A Good Game, but feels like a Contra clone
Plot wise the game is a sequal to the NES verson of Metal Gear, once again with a storyline that has two different tellings, according to the manual Solid Snake, and his team are tasked with hunting down "Higharolla Kockamamie" who has come into possesson of Metal Gear from the "villain" of the previous game, and like that villain Kockamamie doesn't appear and the story line in the game is completly different, pitting Snake against the rouge FOXHOUND Agent Big Boss/Naked Snake, and for the first time in North America, gamers got the chance to face Metal Gear itself.
Over all the game is a vast improvement over the previous game in terms of it's control and weapons. Unlike the first game, where the player was started out with little more then their fists and a pack of cigaretts, Snake's Revenge give the player a gun from the moment the game starts, making the game play easier to play. Another big improvement is in the control skeem, especally the menu selection, which now only require pausing and using one button in order to access the menu you want and to select your item.
While the controls make the gameplay easier, they do very little to improve the gameplay itself. When one thinks of the Metal Gear games, one thinks of stealthly moving through the brush, plotting the best route to get past the enemy and solving intracate puzzles. Snake's Revenge is the complete opposite of what a Metal Gear Game is suppose to be, even in the original verson, there was at least some stealth elements, this game though is more of a run and gun type of game, with anything setting off the alarm, the moment you walk past it.
For example, in the opening Jungle scene the difficulty is made even more challenging, but not in a good way. In most games when the area goes dark, there is usually an outline showing you the bounderies and trees, but in this game you can't see anything in dark areas except for search lights, and the only way to be able to see is to step into the search lights and trigger the alarm, defeating any stealth element the game may have had.
Another flaw I would like to point out is the character designs. For starters I would like to ask this simple question: What kind of spy parachutes into enemy territory wearing brightly colored camaflage? That's right the character designs in the game look nothing like the box art, which shows Snake wearing a traditional military style combat uniform, however in the game Snake and his team mates are all wearing bright orange uniforms with yellow shoulder pads, even in the original Metal Gear NES game, Snake still wore a traditional camaflague outfit, I have to ask why the change?
All in all Snake's Revenge is an improvement on the first Metal Gear game, but not by much, while it fixes some of the problems with the controls, it does nothing to improve the game play. In conclusion after playing both Metal Gear and Snake's Revenge it makes you wonder why they chose to butcher a great series by creating completly new games, instead of simply porting the MSX Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake to North America?