Metal Gear Solid 3: The Complicated History of All 5 Versions Explained

Metal Gear Solid: Delta is not the archetypal remake of Metal Gear Solid 3.

In the 2 decades since Metal Gear Solid 3 archetypal HALO-dropped into our hearts, Konami has reissued, remastered, and remade Hideo Kojima’s tactical espionage opus much than a fewer times– adding to, subtracting from, and importantly changing Snake’s escapade successful the nonexistent jungles of the Soviet Union.

You tin excavation up the earthy PS2 archetypal that deed 2004 similar a tactical nuke, oregon feast connected the much refined and rounded Subsistence. You tin bask it connected the go, oregon judge immoderate sacrifices to play it connected the newest tech. And if nary of those get you charged up, possibly Delta volition present the Snake Eater of your dreams.

There are plentifulness of ways to bask 1 of the top games ever made– but what’s the correct way to acquisition MGS3? Is authenticity the aim, oregon adjacent achievable? Are we consenting to suffer immoderate of its archetypal information successful the sanction of enjoyability and accessibility? In short: what’s the existent Metal Gear Solid 3?

Your mission, Jack, is to infiltrate the assorted versions of this virtuous masterpiece and research the changes it’s accumulated passim the years, for amended and for worse, opening with...

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

Try to retrieve immoderate of the basics of beingness successful 2004: You’re wearing your “Vote for Pedro” shirt, rocking a Livestrong bracelet, and T9 texting your MySpace apical 8 connected the brand-new Moto Razr. Spider-Man 2 is at the movie theater, on your iPod Mini, and inside your sixth-generation console. Other games vying for your attraction successful this perfectly stacked twelvemonth see a squad of S-tier sequels similar Half-Life 2, Halo 2, and GTA: San Andreas. MGS3 hangs with them all.

Etched connected this PS2-exclusive disc is an all-time classic. Hot connected the heels of the mind-shattering Metal Gear Solid 2, Snake Eater is the platonic perfect of a prequel– an approachable enactment epic, with fantabulous voice-acting, and intricate, quirky crippled systems. It’s the cleanable on-ramp to the Kojima acquisition and it easy deserves our modern people of 9.6.

But the crippled is astir each you get.

The archetypal merchandise of Snake Eater had nary VR missions, nary multiplayer, and nary bonus features beyond Snake vs. Monkey, a charming hide-and-seek minigame starring the titular simians of Sony’s Ape Escape series. Since the run itself is much than a hearty meal, nary 1 overmuch complained astatine the time, though determination was immoderate grumbling astir the fixed, overhead camera carried implicit from MGS2.

A top-down presumption worked large for the bases, tankers, and… struts of past Metal Gear games, but a batch had changed since the heyday of 8-bit Japanese PCs. The archetypal merchandise of Snake Eater tin beryllium aggravating astatine times, and the cramped position doesn’t instrumentality afloat vantage of the wide-open jungles of Tselinoyarsk.

Still, the PS2 archetypal is the rare, unseasoned Snake Eater experience– and there’s thing rather similar sinking your teeth into the earliest draught of a masterpiece. It doesn’t get much authentic than this flawed but foundational substance from which each MGS3 is derived.

It lone took a fewer months for Kojima and Konami to commencement tinkering with the game. Like MGS2 earlier it, the PAL mentation of Snake Eater includes a brag unreserved mode, cutscene theater, and the “European Extreme” trouble level– possibly 1 of the highest honors ever bestowed upon a continent.

The crippled itself was substantially unaltered, but it would spot subSISTantial changes successful MGS3: Subsistence.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence

The new-and-improved mentation of Snake Eater didn’t travel arsenic a surprise, since some anterior MGS titles were followed by revised expansions. Metal Gear Solid: Integral included an full disk of VR missions, a playable first-person view, and a bizarre photoshoot mode that has since been reborn successful Death Stranding 2.

MGS2: Substance was flush with bonus content, including non-canon, mostly silly Snake Tales to appease the aggravated anti-Raiden army. The crippled itself received tons of subtle refinements, though thing adjacent the grade of MGS3.

With MGS3: Subsistence, the Snake Eater acquisition is present composed of treble disks, with a 2nd DVD bursting with bonus material, arsenic good arsenic caller ports of the archetypal MSX games– including the archetypal authoritative localization of the magnificent Metal Gear 2.

And if that wasn’t capable bang for your buck, the alleged “Persistence” disc besides includes a full-fledged online multiplayer mode: Metal Gear Online. Other MGS games, including Delta, would connection their ain rotation connected the PvP formula, but this is the lone merchandise of MGS3 that includes it– though the servers person been acheronian since 2007.

Goodies aside, it’s the monolithic alteration to gameplay that makes Subsistence specified a large deal. It’s wherefore the rerelease has been the blueprint for each aboriginal iterations of the title, and it’s a large capable woody that 1 could plausibly reason that Subsistence is simply a remake unto itself.

Subsistence incorporates a brand-new, player-controlled, third-person camera system– fundamentally a prototype borrowed from the past in-development Metal Gear Solid 4, and a immense betterment successful presumption of idiosyncratic experience. The crippled present allows you to peek astir corners and scope retired your surroundings, without the tedium of popping into first-person. The aged mode is inactive disposable arsenic an option, though not a precise appetizing one– adjacent if immoderate of the acquisition is mislaid successful the transition:

The caller POV makes the crippled somewhat easier, though obscurity adjacent the grade to which Twin Snakes trivialized the halls of Shadow Moses.

Some cinematic setpieces primitively contained bespoke camera shots and movements that spell unseen with the caller system. They’re inactive there, but you’d person to cognize astir them to power implicit beforehand.

Finally, the wide-open Soviet jungle loses conscionable a small magic erstwhile the camera is unshackled. Without the curated, constricted angles of vanilla Snake Eater, it’s easier to spot past the illusion of a sprawling wilderness and recognise the portion for what it really is: a bid of amazingly tiny rooms connected by loading screens.

Issues aside, the caller camera makes Subsistence a beardown campaigner for the definitive mentation of MGS3. It’s astir purely additive and, dissimilar aboriginal releases, it’s content-complete. Our much granular reappraisal standard of the epoch deemed the upgrade worthy 2 full tenths of a point, and galore others would hold that it’s the amended crippled implicit the original… But is it the same game?

The enhanced rerelease is simply a Kojima contented astatine this point. Even Death Stranding has a “Director’s Cut,” though Kojima himself disagrees with that label– helium prefers the word “Director’s Plus.” His expansions beryllium to supplement the original, not formed shadiness connected oregon regenerate them– adjacent though successful respective cases, the vanilla versions are nary longer commercially available.

Subsistence is the smoothest mode to play MGS3, and it’s astir apt the camera the crippled should person shipped with. The happening is… it didn’t. The archetypal merchandise of Snake Eater remains Kojima’s uncompromised vision– and truthful does Subsistence. It’s up to you if you privation to endure an aggravating camera successful the pursuit of historicity, sans the temptation to power to the amended system.

Subsistence remained the last connection connected MGS3 for 5 years, until different mentation brought Snake Eater into a caller generation. Most of it, anyway.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater HD

Metal Gear Solid: HD Collection was released successful November of 2011, the aforesaid time arsenic Modern Warfare 3, making for 1 absorbing midnight astatine Gamestop. The Collection contains updated ports of MGS 2 and 3, positive a brand-new large surface mentation of the PSP-exclusive Peace Walker, each successful glorious 720p.

Snake Eater HD is based connected Subsistence, incorporating the escaped camera portion offering higher resolution, autochthonal 16:9 widescreen support, and 60 frames per 2nd performance. The HD postulation was besides the archetypal accidental for XBox owners to acquisition MGS3, though that came with a monolithic caveat.

Back successful the optimistic aboriginal years of the millennium, console manufacturers went benignant of brainsick with controllers. It was a large play of innovation, starring to the abandonment of wires, built-in rumble, buttons shaped similar beans, and controllers modelled aft TV remotes and chainsaws. Pressure delicate buttons were an evolutionary dormant extremity of this era.

In summation to analog sticks and triggers, the DualShock 2, 3, and archetypal XBox controllers each utilized analog look buttons that responded to pressure, meaning alternatively of a elemental on/off state, they tin study however hard they’re pushed. Not galore games took vantage of this feature, but Kojima, the antheral who turned the prima itself into a crippled peripheral, gleefully stitched pressure-sensitivity into the precise cloth of MGS2 and 3.

To rise your weapon, lightly property the designated Weapon Button. Let spell to little your weapon without raising the alarm oregon spending silencer health. Push it each the mode successful to propulsion the trigger. With today’s musculus memory, it’s benignant of jarring to not interaction the enarthrosis buttons portion handling an in-game firearm, but it works.

MGS3’s absorption connected close-quarters combat adds the wrinkle of questioning enemies astatine the extremity of Snake’s blade, wherever 1 gaffe of the thumb tin crook interrogation into exsanguination. The slightest quality of unit is each that stands betwixt snagging immoderate shiny caller dogtags oregon splattering GRU guts connected your camo and losing the precious Pigeon rank.

The pressure-sensitive controls tin beryllium inelegant astatine times, but they’re however the crippled was meant to beryllium played– a uniquely tactile, immersive mechanic that mightiness beryllium everlastingly mislaid to history.

The PS3 mentation of MGS3 HD is the past merchandise of the crippled to enactment unit sensitivity. Starting with the XBox 360 merchandise of the HD Collection, Snake Eater has replaced it with a clumsy but functional strategy that involves clicking sticks, due to the fact that today’s controllers are nary longer capable of this level of input.

Analog look buttons are expensive, and the wide apathy toward them led console manufacturers to dump them similar a sack of spoiled histrion frogs with the seventh generation. Today’s controllers are successful their haptics and interior microphone eras, and nary 1 has shown overmuch involvement successful reviving unit controls.

Not a batch tin beryllium done astir an industry-wide determination to driblet a feature, but it does mean we mightiness ne'er get a accidental to acquisition the crippled similar this again. Even emulation requires original, aging analog hardware to bask Snake Eater arsenic it was intended. You truly can’t cognize what it’s similar unless you’ve really felt it

The HD Collection is besides the archetypal merchandise of MGS3 to remove content from the game. Every azygous bonus diagnostic from Subsistence is absent prevention for the 8-bit Metal Gears. Metal Gear Online is gone, and truthful is Snake vs. Monkey– a constituent of Snake Eater since its archetypal printing successful 2004. Sony didn’t privation their Ape Escape connected different platforms, and arsenic of Delta they inactive don’t. We’ll get to Konami’s clever compromise soon.

The HD Collection replaced the lethargic framerate and hazy PS2 sheen of Subsistence with creaseless show and HD clarity. Some cutscenes don’t play ace good with widescreen, and immoderate ocular effects are mislaid successful translation, but it suits its intent arsenic a solid, adaptable, astir archival variation of MGS3.

It’s conscionable a shame Guy Savage didn’t marque the cut.

In erstwhile releases, aft Snake is captured and imprisoned heavy wrong the fortress Groznyj Grad, our now-cyclopic leader has the enactment to telephone Para-Medic and prevention his game. This, naturally, sparks a treatment astir Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Snake falls asleep, and erstwhile the subordinate loads the prevention again, they find themselves successful a wholly antithetic video game.

Without immoderate mentation we are tossed into a barebones, black-and-white hack-and-slash series successful power of a hook-sword wielding anime hunk. There’s a textured warehouse environment, a horde of zombies with rudimentary AI, and adjacent a basal “heating up” mechanic, but the enactment ends aft conscionable a fewer minutes of mayhem and Snake Eater returns to your regularly-scheduled adventure.

Snake’s nightmare, known arsenic the “Guy Savage” sequence, is Kojima’s trademark fourth-wall trolling astatine its finest. It was intended arsenic a teaser for different crippled the squad had been kicking astir astatine the time, utilizing a conflict strategy borrowed from the never-released Zone of the Enders 3.

But, opening with the HD Collection, Guy Savage has been M.I.A. from MGS3.

We don’t truly cognize why. Maybe the abstracted crippled motor proved excessively laborious to port. Perhaps Konami doesn’t privation the hassle of licensing aged concepts for a cancelled game. For immoderate reason, we indispensable endure the seemingly-permanent nonaccomplishment of Guy Savage– on with the related codec banter from your kooky unit of aboriginal planetary authoritarian overlords.

Cutting an wholly missable non-sequitur phantasy series isn’t the extremity of the world, but Snake Eater is less complete without it.

Imagine if Psycho Mantis nary longer talked your receptor disconnected astir Suikoden, oregon MGS4 didn’t unfastened with surreal live-action in-universe TV shows. It’s these playful, winking moments of weirdness that marque Kojima games truthful special, and it would sincerely beryllium a shame if Guy Savage has joined the likes of P.T., skateboarding Snake, and Sam Bridges slamming Monsties successful the catalog of Kojima contented that we whitethorn ne'er spot again.

The MGS3 HD larboard was carried guardant into the currently-available Master Collection, meaning it’s the lone mode to legally acquisition and play the archetypal Snake Eater connected modern hardware. For that crushed unsocial we would easy urge it, particularly since the crippled was really delisted for a portion implicit rights issues surrounding banal footage.

The champion mentation of immoderate crippled is the 1 you tin really play, aft all, and dissimilar different Metal Gear titles stuck successful limbo, you tin ain and tally this highly coagulated mentation of Snake Eater connected beauteous overmuch anything. It’s not the aforesaid crippled that was released successful 2004, but until Delta, it’s each we’ve got.

There’s 1 much iteration of Snake Eater to speech astir earlier we scope the existent day, though, and it’s 1 of the astir absorbing of all:

Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D

Until the Switch, there’s ne'er been a straight-up larboard of the halfway MGS trilogy to a Nintendo platform. Metal Gear is nary alien to the company, but whenever the bid appears connected Nintendo hardware there’s usually immoderate benignant of twist.

The Game Boy Color received a meaty 2-D throwback title, the GameCube enjoyed the highly other Twin Snakes remake, and Snake himself dukes it retired with the Super Smash Bros. connected the regular. Even the NES larboard of the archetypal Metal Gear crippled was a bespoke, albeit wildly inferior, mentation that spawned a Nintendo-exclusive sequel without Kojima’s blessing, prompting him to proceed the bid purely retired of spite.

The Nintendo 3DS larboard of Snake Eater is nary objection to this trend. Snake Eater 3D isn’t simply a portable larboard of the PS2 title– it’s much similar a full-fledged remake. Rather than cram the HD variation onto a cartridge, Snake Eater 3D applies the art, sound, and contented of MGS3 to the much modern, portable-first motor of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. The differences are subtle, but rather wide successful your hands.

The colour strategy and quality models are somewhat altered, and caller fastener prompts demystify the confusing CQC mechanics. Collectible Kerotan dolls person been replaced by Yoshi. The crippled takes afloat vantage of the 3DS’s hardware, utilizing the onboard camera to make your ain PhotoCamo, portion the secondary interaction surface does wonders for MGS3’s notoriously convoluted paper system.

The existent giveaway that Snake Eater 3D is built connected the bones of Peace Walker is the caller question and aiming system. Like successful Peace Walker and MGS4 earlier it, Snake tin present rapidly scamper crossed the jungle level via crouch walking, eliminating the request for dilatory crawling and tedious tip-toeing successful the archetypal versions.

Gone are the thumb-twisting limb controls, replaced by a accepted over-the-shoulder third-person aiming system, implicit with modern “aim with the near trigger, sprout with the right” scheme. The easier quality to determination portion aiming gives Snake acold much mobility options during combat.

That state combined with the alternatively exploitable create-your-own-camo feature, connected apical of the escaped camera from Subsistence, makes Snake Eater 3D the easiest iteration of MGS3– though it’s acold from the astir pleasant to play. The framerate is abysmal, the solution is miniscule, and bully luck stopping the Shagohod without a Circle Pad Pro.

The chiseled gamefeel and prime of beingness improvements can’t truly marque up for these monolithic downsides. Still, Snake Eater 3D is sui generis. There’s nary different mentation rather similar it, and it’s worthy experiencing– but mostly arsenic a curiosity, provided you person entree to a 3DS with 2 sticks.

Besides, astir of its amended features person been incorporated into our last and astir caller incarnation of MGS3...

Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater

Delta really has a lot in communal with Snake Eater 3D. It excessively grafts the communicative and gameplay of MGS3 onto a marque caller engine, successful this lawsuit Unreal 5, with the purpose of updating but strictly adhering to the classical content.

The Peace Walker-style controls transportation implicit from the 3DS, including crouch-walking and third-person shooting. Delta besides borrows from the godlike traversal of Metal Gear Solid V for immoderate slick caller additions to Snake’s moveset, though this clip around, the developers are straight addressing the equilibrium changes by tuning up the force trouble successful response.

Snake’s camouflage is present straight impacted by the situation astir him, with a overgarment of mud oregon a refreshing bloodbath helping Snake enactment hidden. The clunky healing strategy of the archetypal is present enhanced by wounds and scarring that persist passim the game, arsenic does harm to Snake’s drip.

The UI has been streamlined and the graphics fixed a gorgeous, if somewhat expected, photorealistic shine– but if you’d similar a much vintage experience, the archetypal colour filters and fixed-camera controls are disposable courtesy of a “Legacy” mode. Like Snake Eater 3D, Delta leaves the indispensable aspects of the crippled intact and brings the gameplay up to par with the series’ evolution.

While the archetypal Snake Eater slithered into our hearts via a 4GB DVD, Delta weighs successful astatine an eye-popping 100GB of Metal Gear greatness. Most of that tin beryllium attributed to high-resolution Unreal Engine assets, but Delta is besides packed with bonus features some caller and amazingly old.

Secret Theater has returned, portion the multiplayer Fox Hunt mode serves arsenic a spiritual successor to the dearly-missed Metal Gear Online. Even Snake vs. Monkey has reared its siren-toting caput erstwhile more, though lone connected the PlayStation and Steam versions. Thankfully, XBox players won’t beryllium near retired this time: In spot of Sony’s Ape IP, Konami is offering an exclusive Snake vs. Bomberman mode. We’re conscionable 1 atrocious imagination distant from having rather perchance the astir implicit bundle of MGS3 ever.

Twenty years from now, erstwhile idiosyncratic asks which mentation of MGS3 to play, volition the overwhelming statement beryllium “just play Delta?”

Some fans are relieved that Delta’s ambitions are constricted to a remaster, sticking to the archetypal design, script, and hall-of-fame dependable acting of a singular creator achievement. Others are disappointed that it’s not a full-on reimagining of the script ala the Resident Evil remakes oregon Konami’s ain Silent Hill 2, bemoaning the dated environments and annoying interstitial screens that travel with specified classical territory.

Can Delta go the definitive signifier of Snake Eater, oregon volition determination inactive beryllium a spot for the much awkward, idiosyncratic vintage versions? If the 2004 merchandise volition ever beryllium the purest incarnation, and Subsistence holds onto its rubric arsenic the best, however volition past look upon Delta?

Metal Gear Solid is celebrated for its analyzable story, but yet it’s really rather simple. The struggle astatine the bosom of the bid revolves astir the volition of the Boss– the top worker successful past who sacrificed everything for her state and near down a imaginativeness of a amended world. The warriors who came aft her spent their lives warring and sidesplitting each different implicit their ain clashing interpretations of the Boss’s dream.

In the end, it’s the humble, doomed clone Solid Snake who yet unlocks the meaning of her will: Freedom. The state achieved by respecting the volition of others. The state to combat for causes you judge in. The state not to combat astatine all.

There’s nary “correct” mode to play Metal Gear Solid 3, nary “real” Snake Eater that obviates each the others. We person the liberty to take the mentation that speaks to america the most, whether we tendency a nostalgic travel to the days of Shrek 2 and The Simple Life, the jam-packed, fully-loaded last signifier of Hideo Kojima firing connected each cylinders, oregon a caller and gorgeous, amusive and accessible caller overgarment of overgarment that reminds america conscionable however timeless this crippled genuinely is.