A short while ago I mentioned starting two game review features on one series I’ve always wanted to play, Kingdom Hearts, and another I’ve played many times and the Metal Gear series is the other half of that, as after the likes of Sonic and Resident Evil it’s probably the game series I’ve replayed the most across my life, and pretty much all entries to boot. Speaking of which, I went back and forth on where to start from, since I’ve already reviewed the first Solid game, but since Snake Eater is getting a full on remake in the near future I thought I’d give as much time between them as I could, plus it’s the earliest game in the franchise timeline-wise, so it made sense in that way too. Sadly it’s often considered to be the peak of the series, especially story-wise, but is it really all downhill from here? Does it still even stand up? Let’s take a look!
Background:
The End is just the beginning! … Of this review. He’s actually about half way in the game… (PS2)
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater was a PS2 exclusive first released in the US (oddly) on November 17th 2004, with the Japanese release happening the following month, December 16th 2004 to be precise. Us stuck in the PAL regions didn’t get it until March 4th 2005… An expanded version called Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater Subsistence was released in late 2005 in Japan and 2006 everywhere else.
It has since been re-released a whole bunch of times. It was packaged with MGS2 and MGS: Peace Walker in the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection for PlayStation 3 and XBOX 360, which followed the original’s convention of releasing in Japan and the US in November 2011 but not reaching my UK shores until February 2012. A PlayStation Vita version of this collection was released in all three regions at the same time in June 2012. I actually own the 360 version but I thought two consoles were enough already for this review! A 3DS version of the game, simply dubbed Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D was released in early 2012 and finally it was included in the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 for the PS5, PS4, XBOX Series, Nintendo Switch and PC, which released worldwide on October 24th 2023.
Well, I say finally, obviously there’s the remake “Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater” on its way to PS5, XBOX Series and PC in the near future, but I’ll be reviewing that separately whenever that comes out…
Gameplay:
I like how a radar with enemy cones of vision is a no-no because it’s the 60s but flying moving platforms? No problem! (PS5)
Unsurprisingly for a game with “3” in the title, it plays similarly to previous entries in the franchise, where you control Snake in a third person perspective and have to get from one place to another without being seen, if possible. You can crouch, crawl on your belly, silently choke people out, shoot them with silenced pistols, all that usual stuff, but as Snake Eater takes place primarily in a jungle during the 60s there are a few differences. First of all the handy radar that shows you enemy positions and cones of vision is gone, replaced with a sonar device you have to actually equip in your item slot. Secondly there’s now a camo index meter and many different camo outfits you can wear, so choosing the right outfit for where you’re currently hiding in key to avoiding detection. The former makes things a lot more challenging while the latter is a fun system to play around with. Also added are a stamina system that will go down naturally over time and you have to refill it by eating either food found around the place or by catching and eating local animals (like, eating a snake, maybe?) and a frankly annoying injury system, where if you get shot or exploded etc then you have to go into a menu, pick the right equipment to treat it, and press each bit of equipment one after the other to heal yourself. While it can be funny to see where you’ve been randomly hit it just takes you out of the action far too much. In the middle of a fun boss fight? Well, hang on five minutes I need to press start, go into this menu and press all these buttons to heal myself before continuing, which means in-universe the boss is just standing there waiting, I guess… I mean it was a good motivator to stay hidden and not get hit, but let’s just say I’m not surprised it never returned to the series…
Panic firing in first person while on alert? Yeah, that sounds like me alright… (PS2)
Of course, if you’re like me, you’ll know that when you inevitably do get caught there are plenty of unstealthy weapons to use and a new CQC combat system to take down foes hand to hand or grab hold of them and slit their throats (or interrogate them… before slitting their throats). Lot’s of fun to be had! When you use a handgun or rifle you can go into a first person mode to aim and fire accurately, it’s something introduced in MGS2 but still worth mentioning here, as it’s extremely handy (as I noticed during my replay of the original MGS, which lacked it!) There are of course boss fights that require you to not use stealth at all, including a great sniper duel with “The End”, a 100+ year old sniper who you have to out-snipe in several patches of jungle, or move your internal clock forward enough that he dies of natural causes, which is a classic bit of Hideo Kojima humour. There’s also an infamous moment where Snake climbs a ladder, which may seem like an innocent and unmemorable moment but in this case the ladder climb takes like two or three minutes all while a slower version of the Snake Eater theme plays… I’ve never been sure what Kojima was going for there, but hey-ho! There’s also the final boss fight, but I’ll leave that to the story section. It’s one of my favourite gaming moments though so I had to mention it here, too!
The PS2 version included a bonus game called “Snake vs. Monkey” where our titular protagonist has to capture Ape Escape monkeys dotted about in several maps. It’s good fun, and a shame it never got ported, presumably due to copyright reasons. The “Subsistence” version adds playable versions of Metal Gear 1 and 2 (I guess because at this time they were the only other things that happened in between this game and MGS1… boy did that ever change!) and an Online mode, though I didn’t have an online capable PS2 and even if I did I never would’ve tried it… Oh well, it sounds like it was just some basic death matchy stuff, so I’m not heartbroken it too has never left the Sixth Generation.
Graphics and Sound:
Fair play to the PS2 version, there have been a few double takes to make sure I’m putting the right console in brackets on these pictures! (um, PS2…)
The graphics were good at the time, in fact the jungle environments and having lots of enemies and animals on screen at the same time I remember being really impressive, and Snake’s model and movement were great too. The 360 port made the game widescreen and polished up the models and environments a bit, and the PS5 version I played here took the 360 version and added a little bit more polish (like better lighting) It looks perfectly fine, so long as you go in knowing it’s an up-rez’d version of a 20 year old game.
Sound-wise it’s great, music is used to increase tension and the feeling of action, with a few vocal tunes for the intro and credits thrown in, the sound effects are top notch and I still love the voice acting, though I wouldn’t say it’s on par with some modern efforts it’s still perfectly good, especially David Hayter’s Snake and Lori Alan as The Boss.
Story:
Aww, he’s so young… Ocelot that is, Sokolov I don’t care about in the grand scheme of things! (PS5)
A CIA agent currently known by the codename “Naked Snake” is sent into Soviet Russia to retrieve a scientist called Sokolov who had defected to the US but was recently returned to his homeland in a business deal, which is why Snake is sent in alone so the government can have deniability. To make matters worse Sokolov is believed to be making a new special type of nuclear equipped tank that could end the Cold War in Russia’s favour. Supported by Major Zero, Para-Medic and his old mentor The Boss via radio Snake manages to find Sokolov and even fight off a top ranked Soviet GRU Major called Ocelot, but the mission comes to a sudden close when The Boss appears in person and announces she is defecting to the Soviet Union, specifically to team with Colonel Volgin who wishes to gain control the country from Khrushchev. Aided by her old World War II buddies the COBRA Unit, The Boss takes out Snake, recaptures Sokolov and gifts Volgin a “Davey Crockett” nuclear missile launcher. As they take off Volgin decides spur of the moment to fire the nuclear missile at Sokolov’s research facility, a choice that upset Ocelot and clearly confuses The Boss…
Snake survives his beating, long fall and the nearby nuclear blast and just a week later is sent back to Tselinoyarsk by the join direction of both US President Johnson and Khruschev, the former wanting to prove the US’s innocence in the nuclear bombing and the latter wanting to get rid of Volgin and his faction. Snake is given three mission goals: take out Volgin and stop his faction’s goals, destroy Sokolov’s nuclear equipped tank known as the “Shagohod” and finally to eliminate the Boss to show that she was acting alone and not under US orders. Snake meets up with an inside man, or well, woman, called EVA despite the fact he was expecting to meet a male spy called Adam, and begins making his way through the area, defeating Major Ocelot again (though he seems rather pleased with his confrontations, especially as Snake convinced him to give using a revolver a go in classic prequel “that’s the origin of that” fashion!) plus making his way through the COBRA unit by killing off weird living beehive man The Pain, equally weird double-jointed insect man The Fear, ancient photosynthetic sniper The End, and insane former astronaut The Fury, plus he has a trippy near-death experience where he meets the already-dead COBRA member The Sorrow.
It’s fine, he’s just doing pull ups to increase his stamina!
He also meets a scientist called Granin who reveals that he hates Sokolov as his Shagohod design was chosen instead of his idea of a bipedal tank he described as a Metal Gear in the cog of something or other… it’s another prequel thing, don’t worry about it. He also finds out that Volgin has a colossal fortune thanks to his father inheriting the “Philosopher’s Legacy”, basically during the early 20th century America, Russia and China secretly came together and pooled their resources to create a secret organisation called The Philosophers, and when it came to an end the fortune was split, but Volgin’s dad, and now Volgin (after killing his dad) has not just got the Soviet part but a microfilm with the entire legacy’s location on it. The Boss later reveals that she worked for The Philosophers and that her son, born in the middle of the Normandy landings, was taken from her to make sure she continued to do so (and that child for the record is Ocelot and the father is The Sorrow, who The Boss had to kill herself to fulfil her duty…complicated family tree, to say the least!)
Spoilers from here to the next bolded sentence!
Snake is eventually captured and tortured by Volgin, who uses his electric powers (giving Ocelot the impression that electro-torture is a great thing, so once again, that’s the origin of that!) and during this our protagonist loses an eye trying to save EVA and making sure she doesn’t blow her cover. He eventually escapes and has a near-romantic conversation with EVA before heading back to the base and planting bombs on the Shagohod to get closer to finishing his mission. He plants the bombs but ends up having to go hand-to-hand with Volgin when he and Ocelot sniff out (literally) EVA, though she is taken away to be killed by The Boss off-screen. Snake defeats Volgin and meets back up with EVA, who The Boss let go, and the two make a getaway via a bike and sidecar but are chased by the Shagohod, piloted by Volgin. After a few missile rounds and a “lucky” lightning strike (that may or may not have something to do with the Sorrow’s other-worldly powers) Volgin is killed… sort of (just wait for a retcon in MGS V!) and Snake and EVA head to a plane to escape, with EVA getting mortally wounded on the way but she walks it off and soon its never mentioned again. Before that though Snake confronts The Boss, finding out from EVA that the plan was for her to fain defection but once Volgin fired the nuke she was left with no choice but to be labelled a traitor to her country and get killed to clear America’s name, becoming a true patriot by becoming a historical figure of hatred. Reluctantly Snake fights her and ends up killing her in a flowery field in still one of the best framed and most impactful boss fighters / cutscenes in gaming history.
Some moments don’t need describing… (PS5)
Snake and EVA then head off on their plane but as they escape Ocelot arrives and gives duelling Snake one more go but loses again, announces how much he admires him and then leaves before the plane takes off. Snake and EVA share another night together where she steals the Philosopher’s Legacy film from him and reveals she was actually a Chinese agent pretending to be a US agent who was then sent to Russia as a Spy and therefore she took the Legacy for her country, though we see Snake has kept the real one for himself. Snake is later given a medal and the title of “Big Boss” by the US President but after how the country treated The Boss Snake wants nothing to do with the title or the country, choosing instead to salute The Boss’s nameless grave and clearly begin to plan a paradise where soldiers can be who they are without politicians hands in their actions, in other words, this is the incident that ends up with him becoming Big Boss and forming Outer Heaven, though later games set after this but before MG1 would retcon this, though this incident is still a major factor in what ends up happening… Still clearly what this game was created for, but ah well.
Spoilers Are Over!
It’s a really fun Cold War thriller with your classic Hideo Kojima weirdness in some of the character designs and powers. The connection between Snake and The Boss is so unique and well realised that it’s always stuck with me as a great example of a deep but complicated relationship that isn’t anything to do with love or romance. It’s definitely Kojima’s best work, storywise.
Thoughts Then:
Snake carries an unconscious Raiden up some stairs in 1960s Russia. Confused? I bet a lot would’ve been at the time had this screenshot ended up being shown in the lead up! (PS5, because I ran out of PS2 screenshots, sorry…)
Funnily enough, while I enjoyed Snake Eater, at the time it kind of passed me by. I think because by the time it came out all my friends who I’d normally talk to about the game / story were off in different universities across the country and with the internet only just emerging into what it is now I couldn’t exactly talk to them online about it either, not very often anyway. Due to that, I played through it twice, really enjoyed the story but sucked at the stealth aspect (like all my Metal Gear playthroughs, to be fair…) and then didn’t play it again until the 360 re-release, which is where I think how good the game was in all aspects really sunk in. Back in the day(s) I gave the original a 4 but the 360 version 5, but since this is a PS2 / PS4 review I’ll have to go with my original PS2 score…
Thoughts Now:
“What a thriilllll….” … or not.
Now? Still a fantastic story and really fun gameplay (where I still suck at stealth sections, but not as much! Hooray!) the added screen real-estate and higher rez textures only add to a already great foundation. I think gameplay wise I’d give it a 4 still (which is totally on me, I know) but story alone the game deserves a 5, even in 2024. Looking forward to the same again, only with modern Unreal Engine 5 graphics instead…
Hogan Reviews 