Metal Gear Solid is easily the media franchise that means the most to me, by miles. Around the time I was 5 years old, as a wee (eventual queer) lad, my uncle allowed me to play on his PlayStation 1 while visiting him with my father. As a kid who had one at home and enjoyed randomly playing games with my older brother, stuff like Crash Bandicoot and various demo discs (rest in peace to PlayStation Underground discs), it was the only thing I wanted to do, and an easy way for my dad to get me out of his hair while he caught up with his brother. Well, my dad was bald, but nevertheless. I saw a game out of my uncle’s stack that caught my attention with it’s simplistic box art and very detailed screenshots on the back, and that game was Metal Gear Solid. Although it was rated M, my dad allowed me to play it, due to the premise of “Good Guy versus Bad Guy”, and oh boy, if only he knew how that would drive me both creatively and politically for the rest of my life.
I had never experience cutscenes like this game before, or mechanically deep gameplay like it either. Metal Gear Solid is the sole reason why I prefer story-based video game experiences now over any other. Eventually, my father got us a PlayStation 2 soon after this experience, and we ended up with a copy of Metal Gear Solid 2, and again, I was absolutely floored by the advancement of the medium and just how powerful interactive story-telling could be, even if I was too young to truly understand the story - Hell, I find new aspects of the series still to this day. Eventually, in my early teens I got to play through the final entry on the PlayStation 2 in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. The camouflage system, the way you could see and fix actual damage to your body after fights, the espionage intrigue that, at least on the surface, seemed simpler than Metal Gear Solid 1 or 2, and the seemingly massive scale of the map, naturally split by loading screens (but I think this is something that needs to come back to instill scale!) Again, completely blown away by what Hideo Kojima and his team were able to accomplish on the PlayStation 2.
Snake Eater is easily one of the best looking games on the PS2, maybe next to Final Fantasy XII, and one that holds up incredibly today. The game holds up so well, in fact, that it has been remastered in HD and ported to the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox One & Series, Nintendo Switch and PC. Any platform you could possibly be playing on today you can snag the game for and experience this incredible testament to video games as a story-telling medium and one of the greatest espionage thrillers from likely the greatest video game creator of our time. In my opinion, especially with it’s recent port to PC, PS5 and Xbox, I see no reason for a remake! Just keep polishing it and throwing it out as is to the next platforms so new players can enjoy - and that seemed to be the plan. However, Konami clearly had other ideas.
Before we talk about the Snake Eater remake coming up, lets talk about Konami and Kojima’s fall out, as well as the current company direction.
Hideo Kojima’s Kojima Production team originally started as an internal division of Konami Digital Entertainment, just to catch everyone up to speed on the origins on the studio behind modern behemoths like Death Stranding. Kojima worked on multiple titles with Konami, most renowned was Metal Gear, but he also had his hands on Silent Hill after some time, and was working on a reboot titled Silent Hills with a lot of the team he eventually created Death Stranding with before his incredibly messy, forced departure from Konami in 2015.
Since then, Konami has made many wrong turns, with a great example being Metal Gear Survive in 2018, and plenty of abysmal PC ports. Somewhere that Konami has seen money, however, is in remasters of older titles, such as the Castlevania remasters, which led them to create the Silent Hill 2 Remake, which has put them on a course of which I am personally afraid of.
Konami released the Silent Hill 2 remake in 2024 and struck gold. The game say incredible sales, with the game being developed by the Bloober team, who did so well on this remake that they are working independently on the upcoming Cronos game. Silent Hill 2 is sitting at an unprecedented 95% on Steam, a score Konami has not seen the likes of in a long time. Konami went on to announce a remake of the first Silent Hill, and of course, are soon to release the remake of MGS3, titled Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater. You can see where this is heading. Their original releases have tanked, and outside of Metal Gear Solid, their titles between MGS4 and MGSV are mixed as well. Unreal Engine 5 remakes are also becoming more common, with a recently high performing on being The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered. However, there is a distinction between TESIV & Silent Hill 2 compared to MGS3 - There isn’t a great way to easily play either title on modern platforms before the remakes.
Silent Hill & Silent Hill 2 have been ported before, with an HD port being released for the PlayStation 3, however, they are not on multiple modern platforms, and those HD remasters are hailed as the worst version of the games by a large margin. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, until it’s remake, was only available on PlayStation 3, Xnox 360 and PC, however, the PC port suffers from frequent crashes, and unlike titles like Final Fantasy XII or Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, its art has not aged well, especially in the character model department. For those titles, I can understand why Konami and Bethesda would want to remake them.
Metal Gear Solid 3, as mentioned above, is still to this day a gorgeous game. The game stood out on the PlayStation 2 so well that it has been ported numerous times, and is currently available on all modern platforms for the low price of $19.99, or $59.99 bundled with Metal Gear, Metal Gear 2, Metal Gear Solid, and Metal Gear Solid 2 titled The Master Collection Volume 1. Although a messy port at launch, it has since been fixed, even carrying a Steam Deck Verified badge. Not only is it available on modern platforms, the Master Collection ports were released in October of 2023, less than 2 years ago! It is hard to imagine a need for a remake for either Metal Gear Solid 2 or Metal Gear Solid 3. But, lets talk about why Unreal Engine may be worse for the game rather than better.
Unreal Engine 5 specializes in high-fidelity, life-like graphical quality, sometimes to an uncanny point. It also, often times, is plagued with technical issues for users not on the most up-to-date hardware. Metal Gear Solid 3 was created around the hardware at the time - and the PlayStation 2 era is likely the one that relied on original art direction more than any other, unlike the PlayStation 3 generation trying to get realistic looking visuals.
Snake Eater is a saturated, lush, and sometimes eerie jungle crawl that has a very unique style many other games have failed to capture. With Unreal Engine 5, the jungles look full, sure, but they do lose that lush charm Kojima captured on the PS2, and plenty of the character’s faces look very different, with an example being Ocelot, who had this softened appearance, which lended to his true role in the game, now being replaced by a sharp, rough looking soilder. It is also srange to graft Third Person Shooter mechanics onto a game that was not meant to be a third person shooter, on top of it all, while keeping the game otherwise mechanically faithful.
Okay, so it loses it’s charm visually, losing its seemingly green backdrop, being replaced by a brown fog and an art style that aligns with modern games. It also gets control swapped to a third person shooter in sections of the game, which changes the perspective and feel - Big deal! It still has the story, which is the games selling point, so who cares? Well, Kojima does, apparently. You know, the guy who created all 10 canonical entries in the franchise and helped produce the non-canonical entries prior to 2015? In an interview, Kojima said he wouldn’t be playing the game, after a brief chuckle at the question. This makes sense, as Konami rushed the final canonical entry out the door, basically scorched the LA office of Kojima Productions to the ground, and then went on to release a horribly received zombie themed spin-off of Metal Gear Solid V. Oh, and the game is $70. Remember how I said the port of MGS3 is only $20?…
Konami has done everything they can to exile Kojima, while going on to torch Kojima Productions in 2015, cancel Silent Hills, bastardize Metal Gear in 2018, and now try to print money with remakes after the success of a (much needed) remake of Silent Hill. If Delta, does well, as does the remake of Silent Hill 1, I am sure that Konami’s next step, instead of crafting original I.P’s, will be remaking Metal Gear Solid 1, a task that, in my opinion, as been tried and failed before. If you really want to play this remake, I would advise not to fuel this remake train at Konami HQ, and instead play the port available for much less on your modern platform of choice, or to borrow it instead.
Maybe I will borrow Delta and see if my opinion changes, but at the moment, I can’t support this title or developers trying to find the Infinite Money glitch. I will look forward to creative, original ideas, such as Kojima’s upcoming espionage game with Sony titled Physint. I do think remakes have a place in the current video game landscape, however, I wish moving forward it is reserved for games unavailable on modern platforms, such as the upcoming Final Fantasy Tactics remaster/remake.
Also, Finn has a YouTube channel where they release let's play series with friends. Currently, they are playing Pokemon FireRed and Bioshock. Give it a sub if that sounds like your jam!