Our review of Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, developed by Konami (but not by Kojima!). Available August 28, 2025 for PS5 (reviewed), Xbox X/S, and Windows.
WHAT IS IT?
A slavishly devoted remake of PS2 masterpiece Metal Gear Solid 3.
IS IT GOOD?
It’s a near 1:1 remake, though returning fans might struggle to get used to the tweaked controls and visuals.
WHO SHOULD PLAY IT?
Snake eaters, sons of liberty.
STILL IN A DREAM
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is my favourite Metal Gear game, my second-favourite PS2 game, and, for what it’s worth, the PS2 game I have probably replayed more than any other.
I own the PS2 original, the Subsistence re-release, the Master Collection remaster. Also, the CD soundtrack, the t-shirt, the overpriced action figure. The overpriced Funko Pop.
I consider Cynthia Harrell’s “Snake Eater”, sung over the opening credits, the best non-Bond James Bond theme of all time. I consider the performance by Toronto’s own David Hayter, voice of protagonist Naked Snake (and, incidentally, the screenwriter on the first two X-Men movies), one of the all-time great voice acting performances.
Suffice it to say, I am here for Metal Gear Solid.
All that said, a word or two of caution: much like the Final Fantasy VII remake before it – albeit for very different reasons – this game needs to be reviewed for two different audiences: those interested in experiencing Snake Eater for the first time, and those for whom this represents a return.
FOX…DIE…
The week Metal Gear Solid 3 came out, my best friend nearly crashed his car after an all-night playthrough at my house. We’d started right after school, rolling credits just as the sun came up. In hindsight, David probably should have slept over, instead of trying to drive home. At least we beat Snake Eater.
The arrival of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater in 2004 represented a momentous occasion for a certain generation of gamers. Having been weaned on the PlayStation Metal Gear Solid (1997), one of the first truly cinematic games, we’d had our minds collectively blown with the PS2 launch-era MGS2 (2001), only to breathlessly await the arrival of the final entry in the console-spanning trilogy. (A later MGS4 on PS3, followed by a never-to-be-mentioned-again MGSV, don’t detract from creator Hideo Kojima’s view that these first three games represent a self-contained trilogy.)
Happily for my buddy David and others like us, MGS3 delivered on all fronts, beginning with its winking opening, which asks players to name their favourite game in the series, your answer determining some amusing aesthetic choices in the opening moments.
METAL GEAR?!
For the uninitiated, it helps to understand that MGS3 is widely considered the best entry in the “tactical espionage action” genre which this series basically invented. A 1960s-set prequel – its predecessors were set in the “near-future” of the mid- to late-2000s – Snake Eater stars the man codenaked Naked Snake (Hayter), a special agent for the ultra-secret FOX organization of the U.S. government. Players of the preceding PS1/2 games would recognize the face and the voice: Metal Gear Solid and MGS2, both set decades later, featured a hero named Solid Snake, also voiced by Hayter.
As Snake Eater begins, Snake (we eventually learn his first name, as well as his connection to the protagonist of the previous games) has been sent on a search-and-rescue mission to locate a missing Soviet rocket scientist, deep in a Russian jungle. In keeping with a proud video game / James Bond tradition, Snake soon runs afoul of a diabolical Russian colonel and his motley crew of henchmen/sub-bosses, along with several competing factions’ worth of armed soldiers.
Everything about MGS3 is brilliantly designed and implemented, Hideo Kojima and his team at the (now-defunct) Konami Computer Entertainment Japan firing on all cylinders.
The world design is impressive – a series of interconnected maps, seamlessly flowing from dense jungles to serpentine rivers to rickety outposts to, eventually, a series of heavily guarded Soviet bases – as is the diverse gameplay, which offers a surfeit of stealthy techniques to sneak through the world, with both non-lethal and lethal strategies for dealing with enemies who get too close. (In one of the game’s many brilliant touches, one of the boss encounters is predicated on how many characters you’ve killed up to that point in the game.)
MGS3 also tells a fantastic, compelling, if endlessly convoluted story. Like any good Bond film, there are conspiracies upon conspiracies, double/triple/quadruple agents, and ever-shifting loyalties which will have you loving a character one moment, cursing them the next. The relationships – especially that between Snake and his frenemy Ocelot (Josh Keaton) – are fascinating, with nuances and layers of subtlety you wouldn’t necessarily expect in a game which also features a guy who shoots bees out of his mouth.
Speaking of – there are very few games which can match Snake Eater for the sheer inventiveness of its boss encounters. There’s the aforementioned bumblebee man, a terrifying encounter against a flamethrower-wielding cosmonaut (itself a callback to a fabled fight from the first Metal Gear Solid), and a truly riveting sniper duel against a centenarian(!) sniper. There are others which I won’t spoil, other than to say that MGS3 has the lovely ability to veer right when you expect it to veer left, and to seamlessly integrate its combat encounters big and small in ways that flow naturally from the story.
Being a prequel, Snake Eater also has the advantage of not especially demanding your prior knowledge of series lore. Yes, it’s fun to know that young Ocelot will grow up to be the conniving Revolver Ocelot of the other games, but he’s such a well-rounded character here that newbies will appreciate him all the same. Similarly, Snake Eater plants the seeds for a lot of what players would have seen in MGS1/2, but it’s not strictly necessary to have played those games first. (That said, the MGS Master Collection is readily available on most modern systems, so if you’re really interested in this, greatest, of PlayStation series, I highly recommend plowing through MGS (11 hours) and MGS2 (13 hours) before tackling Snake Eater (the longest in the trilogy, at an estimated 16 hours).
TILL WE MEET AGAIN…
Returning Snake Eater players will no doubt be wondering how this from-the-ground-up remake, made without the involvement of series creator Hideo Kojima, who left Konami on bitter terms nearly a decade ago, compares to its predecessor. Setting aside the politics of that split, curious players, not least your resident MGS fanatic, understandably have reason to worry about what a post-Kojima Metal Gear looks like.
As it turns out, a lot like the original Snake Eater.
Like, to a fault.
Never have I played a remake so intently focussed on recapturing the original, moment by moment, frame by frame. It reminds me, in a way, of the infamous Psycho shot-for-shot remake from Gus van Sant, not so much paying homage to Hitchcock as directly copy-pasting his style.
Now, in fairness, this Snake Eater Delta rehash isn’t nearly as distracting and terrible as the Vince Vaughn-starring Psycho 1998, but that’s also because Delta is using the same voicework (with a handful of exceptions, the audio files are lifted directly from the PS2 original), the same direction, the same layout, the same combat, the same cutscenes… you get the picture. Those hoping for Snake Eater Delta to remix or reimagine ideas from the PS2 original will undoubtedly come away disappointed.
Snake Eater Delta does come with some expected quality of life improvements – a more accommodating camera, prettier graphics, touched-up controls – but it’s striking how much this game emulates its predecessor. I’m not sure what I was expecting – deviate too far from the formula, and you wind up with the mess that was FFVII Remake – but it is, frankly, strange to be playing a game that more closely resembles an HD makeover than a full-fledged remake. That was also true for, say, the recentish remake of my all-time favourite video game, but it’s increasingly difficult in 2025 to argue for the replayability of a remake which so closely hews to what came before it.
What changes have been made are worth dwelling on, however. There’s a small handful of easter egg-laden new dialogue sequences, riffing on developments (real world and fictional) since Snake Eater released in 2004. The graphics are better, though characters look different enough from past incarnations that one wonders why Delta didn’t just reuse the much better and more familiar models from the PS5-era MGSV. (And here I was, promising you I wouldn’t mention the disappointment that was MGSV ever again.)
The new Delta controls are, on the whole, worse, though the new camera is better. Annoyingly, you can’t just pair the new camera with the old controls, but with some menu tinkering you can eventually force the game to give you the camera and controls you want. I’d also swear that holdups – the nifty technique where you sneak up behind some, quickdraw a weapon and shake them down for items/intel – are harder to do than before. But maybe I’m just older.
Bizarrely, I have yet to find a quickmap button, though it’s nice that camo – one of the great innovations of the original Snake Eater was the ability to paint your face and change your clothes to blend in with your surroundings – is now quickly swappable without pausing the game.
THAT’S MORE OF A REVOLVER TECHNIQUE
As I said, this is really a game for two audiences: for the returning fan, it represents both a deeply nostalgic but strangely over-faithful endeavour; a great way to experience Snake Eater on a modern HDTV, albeit a Snake Eater which controls worse, with characters who look, confusingly, a bit different.
For the MGS novice, it’s true that Snake Eater will be a lot to take in. If you’ve played Kojima’s recent games – notably, the Death Stranding titles – you’ll be better prepared for the idiosyncratic mix of lengthy cutscenes, deeply complicated plots, goofy humour paired with serious, intelligent storytelling. If you’re new to Kojima entirely – well, just trust us, all those long CODEC conversations and stock footage eventually pay off. And if nothing else, you’ll be sketching Ocelot fan art in no time.
***
Final score: 9/10 cardboard boxes.
Visit the official website for Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater here.
