Few games truly deserve the remake treatment as much as Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Arguably the best stealth-action game of its generation, back in 2004 it pushed the PlayStation 2 to its very limits – so much so that the hardware occasionally weighed down its ambitions. Twenty years later, a complete remake from Konami using the power of modern consoles has the potential to unlock the full, uncompromised vision of the game’s original creators.
Instead, this new, Kojima-less Metal Gear Solid Delta seems more like a very shiny HD remaster than the elegant remake it could have been. It’s an admittedly beautiful nostalgia trip, but almost faithful to a fault. In a recent hands-on demonstration I was able to play through Metal Gear Solid Delta’s Virtuous Mission; a complete recreation of MGS3’s prologue built in Unreal Engine 5.
It looks every bit as fantastic as you’d hope, particularly when it comes to character models – faces and clothing are a real highlight. The jungle is the true star of the show, though, with modern lighting techniques helping showcase the graphical overhaul to every blade of grass, every pool of mud, and every writhing python. If you’re a Metal Gear veteran, you’ll know that the roughly 90-minute duration of the Virtuous Mission is dominated by cutscenes and codec calls.
It’s not the ideal section to test drive any changes Konami has made (visuals aside) particularly since Delta uses the same dialogue audio as the original Snake .