The quintessential tactical espionage action game is back - and it's snakier than ever.

At it's core, Metal Gear Solid: Subsistence is essentially the same game we've come to know and love; an overhauled Snake Eater with our hero, Solid Snake, skulking through the jungle or down guarded and booby-trapped corridors with his trusty bowie knife and impossibly quiet shoes, taking out guards one broken neck or punctured thorax at a time interspersed with intense moments of giant exclamation marks and enthusiastic firefights - but with some major tweakage and the bonus bonanza of full 3D camera control (fixed, top-down view is still an option and targeting is still in first-person). The puzzle-intensive cerebralness of the series remains, promoting stealth and skullduggery over running and gunning, while character control and menu juggling are still fastidious lessons in double-jointed fortitude (i.e. a handful, but rewarding).

A second disc contains a bunch of bonuses, foremost of which is an online multiplayer component for up to 8 players - a first for the franchise, long sought and hugely welcome. Clunky PS2 connection issues aside, these are a mixed bag of hide & Snake and capture-the-frog (seriously) type games that try to remain true to the measured pacing of Metal Gear, with some opportunity to join pick-up frag fests that most online games seem to degenerate into anyway. There are reasons to love and hate the online play, but it's true to the Gear universe regardless.

Online aside, you've still got at top notch Solid Snake game back on disc 1 and, moreover, gobs of bonus content, including playable versions of the original Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2 games from the late '80s in all their pixilated glory. Plus, more mini games and insider gags and spoofs than you can shake a stick at. All that and under-priced out of the gate; there is absolutely no reason you shouldn't go pick this up.

TIP: You can defeat the boss The End in Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence quite handily by entering his fight area, saving your game, quitting, then setting the PS2's internal clock ahead a few years. Come back and he's died of old age.

Also, if you get the chance to blow up storehouse of food ratios and/or ammunition, do so (make sure it's good an charred). Guards thereafter will complain of hunger and/or have only the bullets in clips of their guns, which eventually run out and leave them pleasantly vulnerable.