Kept you waiting, huh?
Developer: Kojima Productions
Publisher: Konami
Format: PC, PS4 (reviewed), Xbox One
Released: September 1, 2015
Copy purchased
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is what so many big budget games try and fail to be. Densely packed but not padded with filler content, graphically beautiful yet sleek in its performance, and evocative of Hollywood blockbusters without misunderstanding both the mediums of movies and videogames.
As Venom Snake – the newly awakened Big Boss – players traverse both Afghanistan and Africa in a sandbox of stealth action. The result of this more open world is a game that lacks the narrative tightness of prior Metal Gear Solid releases, but without doubt remains a Hideo Kojima game. The decision to expand Metal Gear‘s world of tactical espionage action has proven somewhat detrimental in an expository sense, but it’s an absolute boon to the gameplay itself.
Kojima Productions has crafted an impeccable world within which players can sneak, interrogate, murder and just mess around. Being a Metal Gear game, the scope for pure silliness has only amplified with the scale of the environment. Unlike with previous releases, every mission is dynamic, opportunities to approach a situation are vast, and enemy reactions can be manipulated in previously unseen ways.
The satisfaction in misdirecting opponents and taking them all out from behind is a beautiful thing to feel, and there are ways both grand and subtle in order to achieve one’s ends. Whether it’s simply throwing an empty gun magazine to lead guards astray, or exploding a power grid before cutting off a base’s communications, you can attack a problem in any number of ways – the game’s combat has been severely beefed up for more violent operatives, too.
If you want to hijack a tank and crash the front gate, it’s viable. You’ll lose some “hero points” (a currency with which you spread Big Boss’ fame) for doing it, but it’s worth the cost.
What I love most of all is how the minor experimentation of previous games have become fully realized ideas in their own right. Little things like enemy interrogations and the destruction of tactical facilities were almost easter eggs in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, but here they become tactically vital parts of a flawless mission.
Mechanically, The Phantom Pain feels like everything prior Metal Gear Solid installments have been leading to. Every silly premise, every distracting toy, every secret gimmick, all of them are refined and evolved to a sublime degree.
One of the biggest additions to Snake’s repertoire is the Fulton balloon device. Using this, players can attach balloons to enemies, animals, and even vehicles in order to lift them out of the combat zone. Successfully extracted entities become captured and digested into Snake’s new headquarters, Mother Base.
As well as a tactically useful means of getting rid of opponents, the Fulton is an important recruitment tool. Every enemy has a set of statistics that players will eventually be able to scan for. Extracting skilled soldiers will boost the abilities of Mother Base’s varied facilities, unlocking new equipment for development and significantly boosting Snake’s potential arsenal.
Most crucial of all, it’s hilarious. Somehow, hooking sheep up to balloons and watching them bleat in confusion as they’re zipped into the sky never gets old. It’s glorious to do the same thing to a tank while it’s distracted by a sniper shot from a certain mute partner. Those sheep and that tank are now mine, all part of my glorious base.
Mother Base is a game unto itself. Using money earned in missions, players can research their own variety of weapons, costumes, and gadgets. These range from new bionic limbs for the newly one-armed Snake, as well as upgrades for the helicopter that players use to get in and out of mission areas.
By leveling Mother Base’s various departments with extracted soldiers, more equipment unlocks. There are several sub-bases including Intel, Support, R&D, and Medical, and they each leads to new gear. Building this gear takes time as well as money, and it’s shocking how addicted one can become to checking up on progress, while working towards earning new upgrades. Blueprints hidden around the world add even more to the toybox, and you can bet there are some very silly and weird things included among the arsenal.
The amount of content is simply staggering. Accompanying main missions are over 100 side-ops that can be undertaken for extra cash and resources. Unlike so many other games, however, none of this content feels overly repetitive or nebulous. Due to how much fun and variety there is to be had with the game, how much experimenting can be done, side-ops are more like perfect excuses to get back into the action and try out something new.
Snake can even build combat units to undertake their own constant stream of dispatch missions, earning bonus loot over time, and the world itself is full of extras and secret tasks – just exploring Mother Base will uncover some big surprises.
Meanwhile, there’s a ton of customization on offer. From your helicopter to your Mother Base logo, you can put a personal stamp on everything – even guns, should you extract a legendary gunsmith! My only wish is for there to have been more color options for everything, but what’s there is ample enough to get a number of amusingly gaudy results.
With the open world formula comes some mechanical changes. Snake now has a fully modernized regenerating health system – no more rations or stamina bars. In addition, getting spotted by an enemy initiates a “reflex” system, slowing down time and giving players a chance to take out their would-be tattler without alerting the whole area.
With jackable vehicles and a close-quarter combat system that is faster and more powerful than ever, some traditionalist players may find Phantom to be more empowering than they’d like.
Still, some of the extra features can be turned off in the menu, and the opposition is significantly tough enough to still reward a stealthier approach. As the game progresses, Snake will come up against gunships, heavily armored soldiers, and carefully hidden snipers, all requiring thought and strategy to eliminate.
Planning before entering is a valuable tactic, something MGSV borrows from the likes of Far Cry as you scan bases from a distance and mark enemy positions. This can help a great deal, but strongholds are deliberately designed to contain blind spots where death can await, just to keep things tense. Knowing where enemies are won’t guarantee you’ll know where they all are, and getting in and out like a true boss will take a lot of patience and regular improvisation.
Fortunately, “Venom” isn’t alone. For the first time, a main entry Metal Gear game doesn’t just throw you into the action without backup, making players feel like they truly are Big Boss. His mercenary outfit, the Diamond Dogs, are on call to provide support in a number of ways, while the growing list of equipment on offer gives the Boss real flexibility in his options.
Equipment can be dropped in at any time. If you need a sniper rifle but landed with a rocket launcher, just call it in! There’s a waiting period for these things, meaning you can’t just switch stuff on the fly, but it can be immensely useful to get an ammo drop or a fresh suppressor if caught in dire circumstances.
Though it shall cost you in post-mission ranking (locking you out of a potential S rank if you care about those things), you can use your chopper for deadly air support or request bombardments of explosives and sleeping gas. There is some late game equipment that is so powerful it similarly restricts rankings, and you can always wear the Chicken Hat if the going gets too rough – donning it will allow you to get caught without consequence three times, but you’ll have to wear that goofy hat as a mark of poultry-flavored shame.
Additionally, Snake can deploy buddies with their own range of unique skills. The first such buddy is the D-Horse – a horse (obviously) that provides transportation along with some… creative means of distracting an opponent. By far my favorite buddy is Quiet, the controversially attired sniper who can scout bases, mark targets, provide cover fire and, if you raise the funds, acquire a costume that actually puts her in some clothes.
She looks far, far cooler in clothes too. The bikini look may have limp “story reasons,” but it’s patently ridiculous.
I won’t spoil any other potential buddies, but they’re all great fun to use and can be evolved throughout the game, earning new commands and abilities.
There’s so much to do and tinker with it’s almost overwhelming, but an extensive manual and helpful advice from Kaz Miller over the radio will get you the basics. A lot of the Mother Base development is a lot more straightforward than it looks. Still, there’s an intoxicating level of depth and complexity at work – so many things to try, and so much reward in simply goofing around.
The solo experience of Metal Gear Solid V is astounding on several levels, and my personal advice would be to keep it strictly solo. On the PS4, the game’s touted online features are a notable detriment to the production, slowing down basic menu handling with added loading times as well as frequent server disconnections that ensure you’ll never be online for long. Logging into the online mode requires scrolling through page after page of notifications, and the whole thing reeks of poor implementation.
The hassle just isn’t worth it, either. With an online connection, you can construct “Forward Operating Bases,” extra Mother Base stand-ins designed for online play. Here, you can hold extra resources and staff, as well as increase the number of units sent on dispatch missions. You can also have your FOB invaded by other players, or invade theirs in turn. I tried it a little bit, and didn’t care for it at all.
It’s basically a stealth mission on Mother Base, with another player in the mix, and it’s nowhere near compelling enough to justify the hit to performance that MGSV takes.
Ultimately, the FOB system is designed to sell a premium currency, as you need to use microtransactions to purchase further FOBs past the first one. As routinely disgusted by microtransactions in full-priced retail games as I am, I can’t say I have any interest in ever partaking of the FOB scheme.
Keeping The Phantom Pain offline is the best way to experience it, as far as I’m concerned. The connection issues were frequent enough that I wouldn’t say I even had much choice in the matter, but I wholly recommend never connecting the damn thing except to construct the first free FOB and use it to rake in some free passive loot via dispatch missions.
Now we’ve dealt with that unpleasantness…
It’s simply jawdropping just how good Kojima Productions got this thing to look on a console. Running at sixty frames and gorgeous as hell, the animations are sublime, the lighting is perfect, and the art design is characteristically brilliant. There are so many little touches, too. Things other games just wouldn’t think to animate, yet appear here just on the offchance a curious gamer does something offbeat. The attention to detail is borderline neurotic, and all the more wonderful for it.
The same can be said for its soundtrack, something I could only describe as rich. As well as a lavish original score with a number of beautiful refrains, the period music that Snake can collect in the field rivals Saints Row or Grand Theft Auto in its joyfulness. You can set music at any time via Snake’s iDroid, meaning that The Final Countdown or Rebel Yell could accompany one’s finest moments. I played Maneater during a particular sniper duel, and it was the best move I ever made.
Metal Gear Solid games are most notable for their thorough and enthralling – if vastly convoluted – stories, and here’s where Metal Gear Solid V unfortunately lets me down. It boasts some fantastic scenes, and characters like Skull Face and Quiet are fascinating to see in action, but the overall plot limps along and spends much of its time treading water.
The cost of an open-world game is a narrative that lacks the tight structure and pacing of Kojima’s previous linear efforts, while the focus on gameplay over storytelling means that cutscenes and dialog have been reduced to a noticeable degree. This will be good news for critics of the series’ famously lengthy cutscenes, but it’s hard to stay invested in a plot where Kiefer Sutherland’s Snake barely talks and the other characters get angsty over problems that constantly reinforce their presence without ever developing.
As the campaign goes on, the twists get more ridiculous but the explanations for them become thinner. Several plot strands are left dangling or go nowhere at all. At times, Phantom Pain matches even Guns of the Patriots in terms of sheer contrivance, but relevant story scenes are so infrequent they come off as little more than non-sequiturs rather than part of a cohesive arc.
Some of the scenes are just awkward, too. Quiet as a character is immensely likable and sympathetic, yet she’s undermined at every turn with infantile jiggling and thirsty camera angles. Several torture sequences – as well as one particular callback to Ground Zeroes – are gross, making practically every character in the game tough to like in some way or other.
Perhaps worst of all, The Phantom Pain just doesn’t seem to go anywhere overall. Characters like Eli and Rebenok are dangled in front of us, promising huge revelations or at least confrontations, but we don’t get them. The eventual fates of Skull Face and The Man On Fire are thoroughly disappointing despite such promise. The lack of boss battles overall are a glaring omission in a series famous for them.
So much seems missing from the game, with a lot of important details relegated to cassette tape messages that you have to play yourself from a menu. Digging through the tapes guarantees a ton of information that would’ve had some impact had it been shown in the game itself, but “show don’t tell” is a narrative basic that MGSV sadly leaves at the door.
It gets worse the more the game goes on. Despite some genuinely amazing moments and one particularly horrifying sequence that I’ll never forget, the game’s missions become increasingly light on exposition while the cassette tapes divulge torrents of hastily spewed information. It’s as if Kojima Productions just ran out of time and money towards the end and simply cut the game short which, given rumors regarding Kojima and Konami’s tensions, might not be a fantastical suggestion.
I feel greedy wanting more from a game that delivers so much quality content, but as a fan of the series’ barmy universe, I can’t help but feel let down by the lack of conclusion, the dearth of villains, and the amount of storylines that simply end without a satisfying resolution.
It’s assumed by all that The Phantom Pain is Hideo Kojima’s last Metal Gear Solid game – for real this time – but it doesn’t feel conclusive enough to be the last. For as much as people bash it these days, Metal Gear Solid IV felt like more of a send-off for the franchise than this one. If anything, despite its prequel status, the whole thing comes off like a sequel hook.
Among the reviews you’ll read, I’m willing to bet this is among the most critical, but I need to stress that despite how disappointed I may be in The Phantom Pain‘s writing, I am in love with it as a game. It’s a perfect example of the uniqueness of videogames as a medium – how its story could be so underwhelming, and yet it’s such a triumph in terms of interactivity that I still could not recommend it enough.
For past releases, the clunkiness and obtuse nature of MGS‘ gameplay has often been forgiven due to how engaging each installment’s characters and events are. Here, the situation has been reversed. The game itself is engaging and rewarding, while it’s the script that’s become clunky and obtuse. It’s swings and roundabouts, but the result is a game of quality that rivals any prior Metal Gear Solid game – it’s just got its priorities the other way around.
And I’m okay with that. I’m okay with that because I’ve not had this much raw fun with a game in quite some time. It could have ditched the plot entirely and just thrown me into these environments with all the unique toys and I’d have had a roaring good time. This is, to date, Kojima Productions’ finest videogame if we’re looking at it as a piece of pure, unabashed entertainment.
That I can be so critical of it, that it can have damn microtransactions in it, and still get one of my highest recommendations, speaks volumes about what Kojima’s done.
Because this is a game in which I made a tank fly away on balloons and then rode a horse that pooped whenever I told it to.
Yes folks… this truly is a Hideo Kojima game.
9/10
Superb