Metal Gear Solid: The Snake Eater 3D preview

You begin Metal Gear Solid 3 in the jungle, having taken a high-altitude parachute drop into enemy territory and barely avoided falling off a cliff. After losing your kit in the jungle, you're a long hike from your rendevous, to help extract the Soviet engineer behind the world's first Metal Gear prototype. You venture into the jungle, get chewed on by a crocodile, panic, run into a swamp and drown. Let's try that again, shall we?

Snake Eater 3D is a port of the six- year-old PS2 game, which would make it deeply uninteresting if MGS3 weren't one of the best games ever.

It's light on the usual narrative nonsense - the half-hour cut-scenes and chitchats - and heavy on all that makes Metal Gear great.

It's 20 hours of amazing variety, through jungles, rivers, mountains and bases. All the time you'll manage your camouflage index - picking the right patterns to blend into the environment inches from the enemy.

The Jungle Look

The latest demo we played is a brief glimpse of the opening sections. It cuts short before you'll even come close to the first major fight against Revolver Ocelot, but in the full game you'll go deeper into the jungle and uncover a massive conspiracy which threatens to turn the Cold War hot.

Snake is extracted from his first failed mission in the shadow of a mushroom cloud, but the first hour is a prologue. Still to come are motorcycle chases, insane betrayals, Cold War sexytime, a boss who becomes stronger based on your own bodycount, and one who fights using stealth and camouflage - the best boss fight you'll ever play.

Snake is controlled with the slider while the face buttons control the camera, and the touchscreen makes item selection quick and easy. The face buttons aren't perfect but if you aren't inclined that way, it also supports Nintendo's new Circle Pad add-on.

Trees sway, grass is caught by the wind, and layers of foliage pop from the screen like no other game on 3DS. The motion sensor lets Snake balance, the camera lets you import camouflage from real life. Snake Eater might be a port, but it's finally coming home to 3DS.