About 20 years ago, I remember distinctly watching of the final trailers for Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater at the ECTS in London. As I was there, eyes looking up, I realized there was someone familiar just next to me, eyes fixed at the screen as well. Someone Japanese. Yeah, it was Hideo Kojima, attending the show at the same time. After the trailer ended, we had a few words. After all, he was responsible for one of the best games ever made, Metal Gear Solid 1, and I had a huge respect for him.

Back to 2024: Kojima has now left Konami for quite a while (and let’s say, for still unclear reasons) after spending most of his career there. Metal Gear Solid‘s IP is now used and milked by its former employer, without Kojima’s involvement. Last year at the TGS 2023, Konami was presenting the first three MGS titles running on modern platforms (probably through Playstation emulators), but this year they had something a little more ambitious. MGS3, Snake Eater Delta, getting a proper remake with modern technologies, and it was playable at the TGS at Konami and Sony’s booths.

Hands on Snake Eater

It was running on a Playstation 5 at the show. Visually, it holds its ground: the jungle looks much better: better resolution, more polygons, much better textures, and better animations (?) maybe. The framerate was not great. Cinematic, as they say. Probably about 30 FPS. Overall, it does look better than how you remembered the original. Three generations down the road, that’s kind of expected.

The big surprise, however, is that they stopped there. Beyond the overhaul, the game is just the same as before. They kept the super small zones of the original Snake Eater, with the loading screens that go with it. I was naively expecting that they would remake the game with a proper open-worldly experience to make full use of the camouflage mechanics. So… it’s a massive let down. The technical upgrade is hardly worth it if it keeps the limitations of the original game running on Playstation 2 hardware.

The same limitations, again, are felt with the enemies’ AI: the Soviet soldiers in the area are completely blind (you can stand 10 meters from them and they don’t really see you), and it takes ages for them to shoot at you, and Man, they tend to miss like if they were drunk. There’s also a wooden bridge you have to cross at once point, and that bridge wiggles a little. I found it impossible to cross it without falling on the side over and over again. I am not entirely sure, but it may have been similar back on the PS2. This just feels bad in a modern game.

This feels OLD

They kept as much as they could from the original, I guess, good or bad. The voice acting is the same, the jungle zones are the same, so if you were expecting a 2024 AAA game, look away. This is a 2004 AAA game with refreshed graphics. Nothing more.

I hope that Konami has more serious plans to make good use of the Metal Gear Solid IP in the future, if they want to be taken seriously again.