Over 20 years of muscle memory made Metal Gear Solid Delta feel like I was just playing the original – and MGS heads like me know that's truly special

Inside me are two snakes. One is well aware that Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is a luscious remake of the original Metal Gear Solid 3 featuring new control options and impressive Unreal Engine 5 visuals. The other snake is just like: "Hell yeah, we're playing Metal Gear Solid 3 for the hundredth time, time to do the usual!"

Both snakes are valid, but it's hard to listen to their slithering whispers at the same time. Able to play and go hands-on with the first couple of hours of Metal Gear Solid Delta for myself, encompassing only the prologue Virtuous Mission, this amounted to a straightforward playthrough of the opening and then a more leisurely run taking it all in and pushing the buttons of enemy guard and animal AI alike – sorry, crocodiles, you're just too tasty to leave alone.

Eat your greens (camo)

For the new FOX recruits out there, Metal Gear Solid Delta once again sees Naked Snake sent behind Soviet enemy lines in the 1960s to extract a defecting scientist, who has been helping to develop a mobile nuclear weapons platform. Naturally, complications arise, and he must balance jungle stealth with simply surviving, nabbing animals for food, for instance (I see you there, crocs, I warned you!). The original combines Bond-like spy thrills with the best sneaking the Metal Gear series at the time had to offer. Many would consider it one of the best games ever made. So I'm pleased to report, all that stuff that made it such a classic is present here in Metal Gear Solid Delta.

Beyond hidden rubber ducks to now find in addition to the returning rubber frogs (one in each map), great care has deliberately been taken by the developers to ensure it still feels like the iconic game fans remember. All while also being slick enough for newer players to get into without having to think too hard about it being technically an older game. It creates a smooth feeling to play, where it essentially handles like your rose-tinted memories. Of course the game always looked this good and was this straightforward to control. This is a game made with the idea-slash-nighttime-anxiety-thought that the "younger generation of gamers aren't familiar with the Metal Gear series anymore."

At the same time, though, it can almost be hard to appreciate those enhancements because of it. Like Naked Snake rocking the perfect camo for the occasion, by design they blend into the background. Although in my demo I could only play with the modern controls, introducing things like a crouch walk, and a marginally more intuitive control scheme (okay, okay, probably a lot more intuitive, I'm just a Metal Gear sicko whose synapses are always ready to return to the legacy controls), I kind of didn't notice them much unless I explicitly made myself think about it.

Likewise, the fancy new visuals in Metal Gear Solid Delta are undoubtedly very pretty, but after a few minutes of play, poking around the forests of Tselinoyarsk, I lose sight of the brushstrokes and my brain begins to interpret it as simply Metal Gear Solid 3, same as it ever was. All this isn't helped by the fact that Metal Gear Solid Delta is very clearly grafted onto the bones of the original game as directly as possible – it's an entirely different proposition to Konami's recent Silent Hill 2 remake developed by Bloober Team.

Map geometry seems unchanged, with load points right where you remember them. Guards still aren't very smart. Apart from crouch walk, Naked Snake's movement options are much the same (no Metal Gear Solid 5 style diving here!). The devs say it's "almost too faithful". There are times when these philosophies clash – tranquillized animals will still suddenly pop into a spinning cage model for Snake to scoop up – but to me that's the original charm shining through.

It's tempting to find this disappointing, even while intellectually acknowledging the amount of effort that must have still gone into making Metal Gear Solid Delta. After all, there's not going to be much to surprise or delight veterans like me. Woefully, I might only be able to enjoy this flashy overhaul as much as the original Metal Gear Solid 3.

Wait a minute… Enjoy a game as much as the original Metal Gear Solid 3? That's actually an incredibly high bar. Often with remakes, rereleases, remasters, reduxes, and retools there can be some conflict between the quality of the source material and the ambition of the team putting together the new version. Here, they're perfectly in sync. It might not be the expansive reimagining some dreamed of, but if the limitation Metal Gear Solid Delta faces is being beholden to feeling too close to one of the best PS2 games of all time? That's certainly no bad thing. It's time to go dark, and submerge once more into a Russian march, crocodile cap firmly attached to head. Soon, we shall emerge.

Big in 2025 is the annual new year preview from GamesRadar+. Throughout January we are spotlighting the 50 most anticipated games of 2025 with exclusive interviews, hands-on previews, analysis, and so much more. Visit our Big in 2025 coverage hub to find all of our articles across the month.

Stay sneaky with our best stealth games list!