Solid Snake: Metal Gear (Play Arts Kai)

Square Enix's Play Arts Kai Solid Snake

What a way to start this year with this awesome Solid Snake action figure from Metal Gear! Now this has nothing to do with the Year of the Snake of the Chinese astrology, it's just that it's about time for me to introduce another Play Arts action figure after that marathon of Marvel Select and Marvel Legends reviews I had last year. So lets get on to Solid Snake shall we!



























The sculpt on Snake's sneaking suit is probably what makes this figure a real stunner. It just looks like it's wrapping tightly around his body and emphasizing those muscles, kinda like what latex does to a Marvel superhero. The paint app is highly detailed with a mixture of grays covering his suit as well as dark shading around the creases. The sculpt and paint on those belts, straps, and bags are gorgeous! If you look closely, you can see how it tries to imitate nylon fabric.

Also, great paint job and sculpt on Snake's head; with flesh tones all over his face, and the hair just looks nice. Although the headband looks great with all its creases for his frown, I find his eyes looking a little strange, kinda like he's intoxicated or something... it's probably the booze last night!... but it's deemed unnoticeable at first glance.

The first thing that caught my attention with regards to articulation are the toes. Snake's toes are not hinged but they're "swiveled." Now I'm not sure if this is suppose to replace and imitate the ankle rockers because it don't seem to do the job pretty well... and it looks odd. Another issue he has are those shoulder pads that're restricting his shoulders to raise up. Although I am kinda bummed about it cause I thought I can prone this guy while aiming his rifle, but what can you do. I wasn't expecting this on a Play Arts figure.

Play Arts has this signature articulation, "the extending knees" and I have talked about it in my Spartan - Mark V review that as you flex those double jointed knees, it seem to get longer and goes to normal as you unflex it back. But with Snake's knee pads, it's not obvious. Other articulations includes diaphragm swivel, ball-jointed hips, ball-hinged elbows, ball-hinged wrists, ball-jointed neck and my favourite collar joints!

Solid Snake comes with a few accessories; an assault rifle, a handgun with a removable silencing barrel, and interchangeable hands. I was hoping a knife for this figure! ...but oh well. I guess he is not CQC trained yet. The silencing barrel for his handgun is made of soft plastic, so it's really bendable and it's hard to straighten it up. So I advice you to put a small piece of metal rod (if you find one) inside the barrel to fix this problem.


















He stands about 8.5 inches tall, and you can't really have him play war games with the Spartan - Mark V, which is also by Play Arts, but he is in perfect scale with those Mass Effect figures.

Spartan (Halo) & Solid Snake (size comparison)

If you're a gamer and a huge fan of the Metal Gear game series, then I definitely would recommend you to get this action figure. Overall, Solid Snake has a satisfactory playability and poseability, and a fantastic sculpt and paint. Until next time, and please do check out my other reviews.