WHAT IS IT?

A (surprisingly violent!) stealth/horror title with a wonderful Burtonesque aesthetic.

IS IT GOOD?

It’s entertaining in its own morbid way.

WHO SHOULD PLAY IT?

Wednesday Addams.

THE HILLS ARE SILENT

Tarsier Studio’s macabre Reanimal, its first new horror title since the well-received pair of Little Nightmares of 2017/2021, is an engaging, well-told, if fairly disturbing adventure, where the emphasis is less on the truly frightening and more on maintaining a generally eerie vibe. As such, it’s not as scary as fans might hope, though it definitely has its standout moments, even as its story is interesting enough to pursue on its own.

THE EVIL IS RESIDENT

From its opening, contextless sequence – a stormy rescue at sea – Reanimal takes off and rarely lets up.

Following the trials and tribulations of a pair of animal mask-wearing siblings as they seek to escape the clutches of a horrifying assortment of adult-coded foes, Reanimal offers a solid core of stealth gameplay, in service of a series of disturbing setpieces overflowing with dark shadows, slithering monstrosities, and quite a lot of blood and guts. The fact that these are children we’re playing as makes it all the more distressing.

Moment to moment, Reanimal plays a lot like a horror-inflected version of Ico, that classic of PS2 immersive adventuring. Whether playing in two-player co-op or solo (we honestly preferred solo, it contributed to the oppressive vibe), expect to spend a lot of time exploring expertly rendered environments – a coastal castle, a tumbledown cinema, a flooded city – in pursuit of doohickeys to unlock the next obstacle in your way, all while being stalked by a myriad of Burtonesque foes.

Although the aesthetic remains fairly consistent – grim, grey – throughout, this set-up does allow for quite a bit of diversity in terms of what you’re exposed to, each new area an opportunity for another new set-piece. One minute, you’ll be dropped into an extended homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s classic The Birds, while in another you might be easing your rickety motorboat through a flooded building while underwater monsters bear down on you. It’s good stuff.

THE FRAME, FATAL

While technically a spiritual sequel to Little Nightmares, Reanimal perhaps has more in common with the horrifying creations of Playdead, the brains behind the critically-acclaimed Limbo and Inside. Like those games (and, to be fair, like Little Nightmares before it), Reanimal embraces an approach which might best be described as “horrifying stuff, plus kids!”

This both lends it a certain sense of urgency – you worry more for these oddball kids than you would for, say, a lonely explorer traipsing through an abandoned space station – but it also occasionally allows for Reanimal to veer into the unpleasant. Frankly, it feels borderline wrong to see these kids subjected to certain of these environments, these visuals. The fact they’re merely avatars for you, the player, makes it tolerable, but there’s an unshakeable “ick” factor, not present even in the previous Little Nightmareses, which were decidedly more tame.

Another fair comparator might be BioShock, in which you could – with a merciful fade to black – “harvest” the spirits of that game’s mutant Little Sisters, which at the time represented a rare dalliance with a relatively untouchable aspect of interactive storytelling. Reanimal, in which your youthful protagonists can die in fairly macabre ways, does not offer such a fade to black, though the stylized art at least blunts the trauma of it.

That said, my main criticism is, perhaps ironically, the opposite: Reanimal fails to make death consequential. Checkpoints are frequent, and there’s rarely any cost to failing a segment and restarting. Over time, this both encourages risk-taking (why bother trying your best when you can just instantly retry) and dulls the threat of foes or obstacles: the third or fourth time you begin the same chase sequence, it’s hard to get exercised about the giant snake dude slithering from up-screen.

Still, at a breezy five-hour campaign (with a handful of optional unlockables to pad out the extra time for those interested), Reanimal nevertheless earns a hearty Toronto Guardian recommendation for any horror fans. It looks great, it plays wonderfully, and it has enough spookiness – and more than enough entertaining set-pieces – to reward the interested horror gamer.

***
Final score: 8/10 Pugsleys.

Visit the official website for Reanimal here.

The post Reanimal (PS5) Review: Big Nightmares appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

WHAT IS IT?

The ninth mainline entry in the long-shambling zombie horror series.

IS IT GOOD?

It’s brainless fun, emphasis on the brainless.

WHO SHOULD PLAY IT?

Cereza, Dante. Kojima.

SEEING S.T.A.R.S

If I had to pick the moment Resident Evil Requiem ceases to be scary, it’s the moment when Leon Kennedy picks up a kill counter.

Up to that point, Requiem had been pretty stupid – like, not boulder-punching stupid, though still pretty dumb – but the addition of the counter, which awards points to be spent on upgrades and yet bigger guns, marks the moment in which I gave up all hope on Requiem living up to its prerelease promise.

Some context: prior to 2017’s brilliant Resident Evil 7: biohazard, the series had been trapped in a downward spiral, devolving into a self-parody of what it used to be. Taking all the wrong lessons from the era-defining RE4, Capcom doubled-down on action and braindead gunplay, with RE5 and then RE6 – a game featuring a zombified U.S. president – representing the absolute nadir of the series.

When, in 2017, the series soft rebooted with the first-person biohazard – not to mention its nauseatingly terrifying demo, easily one of the scariest games ever made – Capcom demonstrated it still had the magic (horror) touch.

The subsequent Resident Evil VIIIage (2021) returned to some of the stupidity of RE4 (whose influence it wears on its zombified, Euro-village sleeve), but still managed to deliver the frights, largely courtesy the memeworthy Lady Dimitrescu. When Capcom openly promised that Requiem – that’s Resident Evil 9, for those keeping track at home – would be a return to form, starring an inexperienced everyman protagonist akin to the terrified Claire Redfield or Ethan Winters of prior games, we RE diehards had every reason to be excited.

Then we learned that Grace Ashcroft, featured so heavily in the advance trailers, was only a co-star, alongside a gun-toting Uncle-Bro Leon Kennedy returning from RE2 and RE4.

A WHOLE LOT OF BSAA

Things start worryingly in Requiem (RE9 for short), with a plot hole-laden opening in which the FBI deploys a solo, inexperienced agent to investigate the site of a recent murder. Oh, and the crime scene also happens to be the site of a traumatizing episode from the agent’s childhood. But sure, let’s send Agent Grace Ashcroft on her own with no backup. Nothing could possibly go wrong…

Once things go wrong, Requiem quickly gives you a strong flavour of the competing interests at play in this game.

On the one hand, there’s the fairly scary, albeit haphazardly told, story of a young, frightened woman, ill-equipped to survive the mysterious medical centre to which she has been kidnapped.

On the other hand, there’s a big, explosive, action game featuring a dude with a propensity for roundhouse-kicking zombies to the face. When the game focuses on Grace, it can, at least, be scary. When it turns to Leon, as it increasingly does before effectively handing the game over to him in its latter half, it’s mostly stupid, albeit enjoyable in its own stupid way.

Sticking to Grace for a moment, credit to Capcom for walking back its tendency towards overpowered protagonists, here the young FBI agent mostly limited to a weak handgun, some defensive (and breakable) melee weapons, and a whole lot of patience. The best parts of the game involve Grace cowering in fear in one of the many shadowy corners of the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center, as she tries (and fails) to avoid being spotted by monstrous foes. Capcom recommends playing as Grace in first-person, and we agree. It’s too bad, however, that Grace herself is so poorly written and poorly acted, with a distractingly fake-sounding nervous stutter which peppers her speech.

Leon, on the other hand, is the designated ass-kicker, an epithet which is not necessarily complimentary in this case. As I’ve noted before, it’s tough to make a scary game when the player carries an overwhelming assortment of explosive weaponry, and the backpack to carry it all in. (Side note: while Grace has to handle some delicate item management, adding some tension à la prior RE games, not once did I ever run out of space in Leon’s oversized equipment bag.)

Moreover, making that character a motorcycle-riding, one-liner-quipping “badass” unfortunately brings this game ever closer to the Re5/RE6 template, albeit without those games’ diversity of ideas. Indeed, another complaint I have about RE9 is how rarely it departs from standard zombie fare: it’s not until quite late in RE9 that you even get a glimpse of the kinds of alternative enemies – plants, rabid dogs, zombie sharks – which were ubiquitous in prior entries.

One tip for making the Leon sections scarier, at least? Play it in first-person, and ignore Capcom’s “recommended” third-person view.

RE9 also marks the Metal Gearification of this beloved series (and I say this as Canada’s biggest Metal Gear fan), beginning with its pair of cartoonish, over-the-top villains who feel completely out of place. And that’s even before RE9 awkwardly tries to retcon them into key aspects of RE lore.

Speaking of which, much like later Metal Gear entries, RE9 is much too in love with its own past, revisiting not only certain environments but even specific enemies, long thought dead. Sadly, however, unlike MGS4‘s triumphant return to Shadow Moses Island (surely a series highlight), RE9‘s return to Raccoon City (a spoiler already given away in the trailers) has little if anything interesting to say, offering a perfunctory revisit to a few familiar locales, now stripped of any fear factor.

Most egregiously, certain sequences in RE9 play like cheap rehashes of things done better before, including a nearly beat-for-beat retread of the nursery portion of the (far superior) Resident Evil 2 remake.

TRICELL HARDER

One day, Capcom will tell the story of the Umbrella Corporation architect and their love for wide-open atriums featuring curved double staircases.

That day, we’ll also learn why everything from metropolitan police stations to rural healthcare centres is locked behind a series of inscrutable, symbol- and gem-based puzzles. Maybe, we’ll also learn why nobody thought these might pose a safety hazard, particularly when, say, a bioweapon has been accidentally unleashed, and people just need to get through a closed door.

Until that day, we’re left with the often ludicrous, undeniably entertaining, and wildly varying Resident Evil games. Although it’s been some time since their peak, even this latest entry, likely destined to go down as a minor entry in the RE canon, is still a great deal of zombie-stomping fun. Don’t forget to pack a Green Herb.

***
Final score: 7/10 Zombified Great White Sharks.

Visit the official website for Resident Evil Requiem here.

The post Resident Evil Requiem (PS5) Review: Brain Dead appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

WHAT IS IT?

A retro side-scrolling beat-em-up, à la Final Fight – or, to be more precise, X-Men Arcade.

IS IT GOOD?

It’s the best beat-em-up since Streets of Rage 4.

WHO SHOULD PLAY IT?

Blaze Fielding, Billy and Jimmy, Mayor Haggar. My buddy Matt.

BLUE BLAZES

Face front, true believers, this one’s for you.

Long-time Marvel Zombies will no doubt recall, and look fondly upon, the Marvel arcade era, when the fabled House of Ideas could be counted upon for everything from hyperkinetic Street Fighter-style fighting games to quarter-munching six-player beat-em-ups featuring a who’s-who of mutantdom.

Tribute Games, the widely admired, Montreal-based developers behind Marvel Cosmic Invasion – and before it, the wonderful Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge – are clearly veterans of that era, pouring their love of Marvel and these arcade classics into this, their latest, best, effort.

A four-player, drop-in/drop-out co-op beat-em-up with a refreshingly non-MCU slant, it’s a fantastic, just-in-time-for-the-holidays, action game worth checking out for any fan of Marvel, superheroes, or plain ole arcade fun.

THE HUMAN ROCKET

(Very) loosely inspired by the legendary Annihilation miniseries from 2006, Marvel Cosmic Invasion puts players in the spandex and superpowered armor of a diverse roster of fifteen heroes (and some villains!), teaming up to defend the galaxy from Negative Zone warlord (and nominal Fantastic Four foe) Annihilus. Annihilus, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1968, is one of the great underused cosmic villains, a diabolically evil green-and-purple super-insect, given new life in the pages of Dan Abnett’s and Andy Lanning’s Annihilation, the series which also rejuvenated the comic book career of former teen hero Nova. (Incidentally, Annihilation also planted the seeds for what would become the MCU Guardians of the Galaxy.)

When Marvel Cosmic Invasion begins, Annihilus’s attack is well underway, his Annihilation Wave having already conquered several planets en route to invading Earth. Aided by an army of insectoid aliens, as well as numerous brand name characters bent to his will – courtesy a kind of mind control which awfully resembles the xenomorph life cycle – Annihilus is on the verge of victory, with only fifteen characters, and fifteen stages, to stop him.

Gameplay is standard beat-em-up, with sprite-based characters pressing ever forward, left to right, top to bottom, across a series of themed stages – New York City, the Savage Land, etc.

In addition to standard jump and melee attacks, each character has a dedicated special (often, though not exclusively, a projectile, as in Spider-Man’s web attack or Rocket Raccoon’s grenades) as well as a screen-clearing super move. Some characters – Nova, Iron Man, several others – are also capable of flight, and it’s usually a good idea to take at least one flyer with you into each mission.

About that: Cosmic Invasion’s niftiest feature is that each player actually chooses two, swappable, characters per level. Clearly inspired by the tag team mechanic in Marvel vs. Capcom, this allows for fun combos as you “summon” your alternate character to, say, interrupt an enemy attack, or swap them out entirely to tackle a particular challenge with their skill-set. I love the opportunities this affords, each stage a chance to try out new team-ups, like pairing the formerly married Black Panther and Storm, or joining “horse Thor” Beta Ray Bill (he’s awesome) with fellow cosmic stalwart Nova.

Happily, the game does not restrict who you can take into any level, though it encourages you, through certain character-specific challenges, to prefer particular characters in particular stages. In a game with easily replayable 8-10 minute levels and plentiful unlockables, that’s an easy and inviting prospect.

BERSERKER BARRAGE

Also great is the attention to detail which has gone into this game.

Designs are heavily inspired by – if not directly lifted from – Marvel arcade classics, with certain enemies (case in point: the wonderfully retro Sentinels), and even specific character animations looking like they’ve been ported over from an arcade cabinet. Even the fact that Wolverine’s default costume is the brown-and-yellow from X-Men Arcade says a lot about Tribute’s approach.

As do the excellent casting choices, ranging from Toronto’s own Cal Dodd (Wolverine) and Alison Sealy-Smith (Storm) reprising their roles from the X-Men cartoon, to a surfeit of familiar voices with long-running Marvel associations, including Brian Bloom (Captain America in animation and video games since the 2010s), Josh Keaton (the longest-serving Spider-Man, though he’ll always be Young Ocelot to me), and Isaac Singleton Jr. (the voice of digital Thanos since at least 2015).

Cosmic Invasion is also overflowing with cameos, easter eggs, and references only the most diehard Marvel fan will appreciate. Background details feature familiar names and faces. Certain in-game achievements (typically formulated as “Accomplish X Task by Y Character”) are deep-cut references to comic book lore. Nova, the game’s de facto lead, gets to shout “Blue Blazes!” and “Time for a New Warrior”, referencing his time with the largely forgotten ’90s teen hero team New Warriors, which also featured such cult-beloved heroes as Speedball, Scarlet Spider, and Darkhawk.

WELCOME TO DIE

Marvel Cosmic Invasion isn’t perfect, though there’s hardly much to criticize.

It’s not exactly original – even the tag team concept is just a variant of what you could do in the LEGO Marvel games – and it would’ve been nice if a few more levels shook up the formula, like the standout Asgard level which takes place on a parallax-scrolling Rainbow Bridge.

Characters don’t differentiate from one another enough to make a marked difference, meaning it’s easy enough to stick to a handful of favourites. (Though you should, as a rule, mix things up just because it’s the only way to upgrade each character’s HP and skills.) A few of the boss fights can be cheap, in two competing senses: sometimes, a boss (typically a well-known villain or brainwashed superhero) is so overpowered they can be annoying to deal with; other times, bosses can be easily exploited or brute-forced, especially if you’re playing in co-op.

And though not nearly as beholden to the MCU as, say, Eidos-Montreal’s Guardians of the Galaxy game, the unwelcome influence of corporate synergy still bleeds through, for instance in the game’s inclusion of the godawful Cosmic Ghost Rider character (he’s Frank Castle, the Punisher from the future, don’t ask), who Marvel has unfortunately been trying to make happen since his comic book debut in 2018.

The lack of any Fantastic Four members also seems a big mistake, given Annihilus’s heritage and this year’s best superhero movie. Also, I hate the fact that Cosmic Invasion lacks a post-credits scene. Come on, it’s a Marvel tradition!

Minor concerns aside, Marvel Cosmic Invasion is a welcome addition to the ever-growing stable of retro beat-em-ups, benefitting not merely from nostalgia but from meaningful gameplay choices and a design which makes things fun even for those who’ve never grasped a sweaty, pizza-stained arcade joystick, or spent a hundred quarters trying to defeat Magneto, Master of Magnet.

I’m still holding out hope for some DLC characters – Mr. Fantastic? Darkhawk? Paste Pot Pete? – but until then I’ll continue to Make Mine Marvel.

***
Final score: 9/10 cosmic cubes.

Visit the official website for Marvel Cosmic Invasion here.

The post Marvel Cosmic Invasion (Switch/PS5) Review: Excelsior! appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

WHAT IS IT?

The first proper new Silent Hill game in over a decade.

IS IT GOOD?

Yes, and it has some great ideas, even if it’s not as frightening as we might have hoped.

WHO SHOULD PLAY IT?

Harry Mason, James Sunderland, Heather Mason, Henry Townsend.

OF YUREI AND YOKAI

J-Horror aficionados will tell you nothing’s better than a creepy doll, an abandoned shrine, and a ghostly apparition or two.

For years, the primary exponent of this formula was Fatal Frame, Koei Tecmo’s brilliant “helpless horror” series of games featuring hopelessly overwhelmed heroes and heroines trapped in decrepit villages and even more decrepit mansions. For our money, the original Fatal Frame trilogy on PS2 ranks among the greatest and scariest horror games of all time, rivalling even the Resident Evils and Silent Hills of the world.

It’s been a decade since the last full-fledged Fatal Frame – 2015’s middling if creepy Maiden of Black Water – and longer still since the last standalone Silent Hill game. Not counting remakes, delisted demos, and weird TV tie-ins, you’d have to go all the way back to 2012 for Silent Hill: Downpour, the poorly received, long-forgotten seventh entry in the series.

Thirteen years is a long time for Konami to get its act together, and it’s with great delight – particularly for all you Fatal Frame fanatics out there – that I can announce that the latest Silent Hill, mysteriously titled Silent Hill f, has been worth the wait.

It’s not P.T. (of which more in a moment), but it’s a fun, eerie, J-Horror adventure, obviously indebted to Fatal Frame and, in turn, the films (Ringu, Ju-On, Kwaidan) which inspired FF. It’s also not nearly as frightening as it might have been, though it’s certainly nightmarish – mostly in a fun way, though occasionally in disturbing, Severe Content Warnings ways as well.

ZERO PROJECT

Marking a significant departure for this series, Silent Hill f is neither set in the United States, nor in present day. Leaping across the ocean and back in time, this latest entry resituates the action to 1960s Japan, in a sleepy village in the remote Japanese countryside. Familiar elements remain – an eerie fog that descends on a small town, the plague of psychosexual monstrosities it brings with it – but this new setting offers Konami a chance to do something at least superficially different: play around in the space previously inhabited by the likes of Fatal Frame, the underrated Siren games, and FromSoftware’s little-known PS2 title Kuon.

f‘s 1960s setting is also, it’s worth noting, the era of the first wave of Japanese horror cinema, and, if you know where to look, you can occasionally spot the influence of cinematic ghost stories like Onibaba, Kwaidan, and Kuroneko, with their allegorical hauntings and interrogation of gender and sexual norms. It’s probably safe to say that f’s lead writer Ryukishi07 (best known for a niche series of murder mystery “visual novels”) is a fan of these classics and others from fabled directors Kaneto Shindō and Masaki Kobayashi.

F TO PAY RESPECTS

Moment to moment, Silent Hill f plays a lot like Silent Hills past. You’ve got your pipe-wielding protagonist, alternatingly battling and fleeing from biologically impossible monsters, who look (and move) like broken puppets made out of flesh. You’ve also got your cast of nominally helpful non-player-characters, who appear and disappear at suspiciously opportune moments. Finally, in proud Silent Hill fashion, f offers a plethora of puzzles, some reasonable, some plain dumb, and too many of which are interrupted by annoyingly persistent baddies.

On the whole, this new Silent Hill works well. The story is reasonably compelling, the combat tough but fair. I could do with more inventory slots, but that’s a relatively minor gripe. The twists on the formula are also fun: I especially like f’s take on the series’s frequently recurring “Otherworld”, which here resembles a Japanese temple complex, albeit one constructed on dream logic (not unlike the Himuro Mansion of Fatal Frame), and hosting the majority of the game’s puzzles.

But Silent Hill f also suffers from two problems increasingly present in modern horror games: it’s too combat-centric, and its enemies tend to become annoying as the game wears on.

Let’s start with protagonist Hinako Shimizu’s pipe-wielding antics. Across the board, horror games (outside a few noteworthy indie titles) have in recent years tended towards power creep, handing their protagonists bigger and better weaponry with which to mow down the legions of enemies stalking their crumbling mansions and haunted spaceships. Sure, it’s fun, but it also ignores a very simple formula: the bigger the arsenal, the less frightening the foe.

Which brings us to the other f problem: enemies which start off oppressively scary but eventually devolve into irritants through sheer force of repetition. Resident Evil 4 was and remains the prime offender for this: with its hordes of rocket launcher-wielding zombies and relentless action movie set-pieces, RE4 was only intermittently scary, largely abandoning the slow-paced, bone-chilling creep of its predecessors. Silent Hill f, while not nearly as bad (mercifully there are no guns here), still suffers from the lazy trick of trying to overwhelm the player with enemies, rather than deploying them judiciously for scares.

This is especially problematic when it comes to puzzle-solving, as enemies increasingly interfere in your attempts to solve the game’s many nefarious brainteasers. A particularly egregious early example requires that you closely inspect scarecrows to find the “helpful” one. Annoyingly, any “bad” scarecrows will instantly attack you, meaning you can rarely get close enough to look for clues. (I wound up solving this one through brute force, disposing of scarecrow after scarecrow until I could identify the correct one.)

M FOR MATURE

If Silent Hill f invites comparison to Fatal Frame, there’s also another spectre looming over this game, that of the game which would have been the seventh Silent Hill.

It’s become nigh-well impossible to talk Silent Hill, or really any modern horror title, without reference to the infamous Guillermo del Toro/Hideo Kojima collaboration P.T. Back in 2014, P.T. made waves when it was stealth-revealed to be a “playable teaser” for a planned Silent Hill sequel – only to make even bigger waves after Konami cancelled the game and delisted P.T. entirely, robbing players of the opportunity to experience even the demo for the game that never was.

That f does not even try to resemble P.T. is understandable, Konami choosing a different direction which largely resists direct comparison. Still, playing f, it’s hard not to wonder what this game might have been had Kojima, in all his idiosyncratic glory, had been allowed to play around in this sandbox a bit longer. As it is, f lacks the oppressive, helpless atmosphere which marked P.T. (and which has since been so brilliantly replicated in titles like the Canadian-made Visage), trading it instead for a trauma-focused narrative which, while only intermittently scary, deals in some very mature themes which might be distressing for some players. (Seriously, steel yourselves for this one.)

All that said, Silent Hill f is fun, and it has its moments, and I admit that one or two of its jump scares caught me. But it’s not terrifying, in the cower-in-the-corner-and-cry way that only the Fatal Frames and Visages of the world have been able to pull off. It’s not even as scary as the original twofer of Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2, the games which more or less invented this psychological-horror subgenre, and which to this day continue to shock players new and old.

If f ever gets a sequel, or if a proper Silent Hill 8 comes along, all I ask is that its protagonist be just as wimpy and cowardly as I would be, if trapped in that haunted town.

***

Final score: 8/10 Kwaidans.

Visit the official website for Silent Hill f here.

The post Silent Hill f (PS5) Review: The F Stands for Fatal, as in Frame appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

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.

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