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.
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.