Snake is properly back.
Konami
One of the best games in the Metal Gear Solid series has finally been given a modern remake, and it is thoroughly superb.
While I have fond memories of the first Metal Gear Solid back in 1998, it was very much a digitally designed stealth game. You had a (mostly) top-down view of the proceedings, with a radar that showed where your enemies were looking as well as moving, and you had ration packs that refilled your health.
The same was also true for the second game, although the addition of first-person elements did change things up somewhat (and no, the first game’s Integral first-person mode is not the same functionally).
However, what really elevated the series of Metal Gear Solid was its third and retro-themed game.
Set in the 60s, gone were the radars that showed you where enemies were positioned as well as where they were looking, and food now replenished stamina rather than health. You also had to figure out what the best camouflage was to use in different parts of the jungle or in a hidden military base.
The third game, then, was as analogue as the decade in which it was set, and it made for a more organic and fluid stealth setup that was uniquely engaging, both then and now.
It also had some of the best boss fights ever in gaming, with my personal favorite being against the suitably ancient sniper, The End.
The story also set up the whole narrative arc for Big Boss, who would be a key figure in the original Metal Gear games.
The camouflage setup makes a welcome return.
Konami
Play Puzzles & Games on Forbes
In short, the third Metal Gear Solid was a masterful game back on the PlayStation 2, and this remake certainly does justice to that.
Normally, when remakes happen, a lot is updated functionally, and you sometimes lose key elements that made the game special along the way. Quality of life improvements that make the game more manageable in a modern sense can often shortcut elements that were there to increase tension or complexity.
In the few rare cases where this doesn’t happen, you end up with something quite special.
That is what this remake is. It’s a very faithful remake of the original game, down to precise recreations of areas and even cutscene animations, but still affords players the choice for a more modern control scheme, among other things.
What makes this especially remarkable is that all of this has been done within Unreal Engine 5, which has an entirely new and different toolset in terms of the backend.
While everyone tends to focus on the graphical side of things with middleware engines such as these, it’s the toolsets they offer that can often functionally skew how a game gets made and eventually plays.
In this instance, Delta handles like the original PlayStation 2 game did, and that is both wonderful and eerie to behold.
It also brings me to the elephant in the room: this game was made without Hideo Kojima’s involvement. Not that I ever bought into the great-man myth surrounding Kojima in the first place, as it’s well documented that he didn’t come up with the original Metal Gear, many still think he was the key element in making the Metal Gear Solid games work.
The retro 60s setting is still as compelling as it was originally.
Konami
The reality, as with most things, is far more mundane; games are made by large teams of people who all bring various aspects to how any game turns out.
So what this remake proves, pretty empirically, is that the people who made the Metal Gear Solid games great are still at Konami and are capable as well as adaptable enough to remake a game this accurately with an entirely new and off-the-shelf toolset.
To explain why this is such a big deal, whenever you take source code and assets from an old game and port them to a new engine and toolset, almost everything breaks. People have to then go in and adjust all the settings and variables to fit the new engine and toolset.
This is a difficult, painstaking, and, most importantly of all, a very manual process. One person is nowhere near enough to be able to do all that work on a game this big. This is why it’s such a smoking gun in showing that game development is a team-based, very collaborative endeavor.
All of this is what really makes Delta stand out for me. Yes, it plays brilliantly and also incredibly faithfully to the original, but the team behind this did all of that in an engine and toolset that was not at all created for this game, and it still plays identically.
My only criticism, and it is a very slight one, is that they could have flexed their collective creative muscles a bit more and added in a few more things of their own. However, I think with Kojima’s PR shadow looming as it is, they were sadly forced to play it safe.
It is also worth mentioning here that it’s really nice to have David Hayter back and voicing Snake. His absence from Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain, despite Akio Ohtsuka’s continued inclusion in the Japanese version, suggested something deeply petty at work. Thankfully, that has been rectified, and the real voice of Snake has finally returned.
Overall, Metal Gear Solid Delta is a superb remake of probably the best stealth action game ever made. It’s even more impressive that this was achieved with an insane level of accuracy in a completely separate engine and toolset. I would even go so far as to say that this version supersedes the original in almost every way, and comes highly recommended to anyone who wants to crawl on their belly through a jungle while eating snakes.
Platform: PlayStation 5 (Reviewed), Xbox Series X|S, PC
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Released: 28th August 2025
Price: $69.99
Score: 9/10
Disclosure: Konami sent me a copy of this game for the purposes of this review.
Follow me on X, Facebook and YouTube. I also manage Mecha Damashii and am currently featured in the Giant Robots exhibition currently touring Japan.