| Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater | |||
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| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater is the anticipated remake of the critically acclaimed tactical espionage action game, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater Review Overview
What is Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater?
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater (also known as MGS Delta or MGS3 Remake) is the modern remake of the 2004 stealth-action game Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater previously developed by Konami under the direction of Hideo Kojima. The game releases for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S on August 28, 2025.
The game stars Naked Snake, or Big Boss, as he undergoes a mission amidst the 1960s’ Cold War, serving as a prequel for the entire series.
Players will take control of Snake as he accomplishes his missions through brute force or stealth. Players may wield various guns and armaments and make use of the surroundings as Snake in order to successfully prevent two superpowers from devolving into a nuclear war.
The remake covers the third installment in the Metal Gear Solid series, outfitted with upgraded gameplay and graphics, seeking to faithfully recreate the game with a modern flair.
Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater features:
⚫︎ Unreal Engine 5 Visual Overhaul
⚫︎ Modernized Control Scheme
⚫︎ Faithful Recreation of the Original
⚫︎ Improved and Added Quality of Life Mechanics
⚫︎ New Multiplayer Mode - Fox Hunt
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater’s gameplay and story.
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 Playstation |
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| $69.99 | |||||
Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Stunning and Breathtaking Visuals Fluid and Seamless Gameplay Stealth is Much Stealthier Added and Returning Content Mostly Faithful to the Original |
A Bit More Difficult Than The Original Performance Issues |
Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater Overall - 94/100
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is a remake that puts eyes back on a franchise that was seemingly doomed to the times. The approach to turn it more into a third-person shooter with its new control scheme makes it feel like this was the original intention decades ago. Despite its stability issues, it’s a title that is the definitive way to experience one of the games that defined the PS2 era.
Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater Story - 9/10
Despite the story being decades old, it holds up surprisingly well. The compelling narrative, paired with its memorable characters, makes for a great cinematic experience that can fearlessly drop comedic one-liners and explore thought-provoking themes without the risk of losing its audience. The dialogue can be jarring for some, especially with how frequently the characters constantly teeter-totter between trying to be funny and serious. Rather than the more dark, gritty narratives of the modern day, it reads more like a classic spy film in video game form, with all of the plot twists, outrageous villains, cheesy dialogue, and entertaining action scenes of that era.
Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater Gameplay - 10/10
The biggest change that’s reflected in the remake is the gameplay overhaul, which directly affects how stealth and gunplay work. On its own, it's a full-fledged action shooter with stealth elements that has common mechanics, and it’s executed in a way that embraces the essence of the original while making it feel like this was the intended design all along. The result is that the upgrades make the remake a more natural stealth game. And if you’re not a big fan of the new control scheme, it also has the option to play on the Legacy Style instead, which uses the original controls with a few changes and quality-of-life updates to still keep its modern flair.
Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater Visuals - 9/10
Konami’s trailers and gameplay footage already showed how gorgeous the game looks. That same aesthetic and visual quality translated well in the game thanks to the Unreal Engine 5 overhaul, resulting in lush forests, murky swamp areas, and detailed character designs that breathe life into the game. There’s also a big focus on character details and facial animations to capture the characters’ expressions, and it’s evident during cinematic scenes. However, the new visual fidelity does come with its drawbacks, as the game’s cutscenes and even some segments in gameplay have noticeable frame drops that harm the overall experience on the PS5.
Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater Audio - 10/10
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater’s audio design is superb and carries over the ambiance of the original. Since about 70% of the game will be spent in hearing only background noises, that great ambient noise design reinforces its emphasis on stealth well. The remaining 30% showcases the great music score that highlights the intensity and grittiness of its action-packed encounters.
Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater Value for Money - 9/10
Priced at $69.99, Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater is a remake that almost deserves its high price tag. It has great replayability with multiple difficulty settings to play with, secrets to find, and items to collect, as well as tons of content on top of the main campaign, such as Snake vs. Monkey, Secret Theatre, and Fox Hunt. For those hoping that promised a stable 60 FPS experience, prepare to be disappointed, as the frame drops can be very noticeable in cutscenes and when enemies start swarming in.
Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater Review: What a Remake Should Be
Every time a new remake or remaster is announced, it feels as if we’re being scammed into playing games that already exist. So when Konami revealed that they were going to remake one of my absolute favorite games of all time, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, I was hoping, wishing, and even praying that it would at least be good or, heaven forbid, better than the original.
The developers announced that Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater will be remade in Unreal Engine 5. It was also revealed to have upgraded visuals, new controls, new gameplay mechanics, and new content, but will keep the same voice actors as the original. That being said, there are a ton of questions that need to be answered: Is the remake faithful to the original, or, more importantly, is it even good?
As Ocelot would put it, yes. It’s pretty good.
An Unreal Facelift
Konami made it clear back when they revealed the trailer that the visuals had been overhauled and upgraded. The art direction was one of the things that they wanted to keep and improve, since the sense of realism and immersion is apparent as soon as you open the game.
The most obvious improvements are seen in the different environments you’ll eventually be exploring in the game: the forests, mountain ruins, tunnels, and even snowy urban bases. The visual and color contrast between the dense forests, dark tunnels, and, later on, the snowy military base makes for a great display of how it showcases the visual improvements made for the remake.
Beyond the areas themselves being jaw-droppingly beautiful, the remake also retains the practical detail where the color scheme of each environment makes it obvious which camouflage works best.
Filters were also added to enhance the viewing experience, allowing you to choose from several different options to make the game look slightly different. For example, you can choose the Action Film
filter to emulate classic action movies with its darker tones, or the Legacy
filter, which brings back the greenish tint from the original game. Or, you can just choose to have no filter at all.
Let’s not forget the new and improved character models as well. Not only do they look great, but they’re also animated incredibly well. The way they move makes the game itself feel more natural, especially when you’re sneaking about in different areas. This is most evident in cutscenes, as it showcases the full extent of the details in the environments, characters, and their respective facial animations.
Technical Difficulties
The visuals aren’t perfect, however. The spotty frame rate is one issue in particular that needs to be addressed. For context, our review copy was played on the PlayStation 5 and was set to Performance Mode for the whole playthrough. There were numerous cutscenes and gameplay segments where the frame rate noticeably dips.
I’m no expert on game optimization, but I have played enough games that use Unreal Engine to believe that the engine may be the main culprit. Another possibility for the cutscene frame drops, particularly those with cinematic slow-motion for dramatic effect, may be the rendering putting a lot of tax on the engine—enough that the frame rate tanks, particularly in those moments.
It’s not as if this issue is a game-breaker, since there wasn’t a time during my playthrough when the frame rate became unplayable. Case in point, after getting detected, there was an obvious drop in frame rate during an Alert Phase, where enemies tend to come out in droves and swarm you. Although the frame rate dips weren’t bad enough to kill me, they did cost me some HP.
I wasn’t expecting perfect performance, as these things often plague even bigger releases. However, it shouldn’t be the norm for a premium $70 video game to have issues with keeping a stable frame rate.
The Cold War Retold
One reason the Metal Gear Solid series is so memorable is due to its exaggerated narrative. While it’s obvious that the game is purely fantasy, it takes actual historical events into the story and spins them in a way that feels cohesive to its otherwise fictional setting.
The premise is set during the Cold War, with tensions between the US and the Soviet Union at a heightened state. The CIA sends agent Naked Snake to rescue a rocket scientist in hopes of stopping the Soviets from creating a nuclear missile-loaded tank.
Without spoiling the overall narrative, it similarly plays out like an action spy movie, where the protagonist will have to stop the villain’s plans using espionage, special weapons, and a little charisma. Most of the story focuses on action, but it has its moments where it dips into lighthearted or goofy humor and the occasional philosophical conversation.
A lot of characters are written to have quirks that make them both memorable and interesting. For example, Snake is a huge nerd when it comes to combat techniques and guns, but he also drops cheesy one-liners from time to time. And if you delve deep enough into the game’s codec calls, you’ll probably find him to be a little weird—maybe even more than the others, which is saying something.
The most memorable characters, however, tend to be the over-the-top ones, especially when their peculiarities are featured in cutscenes. Take one of the most animated characters in the story as an example: Ocelot. Anytime he’s included in a scene, his mannerisms, way of speaking, and even movements instantly steal the spotlight
His iconic finger guns gesture, his meme-worthy “You’re pretty good,” catchphrase, his absolute need to show off his revolver tricks any chance he gets; all of these make him a deeply a fascinating character, and even more so once you you delve deeper into the series and realize how important he is in the greater narrative.
This also brings us to something that people might find jarring, given the narrative’s extremely high-stakes plotline: The dialogue can feel very disjointed at times, particularly with its humor, and when it does, it cuts the tension from the overall plot.
Of course, it’s not as if it’s completely bad. The jokes don’t quite land all the time, sure, but it does have its moments. If anything, it makes the dialogue interesting since the characters tend to talk about anything and everything under the sun. There are just moments where the impact of scenes doesn’t feel as strong due to their strange comedic timing.
Remade to Fit The Times
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater transforms the original gameplay into more of a third-person shooter, stealth-focused game. The original version, described as Legacy Style in the remake, has a fixed camera angle, completely different shooting mechanics where you can’t move when you aim down sights, and movement that is more restrictive due to the slower crouch walk and crawling speed.
Depending on how you want to look at it, messing with how the original played might sound like a bad thing. But I’d argue the change made it even better. It makes the gameplay feel much more natural, especially now that the aiming mechanics have been reworked to match modern standards.
For those who’ve played through the original series, the changes make it play more akin to Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. This is evident by the over-the-shoulder camera, the ability to move while aiming, and even one of the most underrated changes: being able to move while crouching.
The new camera can mess you up, however, as certain sections and areas obscure your vision, even when you’re doing third-person camera tricks like peeking around walls. But ultimately, I much prefer the New Style over the Legacy Style, since the latter doesn’t allow moving while aiming down sights.
Another key improvement lies with the game’s pacing and menu navigation. The game now includes new shortcuts to certain menus like Camouflage and Cure, making the gameplay a lot more seamless and fluid. Also, I’ll have to commend the inclusion of a checklist and visual indicator that you’ve been injured. This makes the process of detecting and healing injuries so much easier and more convenient.
Even inventory management is much easier to do now, thanks to faster load times. While the Backpack system still isn’t the greatest, the speed of being able to add and remove items to your equipment is much faster than ever before. While I would prefer to have something like Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain’s completely seamless inventory and the radial menu system, this keeps it close to the original, and the improvements have at least made it much better to handle.
However, one key thing that makes the game a little harder is that there are essentially no tutorials. While one can argue that the intro mission and the constant tooltip popups are the tutorials, I would hardly consider them sufficient, especially since they don’t necessarily teach you the game’s inner workings. Players will need to voluntarily read the game’s manuals and tooltips to fully understand the extent of the game's details, like how to blow up weapon and supply sheds, hold enemies up, interrogate them, and even deal with certain hazards like electric fences.
While we’re on the topic of difficulty, stealth and sneaking have been reworked as well. Stealth has moved away from its classic arcade-y nature and has felt a lot more realistic. Playing on the game’s Normal difficulty on both the original and the remake, it’s noticeable that the enemies’ area of sight is much larger, and they’re much more sensitive to sound.
To be honest, it did catch me by surprise a few times, but after adapting to the new parameters, it feels as if it should’ve been this way a long time ago. I appreciate that the game finally feels like a more natural stealth game.
Almost as Loyal as The Boss
One of the key things the original 2004 release was known for was the sheer amount of hidden interactions and tricks that could be used to influence the game. Fortunately, the remake carries most, if not all, of it over. If you’re meticulous or curious enough, you can make things a lot easier and even skip entire boss fights by doing certain actions.
A concrete example would be one of the early base checkpoints that you encounter, where a helicopter is on the landing pad. Destroying it makes one of the future areas a lot easier since there won’t be one flying overhead later on. Another example is using certain equipment in specific areas to fool enemies, like using the Crocodile Cap to become invisible
when underwater.
As for bosses, you can skip an entire boss fight if you’re able to snipe them during their earliest appearance. You can also use an item to fool the boss into thinking that you’re dead and leave them open for a moment. Some even have unique interactions if you’re wearing specific disguises.
Some things didn’t make it, however, like a certain exploit that makes one particular boss trivial. While I won’t exactly spoil who it is, it involves catching them off guard with a stun grenade. Afterward, shooting them down—even with lethal rounds—would damage their stamina bar and award you with a non-lethal kill, making the fight shorter than it was intended to be.
This isn’t in the game anymore, and I’m glad that it isn’t, since the boss fights are great enough to be memorable already. Making them a cakewalk would be a disservice to how well they were crafted.
A remake being faithful isn’t exactly news, but it’s great that the original’s extremely detailed interactions weren’t changed. This is especially the case with the boss fights, since they were one of the highlights of the game. While some exploits were removed, I think it’s much better that these were omitted since they undervalue certain scenarios and encounters that aren’t particularly hard to begin with.
Intended tricks that use certain lore reasons, like defeating a boss by passing the time or using their fear of frogs to scare them away, make for a memorable experience since it rewards the player for looking into the finer details. But exploits that abuse the system, like quick switching weapons to remove the post-firing animation or using stun grenades in a quick succession to stun lock boss fights, devalue the design of its intricate boss fights.
A Remake You Don’t Want to Miss
Remaking a critically acclaimed classic is never easy, especially when the original director isn’t involved in it, but they managed to pull it off quite masterfully. The remake makes the original pale in comparison in terms of gunplay and movement.
The upgraded presentation powered by Unreal Engine makes its aesthetic shine much more with its incredibly detailed environments, character models, and animations. Additionally, the audio design has been upgraded while keeping the iconic voice actors, which elevates the game’s nostalgia factor for older fans.
I'll give Konami their flowers for making a great remake of one of the PS2’s best and most memorable games. They have done the due diligence to carry over many of its unique interactions and tiny details.
It’s hard enough that the Metal Gear Solid series remains unfinished due to Kojima’s departure, but at least the legacy of the series lives on with what we have now. And that’s a win for a fan like me, any day. Now, about Metal Gear Solid 4…
Is Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater Worth It?
Absolutely, This Is The Definitive Way to Experience MGS3
Despite the hefty price tag of $69.99, Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater is a direct upgrade to the original in more ways than one. The new control scheme, mechanics, and quality-of-life changes elevate the gameplay to rival modern releases while keeping the spirit—and even the details—of an all-time classic. On top of that, the game also looks and sounds gorgeous. And if that wasn’t enough, it also has enough content to keep you entertained for hours.
Simply put, Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is the definitive way to experience one of the greatest PS2-era games in 2025. So much so that I would recommend it to anyone, even to those who have never played it or any of the games in the series. And despite the frame rate issues, it’s a well-done remake that’s well worth the price.
| Digital Storefront | |||||
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Playstation |
Xbox |
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| $69.99 | |||||
Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater FAQ
Is Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater a remake?
Yes. The overhauled gameplay and enhanced visuals put it in the same category as a game like the Resident Evil 4 remake. While it's not as radical a change as Final Fantasy VII's REMAKE trilogy, most of the changes were made to effectively change the game.
Will Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater support Japanese voice options?
Yes. The game will have full audio support for both English and Japanese.
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Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater Product Information
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| Title | METAL GEAR SOLID DELTA SNAKE EATER |
|---|---|
| Release Date | August 28, 2025 |
| Developer | KONAMI |
| Publisher | KONAMI |
| Supported Platforms | PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S |
| Genre | Action, Shooter, Strategy |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | M 17+ |
| Official Website | Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater Official Website |
