It’s been a while since Hideo Kojima made his farewell magnum opus in the MGS series about adventures of the cloned Big Boss. (And it’s hard to take seriously the stigmatized MGS: Survive as Kojima barely had any creative control over that Fulton-driven blasphemy.)
The rebooted Snake Eater will be a warm hello from the past, making the OG fans misty-eyed. The neophytes will probably appreciate the overhauled visuals, and smoother fight mechanics, as well as the classic plot where Philosophers, KGB, and robot scientists get at each other’s throats. We, an iGaming affiliates, made a quick review of the upcoming title.
That 60s Show
Hopefully, the original game’s narrative will stay untouched and be the same bizarre and stormful mishmash of infiltrations, interrogations, and Cobra Unit neutralizations — some of those will put your patience at a painful test, but it’s worth it.
The game is set in the 1960s Soviet Union: Nikita Krustchev threatens to hail the entire arsenal of Tsar Bombs upon the American continent, unless Lyndon Johnsn can prove that the US have nothing to do with a mysterious nuclear explosion that has just happened on the communist soil.
The primary area of interest here is a fictional town of Tselinoyarsk — a closed-for-entry, tightly guarded area, where a macabre Soviet genius designs caterpillar nuclear tanks. Such a tank — alternatively known as Shagohod — is a “weapon of tomorrow” that could be a key to the victory in the Cold War.
You will play as Naked Snake — who will later be known as Big Boss — a brilliant saboteur and green beret receiving orders straight from Langley headquarters. It’s that pivotal moment in his life when he loses one of his eyes, receives an iconic eyepatch as a consolation prize, and learns the bitter lessons of treachery, deception, and how dreadfully insane people can get over their ambitions, delusions of grandeur, and lust for money.
By the way, cash rules a lot in Snake Eater: we are talking about 100$ billion — a nest egg carefully put together by a mysterious organization dubbed Philosophers. In the game they play a role of a secret government, pulling the strings from behind, Illuminati style. Their goal is, of course, building the New World Order. And of course the goal becomes a deafening failure with the remaining Philosophers fighting over the money like dogs over meat scrap.
All in all, it’s a captivating odyssey of spying, stalking on your prey, noiselessly slithering into grin-looking military facilities, and fighting more than insidious bosses. One of them is simply known as “The End” and there’s a good reason why: the 100+ years old war-horse is infected with a mysterious parasite strain, and you’re about to discover what super powers they grant him.
Visuals: Smooth & Pretty?
We only know what the game will look like from a gameplay demo released by Konami, and so far it looks quite promising. First, it’s impossible to avoid the impression that you’re seeing some sort of a prequel to Phantom Pain — a new life has been breathed into the Snake Eater’s visual component with facelifted textures and apparently improved physics.
Now, there’s a bigger amount of detail, which nicely complements cutscenes from skydiving in the glare of a golden sunset to the meticulously filmed microcosm of the taiga forest, where billions of ants hurry to construct the winter quarters for their queen driven by the collective impulse. (Monarchy meets Collectivization!)
Nature is absolutely vibrant in the game. Naked Snake will learn how to survive in a rough biome of, seemingly, Siberian taiga — it is inhospitable, but sure stunning. Every blade of grass, every creek running through the rugged valleys, every birch and cedar pine are alive here. And most of them are probably interactable: at least you can safely hide behind a tree to knock senseless a vagrant Soviet special-op to expropriate his firearms.
Game mechanics have also got a nice little touch-up from the devs. CQC movement has certainly migrated from the Phantom Pain and Snake unleashes a sequence of nimble and surgically precise hand movements to have the opponent thrown on the ground like a sack of potatoes.
Another appreciable novelty that the original game critically needed is the backwards crawling. Again, it’s a nice nuance borrowed from the recent MGS games — probably premiering in the prologue dubbed Ground Zeroes — that makes neutralizing unwary Soviets a smoother and more enjoyable experience.
A few oddities, of course, still can catch your eyes. First, despite splendid visuals, lighting, and improved physics, the character’s hair still somehow either resembles a wig made from a solid chunk of plasticine, or an experiment with a hair-fixating pomade gone wrong.
Another peculiarity is the fauna of the local biome. There, among all else, you can stumble upon an alligator, whose yawning apparently gives a gentle hint to his appetite and outlines the attractiveness of Snake’s nutritious flesh. This is truly odd since Siberia is too cold for the Alligatoridae reptiles to live, as they can’t stitch together sable fur coats to make it through the winter. But in MGS anything is possible, it seems.
Kept Us Waitin’
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater has a chance to show how a legitimate reboot should be tailored. So far, it has everything a fan of the original Snake Eater would want: mesmerizing locales, updated gameplay mechanics that open a leeway for enemy interaction, and even a stupidly hot paramedic NPC. Sadly, Kojima is not affiliated with the project. But maybe, his notorious perfectionism is needed somewhere else at the moment.
