{"id":69816,"date":"2025-08-26T21:05:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T11:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/?p=69816"},"modified":"2025-08-26T21:05:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T11:05:10","slug":"review-metal-gear-solid-%ce%b4-snake-eater-sony-playstation-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/2025\/08\/review-metal-gear-solid-%ce%b4-snake-eater-sony-playstation-5.html","title":{"rendered":"Review: Metal Gear Solid \u0394: Snake Eater (Sony PlayStation 5)"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it ain\u2019t broke, don\u2019t fix it. And in the case of Hideo Kojima games, they\u2019re never broke. Konami\u2019s new Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is a very different kind of project to the Silent Hill 2 or Resident Evil remakes that really turned heads in recent years. This title is a textbook case of a development team too timid to try much of anything with it. But then it\u2019s also one of the greatest games of all time so I\u2019m glad they didn\u2019t break it.<\/p>\n

Delta is, of course, a \u201cremake\u201d of Metal Gear Solid 3, a title that is either famous or infamous for having cut scenes that run on for so long that it is clear that Kojima aspired to be a filmmaker before turning to games. It\u2019s a pity that the discussion about the plot often gets reduced to that point over how long the cut scenes are, because Metal Gear Solid 3 also has a lot to say about war\u2026 and a lot of criticism over how certain countries conduct themselves with regard to the military.<\/p>\n

As this excellent essay on the Metal Gear<\/a> series as a whole states: \u201cAt its core, Metal Gear isn\u2019t about winning, or doing your duty, or enjoying the spoils of battle after beating up a bunch of people because some middle-aged guy in a beret told you to. It\u2019s about humanism. It\u2019s about empathy. It\u2019s about finding things to cherish in life despite its horrors. It\u2019s about breaking the cycle of violence you\u2019ve been forced into by leaving the world a slightly better place than it was when you got there. And, cheesy as it may sound, it really is about love. Loving others! Finding a capacity for love you didn\u2019t even know you had! Loving the world and wanting to make it better on your own terms, not the terms you\u2019ve been given by someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

It is so enormously rare to have works about war in any medium \u2013 let alone games \u2013 be genuinely willing to be critical of war. While there are plenty that claim \u201cgritty realism\u201d or go out of their way to show how violent and cruel battlefields are, that\u2019s usually done in the context of celebrating the valour of the soldiers or justifying one side of the conflict or another as a light in the darkness. Each Metal Gear game, and especially 3\/Delta, has a very different texture, and if you\u2019re capable of sitting through those cut scenes and actually pay attention, you\u2019ll walk away from this experience in a pensive and reflective mood.<\/p>\n

Helping nail home the cinematic quality of the game is the fact that Delta is stunning to look at. The development team may have focused all their efforts on this exclusively, but it was worth the effort. The animation quality, art direction, and environments have all been polished to the point that you wouldn\u2019t have known that the base of this was released back on the PlayStation 2. This thing looks and feels native to the PlayStation 5, though it does perhaps push the hardware a little far, as there were times that even I \u2013 a guy who struggles to care about the difference between 30 and 60fps, noticed slowdown.<\/p>\n

The other big change \u2013 really the only other big change \u2013 is that you do have the option of playing the game with a revamped control and camera system. Flicking that option on makes Delta play like any other modern third-person action game, and I would argue is a much better experience, especially given the intricate stealth system and complexity with which enemies are arrayed throughout the environment. It\u2019s not easier by any means. In fact, the shift in perspective makes fully monitoring the environment even more important. It\u2019s just more enjoyable and immersive\u2026 though you can revert to the traditional option if you\u2019d rather.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

There are some other tiny incidentals that have been thrown in. The camouflage system is a minor, yet welcome, quality of life improvement, as Konami has made it easier to swap between costumes on the fly. Given how often you do need to change camo, those seconds saved do start to build up. There are also some additional collectibles for the completionists.<\/p>\n

That is it for Metal Gear Solid Delta, though, and this puts us in something of a conundrum. On the one hand, we\u2019re talking about the game that is to Kojima what Dr. Strangelove is to Stanley Kubrick (i.e. the masterpiece in a resume that basically has no misses). Even considering how brilliant Death Stranding is, Metal Gear Solid 3 is just something special, meaningful, and important as a work of art. It\u2019s hard to see how anyone could improve on it, so it didn\u2019t really need a \u201cremake\u201d in the way some other titles do. On the other hand, this really isn\u2019t a new game, and while it wouldn\u2019t be fair to say the remake\u2019s efforts were \u201clazy,\u201d it\u2019s also hard to shake the feeling that where the Silent Hill 2 remake was exciting by virtue of how new it was, this is just that game, that we\u2019ve already played and loved to death, in a prettier dress. But hey, if you\u2019ve somehow not played Metal Gear Solid 3 before, this is going to blow your mind.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it ain\u2019t broke, don\u2019t fix it. And in the case of Hideo Kojima games, they\u2019re never broke. Konami\u2019s new Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is a very different kind of project to the Silent Hill 2 or Resident Evil remakes that really turned heads in recent years. This title is a textbook case of a development team too timid to try much of anything with it. But then it\u2019s also one of the greatest games of all time so I\u2019m glad they didn\u2019t break it. Delta is, of course, a \u201cremake\u201d of Metal Gear Solid 3, a title<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":69818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1268,17,302],"tags":[13736,16920,12994,12764,13556],"coauthors":[12758],"class_list":["post-69816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-konami","category-reviews","category-sony-playstation-5","tag-konami","tag-metal-gear-solid-delta","tag-ps5-review","tag-reviews","tag-sony-playstation-5"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69816"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69821,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69816\/revisions\/69821"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69816"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=69816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}