Fear who can inflict a lot of status conditions onto you. The food items dropped well, since I took part in a lot of hunting to get more food, but there are other aspects too. I swear the enemies are way more sensitive to your actions compared to the original, so I will definitely say that this game is harder than the PS2 original, but of course your opinion on that will vary on your opinion of the original game and how much you want a challenge this time.

CONS

• Historical Footage

While the whole game has received an update and looks quite good in Unreal Engine 5, I would say that I think the historical footage took a hell of a hit. These are the cutscenes that they couldn’t change from the original PS2 game, however their solution wasn’t great. I’m wondering if this had something to do with Konami getting licenses for that footage again, which involved taking the HD versions of 2 and 3 prior to the collections coming out off of storefronts, because the method that they have come to is that they have essentially have put them on the screen but increased the size of the pixels and pushed it way further forwards towards the camera, so several images feel stretched out and you don’t get to see much of the footage. 

It even effects the stuff that they didn’t have to use historical footage for, in the conversation between Linden Johnson and Kruschev, they didn’t use historical footage of either of them, they just used drawings, but it still looks pretty bad I know this is a minor complaint, but I liked how they handled historical footage in the original game and this ay kind of reminded me of the terrible cutscenes in Sonic Colours Ultimate. 

• Performance Issues

This was noted prior to the game coming out by Digital Foundry, but it was something I picked up on myself. I played the game on an original PS5, and judging from what I’ve heard meant that I got the better end of the deal because it apparently has worse performance on the PS5 Pro- you know the console that costs £700? 

I did notice some performance dips from time to time, mainly in areas that has to generate lots of guards. I will stress that while these issues are there, they didn’t ruin my time with the game, and I still think that the game runs pretty well for the most part and it never dipped below 50FPS. I think I noticed on a couple of occasions it had issues running a couple of areas, but I have to note that there were some drops in certain areas and I do have to stress that the fact there are reports of issues on the PS5 Pro means that it does need a patch. I haven’t heard anything about it running badly on Xbox or PC.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is a fine remake, but it’s not one that leaves me as impressed as Silent Hill 2. It’s a good game, don’t get me wrong, but I just think I enjoyed my time with the caveat of ‘this wasn’t as impressive as I hoped’. Most of what you like is intact, and the time looks really good in certain parts, but as a whole, this doesn’t feel like this was a remake from the ground up like with the Silent Hill 2 remake. It just feels like blown up PS2 assets with Unreal Engine 5.

Metal Gear Solid 3 is one of the best games in the series, so if you haven’t played that before, I will say that this is a good version of the game, but I think your appreciation of this will vary if you’ve played the readily available version in the collection. My final thoughts are that as a fan of the series I think it’s worth a purchase, but since the updates are overall mixed and there’s not really anything new, you might want to wait for a sale on this one, but I can stress that the performance issues are the only thing that’s truly egregious.

FINAL SCORE: 7.5/10