Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater review: "Little surprised me in this rigid remake, but it's still one of my favorite games of all time"

What can I really tell you about Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater? Pull off the cardboard box, and this is pretty plainly still Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. First released on PS2 back in 2004 it's rightly been celebrated as one of the best games ever made, with reams written about how phenomenal it is. I don't just like Metal Gear Solid 3. Hell, I love it. And I'm sitting here just itching to play it again. I always am, and I always do. Yet, I'm not sure Metal Gear Solid Delta does much to make that replay all that different from the times before.

Metal Gear Solid Delta is a glossy Unreal Engine remake, and an extremely faithful one. Following Naked Snake on a doomed mission to Russia in the 1960s, he must stealthily try to extradite a defecting scientist, sabotage a nuclear missile platform, and assassinate a traitor, with barely any equipment to his name – scrounging tools and snacking on wildlife to stay alive. In series tradition, it's a narrative that blends serious stakes and historical facts with military sci-fi fantasy that goes in the complete opposite direction. Barely an hour after watching a slideshow on the Cold War, Naked Snake is jumped by a man who shoots hornets from his mouth called The Pain. It's brilliant.

Shedding skin

Metal Gear Solid Delta keeps this story intact right the way down to re-using all the same voice acting and cutscene direction. Care has definitely been taken in polishing everything up – the audio is crisp. New character models and environmental features have been refreshed to be impressively detailed to a degree we couldn't even fathom in the '00s. All this extra foliage flourish really makes the Russian forests lush (and sometimes very muddy), which is where the bulk of the action takes place.

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Though Metal Gear Solid Delta's forests look more alive than ever, they're still beholden to the same structure as the original – it's so faithful that level geometry remains the exact same. The forest frequently funnels you down set corridors, and the exterior of enemy base Groznyj Grad, for instance, is still awkwardly split into four screens with a brief load between each. MGS3 is more about progressing through discrete screens than the more longform infiltration of Metal Gear Solid 5, and that remains the case here.

I struggle to begrudge the game much for it, though. Metal Gear Solid Delta is firmly an exact recreation of Metal Gear Solid 3. But it does mean its higher fidelity graphical style can clash with the clearly older bones beneath. Snake can still perform a rigid-feeling kick combo in the rough vicinity of a snake to instantly kill it, causing it to fade away as it turns into a floating food pack. Enemy guards can still end up in-sync so their idle animations uneasily occur simultaneously as they stand next to each other. Press the roll button to vault over a big crate, and Snake will weirdly float across to nail his landing, defying physics. The same is true in cutscenes, the original motions sometimes appearing a bit uncanny performed by the extremely detailed models.

It's the kind of clashing that can make it hard to appreciate Metal Gear Solid Delta's enhanced visuals, as the rigid faithfulness to MGS3's foundations mean it's clear you're still fundamentally playing a much older game.

In fact, it can make some of the more dated sections of Metal Gear Solid 3 stand out all the more, from overly-long shooting gallery sequences towards the end throughout which you have little control, to how basic enemy AI can feel as they patrol their routes. (And yes, all the pervy chances to ogle lady bits in first-person are still here). Rarely does increased fidelity feel additive to the way Metal Gear Solid Delta actually plays.

Metal Gear Solid Delta comes with two control options: New Style, and Legacy Style. Legacy, for the most part, captures the spirit of the very original Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, which is played entirely from a top-down perspective similar to previous Metal Gear games, forcing you to aim by going into a first-person view.

It's great to see this option to play in a classic style included, as it's the kind of thing you could easily imagine getting left by the wayside. Given how wide some areas in Metal Gear Solid Delta can be, the perspective takes some getting used to – but you can change control modes mid-game with just a quick checkpoint load. And some concessions appear even here, like a slow crouch walk.

The original game was followed up by the Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence release in 2005, which gave the game a third-person over-the-shoulder camera. It's from this that the New Style controls in Metal Gear Delta take their cues, also adding features from the 3DS' Metal Gear Solid 3D: Snake Eater, giving Snake the ability to aim in third-person and to crouch walk at speed (in the PS2 days, Snake's knees couldn't manage it). Even the ability to quickly access the camouflage and radio menus using the d-pad in in both styles feels close to their touchscreen counterparts on 3DS.

As you might expect, with the core game design otherwise much the same as it ever was, these new ways to move do make the game significantly easier. But it's not as big an overhaul as the name New Style might imply. Even in this newer mode, it feels like Snake still has a lot of limits to his movement, occasionally feeling a bit cumbersome to go prone or even in his turning arc – in-keeping with the original.

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Those expecting a big MGS 3 remake to even come close to Metal Gear Solid 5 will be disappointed. Metal Gear Solid Delta plays nothing like MGS 5, even in New Style. But, giving Snake the level of responsiveness you have at your fingertips in that game would completely break the design of the original that Metal Gear Solid Delta sticks to. Pop the hood, and how everything works underneath is extremely familiar.

Metal Gear Solid Delta's rigid attachment to the original does put this reworked classic in an odd position. Long-time series fans will appreciate the care taken here, but nothing is significantly different enough to really stand out. I'm an old head but I'm not sure I can confidently say I even like the new visuals all that much given how they can clash with some other parts of the design (and yes, I do prefer playing with the green-tinted 'Legacy filter' on, like in the above screenshot).

On the other hand, newcomers to the series may find that Metal Gear Solid Delta plays so similarly to the original that it's not modernized enough to be approachable. Though this is a loving recreation of Metal Gear Solid 3, it misses the chance to do anything bold or exciting.

Third-person aiming and crouch walking being freed from the shackles of Nintendo 3DS goes some way to making this easier to get into, but there's no getting around that Metal Gear Solid 3 still feels like a game from 2004 underneath it all. It's not even close to how good Metal Gear Solid 5 feels to pick up and play in a modern context, and even when it comes to things like cutscene and visual direction it doesn't match up MGS5 either.

Should it, though? I'm not sure. After all, I love Metal Gear Solid 3 in its Metal Gear Solid Delta form just as much as I loved it when I last played it as part of the Master Collection. There's no question about it though, this cardboard box still contains the same game at its core, there's no sneaking around that.

Up for another sneaking mission? Check out our best Metal Gear games!