Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater came out for PS5, Xbox, and PC back in August, but it wasn't a complete experience. While it included a lovingly recreated version of the classic campaign, Konami decided to delay its Fox Hunt multiplayer mode until a later date.
Now, after months of waiting, Fox Hunt has finally arrived in the form of a free update that allows up to 12 players to battle it out on a selection of maps inspired by the main story. You'll use several different disguises while engaging in hide-and-seek gameplay, requiring you to kill, extract and steal valuable amphibious assets from your enemies.
Instead of implementing traditional multiplayer modes, it feels like Konami tried to give Fox Hunt a solid Metal Gear flavor, and the results speak for themselves. So it's even more of a shame that it was sent to die without any promotion.
The modern gaming landscape is obsessed with fleeting trends. A random indie can pop up on Steam and attract hundreds of thousands of players in a week, only to become a distant memory in record time as we all move on to the next big thing. The same logic applies to triple-A blockbusters in that we play them, talk about them online a bit, and move on.
Very few exceptions exist, such as a handful of live service juggernauts and video games that can form fandoms that can go beyond the initial experience. Gems like Baldur's Gate 3 or Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 that break boundaries in the medium and show us what developers are capable of when unconstrained by capitalist publishers. Fail to strike while the iron is hot, and you will suffer the consequences because people don't care.
Fox Hunt launched last week with no crossplay support and minimal marketing, meaning that die-hard fans who wanted to find the game struggled to do so and couldn't fully experience the game they were excited about.
Things have stabilized since then, but I'm struggling to see a world where Fox Hunt is seen as more than a specific part of the game that already feels put into a specific brand of Metal Gear Solid fandom. A shame, because there's so much potential here. Being able to use the numerous weapons and items found in the campaign against countless different environmental disguises and other players is a lot of fun.
Unfortunately, the gameplay also seems somewhat unrefined. Players on Reddit are admitting that Konami seemed to have sent Fox Hunt to die not only because of its unofficial release, but also because it feels very unbalanced at the time of writing.
It runs poorly, the netcode is bad, the map is too small for the number of teams needed for certain modes, the kill times are absurd, and the random rewards make progression feel like an unnecessary slog. What worries me the most is that the audience won't be big enough to care about Konami when it comes to future quality-of-life updates.
There is a high probability that Fox Hunt is left for dead as a small community of players hold on for dear life, aware of the greatness it could conjure up if things turned out differently.
An ideal world would see it become the next iteration of Metal Gear Online – an unconventional take on multiplayer with different mechanics, modes, and progression that stands out among countless copycats. Konami may have missed the boat on this one, and it broke my heart.
