The prequel to the Metal Gear series is an incredibly satisfying game... if you can tolerate minor gamelay issues.
Snake eater tells the story of Snake's 1960s mission in the jungles of Asia, trying to prevent a cold-war disaster from becoming a global nuclear holocaust. There's much that could be said of the story, but doing so would ruin much of the charm and surprise that is a trademark of the series. It's enough to say that despite some rather one-dimensional boss characters, the story is as good as fans have come to expect from the series, if not better. In fact, I believe it is the best yet, and the presentation is cinematic and flawless. Once you've seen the game to the end, it's incredibly rewarding as a whole, giving closure to many unanswered questions in the series, while of course introducing a few more.
While Snake Eater is a prequel to the later titles in the Metal Gear timeline, in the gameplay it is very much a sequel. It expands on many of the fun additions that Sons of Liberty, like dogtags and first-person aiming, and expands on those ideas to introduce Close Quarters Combat, where you'll have more ways than ever to mess with the guards, from outright killing to knocking them out to holding them at gunpoint and dragging them with you to holding them up for equipment and more.
Not that it will be as easy this time around. Your trusty radar hasn't been invented yet back in the 1960s, so you'll have to rely more on your senses and some simpler tools to figure out where the guard are. This can sometimes be difficult, given the series' top-down perspective. While the game uses the right stick to move your focus further ahead of Snake, you'll still be switching to the first-person perspective a lot just to see what's around you. Hopefully, looking around will be easier with the addition of a 3rd-person camera in the upcoming "Substenance" re-release, due later this year.
Another added challenge is that the guards are much smarter than before, and they will almost never be alone. They typically patrol in groups of four, so their radio communication (or lack of it when you take a guard out) is always a threat to you. So you'll have to be sneakier than ever and really think on your feet if you want to survive in the jungles.
Fortunately, you'll have lots of weapons and equipment - some old to the series and some new - to help you out. Camouflage is one new way of evading the notice of guards, and there's a lot of different camo options that you'll find along the way. Unfortunately, you'll really need the camo to stay hidden at all, and even when you use it wisely, you'll still have to be very sneaky - hiding in dark places, behind obstacles, or crawling in tall grass - to escape detection.
Another new gameplay feature is the addition of food. Like the game's title says, you'll be eating your fair share of snake, plus mushrooms, crocs, and more. This is all to keep up your stamina, which your main way of healing yourself after you do have scrapes with the guards. As long as your stamina stays high and you stay out of trouble, Snake will slowly regenerate health. This means that you'll always be on the lookout for new sources of food around you in the plants and animals that are almost-always present in the game's lush environments. Food can be eaten anytime from a series of food inventory menus.
The other new feature is similar. While minor scrapes will heal with food and time, more major injuries like gunshot wounds and broken bones will need you to use medical supplies on your ailments, which is done in a series of menu screens like the food eating.
Unfortunately, both the food and medical features seem to take you out of the gameplay, making the experience *less* immersive, not more. (Excuse me, Mr. Guard, while I take a lunch break. You don't mind, do you? I know you're trying to shoot at me, but give me a minute or two to put a splint on my leg. It's really killing me.) As a result, I think these addition to the series really took away from the gameplay in a bad way. I enjoyed the CQC once I learned how to make use of it, but the food and medical screens were a nuisance to me and made me wish for the simpler gameplay of Sons of Liberty.
Those gripes aside, though, Snake Eater is a great game, and it's worth it to experience the rest of what makes it great, the visuals, sound, and story.