Hideo Kojima wasn’t involved in this NES sequel to the original “Metal Gear.”
Cool, now the baggage is out of the way and we can talk about the game itself.
On the positive side, it does a good job of smoothing over a lot of the rough edges from “Metal Gear,” cleaning up the graphical presentation quite a bit. It also avoids the comical translation problems and the weird jungle traversal from the first game.
I also like the whole “interrogate prisoners” dynamic, which feels different from anything I’ve seen in any of the other Metal Gear games.
On the negative side, “Snake’s Revenge” doubles down on the stupid key cards from the first game (the problem is less the cards themselves and how they’re implemented — you basically have to guess at every single door which card to use, then systematically try all of them, and this process is a sucky waste of time). I also don’t think I’m going out on a limb to call the side-scrolling sections a perplexing addition, since they largely suck as well.
That a lot of this is unsuccessful doesn’t make the whole a bad game, and indeed, I sort of hate that people dismiss it without giving it a fair go because of some bizarre loyalty to Kojima.
Where I think this all ends up is with a game that improves on its NES predecessor in some respects but largely fails to move the ball forward. It’s not all that dissimilar from something like Zelda II in that it’s weird enough to merit a play, but not good enough to consider it more than a curious bit of history, rather than an example of a great game.
But that history, such that is, doesn’t deserve to be erased.