Silent Hill 2 and Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater remakes listed for 2024 release
Konami stealth-and-horror combo to launch this year
Did we put the Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and Silent Hill 2 remakes on that list of our most anticipated games of 2024? The article is so voluminous I’m not sure I have the energy to check. I get halfway down the page and feel like I need to pitch camp below one of the paragraph breaks, like a mountaineer sleeping beneath a crag in one of those dangling tents. Assuming we didn’t, both have been slated for 2024 release by the PlayStation blog.
It’s possible that this is an error, given that publisher Konami have yet to make any announcements, but the blog post notes that "all featured titles [are] scheduled for release in 2024 at the time of publication". Go on, Konami, call Sony a liar! No seriously, please do have some kind of public spat. It’s the shallow end of January and there’s precious little news on offer.
The usual approach to covering remakes is to talk in-depth about how they differ from the original games, but I’m going to be obnoxious and assume you have no previous experience of either series. So! Snake Eater is a kind of tropical Splinter Cell clone about a man stuck in the jungle with his boss and lots of edible crocodiles.
You can paint yourself different colours to bamboozle hostile soldiers, and there’s a battle you can win by switching the game off and letting your enemy perish of old age. The 2024 release runs on Unreal Engine 5, and in the cogent assessment of pro RPS serpent gobbler Matt Jarvis, seems "highly faithful to the original Snake Eater". Here's some footage.
The Silent Hill 2 remake, meanwhile, is a bit like developer Bloober Team’s The Medium except it happens in a lakeside American town, the titular Silent Hill, rather than a collapsing Soviet-era hotel near Krakow. You are a sad man called James who is searching for his missing wife, while avoiding the earnest attentions of a guy with a triangular hat. Having enjoyed The Medium a lot less than Alice B did, I am concerned Bloober are going to make a mess of things, but the developers’ previous cyberpunk outing Observer is evidence that they have the skills to make a great horror game.
There are a bunch of new Silent Hills on the way, besides the Silent Hill 2 remake, including brand new games from No Code and NeoBards Entertainment. Metal Gear Solid is in a more complicated place, now that original creator Hideo Kojima has cut ties with Konami. The recent Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection was not a great advert for the publisher's handling of their own series - hopefully, the Snake Eater remake will be less buggy at release.