So a year where we've received a new Metal Gear project has come to a close and I feel as if there's been enough time for hype or outrage to give way to something more refined, something more identifiable, something like...an opinion.
I know we already have the
impressions thread but the idea here is for people to give something closer to their 'final' thoughts. Obviously how we feel may still change with replays but for
now, did you like the game?
Now is the time for a slightly longer form post, a bit more thought out, offering a real insight into what you think about Delta as a package, rather than what you think about Snake Eater. I'm interested to see what the site's consensus is, so with that in mind please use:
the thread rating system ↗
to give your star rating out of five as well as your post containing your opinions. This way we will end up with MGF's aggregate score for Delta at a glance.
Metacritic eat your heart out.
Looking forward to seeing what we all think. My personal review will follow.
Delta is, by all accounts, a very safe remake. Deciding to remake Snake Eater over any of the other entries is unambitious to put it plainly. While the dev team claimed the choice was due to Snake Eater being the chronological first game and thus a good entry point (which I’d take issue with even if it were true), it’s obvious that in reality the reason was due to MGS3 being both one of the most popular entries in the series as well as one that still feels very modern in its design even 20 years on. Whilst Metal Gear and Metal Gear Solid would be more logical options for a remake both would require dramatic reimaginings of game design, presentation, and (mainly in the case of the MSX game,) story. This clearly was a much more daunting undertaking for a development team that had not been tried and tested, and so Noriaki Okamura’s new MGS dev team were instead tasked with remaking Metal Gear Solid 3.
Throughout the entire production cycle the project was cited as being incredibly ‘respectful.’ In this case respectful meant that the game’s level design, voice acting, and cutscenes were all untouched. MGSΔ is very much built upon MGS3’s skeleton, with the entirety of the original game’s files being contained within MGSΔ’s. But of course the remake has to remake something, and that mainly takes place with the presentation and gameplay.
The presentation leaves much to be desired. It’s definitely not low-effort, but a lot of the design decisions result in a game that has markedly worse presentation than the PS2 game it’s based on. The word ‘soulless’ has been thrown around a lot in discourse around the game and that doesn’t really offer much insight, but unfortunately it’s the kind of thing that is hard to quite put a finger on. The character models don’t feel quite right, face shape changes and the use of more reflective textures in pursuit of realism end up making them feel a bit uncanny and strange. Characters like EVA don’t really resemble their PlayStation 2 counterparts. The graphics in general feel as if they lack a certain amount of character and style. This has been attributed to the use of Unreal Engine but I feel as if it goes further than that as many of the more stylish elements of Snake Eater were quick to be culled in the game’s New Style. The 2004 start screen, a psychedelic shock to the senses of vivid coloured camouflage patterns and raining symbols overlaid with a silhouette of Snake performing various motion captured CQC takedowns on enemy guards (every element of which was changeable via button presses) accompanied by music that gets you pumped to play, has been replaced with a slow forward tracking shot through the jungle accompanied by some much more generic generic jungley music. It’s incredibly dull in comparison. Where the original was a unique and artistic way to show off elements of the game such as CQC and camouflage to set the scene, the new start screen is little more than a showcase of the graphics. Many defenders of the game have been quick to point out that the original start screen is used when playing on the game’s Legacy Style, which leads us to one of the main reasons I oppose this idea of the remake as ‘respectful’. Having the original art design, visual identity, or any similar aspect relegated to a Legacy Style that is more present to pre-address complaints about them being changed than to celebrate them is not respectful. The New Style of MGSΔ is the one the devs intend for you to play. Elements such as the original game’s colour grading, decided upon by the original dev team in an attempt to evoke mood and imbue the game with at least some element of artistic decision, is eschewed in favour of simpler realistic colouring. Does that feel like respect? To decide that design choices made by Kojima’s team to convey a hot and humid environment inspired by their own points of reference are worse than trying to colour a jungle like a real life jungle? To relegate that to an options menu in favour of a safe colour grading choice? It instantly strips the visuals of a huge amount of their identity. Another example of lost identity in Delta comes in the game’s iteration of Guy Savage, the peculiar and totally missable nightmare sequence that players are met with when loading a save made while Snake is in jail. After Guy Savage having been absent from any re-release of MGS3 the news of it being in Delta piqued my interest but it ended up being one of my major disappointments with it. The original Guy Savage was a real oddity: a sepia sequence of a strange indoor carpark where your hookblade-wielding protagonist fights off hoards of grotesque vampiric police. The gameplay wasn’t anything special but visually it was it’s own thing and it thematically reflected Snake's current situation. Guy Savage Δ on the other hand feels more like some sort of generic imitation of a PS3 Castlevania game which leans much more heavily on the Dracula mention that spurs Snake’s nightmare on. The gameplay was still uninspired despite having Platinum Games’ involvement. It simply wasn’t Guy Savage, and it once again feels like a moment where MGSΔ chooses generic norms over MGS3’s individuality.
The gameplay is of course a lot of fun as Snake Eater’s gameplay is a lot of fun. With that said the game’s New Style modern controls trivialise a lot of the original game’s design. New features such as over-the-shoulder aiming, a crouch walk, and moving in first person mean that a lot of the game is much easier. This is especially true of bosses, who at times feel like pushovers playing on the game’s normal difficulty. Even the enemy AI has been changed to be less aggressive, meaning being spotted is rarely an issue as New Style Snake can quickly dispatch any guards in the area without issue. While this certainly can feel good, it definitely undermines the threat of an Alert mode outside of harder runs and makes stealth feel more of a self-imposed challenge than a necessary approach. The lack of any changes to level design means that the new gameplay doesn’t really fit. You’re playing through environments that were designed meticulously around gameplay restrictions that have been done away with in favour of delivering a souped up John Wick gunplay experience. Despite the complaints around The Twin Snakes it’s the same exact issues of simply modernising gameplay without adapting the game’s environments to match. The game’s Legacy Mode also doesn’t really deliver the legacy experience, as changes to enemy AI remain, Snake in general feels a bit slow to start moving in Delta, and the 360 camera of Subsistence is nowhere to be found, meaning people who have enjoyed playing that way for 20 years only have New Style. Furthermore, outside of the game’s heavy adaptation towards modern shooter trends, the New Style doesn’t really offer us much new. There are some fun things, such as the addition of GA-KO to find in every area alongside Kerotan (but no new Kerotan camo to help find said GA-KO, making some of them very annoying), and wounds and damage to camo fatigues apparently enduring throughout the run (not that I ever particularly noticed), but there aren’t really any new additions that shake up the gameplay in any meaningful way (you do get the AT-Camo for finding all GA-KO, but it only ends up functioning as some free camo index for challenge runs). When I heard that there were options for newer entries in the game’s “I Like ____” selection at the start it had me excited-what sort of things could be behind those? "I Like MGS2" gave us the Raiden intro and disguise after all, and that was a meaningful change to a run. Could “I Like MGS4” give us a Solid Eye? Or maybe “I Like MGSV” would see Snake receive a Skull Face facepaint? Instead the choices simply redistribute camouflages already in the game, not very fun. Not adding any new items or camouflage has been cited as an attempt to preserve the game’s balance, except that clearly isn’t true as the game’s pre-order bonuses give you a plethora of items that break every major mechanic in the game. A Peace Walker Sneaking Suit that makes stealth piss easy from the get go, a Croc Suit that makes all food taste amazing, or a Battle Dress that doubles health recovery and halves damage-all received from the get go. Even something fun like a James Bond inspired gold bodypaint that makes you super easy to spot is reserved as a pre-order bonus. That’s a poor show for a full price remake.
The story was unchanged, again in the name of respect, but I would have honestly appreciated some sort of new easter eggs, codec calls, or some nods to MGSV-I know that many wouldn’t have appreciated the latter so I understand, but they then incorporated the Man On Fire theme into Volgin’s compulsory death cutscene…would some easter egg traces of XOF involvement somewhere have really been that much bigger of a deal? It’s hard to say whether this one was more due to playing it safe, or just the generally scarce approach to new additions.
To touch on other modes: Snake vs Monkey is back with some minor-changes in the addition of Astro Bot, but the reward for completing it is now a banana hood rather than an Ape Escape mask, with the reward for good times in all levels a golden recolour of said hood-not as fun as the mask I’m afraid. The Xbox got a Snake vs Bomberman mode which I’m yet to try as a PlayStation owner but does have me interested both because I’m a Bomberman fan and because it is, really, the only bit of new single player content the remake has added…and I don’t get to play it because it’s console exclusive despite Konami owning Bomberman. I get that they didn't want non-PlayStation players to feel left out but one console got a mode we played 20 years ago and the other got a brand new mode. Doesn't seem all that even-especially with no monkey mask! Delta did receive quite a significant piece of new multiplayer content in the form of Fox Hunt. It’s a fun mode built around the AT-Camo, a new invention that’s a mix between octocamo and a ghillie suit. It’s reasonably well thought out, with the AT-Camo having to be decided by the player to blend in with surroundings and avoid detection, but offered very little content at launch with only two game modes and three maps, and unique characters and character customisation done away with in favour of a selection of skins of characters from the single player. The game mode is mostly fun (though the gunplay feels abysmal for some reason?) but it released months after the game and received hardly any fanfare from Konami, leaving it pretty much dead in the water at the time of writing this. The Secret Theatre is also back with some funny new entries that get the humour, but the old ones are just videos of the PS2 versions which feels incredibly lazy.
Overall I had fun with Delta…but that’s mainly because it’s Snake Eater. It’s a very safe remake that doesn’t have enough new to justify the hefty price tag, especially with its biggest addition in the form of Fox Hunt not being in the game until months after release. I didn’t really get any feel for Okamura’s new dev team and I don’t necessarily trust them with MGS anymore than I’d trust any other team who have played MGS3. It avoids adding anything meaningful in the name of respect but then consistently makes alterations or additions that belittle Snake Eater’s balance and feel. Paired with poorly handled extra modes Delta is far from the definitive way to play Snake Eater that many are claiming it to be. It’s fun, but at best it's just a remake-by-numbers made to make as much money as safely as it could without any real examples of artistic vision or intent. Nothing about this game makes me feel as though they could remake Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2. For better or worse a remake that changes things and takes on some of the new dev's artistic vision can be judged on its own merits, whereas Delta can only be judged on their implementation of modern gameplay elements-elements which were mostly taken from Metal Gear Solid V anyway, which does them a lot better. It's an awkward Frankenstein of games by other dev teams that doesn't really win Okamura's team any merit.
⭐️⭐️⭐️★★