Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater

Developer/publisher Konami

Format PC (tested), PS5, Xbox Series

Release Out now

E very tiny detail of protagonist Snake is modelled. The fabric of his fatigues darkens and grows heavy with water when he splashes through a stream or pond. The loose ends of his bandana whip in the wind. Up close, it’s possible to make out the pores in his skin, the strands of hair in his beard and the cracked texture of dried camouflage paint wiped in streaks across his face. Seeing – and controlling – such a lavishly detailed version of Snake is Delta’s main purpose. The existence of the game, which serves as a remake of 2004’s Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, is premised on the desire to witness a classic cast of characters, and the setting of the story they star in, rendered in the highest fidelity modern technology allows. Everything else about Delta, from its reuse of its source material’s script and voice acting through to its recreation of the level design and boss fights, seems almost besides the point.

Exactly like the original game, Delta opens in 1964, with a CIA special forces operative called John, codenamed ‘Naked Snake’, on a mission to help a defector escape from a research facility hidden deep within a stretch of Soviet wilderness. This mission, of course, goes off the rails almost immediately. The bulk of the plot that follows sees Snake working to mitigate increasing international tensions by sneaking around behind enemy lines, destroying a superweapon, assassinating deadly targets, and meeting a cast of larger-than-life allies and enemies along the way.