Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

If you'd prefer to watch the following review instead, here's the youtube link:

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Review (PC)

The Metal Gear Solid games have been trail blazers when it came to the art of conveying message to an audience while disguised under clever and exceptional gameplay design. A series that has held the attention of many players from the moment a snake swam out f a submerged capsule and made his way into our lives. The series, having held relevancy over the span of 17 yrs with a story stretching beyond that time frame has supposedly culminated in the recently released, Phantom Pain. And true to fashion, like many of its predecessors, the game was released to unwavering critical acclaim from a vast majority of media outlets. I, however,--as a small reviewer, am lucky enough to take my sweet time with the game since I'm not competing to be the first one out the door. So 95 hours in and only 8 missions shy from completing the main game before losing my save to an unfortunate bug, I feel equipped and ready to share my opinion about the game....as usual, starting with gameplay and mechanics.

GAMEPLAY

Everyone wants to dip their hands in that jar of open world goodness because if you're not open world, then clearly you're doing it wrong, right? Wrong. Hideo Kojima, the face of faces behind the metal gear solid franchise decided to jump on the band wagon and make the latest iteration of the game fully open world. As a result, MGS V, to its detriment, plays unlike any other mgs game out there and adopts the mundane tactic implemented by most open world games....repetition. If I had to sum up the entirety of the gameplay in two words, it would be, extraction simulator.

Let me paint a picture for you on how the gameplay works...You get a mission which 98% of the time involves you infiltrating a base to, in turn, rescue and extract someone or something from that base. You call your chopper. It arrives in about 10-15 seconds. You jump on the chopper and sit on the bay viewing the vast expanse of the open world for another 10-15 seconds before snake will actually get into the chopper. You then pull up your I droid and proceed to accept the mission. You then have to select a specific spot you want the chopper to drop you. Then you select your load out equipment and when you're done, the chopper will drop you where you requested...it will take another 10-15 seconds to do that. Now, if you're looking to run and gun your way through the mission, then most of the time you can elect for the chopper to drop you off directly in the base. But, for the 80-90% of you who are planning to stealth your way through missions, if you're lucky, it will probably take you five to six minutes of sprinting around an extremely empty world to get to the base. Once you get to your target, you can extract them by chopper, by Fulton, by car, on horseback, on your back and, if you're feeling creative, you can do some sort of combination of these options. Once you're done, you can do it again and again until you're done with the game. If you're chugging along expecting for variety in the mission types....don't. For the vast majority of the game, it will be the exact same mission in different bases....and sometimes you'll be revising the same bases as well. They are all the same. Even the side missions play exactly like the main missions. This is beyond bad and bordering on the hilarious, especially since the initiation and conclusion of each mission is followed by a prideful display of credits. With all those names popping up after each mission, its downright embarrassing to see that they couldn't come up with anything more than infiltrating and extracting.

I know it sounds bad, but don't let that get you down. Because despite the repetition its easily the best game in the series when it comes to gameplay. Once you get through all the filler nonsense and actually infiltrate a base. You start to realize the amount of complexity and effort that went into the game play design. The gun play is absolutely stellar. Each gun you use feels different and unique. Most impressively, they're very well balanced. The larger rifles rarely have a suppressor available so using them will attract a large group of enemies but they can mow down waves of enemies whereas the smaller guns have longer reload times so you'll want to make sure every shot counts. Each type of weapon compliments a specific play style and you'll often find yourself adjusting your strategy and approach depending on the weapon you switch to. The game also encourages and rewards players who think outside the box or plan ahead. For example, if you run out of ammo and want to take out a specific enemy without alerting anyone to yourself, you can request for an ammo or weapon drop at an enemies exact coordinates. The item will drop on their head and knock them out. You can also set c4 explosives on the ground and if you accidentally draw attention to yourself during one of your stealth runs, you can set off the explosives and the enemies will automatically stop looking for you and start heading towards the explosion to investigate. If anything, that actually speaks more about the Artificial Intelligence in the game than it does about your strategy.

The enemies have some of the best ai I have seen in a game and they adapt to your strategies very well which, in turn, encourages you to adapt to their adaptation. If you like to CQC or run head on into enemies, you'll start to see them deploying more and more decoys in their bases to try and trick you into attacking them. If you're a sniper who likes to deal head shots from a safe distance, word will go around and the enemies will start wearing helmets. If you like to hold up enemies from behind, they start carrying concealed blades that they can use to stab you with as you go to grab them. Their strategies are well coordinated and listening to them reporting suspicious activities and awaiting instructions on how to proceed never gets old.

The friendly AI is also commendable. MGSV introduces a buddy system that allows you to go into battle with a companion. The options of using them are very limited but as you gradually continue to use them, their skill sets and abilities increase. They do a great job of staying out of your way and usually mirror your play style unless you command them otherwise. You don't necessarily have to use them at all, but taking them into missions with you adds more possibilities to your options.

And finally, another major addition to the game is your mother base. Now, I know you're thinking to yourself...”um...no, we had a mother base in peace walker.” and you're right, Metal Gear Solid Peace walker did feature the mother base, but this time around, mother base is an actual area that you can visit to see and experience the fruits of your labor. And I can think of no better word to describe it. It is very labor intensive and this is where a vast majority of your time will be spent. For those people who are wondering what mother base is at this point. Its essentially a hub or a plant that you build in the ocean off the coast of Eastern Africa and it comprises of different structures like base development sites, medical areas, combat, intel, research and development and field support platforms. You'll have to develop it over time in order to expand a mercenary unit named Diamond Dogs and each merc will have a skill set that's suited best to a specific platform. By expanding the base, you'll also have the option to order the development of items or weapons that you can take with you into battle. But here's the catch...doing all of this requires an in-game currency system called GMP. You'll earn GMP as you complete missions, however, extracting minerals, mercenaries, weapons, animals and vehicles to your mother base all cost GMP. By the time you level up your base enough to unlock the weapon or gear you want to use, building that item will require additional GMP. The better the item, the higher the cost and the longer the time it takes to develop it. Expanding the base could take up to three hours in some cases and building items on higher level could take 30 mins at a time. And I'm not talking about in-game time. I'm talking about actual time here. Motherbase simply exists as a huge time sink. Its only purpose is to take what would have been a 15-20 hr-long campaign and stretch it to over 100 hrs. The area itself would not have been so bad if it were lively but, in actuality, its about as dead as a doornail. While you know you have hundreds of soldiers on paper, the platforms typically hold a handful of soldiers making the act of visiting it another chore on the list of things to do.

Some people have said that there is no need to waste time on the mother base...but that is highly incorrect. If you neglect to build up the motherbase, you will reach specific areas in the game where you'll regret it. ...because progressing past those missions will be near impossible without some specific weapons.

And finally, from a technical perspective, there is a traversal issue you'll have to contend with as snake will have a problem trying to get over rocks or obstacles that are over knee height.

WRITING:

So I think we've established that, after taking the grinding away, from a gameplay perspective. this is the most enjoyable MGS game. However, the vast majority of us who have been in this since 1998 --or even earlier -- are here mostly because of the story elements. So does the Phantom Pain deliver?

The game picks up where we left off in Ground Zeros with snake waking up in a hospital and attempting to gain control of his faculties. You'll have to help him through his journey as he comes to grips with the events that transpired. This prologue is the highest point of the entire game and lives up to what most fans love dearly about the franchise. But, as the story progresses past the introductory phase, the story telling cuts down to a minimum. You're left only with a base understanding of the main villain you'll be working towards hunting down. Anything else you uncover from that point will be through the use of audio cassette tapes. As you complete more missions, you'll receive more tapes you can listen to that slowly begins to unfold the story. The cut scenes we have grown to love have been cut down to a minimum. In the previous titles the story and the cutscenes made us feel like we were witnessing events unfolding and taking a journey with characters. But with a change as drastic as this, it completely made me feel alienated from the story and it took away from the visually expressive crazy scenes that only MGS could provide...lt does attempt to throw in some humor here and there through the tapes but it usually falls flat on its face. The writing falls victim to the same problems as well. When the motive of the main villain is exposed, it felt so silly and mundane that I was expecting them to reveal that it was a joke, but, nope, the writers just went with it to the end. If you thought nano machines were bad...wait until you hear this one.

While the main story itself, left a lot to be desired, it was the little things that kept me going. Overhearing the mercenaries in my base gossiping about past events that occurred in the series ...and throwing in crazy theories concocted by the metal gear community was a joy. Sneaking around an enemy base and hearing soldiers talking about some strange things that happened to their unit and knowing I was responsible for those things was great. It was even greater to listen to them talk about things that happened to them that I had no involvement in... and then later run into something that made me go....ahhhhh so that's what they were talking about.

The game also goes out of its way to close some plot holes that plagued the previous games, and while it did manage to do that, it ended up leaving more questions than it resolved. I won't go into detail on the plotholes since this is not a spoiler review, but a quick search on the internet will reveal what they are. The boards are filled with them.

So to go back to the initial question; does the phantom pain deliver when it comes to the writing? Unfortunately not. In my opinion, it is easily the worst in the series as far as writing/plot is concerned.

AUDIO

The audio is a prevalent theme throughout the entire series as there is more emphasis on story telling through audio cassettes. There is also importance placed on journeying to specific sections of two different continents which results in exposure to national and tribal languages. I really enjoyed the latter because I could tell that there was a large amount of work put into it. Normally, in games that strive to implement different languages, there are huge discrepancies and inconsistencies. RE5 (Resident Evil 5) for example seems to be set in a fictional South African city where the majini speak Kiswahili, which is not a South African language... and it sounded like they were reading it directly from a google translate machine with how the sentence structures were completely incorrect. I can't speak for all the languages featured in MGS V, but on the few I could make out, you can tell that they really did their homework. Not only are the regional languages correct, but the inflections and phonetic approach is very convincing. And where you find people speaking a language not native to the region, there is a very plausible in-game explanation for it.

While on this topic, as a fair warning, an issue that most returning players might struggle to cope with is Snake's voice actor. We no longer have David Hayter at the helm, but instead, we have Kieffer Sutherland. He had some pretty big shoes to fill but he delivered as a great voice actor....when he had a line, that is. The problem is that snake's dialogue has been drastically reduced and when you're listening to audio cassettes of him holding a conversation with someone, it will probably take you a minute or two to realize that it's snake's line. Switching a voice actor this late into the series and minimizing cut scenes in favor of audio logs or cassettes didn't really work favorably for me.

The Sound effects are also well done. From the sound of sniper rifles, machine gun fire, mortars whizzing your direction or even the sound of helicopter blades slicing violently through the air...its a battle field out there.

And it certainly sounds the part.

VISUALS

the game is visually impressive and it knows it. True to form you'll have control of a zoom in feature that we've come to expect from the series which will allows you to magnify and examine the intricacies of the character models and the environmental design. So if you're a person who likes to look for easter eggs or subliminal messages or images in the background....you can go crazy on the stuff.

We also have a day and knight cycle and dynamic weather effects in the game that range from sand storms to heavy downpours and blinding fogs. Not only are they visually impressive from an aesthetic and technical aspect, but they also play a pivotal role in how you approach a mission.

What deserves the most attention is the cinematography. The camera and animation work in unison to provide a seamless transition between gameplay and cut scenes. Although they have been drastically reduced, what little they do show is always a sight to behold.

While its visually impressive, there are a few things that affected my immersion, When entering a building at night and looking out the window, everything is lit up like it were daytime again. Exiting the building reverts it back to the right cycle.

Another issue is the over use of lens flares. While the lighting in the game iswell done, the lens flares are too in your face. The flares stretch from one end of the screen to the other which is absolutely annoying. And the random ones that pop up for no rhyme or reason are even worse. I can see them implementing the flares as a visual queue but using it at this level of extremity is way over the top.

CONCLUSION

Tthere are so many other aspects I still want to touch on, like the lack of interesting boss battles, lack of a manual save feature that has caused a lot of people to lose their saves, or forcing people to play through recycled levels with higher difficulties...or cutting out content.....But I feel like I focused on the major stuff....and cleverly sneaked in the other issues in this section...so I'm content with having looked at some of the good and bad elements of what the game has to offer in the main four categories, and the important question, in the end, still remains, is it worth getting? I'll give two different answers because I know there's going to be two different people out there: For the people who have never played a metal gear solid game before...heck even if you've played one or two of the games... and you're wondering if the hype is real and if its worth the investment. The answer is a resounding No. The most you may get out of your sixty dollar investment will probably be eight to twelve hours of great gameplay before you get tired of the repetition and move on to something else. The series hit its peak with MGS3...so if you haven't played that yet, consider picking up one of the collections instead and playing through it, if you feel like you want to move forward with the series, then work your way up to phantom pain.

Now, for those of you who like me, have been long time fans...the answer is yes. You'll enjoy the gameplay for a good 20 to 30%% of the game....but after that point its going to be the ambition of ending the story that will keep you trucking along. The game will put a closure to some of the series' plot holes, but be warned, it will probably raise more questions than it will resolve. Whether you feel like you should get it at full price or wait until its on sale...well, that just depends on how Big of a fan you are.