Snake Eater is by no means a bad game. In fact, it's a very good game. That said, compared to Sons of Liberty, it feels like a downgrade emotionally and narratively.

Maybe it's a me problem, but I find the camp tone and 1960s James Bond-esque spy elements a little old hat and alienating, especially since I never found those films compelling.

Finally, this game features too many cutscenes for its own good. It's not as egregious as Guns of the Patriots in the amount of cutscenes it has, but the story isn't as compelling as Sons of Liberty's and I don't remember that game featuring nearly as many cutscenes.

I wanted to enjoy this one more because I've heard nothing but praise for it. Maybe it was just my expectations after Sons of Liberty, but I wanted more.

Yet another banger in this series. Snake Eater greatly modernizes tons of gameplay mechanics and delivers a more polished and satisfying game than the previous titles. The story is more focused on global politics and espionage than MGS2, which leaned on the philosophical side, but Snake Eater ultimately still digs into its roots.

The difficulty of rating this game comes with comparing it to its predecessors. To nitpick, I feel that this one overreached on some new mechanics - the survival food/cure mechanics felt more obtrusive than interesting, Snake can be a bullet sponge on most difficulties and enemy AI can be oblivious, so it's feasible in this game to go full lethal and just drain all the reinforcements sent at you to clear an area, and the bosses in this one nearly all felt more trivial and gimmicky than those of any previous games. There are a lot of extra nice details here though, so while I might lean towards preferring MGS 2, I do recognize that Snake Eater is a clear evolution.