- Note: This review will contain major spoilers for MGSV. -
The first console MGS since 2008 came along with some massive changes to the formula. How do these stack up, and is it another great Metal Gear game?
Gameplay
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Metal Gear has always been known for it's trademark stealth action gameplay with an accompanying complex control scheme. This time around the player is given many different tools to approach missions in any way desired and with a simplified control scheme. Sneak in without being detected, or cause havoc with your support helicopter to overpower the enemy - the choice is yours.
For the purist, the great stealth gameplay remains with some tweaks. Reflex mode now allows mistakes to be corrected when Snake is spotted and is a nice addition to the series. As for the gunplay, it is a very solid experience allowing the player to use the wide array of weapons effectively. I didn't experiment too much with over the top firepower but I imagine it would have been fun to go in as loud as possible. There is lots of freedom and choice for all types of gamers to approach situations with their own plan. The new buddy system helps with this, with 4 unique buddies with their own traits to help Snake on his missions.
There are many different types of weapons to try out but unfortunately, gone is the ever-expanding weapons list replaced with two primary weapons and a side arm. In my view, this was a drawback in that there are many weapons which will never be used. I saw no reason to take a shotgun with me when setting out to complete 2-3 main missions and multiple side missions - it is in general a useless weapon class, especially for the stealth gamer, with almost no interior sections of the game. An extra primary weapon slot would have allowed more experimentation with tactics.
Mother base is a nice addition and I enjoyed leveling up throughout the game - there is a great sense of progression and improvement. The only downside to this is I feel that I had experienced a lot of it with Peacewalker. It is a good mechanic though which added a lot to the gameplay.
A big negative I noticed while playing for about 60 hours altogether, was the amount of travel time required - whether you are waiting for a helicopter to land, riding your horse 3km or waiting for your helicopter to pick you up there is a lot of dead time between actual content that seriously hampers the enjoyment of long gameplay sessions. After playing for an hour, you will look back and think "What have I actual been doing?" and will scratch your head when you see you've only completed two side missions in that time. Also, the checkpoint system can let the player down at times, where the punishment for dying involves starting a mission from the very beginning.
Story
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Possibly the most important part of any MGS game is the story, unfortunately The Phantom Pain fails to deliver any where near the quality expected for an MGS game.
I have to mention the loss of David Hayter as Snake - this was not necessarily a terrible decision if it was done due to Solid Snake appearing in future games alongside Big Boss, but the replacement has to be given the chance to display his quality. Keifer did not have this chance as he says almost nothing the entire game. Ultimately, a massive waste of resources.
This is the issue with MGSV, there is no dialogue. The characters just say words, and often no one will even respond or engage in actual conversation. Miller barks orders at Big Boss, and Big Boss will say nothing in return. This is most obvious when you are captured by Skull Face and sit in the back of transport while he spews words into the ether. Big Boss is clearly not interested and has no viewpoint on the matter, otherwise he would have said something. This weakens Skull Face as a villain in that he has no one to play off of.
The decision to make Big Boss a silent protagonist to allow the player to project onto him was terrible. To suggest that the story twist is why Big Boss was not his old self does not make sense in that Venom Snake would still express his viewpoints. The game massively suffers for this choice. There are glimpses of potential when Keifer does speak, which ultimately just makes it more annoying that it is lacking throughout!
A big problem with the story was the amount of repetition and redundant missions. For those with the game, look at the mission list and take note of the missions which actually progress story - there are very few. After the introductory two missions it is not until maybe mission 11 until we are actually given an important story mission. Missions 3 -10 could be played in any order or replaced by any other mission and it would do nothing for the story. After mission 12, again we have to wait until mission 16, then mission 18, then every other mission and so on. There are a lot of missions which have no relevance to the story and as I played through them, I did not care who I was tailing, or eliminating or why I had to take those armored vehicles out. The player is not given enough reason to care about these missions in context with the story. Chapter 2 therefore becomes a joke in that it is exact copies of some of the Chapter 1 missions made slightly harder. Imagine having to play a mission you didn't care about the first time round a second time, this is not good game design and it is clear Kojima had given up fighting Konami by this point and the rush to release had begun. Considering a major part of the game was just left hanging and it's conclusion was cut from final release, for me the score must suffer greatly for this.
I feel like these game mechanics with epic character development, a tight story and more linear gameplay would have been fantastic. The trend towards open world being somehow better has seriously damaged the potential of MGSV. The best sections were the constrained sections e.g. Boss Battles, introduction sequence, story segments, Mission 43 - as soon as it opened up the direction and drive was lost.
This game appears to be Peacewalker with a poorer story, and for that reason only deserves a 7 out of 10 to me. Good game, but the worst Metal Gear of the entire series.
Over ten years after its release, does Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain still impress? Jump Dash Roll returns to Snake's world for this Brutal Backlog.
I don’t think I’ve ever quite experienced an unfinished game that was slapped together with duct tape and construction paper to be sold as a finished product, basically making you replay the same missions and include a story that clearly was missing so much of the plot, like I did with this game.
I’m actually shocked that it doesn’t get calls out for this more.
CG writes: In this video, we take Microsoft's Copilot for a spin and talk about gaming and AI influences, and the implications of that. We talked about a possible Metal Gear Solid V remaster, Deus Ex remaster, Hitman Blood-Money mission, and more. Imagine trying to talk gaming with non-gaming friends in real-life and after 5 seconds, they switch off and possibly yawn. Well, CoPilot isn't like that, instead it's like talking to a like-minded gaming fan who is totally on your level. The public version of CoPilot released in Feb 2023 and already it's become almost indistinguishable from a real person.
The Metal Gear series, led by Kojima, pioneered the stealth genre, creating a masterclass in storytelling and gameplay.
No. But MGS5: Ground Zeroes might actually be one of the greatest Game Demo ever, if not the best.
I know a lot of people didn't, but I actually liked that story twist at the end. The game was fun and all, but I wouldn't call it a timeless classic.
Metal Gear legend stopped with number 4.
MGS5 needed a year or 2 more of development to be maybe among the classics.. it was clearly rushed, especially at the end. The story teaches us absolutely nothing new.
A demo is free that was a $40 cry for help as later we would know konami did not want to fun hideo and his team anymore that is why we got the unfinished phantom pain.
Meh
Great stealth gameplay but the game was just average.
Bland open world that felt lifeless, the story felt shoehorned in, unfinished story etc. The whole thing was just average to me compared to the other main titled games.
I would have rather preferred it if they kept Ground Zeroes for the main game as the opening and the rest of the game turns into a Metal Gear 1 & 2 remake to bring things full circle.
If you dig around they had old behind trhe scenes of phantom pain vids and books wrote around the time.
Before funding was puled the main idea was to keep peace walker coop it was in the games early builds and that end game were your building your base that was suppose to be metal gear one.
You as the fake big boss was going to make your own metal gear one map aka your base (outer heaven) then me as sold snake use the mode that is in the game invade/defeat the base even fight your current version of metal gear that was in the game but not finished.
So your idea was on the table bit got canned.
Like hell it is. That was the first time I became aware of being sold an unfinished game and was blown away about blind fanboys saying it was some perfect game.
Yea, the first few chapters were great until they do that thing halfway and make you replay all the missions again. Then little things like capturing animals but only seeing a JPEG unlike 3 where everything was modeled out. Areas were massive, desolate, and boring to look at.
Game was a massive let down for me and the potential was so high for it. Honestly, this was one of the most disappointing games I ever played. What’s worse is it starts off brilliant. You literally play through until you get to the point where you could tell they just stopped developing and then quickly used glue and construction paper to “finish” it and then sold it. Quite frankly, that’s insulting to consumers and fans.
People have selective memory. This game had huge drama attached to it, what Konami did to Kojima and this game was horrible. Now they praise Konami cause they revived Silent Hill, even though SH looks half arsed too.
I dunno if they’re getting much praise after the Silent Hill 2 debacle. Makes me scared sh*tless for the MGS 3 Remake…
I don't wanna defend konami, but Kojima had 7 years to make the game, it's not that weird for a publisher to expect a game to be finished in that amount of time.
Also no one is praising konami from what I've seen, they're just excited that a Silent Hill game is releasing
@Michiel1989
You’re absolutely correct. Look, the dude is a visionary and has brought us some incredible games, but he constantly would go over budget and could never stick to a deadline. I don’t know if people remember the MGS 4 trailers but it became a joke when you’d see a release date and then they crossed it out in the next trailer to give another.
What a lot of people don’t know is there’s a certain amount of money given for development and marketing. When you go over the budget and add additional marketing over the deadline it isn’t cheap. MGS GZ and V were laughable to me for the amount of time he had to develop them and he spent even more time on the engine that wasn’t anything revolutionary to me. I mean, GZ was nothing more than a demo and they released that art like $40 I think, probably to further help fund V. He then spent money for Kiefer Sutherland who did nothing for the character, which I think Kojima just wanted because he’s a fan.
Konami just had enough and said this is the deadline and you’re done after this. It’s business, but fans took it personal. I mean look at this Overdose game he’s been doing.,, like when is that ever coming out?
I kind of forgot about overdose but yeah exactly my thoughts. He has made some of the best games out there and definitely deserves time to create his new masterpiece, but it's not a bottomless well.
This is pure speculation but I imagine he got around 4 years to make the game excluding pre-production. If after those 4 years the game is nowhere near being done, the relationship will be strained between them one way or another.
about the konami being praised thing, if let's say blizzard announces world of warcraft 2 today I'll be excited as hell for the game, but that doesn't mean my opinion of blizzard changes only a tiny bit cause they're still trash.
Yeah, it was the only MGS I didn't play and this is coming from someone who got back into gaming after skipping a generation due to MGS4 back in 2008. It just seems to be the complete opposite of the MGS I always knew and loved (1-4).
Yes and no. In many ways in was a great game; there's a very strong argument that it has the best gameplay of any MGS game, and that it is one of the more interesting open world "playgrounds" we have gotten, in terms of how the world operates. But as an MGS narrative, it is pretty far down the list, for many reasons.
I don't think there is any argument. The gameplay was incredible. But yeah...disappointed in the rest. Could have been incredible but...well...we all know what happened...
I don't think there is much of one either but apparently some people found the world very boring compared to the more linear structures of other entries so I didn't make a definitive statement in order to acknowledge the outliers.
The thing about Metal Gear Solid is that the narrative is what determines which is your favorite because the gameplay had ALWAYS improved with every mainline entry. It's amazing.
If it was gameplay, we'd all say The Phantom Pain, but the story is what truly sets them apart.
For me, that's Snake Eater, which is also my favorite game of all time.
That's my favorite too, particularly if we are talking about the subsistence version with camera control.
Great review, very fair imo. Its also nice to see somebody mention how odd most of the cutscenes were with characters just rambling for minutes.
What EXACTLY was "unfinished"?
I'll also add. MGS 1,2,3,4 & PW were story focused. GZ & TPP are gameplay focused [from a devs perspective]
That was obviously deliberate. For example. Star Wars ep.1 never explained how Anakins mom got pregnant. It just happened with no explanation. Is that unfinished too?
"There was meant to be a mission 51 which dealt with this but it was cut from the final release"
Imagine if they left that scene in. We STILL don't know what happens to Liquid. [shows statue of liberty and Liquid says "Not yet. It's not over yet"]
Again. What EXACTLY was "unfinished" that wasn't deliberate?
IF it was the directors intent to be "unfinished", how is that a negative? It either works or it doesn't. You never explain how it doesn't work though. *Ofcourse you can talk about execution without spoilers.
SEEMS like you had questions that never got answers that wasn't supposed to answers in the first place, A.K.A. the tv show 'Lost' *Not new for a Kojima game.
http://www.gamesradar.com/1...
MGS4. Remember this game's bizarre intro, in which you can flip back and forth between various surreal and ridiculous TV channels? Like Snake voice actor David Hayter appearing on a talk show as himself? Or some lady cooking breakfast with slithering snakes and buzzing flies?
Well, that's not even the weirdest part. Pay attention to the channel numbers the next time you play: 15, 16, 23, 42 and 48. Now split 48 in half, move it to the front of the sequence and – voila – you have Lost's six famous digits.