I'm not going to lie, I LOVE the Metal Gear series. Complex characters, the style of gameplay, and the convoluted yet engaging story that combines fact with fiction. The overall quality of the games are nothing short of excellence led by a man who expects nothing short of excellence. However, a lot of weight and pressure has been put on Kojima's shoulder as the fallout between employee and employer that created a rift between two sides making Metal Gear Solid V: The Pantom Pain officially the last game Kojima will ever work on. With all the controversy between Kojima and Konami how will the Phantom Pain fair?
MGSV splits into two chapters as chapter 1 starts things off 9 years after the events of Ground Zeroes - the attack on Mother Base that left Big Boss in a coma and transported to a hospital in Cyprus. In no time the hospital is under attack by the same group that tried to kill him 9 years ago. You are sucked in to a captivating sequence where Snake and an unknown man make their escape from XOF forces, and the unstoppable Man on Fire. It seemed Kojima has done it again by creating a wonderful atmosphere but it is all down hill after that. Once Snake escapes and rendezvous with Ocelot and rescues Miller, preparations to rebuild his army commence.
Revenge is the theme behind Phantom Pain. Big Boss, Miller, and the rest of the Diamond Dogs want to bring down those who cause the destruction of their home, and took away things that cannot simply be replaced. Snake does odds and end jobs within Afghanistan and eventually Africa in hopes to learn the wear-abouts of Skull Face, the shallow main antagonist as his motives are also based on revenge. But you won't really know what his motives are just by playing through the main story in Chapter 1.
Kojima has a tendency to convolute a plot, but not necessarily in a bad way. It would require you to play through the game multiple times to "get" it, but once it made sense you can appreciate how the story was told. In Metal Gear Solid V, the story telling is just down right bad and that is what drives the series. Without an emotional plot and memorable events, Metal Gear Solid loses a lot of its charm. Whenever the game decided to progress the story you would get a brief cutscene
that contains little to no information about what is going on. You are regulated to listening to dozens of cassette tapes that attempt to clarify where the story is going but not until Chapter 2 do things become clear. And the limited lines given to Big Boss makes him have no personality, it seems he has no input or care, and creates awkward or emotionless scenes that should otherwise be powerful. Sutherland isn't bad as Big Boss, I actually liked him, but I don't get why his lines were kept to a minimum. Skull Face is also a horrible antagonist. Just like the unclear plot, Skull Face's motives are poorly explained within the game. You must plow through more missions in Chapter 2 to obtain tapes that finally explain his intentions, and why he seeks revenge.
By Kojima standards, The Phantom Pain is very tame and very bland. You are always anticipating Kojima to troll us all but it never happened.
However, it did happen. Possibly the biggest shock in the series and his greatest troll attempt ever will surely leave gamers with jaws on the floor in utter shock. As much as I wanted to hate it, I tip my hat to Kojima as I expect nothing less. This may also explain the some of the issues I stated previously and now sort of make sense in the grand scheme of things. But I wonder if the purpose of the game was to deliver what the final minutes laid out. If so, did you really need to wait till the game was over?
Changes in the stories structure continue with changes to the game on how it plays. Kojima expanded the size of the game and created a open world that is new to the series - featuring two countries; Afghanistan and Africa. Scattered across the map are enemy outposts that are begging to be infiltrated. Due to the nature and scale of the game, there are lots of routes to take and is quite fun experimenting with different techniques. Gaining a vantage point is critical so you can 'tag' your enemies putting a marker above their head so you can keep tabs on their location. Progressing through the story will make infiltrating a bit easier as you can be accompanied by one other 'buddy'. D-Horse provides a means of transportation but becomes useless once you can deploy vehicles. D-Dog is most useful as he has super abilities to tag enemies hundreds of meters away. Quite is also useful as you can order her to scout an area and provide cover. A Walker is sort of like a mini Metal Gear that is useful when you're looking to flat out destroy the opposition.
The open world was cool, but visually it felt like a PS3 game remastered for current gen hardware. Low polygon count, draw distance was limited, and some flat textures to foliage and other objects made the game look dated in those areas. However, taking these short cuts allowed the Fox Engine to run at a smooth 60 FPS with high resolution and photorealistic textures to the mountainous terrain. Animations are always fluid and you can see the muscles working (D-Horses legs, Big Boss' back in the hospital), enemy AI is intelligent and seemed to adapt to items used.
Stealth is still the main attraction to the gameplay even though they went to an open world. MGSV takes a lot of the game mechanics from Peace Walker and expands on this idea. Building up Mother Base is still as fun as it was previously by extracting enemy soldiers from the battlefield but now you can also steal resources, vehicles, weapons, and animals too. Each solider has a rank from E to S++ in one of the 6 gradeable categories. Ranking up a specific category depends on the skills of your soldiers and will allow you to develop all sorts of equipment.
One of the most disappointing aspects to The Phantom Pain were the boss battles. Since the main plot was sluggish, there was never a climatic boss fight to set you up to the next area of operations. There is a group called The Skulls that possess super abilities but they were pushovers. They lacked creativity, personality, and just plain awesomeness. It's a far cry from the insanely good boss fights of MGS4 and 3, but even the other games had great memorable fights. What happened?
There is plenty of side missions to indulge yourself in that also borrow elements from Peace Walker. There are a number of Side Ops that have you do multiple things from extracting prisoners, to eliminating powerful tank units. There are deployment missions where the computer analyses your success probability based on how skilled your soldiers are. Depending on the mission rewards vary and can also help you in the main mission by cutting off enemy supplies and equipment.
You also have FOB missions which act as the games online component. Having this large base is not safe from outsiders. Other players can invade your base and try to steal your resources and soldiers by successfully infiltrating your base. You can also invade other bases as well in attempts to strengthen your home. To make sure this is as difficult as possibly you can deploy mines, camera, sensors, and decoy soldiers. Success will results in rewards and MB coins which can be used to build another base elsewhere on the ocean.
As I've stated, Metal Gear Solid is by far my favorite series but something was just not right with MGS5. If it wasn't for the gameplay The Phantom Pain would have been so much more disappointing - if it wasn't enough already. I don't necessarily get the purpose of the plot and the point of Kojima's troll. I feel it does little for the canon of the series and if the only game was to set up the ending then that is just poor execution. I couldn't help but feel the game was unfinished as you can tell by some visual flaws, an underdeveloped plot, and missing missions. I can't say for sure if Konami had a hand in this but I can only imagine this to be true. I am not displacing blame for Kojima however, he had a large budget and half a decade to make this game.
It's a sad day to realize that this was the very last game and as unsatisfying as it was, it makes it a bitter pill to swallow. I wish they ended things that directly went into Metal Gear (NES) that had Solid Snake about to infiltrate Outer Heaven, but unfortunately we didn't get anything of the sorts. Maybe I'm putting too much emphasize on the plot but that is what gives Metal Gear Solid it's personality. Kojima, for whatever reason, didn't deliver what he seemed to always deliver. Because of this, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is just that - a Phantom.
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.
Whether it's showcasing damage realistically or simulating fractures and conditions, these games are worth checking out.
The Metal Gear series has sold 60.2 million copies, as of September 2023.
Too bad it was a lazy release. They could've updated the visuals and everything. Missed opportunity.
...and yet, they couldn't give more respect and effort into the collection.
What a terrible company.
Spot on review I gotta say. Wholeheartedly agree with it. MGS ended for me with Guns of the Patriots.
Great review. I actually have to force myself to play the game. I'll stick to the main missions and will probably get rid of it as soon as it's over. After that, I'll go back to play other games in the series to satisfy my MGS need.
Interesting. Haven't played it yet, but any idea why all the 10''s everywhere?
I'm only at 21% complete but so far I'm really enjoying the game and story. The story is just delivered very differently to other Metal Gear games. It's not cutscene heavy, so listening to the tapes is a must - and that builds on Peace Walker a lot but this time you can do it while free roaming the maps to build your army. I also like that because the tapes are there you can listen to them multiple times instead of seeing one cutscene, so I've actually found this story much easier to follow than previous entries where, by the time you get to the end, you've forgotten large chunks of what was talked about in the beginning.
I personally rate this as my favourite Metal Gear game since Metal Gear Solid on PSone, followed by Guns of the Patriots.