Tokyo Game Show 2024 - Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater Hands-on

You can find all of my Tokyo Game Show 2024 coverage here

Konami was my first stop at TGS 2024.

As soon as the doors opened for Day One, I headed straight for the Konami booth and the Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater demo. The free t-shirt and a Calorie Mate were nice extras, but I didn't need freebies to convince me to play the remake of my all-time favourite game.

I arrived in good time and grabbed my Calorie Mate, before realising that I'd actually entered the booth at the wrong location! Flustered, I almost careened into a cardboard standee of The Boss, before a Konami employee took pity on me and guided me to the correct spot. My press credentials were checked and I was ushered into the very first demo of the day.

I and twenty or so other attendees were led into a small room where we patiently sat and watched the Delta intro movie.  All fifteen minutes of it. I may be mistaken, but it appeared to be a shot-for-shot recreation of the original opening movie, and served as the first indication that Konami is being thoroughly faithful to the original game. A title card displayed early on in the intro stated that Delta is "Based on Metal Gear Solid 3", but that would seem to a massive understatement, given how closely it appears to be adhering to the original.

Watching that intro was like being reunited with an old friend. Familiar sights and familiar sounds, and lots of glorious Kojima-nonsense with real history woven in. It also retains some of the visual qualities of the original. Yes, this is a modern looking game, pretty graphics and all, but at the same time a certain grainy quality has been maintained. Nothing in that opening movie seemed to be quite in focus, and that felt just right.

With Snake safely on the ground, we were released from the mini-theatre and moved to the individual demo stations. The entire booth was decorated to look and sound like a jungle, with series paraphernalia strewn all over, and photo-spots aplenty. I had a life-size replica of a hornets nest hanging overhead, but had no way of making use of it. I picked the wrong day to leave my Mk22 at home, apparently.

The demo itself, limited to around fifteen minutes, consisted of the opening section of the Virtuous Mission, where Snake must retrieve his equipment and sneak through the jungle, before eventually attempting to extract Sokolov, a kidnapped scientist. I couldn't tell you for sure whether I was playing on PC or console, but my controller was certainly a standard Series X/S pad. 

The jungle looks impressive and it sounds just as you remember it - an unforgettable chorus of birds, insects and amphibians that brings the forest to life. The improved lighting makes a noticeable difference, and despite the aforementioned grainy filter, it absolutely does have the visual qualities of a modern day, high-budget production. I believe the audio track is lifted from the original, and if that is the case, it has aged exceedingly well. It was less evident in the demo, but I did notice in the TGS trailer that lip flap and audio were not entirely in-sync. I wonder if this will be fixed, or perhaps it's an unavoidable consequence of layering old audio over new visuals?

Having procured my equipment pack, which was dangling exactly where I expected to find it, I performed some familiar tricks, including shooting a Kerotan frog to distract a nearby guard and knocking a hornet's nest out of a tree to scatter a group of unfortunate soldiers. Tselinoyarsk has been painstakingly recreated - areas start and end where they always did, items and animals appear where you remember them appearing, and guards patrol the same routes they've been walking for twenty years. The original layout of small areas, broken up with load screens, has been retained; soldiers are mostly dimwits with very limited vision, and they still can't pursue you between different screens. These are design choices of another era, and I wonder if they might confuse and perhaps frustrate new players who expect something more dynamic, modern, and wide-open from their stealth games.

The controls, while familiar, have been improved. Combat has been modernised, with trigger-based shooting and over-the-shoulder aiming being the most obvious alterations. These tweaks are welcome and intuitive - at no point during the demo did I need to even glance at the laminated instructions that were provided at each demo station.

Another addition is D-pad shortcuts. Pressing down brings up a quick-dial for your Codec radio, and an up-press enables you to switch camouflage on the fly, without having to go into the menus. Left and right switch items and weapons, respectively. As for firearms, I was limited to the tranquilizer gun, but it felt hefty and gave good feedback. I have bad memories of cocking-up CQC in every iteration of Snake Eater, so I stuck to tranquilizer head-shots during the demo and can't comment on hand-to-hand combat.

Despite its relative brevity, the TGS demo revealed much about Konami's approach to this remake. It's clear that Snake Eater will be shown the reverence it deserves and this new version will not deviate far from the original. I'm sure that this will please old fans, and it certainly pleased me, but I wonder if that adherence to what came before will make it difficult for Snake Eater to win over a new audience.

Regardless, I'm sold.