Historically, talking about the plot in a Metal Gear Solid review sounds like a politician after a particularly risky scandal. The very first game takes place in 1995, the second in 1997-99, Metal Gear Solid was set in 2005, MGS 2 takes place between 2007-09, and this remake of the third game is set between 1962 and 1964, with our main character here being playable in less than half the games to this point. As a game, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is perfect, but as art, I think Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is a pure masterpiece.

Set at the height of the Cold War in the mind of a criminally insane perfectionist who very often lacks an editor and watches too many war documentaries. METAL GEAR SOLID Δ: SNAKE EATER faithfully plunges you back into the jungle of Soviet Russia (modern Northern-Pakistan and South Tajikistan), all in search of a scientist who was working on some totally harmless nuclear program for the Russians. What could go wrong? Well, for long-term fans who suck on Kojima’s toes (Geoff Keighley) probably the fact there’s an optional new control system and over-the-shoulder third-person camera. Those new to the series would think it would be all the “old stuff.”

Let me jump ahead of the long-term fans who are worried KONAMI did a Metal Gear Survive and sucked all the soul out of Δ: SNAKE EATER. Things have changed, but it is updated references and modern polish. Your first save with Para-Medic no longer mentions the 50th anniversary of Godzilla, but the 70th in 2024. The biggest and most obvious change is, of course, swapping to Unreal Engine 5 and the graphical uplift, going from 512×448 or murky 720P for the HD Collection sat next to me, to proper HD and UHD with redone everything. Even adding a photo mode.

From the ground up, METAL GEAR SOLID Δ: SNAKE EATER is a full-blown remake of the 2004 title, which, given the state of some remake,s is always tricky for fans to get excited about. When the Shadow of the Colossus remake was announced, I wasn’t too excited, especially as there was talk of changing music. The reason I bring that up, or the XIII, THPS HD, and GTA: The Trilogy remakes at all, is to give context to how immovable I can be and why I’m not screaming about Kojima’s vision being ruined.

As brutal as working in a pediatric cancer ward and mind-bendingly odd as ever, the direction from the original SNAKE EATER is as closely recreated to the last pixel. Albeit now with a bit of DLSS making the shallow focus and shadows on characters occasionally during cutscenes a bit odd, with a bit of artifacting that I complain about a lot with DLSS. Crawling through the jungle, being eaten by leeches, bitten by snakes, attacked by crocodiles, and snapping your arm back into place are all “faithfully” recreated to a modern audience who don’t think Triangle is a great action button or Square to fire.

The modernizations of Δ: SNAKE EATER are there for those of us who don’t want to be screaming swear words at the PC monitor when you fumble with the use item and use weapon buttons. Controller-wise, the biggest change that removes something is the directional buttons previously being used for slow and silent movement. Now they are your weapons, quick radio, quick camouflage, and equipment buttons, with L1 now being a “stalking” button for modern controls. You can play with legacy controls, but unless you’ve been playing only MGS for 15 years, they won’t feel so comfortable to modern minds.

It does feel odd to talk about the plot, given I force everyone to play SNAKE EATER the same way Disney fans force Kingdom Hearts down some people, but broadly speaking, it goes unchanged. It has been a couple of years since my last playthrough, but I want to say there were one or two minor camera placement changes. Perverts that bow to mount Kojima don’t worry, you still look at Eva’s breasts like a teenager seeing their teacher in a push-up bra. It was mostly a reaction shot or two where I asked myself, “Was that in the original?”

Sent in on the Virtuous Mission in the middle of the Cold War, Naked Snake (before he got his eye patch) is assigned by the CIA to track down and extract known weapons expert Dr Nikolai Stepanovich Sokolov. Sokolov previously escaped to the US, but under the shadow of the Cuban Missile Crisis agreement, he was sent back to the USSR because Khrushchev saw him as too valuable. Turns out Sokolov was working on a secret project of a tank, not just any tank, but one with nuclear capabilities. A sort of Metal Gear, if you will.

Unlike the TX-55, the revised D variant, REX, Arsenal Gear 3 – Tottenham Hotspurs 0, and of course the AM-01 or RAY we’ve seen in the series up to this point, the Shagohod is just a big tank. A big tank with screw wheels to drag it along or jet engines to propel it to 300 MPH, as well as nuclear warheads. You know, the type of thing you want the Russians to have. Oh, and Snake’s former mentor has defected to the Russian side to align with Colonel Volgin, who wants to overthrow Khrushchev so he can use the Shagohod and many more to turn the West into a nuclear wasteland.

So nothing too serious, I guess. Just the fate of the world and Western democracy hanging in the balance as you have to face off with surviving in the jungle, fighting your own mentor, all her other “children,” and while you’re at it, you might want to dust up on 50s-60s movies that Kojima likes. Maintained in sometimes tiring detail, the radio dialog is still as painfully filled with tripe as usual, but that’s kind of the charm of Metal Gear Solid games. Your first save talks about Godzilla because you can cut up a Crocodile and wear its skin while whistling a jaunty tune.

The series’ trademark tone that wavers like the general mood on a psych ward is still here, obviously, and maybe it is a little more jarring than usual. The new assets and cleaner HD/UHD look gives certain characters a remake quality about them in the oddest comparison I’m going to make, that being the Final Fantasy 7 Remakes. Get your gravel ready to gargle as you repeat after me, Revolver Ocelot is not only looking young, he’s been given the twink treatment like Cloud and Sephiroth. He looked young before, but without the filter and higher definition, he looks like a baby.

I don’t want to say everyone looks odd because they don’t, there is just a clearer look to everything that, under certain lighting and certain conditions, can look different than you might expect. We all say it and have done for years, but Unreal Engine has an odd thing where wet characters don’t always feel natural, almost plastic, and that’s no different here. Δ: SNAKE EATER has the odd fire effect or rain-soaked character that might seem immersion-breaking, but is still leaps and bounds above the graphical fidelity of the original PS2 release.

Unreal Engine, particularly Unreal 5, has been noted for certain performance issues depending on the system. Because of this, you need to acknowledge that we’re reviewing before there may be a graphics driver to help with performance. This is why I’m not entirely sure I want to say one way or the other on what performance will be on launch, both 48 hours before with the Digital Deluxe pre-orders and on the 28th of August. Yes, I’ve seen performance dips here or there, but I wouldn’t say every one of them was hardware-specific. Again, it is difficult to say without knowledge of driver updates or release patches.

That said, later on in one of my playthroughs, I did see a couple of crashes. Notably, after the river with The Sorrow, then again in the forest on the way to The Boss. For some people and some games in particular, crashes are really common with Unreal Engine 5, but I can’t say I had any for the first 15 hours. With only two crashes in 20 hours. This may vary, depending on the system and, indeed, dependent on updates. Reviewing on an RTX 40 series that’s above the recommended specs and all other specs far exceeding those, the rare performance dips weren’t too much of a lurch.

As a remake, METAL GEAR SOLID Δ: SNAKE EATER is as faithful as a stupid dog; you can pretend to throw that ball a hundred times, and the dog will never change. KONAMI played it safe, and I’m not bemoaning that. What does change is modernizations to keep the game alive in players’ minds for so much longer, be it the graphical uplift, where the original on large 4K TVs looks even more dated than it is, or be it the controls. There is still a little bit of that clunkiness of Snake being knocked down during the Volgin boss fight, getting up, and maneuvering about, sometimes feeling tank-ish.

With studios like Capcom turning Resident Evil from pixelated jump-scare-athons or carving up RE4 like Sweeney Todd, it is refreshing to see and enjoy something that is effectively unfettered in its ground-up remake. Despite the man himself seemingly saying he’s not going to play Δ: SNAKE EATER, presumably joined by the latest gift KONAMI got from Kojima, a middle finger on a plinth, KONAMI even keeps his name as prominent in the title sequence as can be.

Yuji Korekado might be stepping up from doing the original soldier AI to effectively co-heading this remake with long-term series producer Noriaki Okamura, but there is no denying that SNAKE EATER, even in this form, is a Kojima game. Some modern players might sprint through the jungle screaming how old-hat some of the mechanics still are as they hoot like Daffy Duck, raising every alarm and killing thousands of Russians a minute. However, to play like that would be surface-level. Much like the ice cubes in MGS2, there are plenty of systems to play with and explore for hours, even in those early areas.

Ultimately, METAL GEAR SOLID Δ: SNAKE EATER redefines a classic into a modern resolution, with a modern set of controls, a modern camera during gameplay, and doesn’t lose itself one bit. Be it throwing snakes at guards and killing an old man in the kindest (cruelest?) way possible, to the tension and thrill of reloading mid-battle. A masterful remake that leaves well enough alone and lets a masterpiece of a game speak for itself.

A PC review copy of METAL GEAR SOLID Δ: SNAKE EATER was provided by KONAMI for this review.

Phenixx Gaming is everywhere you are. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Also, if you’d like to join the Phenixx Gaming team, check out our recruitment article for details on working with us.

Phenixx Gaming is proud to be a Humble Partner! Purchases made through our affiliate links support our writers and charity!

METAL GEAR SOLID Δ: SNAKE EATER

$69.99 - $79.99

9.5

Score

9.5/10

Pros

• A masterpiece redefined visually into near perfection.
• Modern controls feel smooth without losing too much of the original's intention.
• Updates and modernizations in the smallest of places.

Cons

• The over-the-shoulder camera can feel claustrophobic.
• Minor performance and graphical hiccups, with very few crashes.