METAL GEAR SOLID Δ: SNAKE EATER Review

METAL GEAR SOLID 3: SNAKE EATER is one of my favourite games of all time; it means a lot to me, so the announcement of a remake had me equally thrilled and terrified. I don’t mind the modern trend of remakes being more akin to reimaginings than shot-for-shot recreations, but I couldn’t imagine this working for SNAKE EATER, especially without Hideo Kojima to helm the project. Now that I’ve put a good few hours into METAL GEAR SOLID Δ: SNAKE EATER, the question stands: is it worth your time?

To start with, I want to cover its qualities as a remake; how much of it remains faithful, and how much is new or altered. To put it bluntly, it’s the most faithful remake I think I’ve ever played. SNAKE EATER takes the entirety of METAL GEAR SOLID 3, and puts on a shiny new coat of paint, along with a new control scheme and camera style. The new visuals are fantastic, and they help make the atmosphere feel so deep and rich, and the control scheme is familiar but feels far less clunky than the original. The controls scheme is largely similar, but with the addition of crouch walking and a new over-the-shoulder aim system, which are both pleasant additions.

Even some of the side content has been faithfully recreated, with a few additions. Snake vs Monkey is here, with a little cameo from another mascot, and even the Guy Savage nightmare sequence, which was one of my biggest surprises. Even the Secret Theatre — a series of silly alternative cutscenes — is here, with all the classic scenes, along with some new ones. The Fox Hunt multiplayer mode is one I was unable to play since it isn’t out until later this autumn, but there’s a sufficient amount of additional content here without that. Also, the main game has the classic METAL GEAR SOLID replayability, aiming for unique titles by beating the it under different conditions.

The voice acting and music are unchanged from the original — aside from a new rendition of the main theme, Snake Eater, by Cynthia Harrell, which is damn good — but I don’t mind this. The voice work and score in the original are both incredible, and they don’t feel out of place here. SNAKE EATER is a classic Cold War espionage tale, and the first game in the METAL GEAR chronology. It follows Naked Snake, a member of the US Special Forces unit FOX, who’s sent into the jungles of Russia to rescue the weapons scientist, Sokolov. This goes awry, and then he returns a week later with a new task: rescue Sokolov, find out what the Russians are doing, and defeat The Boss, another US Special Forces agent who defected.

The setup is simple, but it’s a fantastic tale thanks to the characters, writing, and the way the story manages to twist and turn throughout the game’s runtime. All the characters have their trademark charms, from Major Ocelot’s eccentricities and Snake’s drive to complete his mission no matter what, to the Cobra unit’s bizarre personalities and abilities. It manages to balance its tone remarkably well, bouncing from being silly to serious without any tonal whiplash.

Thanks to its use of set pieces, it feels like a classic action movie. Many of these big dramatic sequences are underlined with fantastic music, often tense and booming orchestral tracks, but it manages to take it slow when it needs to.

While the more intense uses of score make themselves known, quiet parts of the game are often accentuated by more introspective and thoughtful pieces. The quality sound design takes strides beyond just its music; the effects are solid, and combined with the visuals, make for a really deep atmosphere. Sounds of nature underpin the majority of your time in the jungle, which juxtaposes the more tense sneaking brilliantly. The peace of nature equally matches the tension, and it’s a fantastic dichotomy.

As much as I love the story, music, and visuals, the gameplay is really where SNAKE EATER blooms into something far greater than the sum of its parts. At face value, it’s a relatively simple stealth game, but its combination of stealth and survival elements, along with attention to detail, which is still rarely seen today, makes for an incredible time.

A core aspect of this title is the camouflage system: Snake can equip these on both his face and body to increase his Camo Index, a stat determining his overall visibility. You’ll regularly be changing these as you explore the jungles and the military facilities, so the quick menu added in this remake is a great addition, minimising the need to delve deep into menus over and over again. You can also earn special camos with unique abilities, typically from defeating bosses in particular ways. It was fun in the original, but here, it simply takes that system and minimises the tedium.

Throughout your excursion, Snake can get hungry and injured, so you’ll need to locate food and medicine, either rations hidden in bases and storage rooms or by hunting animals. It’s imperative to keep your stamina high, else his aim becomes much less stable, and his stomach may make noises, attracting enemies to his position. Different injuries and illnesses need to be handled with a combination of the right medicines and techniques, such as removing bullets that can get lodged within Snake’s body, or taking medicine to cure food poisoning or illnesses from eating old and rotten food. None of these mechanics is inherently complicated or even particularly deep, but it’s a clever combination of factors that help to broaden this game's sandbox in unique ways.

This sandbox idea goes beyond Snake himself. For example, animals have more value than simply just eating; capturing poisonous snakes or spiders alive and throwing them at enemies can kill them, or even just scare them into leaving their post. You can destroy food storage locations and then trick visibly hungry soldiers into eating rotten or poisonous food as a way to dispatch them. You can fool around a lot with the mechanics, and it leads to some deeply satisfying moments of emergent gameplay.

I want to take a very specific aside to shine a light on the boss fights in this game. Primarily, you’ll be facing each member of The Boss’s Cobra Unit, who each have incredibly bizarre abilities. For example, The Pain, who can control hornets to do his bidding, including carrying grenades around, and create armour for himself. It’s one of the least complex fights, but it makes you recontextualise your kit (especially on non-lethal runs) and turns many of these fights into an equal challenge of execution and comprehension.

I don’t want to spoil too many details, but fights against The Fear, The End, and The Sorrow all have really interesting and unique interactions, along with being engaging to do the “intended” way. I especially want to highlight the battle against The End, who still stands as one of my most beloved boss fights in gaming history. The End is a masterful sniper, and the battle against him is a back-and-forth between tracking him and sneaking up on him without being spotted. Once again, it’s mechanically not all too complex, but its execution makes for one of the most engaging and immersive fights I’ve ever experienced.

One of my biggest fears when details began to come out about the remake was the performance. It’s been developed using Unreal Engine 5, and a lot of games that also use UE5 have had some severe performance issues. Despite the game forcing either locked 30 or 60fps (no options for any higher, which is mildly disappointing), it never had any issues during my playthrough. On my rig (Ryzen 5 5600x, 3070Ti 8 GB and 32 GB ram), I had everything on either High or Ultra, with DLSS on Quality, and it felt like an almost perfectly consistent 60fps from start to finish. I will note very minor graphical artefacts, primarily with hair, that I assume is the product of DLSS, but it was incredibly uncommon, and only lasted for a couple of seconds.

As a whole, METAL GEAR SOLID Δ: SNAKE EATER is utterly wonderful. It’s a near-perfectly faithful recreation of the original, with a few welcome quality-of-life changes, and a gorgeous visual overhaul. For those who have played SNAKE EATER before, it’ll be a familiar return to a classic, and for those who haven’t, it’s a fantastic place to start. I know for sure it’ll be my go-to version for replaying SNAKE EATER.