With the Phantom Pain, Kojima avoids the kind of spectacular descent into villainy that the fans wanted and the trailers promised. Instead he gives us the Sopranos season 6 of Metal Gear (but instead of a depressed mobster, we play as a depressed war criminal). Maybe that sounds like one of those hack game journalist "the dark souls of x" comparisons but it's true. The best case scenario for all of our favorite characters at this point is a swift death.
Spoilers below.
After losing everything in9/11 Ground Zeroes, having his mind and body shattered, Snake just... gets what's left of the gang back together, rebuilds his army, and tries the exact same shit again. Only now, it is completely devoid of purpose; The revolutionary anti-imperialist cause of the 70's is all but forgotten. There's a sinking feeling of dread as the camera pans to "our new Mother Base" in the helicopter after rescuing Kaz; an undeniable sense of this being a pointless, doomed effort. But since being a soldier is the only thing these people know how to do, they are stuck repeating the cycle. They're just going through the motions at this point; You really get a sense of that as the once charismatic and driven Big Boss is rendered a mute with a permanent thousand-yard stare who just does whatever Kaz and Ocelot tell him. When he's at the base between these missions he just stares at nothing and vapes for five hours straight. Far from the badass antihero that people expected from trailers. Venom Snake is actually kind of a directionless loser, which makes him just as good of a player stand-in as Raiden.
And the missions in this game, while incredibly fun and well-made, really beg the age-old American question "What are we even doing in Afghanistan?". The plot feels totally incomprehensible at times; you spend the whole game going after random acronym organizations, shell companies, and mercenary groups with some vague connection toBin Laden Skullface and al-Qaeda the American deep-state/Cipher. But every single character is lying and basically, everyone is Cipher. I had to repeat mission briefings multiple times at certain points to figure out what the hell was going on, and I still really don't. You could say that's just bad writing, but it works for what the game is trying to do, which is to make you feel like someone with a severe head injury. You're not supposed to understand this convoluted imperial entanglement - no one can. Especially not someone as fucked up as Snake.
And like Snake, the returning characters from Peace Walker are reduced to these broken versions of themselves. The only person who seems to be doing well is Ocelot, who has really come into his own as the sort dead-eyed psychopath that thrives in this kind of environment. Honestly? Good for him. Kaz on the other hand is a crippled, traumatized husk driven by revenge which is in turn driven by his own guilty conscience, and Huey has become a delusional, pathological liar focused solely on self-preservation. The few unnamed soldiers who survived9/11 Ground Zeroes are literally running around as raving lunatics in the wilderness. All of these people were supposed to die a decade ago, and instead they linger on as hollow men. Even the metal gear Snake fights is broken - it literally doesn't work without someone's magical powers. It's just this technological abomination created by a madman. When it tries to chase Snake it gets stuck in rocks because its sheer size is self-defeating, and Snake easily sneaks away. Probably the most obvious meta joke in the game (watch the last couple minutes of the launch trailer and tell me the game isn't making fun of itself). These Metal Gear (Solid)s aren't what they used to be. I mean come on, Metal Gear Rex roared like a T-Rex; Metal Gear Sahelanthropus... makes monkey noises.
Even Skullface, who was built up in trailers and in Ground Zeroes as this terrifying villain, turns out to be just a sad joke like everyone else. His plan is the most nonsensical, harebrained shit ever explained by a villain in any Metal Gear game. He spent a decade practicing a 10 minute theatrical monologue about why he has to eradicate the English language and give everybody nuclear weapons to unite the world. It makes absolutely no sense, it's a parody of Metal Gear villains, which were already parodies of 80's movie villains. While Skullface is performing his monologue in the jeep (to the wrong person), Venom just hits him with that fluoride stare and loops through a 20 second idle animation. Then Sins of the Father just... starts playing as they sit across from each other in complete silence and avoid eye contact. It's one of the funniest scenes in the entire series, mistaken by many fans as simply botched and awkward on accident (rather than on purpose, which it was). And if that wasn't obvious enough, Skullface's defeat is just straight up slapstick comedy; he gets crushed by his own non-functional Metal Gear in the middle of another absurd speech. Genuine comedy gold.
I think a lot of people overlook the humor in this game. It's a lot more muted and sad than in the rest of the series, but it's smarter here than in any other entry. Miller's "why are we still here" speech is MEANT TO BE FUNNY AND OVERLY MELODRAMATIC, as well as depressing and hard to watch. The way it ends, with that uncomfortable silence before he just... awkwardly sits back down? That was on purpose. The tone is that this has all become a very pathetic (and funny) spectacle at this point. Kojima's famously asinine dialogue becomes something really transcendent here; each hollow, ham-fisted statement really drives home the fact that everyone is just making this shit up as they go along now, trying to weave some bullshit heroic narrative out of a long series of L's. Kojima is telling us: "This is you dude. This is the American Empire. Your War on Terror is as darkly funny as it is monstrous." MGSV isn't the self-serious death march the trailers painted it as.
The way V's cutscenes are shot adds to these moments too. The shaky, handheld camera builds documentarian realism and a sense of witnessing real atrocities in more high-stakes scenes, but can also lend a comedic awkwardness to these exchanges between characters. I've seen someone compare it to The Office as a criticism but I think that's a feature and not a bug, as strange as it sounds. Somehow, it just works so well for the tonal balancing act this game maintains. But what really elevates V's cinematography thematically is its use of continuous shots. One-takes are often criticized as being essentially a gimmick, style over substance. But in Metal Gear Solid, a series defined by the juxtaposition between hard military realism and over the top fantasy? It's pure genius. Having all of this insane Kojima bullshit captured in documentary style is so fitting for this series. Perfectly hyperreal.
Speaking of hyperreal, let's talk about Quiet. I've thought a lot about whether her portrayal plays into Kojima's contempt for the audience (and the Metal Gear series itself for that matter) or if it's just a part of the game that didn't land. I was inspired by this article to conclude the former. In classic Metal Gear fashion, Quiet's characterization is ridiculous and offensive, but ends up transcending its low-brow trappings and having an emotional payoff - all while playing into a greater meta-narrative. And if you don't like that method of storytelling, then you sure picked the wrong media franchise. That scene of her speaking for the first time to guide the helicopter through the sandstorm is genuinely great. It perfectly encapsulates Kojima's ability to make something ridiculous, cheesy, and melodramatic - but still deeply affecting and with a lot of heart.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves; Quiet is absolutely a biting self-parody of Kojima's own portrayal of women throughout his series and in the wider industry. It's Kojima saying "Is this what you like, you sick fucks?" or possibly a case of introspection on his part ("Oh God, is this what I like?"). She has some hastily made up bullshit explaining why she wears no clothes, she is literally incapable of speaking for herself, and she undergoes gratuitous violence and imprisonment. Kojima obviously knows how ridiculous this is; he's seen basically every American movie, he knows this isn't how you're supposed to respectfully portray women. No, Quiet's portrayal is purposefully exploitative. Her objectification starts out fairly straightforward, but it becomes more and more disturbing for the player to partake in as the game goes on, in order to heighten the dark absurdity of all of this (particularly in Chapter 2, which is where everything in the game falls apart, on purpose). The point of Quiet's character, and the whole game really, is to give players exactly what they want in the most contemptuous way possible. To make you "feel ashamed of your words and deeds", you could even say. MGSV is about getting exactly what you want (another MGS game, endless content, revenge on Skullface, a sniper gf) and resenting it.
To build on MGSV's portrayal of women though, I think it's important that Paz takes on the role that she does in this game. She makes an initially very confusing reappearance - that first moment when you see her is genuinely unnerving, as if even the strange, fucked up Metal Gear reality we have become accustomed to can't explain what we're seeing. Out of all the unrealistic fantasy bullshit we've seen in this series, a series where it feels like anything goes and there are no rules or laws of physics, this is the first moment where I went "Wait, what? How?" But as we find at the end of "Paz's" side story, this is all just a projection of Snake's fragmented psyche. It's incredible in the way it makes you question what's real and what isn't, while simultaneously using Paz as a proxy to just straight up diagnose Snake's own mental disorders. But it's tucked away where most probably never saw it - like a hidden repressed memory somewhere in Snake's mind.
It perfectly conveys his nostalgia for a time that was never even good, as well as his crushing guilt and helplessness over the death of Paz. It's genuinely moving. That last tape of hers is something right out of Silent Hill 2, and it adds such depth to Snake as this miserable person that you should absolutely not want to be. For Snake, women really are just these fixtures of loss, shame, and regret - feelings that no doubt originate from the killing of his mother figure, The Boss. And despite all of the talk about getting revenge and taking down Cipher, the only time we ever see Snake get animated in this game is in his scenes with Paz. Snake's desire for redemption, his insistence on nuclear disarmament that feels strangely out of place, and his statement at the start of the game that he's "already a demon"? It's all about Paz, man.
One thing fans really disliked about Snake's portrayal though is that he never really seems to become the demon we knew him as in the early games. We never get to see The Exact Moment Walt Became Heisenberg. Quite the opposite; his intentions appear to remain heroic all the way to the end. The only scene where Snake approaches the kind of evil fans wanted to see is when Snake appears to murder the children in the mines but ends up saving them instead. In trailers this was depicted as if Snake actually goes through with the murder; to me, this is the smoking gun of another Kojima bait-and-switch. Fans wanted a game full of shocking, flashy acts of villainy on the part of Snake, and Kojima deliberately lead them on in trailers (just like in MGS2) but denied them of it in the final game. What did fans get instead? Spreadsheets.
Don't miss the forest for the trees; Snake is absolutely responsible for unimaginable atrocities during the events of MGSV. But instead of sensationalist images of man's inhumanity to man, Kojima shows us the banal cruelty of what it really means to be at the top of the war machine: You're just... on the computer, like everyone else. And everything you're doing is represented through so many layers of abstraction that it is impossible to understand the consequences. This ties directly into the themes of Metal Gear Solid 2 as well; by issuing your orders via this computer interface, you are even further removed from what is happening in reality. You just do a cursory cost-benefit analysis before sending the next death squad to do god knows what in some African or South American country you don't even know the name of.
And when a disease outbreak hits Mother Base, Snake's iDroid computer makes it easy for him to commit ethnic cleansing, sentencing scores of people to imprisonment and death for the language they speak. It isn't until all of the digital artifice is stripped away, and Venom is forced to enter the quarantine zone and personally slaughter his own men, that he has any crisis of conscience (and you actually lose some of your best men, because Kojima never fails to give the story actual weight via game mechanics). And you can say "Venom didn't want to do it, he had no choice." But that's exactly the point. If the Metal Gear Solid series is about one thing, it's about individual will being crushed under the weight of systems and institutions that have become organisms in and of themselves.
It doesn't matter how much Venom yearns for redemption. It doesn't even matter if he's in charge of Diamond Dogs. The system of global private warfare that Big Boss and friends established has taken on a life of its own, just like the Patriots of MGS2. His own intentions are irrelevant. If this system demands he kill his own men, he will do it. If this system demands that Raiden later kill Solidus, he too will do it. All actions within the system, regardless of intent, perpetuate the cycle of violence, war, and profit. Even if Venom disarms all of the nukes and brings about the Peace Day that never came for Paz, it just sets up the nuke free world that we hear about Big Boss exploiting in the intro to Metal Gear 2.
That's why everything in MGSV takes on such a hilariously pathetic flavor. Nobody, not Big Boss, not Zero, not Skullface, not Venom, has any agency in any of this. They're just flailing, looking for anything they can do to enact their will in a system that now imprisons its own creators. The only person who manages to achieve victory over the system by the (chronological) end of the series is, once again, Revolver Ocelot. And he only does so by shedding all individuality, tearing his mind into a thousand schizophrenic pieces to always be one step ahead of the algorithm. And it's all because he wants to fuck Big Boss. In the end love wins, and I think that's beautiful. But for everyone else, they are doomed to perpetuate the system they so desperately want to be free of.
And to what end? The truth is that there is no point to this system beyond its own self-perpetuation - it's a Snake eating its own tail (pretty good, huh?). The soldiers of Diamond Dogs, and every other PMC, kill so that they can keep killing. It's all for the love of the game at this point. Sure, they did the same thing back in Peace Walker, but at least back then it felt like you were blazing a new trail, sending a ragtag band of freedom fighters to oppose imperialism - that's long gone now. Any lofty goals this organization may have had are now lying somewhere at the bottom of the Caribbean. All of the bullshit Snake and Kaz spout about "fighting for the future" and "standing tall on missing legs" are just words to talk the gun out of their own mouths, to convince themselves that they are still moving toward something.
But they aren't. In the end, after killing Skullface (which was made purposefully unsatisfying according to Kojima) as revenge for the events that destroyed his life a decade ago, Snake is left to rot in a hell of his own creation. There are no holiday celebrations or fun outings like on the Mother Base of Peace Walker, and it's far lonelier; Quiet is gone, Huey is gone, Paz is long dead but still haunts him, and some of his best men are dead by his own hand. His only friends, Kaz and Ocelot, are just using him in some schizo game of global 4D chess. Even Eli and the child soldiers are just suddenly gone, and your metal gear with them - much more simple and poignant than the infamously cut Episode 51 would have been.
The effort to rehabilitate these kids, and maybe figure out Eli's origins? Track him down after his escape? Nope, you never see them again; they're just another of Diamond Dogs' many failures, another part of yourself that will be missing forever. All you can do is take the same helicopter ride to do the same (flawlessly crafted) stealth infiltration missions again and again and again, because senseless murder is the only thing that makes you feel anything anymore. And with the battlefield always shifting to adapt to your tactics in-game, you'll never make any real progress. Oh yeah, and none of this is actually real and Snake's entire life is fake. And deep down, he knows it.
So what about the real Big Boss? Well, he's basically stuck in the same cycle, only he has shed even more of his humanity than Venom. By using Venom's life as a tool in his own geopolitical game, Big Boss has committed the very same crime that was done to him and The Boss back in Operation Snake Eater. And all you can do about it is watch him ride off into the sunset to pursue yet another stupid evil scheme (that we already know will be a total failure), before getting right back to work like the epic gamer you are. Because you the player, like Venom, love LARPing as Big Boss no matter how pointless and repetitive it becomes. You'll complain about how Chapter 2 is "unfinished" and repeats the same missions from Chapter 1 (those were optional just fyi), but guess what? You're still gonna play those missions.
The Phantom Pain left players with such a profound feeling of emptiness and loss, and that's the real reason they felt it was unfinished. It's not because of any actual missing content - MGS2 had far more cut content, backed up by documented evidence, not just internet memes. But the difference with that game was that there was no falling out between Kojima and Konami - a convenient scapegoat for any aspect of the game that wasn't what fans expected, anything that hit players the wrong way. But that gnawing void you feel playing this game, the feeling that something is missing? That was intended, and it's honestly pretty heavy-handed and obvious when you approach the game on its own terms. I mean do I even need to say it? The pain from something that's missing? It's barely subtext.
Kojima purposefully denied us almost all of the campy, goofy nonsense we love about the Metal Gear Solid series to force us to confront how fake and hollow the legend of "the world's greatest soldier" really is. The level to which this game irrevocably shattered the minds of Metal Gear fans, leaving them eternally chasing their White Whale (the Moby Dick references weren't for nothing), is a testament to how the whole experiment was a resounding success. It snuck past gamers' emotional defenses, subverted their media illiteracy, and made them actually fucking feel something for once. Something real, something about their actual lives even.
There's a reason the game ends on a mirror - it's because the game is trying to hold one up to its players. And they could never forgive it for that. For turning their shallow, campy video game funtime, where I get to be a cool secret agent and Solid Snake is my dad, into a challenging work of art that interrogates their life. Because it's true: you are Venom Snake. You're a slave to the whims of others, your own desire for satisfaction. You do not know why you do the things that you do. And everything you're doing here - in this video game, in the digital realm - is ultimately fruitless. Fans complain about how there's no real resolution or ending to the story in MGSV, but it seems to me like that's the point: There is no resolution to be found here - not for Snake, and not for you. None of this is moving toward any conclusion or moment of truth. If you spend your life playing video games, you certainly won't ever see one. Like Venom, you'll never understand yourself, never have a real identity. The only way out, to freedom, is to stop fighting - to stop gaming. You can't save MSF, or Paz, or the Boss, or even Snake - you can only save yourself. Get out while you can. In the words of Naomi at the end of MGS1: "You have to live, Snake."
And that's the way this story ends. No Mission 51 "Kingdom of the Flies", no unwinnable boss fight against Solid Snake like fans wanted. Not even a sudden cut to black à la the Sopranos. Just the same meaningless thing over and over again, but somehow getting worse, until it's just... over. Not with a bang, but a whimper. If Metal Gear Solid 4 was about accepting the death of something that has clung on to life far longer than it should (the Metal Gear Solid series), MGSV is about being denied that noble death, brought back to life in some profane necromantic ritual, forced to live a tortured, half existence for all of eternity.
MGSV is best summed up as Kojima's way of saying "You guys wanted to keep playing Metal Gear Solid forever? Fine, here you go. Enjoy yourselves." He knows that he'll never be able to give this series a conclusive ending - he already tried that with MGS4. Instead, Kojima hands it off to the player, letting each of us come to it on our own, privately. One day, each player will get tired of the same missions and the same fucking helicopter ride and quietly decide for themselves, once and for all "Alright... I guess Metal Gear Solid is over. I'm done." and turn the game console off.
Spoilers below.
After losing everything in
And the missions in this game, while incredibly fun and well-made, really beg the age-old American question "What are we even doing in Afghanistan?". The plot feels totally incomprehensible at times; you spend the whole game going after random acronym organizations, shell companies, and mercenary groups with some vague connection to
And like Snake, the returning characters from Peace Walker are reduced to these broken versions of themselves. The only person who seems to be doing well is Ocelot, who has really come into his own as the sort dead-eyed psychopath that thrives in this kind of environment. Honestly? Good for him. Kaz on the other hand is a crippled, traumatized husk driven by revenge which is in turn driven by his own guilty conscience, and Huey has become a delusional, pathological liar focused solely on self-preservation. The few unnamed soldiers who survived
Even Skullface, who was built up in trailers and in Ground Zeroes as this terrifying villain, turns out to be just a sad joke like everyone else. His plan is the most nonsensical, harebrained shit ever explained by a villain in any Metal Gear game. He spent a decade practicing a 10 minute theatrical monologue about why he has to eradicate the English language and give everybody nuclear weapons to unite the world. It makes absolutely no sense, it's a parody of Metal Gear villains, which were already parodies of 80's movie villains. While Skullface is performing his monologue in the jeep (to the wrong person), Venom just hits him with that fluoride stare and loops through a 20 second idle animation. Then Sins of the Father just... starts playing as they sit across from each other in complete silence and avoid eye contact. It's one of the funniest scenes in the entire series, mistaken by many fans as simply botched and awkward on accident (rather than on purpose, which it was). And if that wasn't obvious enough, Skullface's defeat is just straight up slapstick comedy; he gets crushed by his own non-functional Metal Gear in the middle of another absurd speech. Genuine comedy gold.
I think a lot of people overlook the humor in this game. It's a lot more muted and sad than in the rest of the series, but it's smarter here than in any other entry. Miller's "why are we still here" speech is MEANT TO BE FUNNY AND OVERLY MELODRAMATIC, as well as depressing and hard to watch. The way it ends, with that uncomfortable silence before he just... awkwardly sits back down? That was on purpose. The tone is that this has all become a very pathetic (and funny) spectacle at this point. Kojima's famously asinine dialogue becomes something really transcendent here; each hollow, ham-fisted statement really drives home the fact that everyone is just making this shit up as they go along now, trying to weave some bullshit heroic narrative out of a long series of L's. Kojima is telling us: "This is you dude. This is the American Empire. Your War on Terror is as darkly funny as it is monstrous." MGSV isn't the self-serious death march the trailers painted it as.
The way V's cutscenes are shot adds to these moments too. The shaky, handheld camera builds documentarian realism and a sense of witnessing real atrocities in more high-stakes scenes, but can also lend a comedic awkwardness to these exchanges between characters. I've seen someone compare it to The Office as a criticism but I think that's a feature and not a bug, as strange as it sounds. Somehow, it just works so well for the tonal balancing act this game maintains. But what really elevates V's cinematography thematically is its use of continuous shots. One-takes are often criticized as being essentially a gimmick, style over substance. But in Metal Gear Solid, a series defined by the juxtaposition between hard military realism and over the top fantasy? It's pure genius. Having all of this insane Kojima bullshit captured in documentary style is so fitting for this series. Perfectly hyperreal.
Speaking of hyperreal, let's talk about Quiet. I've thought a lot about whether her portrayal plays into Kojima's contempt for the audience (and the Metal Gear series itself for that matter) or if it's just a part of the game that didn't land. I was inspired by this article to conclude the former. In classic Metal Gear fashion, Quiet's characterization is ridiculous and offensive, but ends up transcending its low-brow trappings and having an emotional payoff - all while playing into a greater meta-narrative. And if you don't like that method of storytelling, then you sure picked the wrong media franchise. That scene of her speaking for the first time to guide the helicopter through the sandstorm is genuinely great. It perfectly encapsulates Kojima's ability to make something ridiculous, cheesy, and melodramatic - but still deeply affecting and with a lot of heart.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves; Quiet is absolutely a biting self-parody of Kojima's own portrayal of women throughout his series and in the wider industry. It's Kojima saying "Is this what you like, you sick fucks?" or possibly a case of introspection on his part ("Oh God, is this what I like?"). She has some hastily made up bullshit explaining why she wears no clothes, she is literally incapable of speaking for herself, and she undergoes gratuitous violence and imprisonment. Kojima obviously knows how ridiculous this is; he's seen basically every American movie, he knows this isn't how you're supposed to respectfully portray women. No, Quiet's portrayal is purposefully exploitative. Her objectification starts out fairly straightforward, but it becomes more and more disturbing for the player to partake in as the game goes on, in order to heighten the dark absurdity of all of this (particularly in Chapter 2, which is where everything in the game falls apart, on purpose). The point of Quiet's character, and the whole game really, is to give players exactly what they want in the most contemptuous way possible. To make you "feel ashamed of your words and deeds", you could even say. MGSV is about getting exactly what you want (another MGS game, endless content, revenge on Skullface, a sniper gf) and resenting it.
To build on MGSV's portrayal of women though, I think it's important that Paz takes on the role that she does in this game. She makes an initially very confusing reappearance - that first moment when you see her is genuinely unnerving, as if even the strange, fucked up Metal Gear reality we have become accustomed to can't explain what we're seeing. Out of all the unrealistic fantasy bullshit we've seen in this series, a series where it feels like anything goes and there are no rules or laws of physics, this is the first moment where I went "Wait, what? How?" But as we find at the end of "Paz's" side story, this is all just a projection of Snake's fragmented psyche. It's incredible in the way it makes you question what's real and what isn't, while simultaneously using Paz as a proxy to just straight up diagnose Snake's own mental disorders. But it's tucked away where most probably never saw it - like a hidden repressed memory somewhere in Snake's mind.
It perfectly conveys his nostalgia for a time that was never even good, as well as his crushing guilt and helplessness over the death of Paz. It's genuinely moving. That last tape of hers is something right out of Silent Hill 2, and it adds such depth to Snake as this miserable person that you should absolutely not want to be. For Snake, women really are just these fixtures of loss, shame, and regret - feelings that no doubt originate from the killing of his mother figure, The Boss. And despite all of the talk about getting revenge and taking down Cipher, the only time we ever see Snake get animated in this game is in his scenes with Paz. Snake's desire for redemption, his insistence on nuclear disarmament that feels strangely out of place, and his statement at the start of the game that he's "already a demon"? It's all about Paz, man.
One thing fans really disliked about Snake's portrayal though is that he never really seems to become the demon we knew him as in the early games. We never get to see The Exact Moment Walt Became Heisenberg. Quite the opposite; his intentions appear to remain heroic all the way to the end. The only scene where Snake approaches the kind of evil fans wanted to see is when Snake appears to murder the children in the mines but ends up saving them instead. In trailers this was depicted as if Snake actually goes through with the murder; to me, this is the smoking gun of another Kojima bait-and-switch. Fans wanted a game full of shocking, flashy acts of villainy on the part of Snake, and Kojima deliberately lead them on in trailers (just like in MGS2) but denied them of it in the final game. What did fans get instead? Spreadsheets.
Don't miss the forest for the trees; Snake is absolutely responsible for unimaginable atrocities during the events of MGSV. But instead of sensationalist images of man's inhumanity to man, Kojima shows us the banal cruelty of what it really means to be at the top of the war machine: You're just... on the computer, like everyone else. And everything you're doing is represented through so many layers of abstraction that it is impossible to understand the consequences. This ties directly into the themes of Metal Gear Solid 2 as well; by issuing your orders via this computer interface, you are even further removed from what is happening in reality. You just do a cursory cost-benefit analysis before sending the next death squad to do god knows what in some African or South American country you don't even know the name of.
And when a disease outbreak hits Mother Base, Snake's iDroid computer makes it easy for him to commit ethnic cleansing, sentencing scores of people to imprisonment and death for the language they speak. It isn't until all of the digital artifice is stripped away, and Venom is forced to enter the quarantine zone and personally slaughter his own men, that he has any crisis of conscience (and you actually lose some of your best men, because Kojima never fails to give the story actual weight via game mechanics). And you can say "Venom didn't want to do it, he had no choice." But that's exactly the point. If the Metal Gear Solid series is about one thing, it's about individual will being crushed under the weight of systems and institutions that have become organisms in and of themselves.
It doesn't matter how much Venom yearns for redemption. It doesn't even matter if he's in charge of Diamond Dogs. The system of global private warfare that Big Boss and friends established has taken on a life of its own, just like the Patriots of MGS2. His own intentions are irrelevant. If this system demands he kill his own men, he will do it. If this system demands that Raiden later kill Solidus, he too will do it. All actions within the system, regardless of intent, perpetuate the cycle of violence, war, and profit. Even if Venom disarms all of the nukes and brings about the Peace Day that never came for Paz, it just sets up the nuke free world that we hear about Big Boss exploiting in the intro to Metal Gear 2.
That's why everything in MGSV takes on such a hilariously pathetic flavor. Nobody, not Big Boss, not Zero, not Skullface, not Venom, has any agency in any of this. They're just flailing, looking for anything they can do to enact their will in a system that now imprisons its own creators. The only person who manages to achieve victory over the system by the (chronological) end of the series is, once again, Revolver Ocelot. And he only does so by shedding all individuality, tearing his mind into a thousand schizophrenic pieces to always be one step ahead of the algorithm. And it's all because he wants to fuck Big Boss. In the end love wins, and I think that's beautiful. But for everyone else, they are doomed to perpetuate the system they so desperately want to be free of.
And to what end? The truth is that there is no point to this system beyond its own self-perpetuation - it's a Snake eating its own tail (pretty good, huh?). The soldiers of Diamond Dogs, and every other PMC, kill so that they can keep killing. It's all for the love of the game at this point. Sure, they did the same thing back in Peace Walker, but at least back then it felt like you were blazing a new trail, sending a ragtag band of freedom fighters to oppose imperialism - that's long gone now. Any lofty goals this organization may have had are now lying somewhere at the bottom of the Caribbean. All of the bullshit Snake and Kaz spout about "fighting for the future" and "standing tall on missing legs" are just words to talk the gun out of their own mouths, to convince themselves that they are still moving toward something.
But they aren't. In the end, after killing Skullface (which was made purposefully unsatisfying according to Kojima) as revenge for the events that destroyed his life a decade ago, Snake is left to rot in a hell of his own creation. There are no holiday celebrations or fun outings like on the Mother Base of Peace Walker, and it's far lonelier; Quiet is gone, Huey is gone, Paz is long dead but still haunts him, and some of his best men are dead by his own hand. His only friends, Kaz and Ocelot, are just using him in some schizo game of global 4D chess. Even Eli and the child soldiers are just suddenly gone, and your metal gear with them - much more simple and poignant than the infamously cut Episode 51 would have been.
The effort to rehabilitate these kids, and maybe figure out Eli's origins? Track him down after his escape? Nope, you never see them again; they're just another of Diamond Dogs' many failures, another part of yourself that will be missing forever. All you can do is take the same helicopter ride to do the same (flawlessly crafted) stealth infiltration missions again and again and again, because senseless murder is the only thing that makes you feel anything anymore. And with the battlefield always shifting to adapt to your tactics in-game, you'll never make any real progress. Oh yeah, and none of this is actually real and Snake's entire life is fake. And deep down, he knows it.
So what about the real Big Boss? Well, he's basically stuck in the same cycle, only he has shed even more of his humanity than Venom. By using Venom's life as a tool in his own geopolitical game, Big Boss has committed the very same crime that was done to him and The Boss back in Operation Snake Eater. And all you can do about it is watch him ride off into the sunset to pursue yet another stupid evil scheme (that we already know will be a total failure), before getting right back to work like the epic gamer you are. Because you the player, like Venom, love LARPing as Big Boss no matter how pointless and repetitive it becomes. You'll complain about how Chapter 2 is "unfinished" and repeats the same missions from Chapter 1 (those were optional just fyi), but guess what? You're still gonna play those missions.
The Phantom Pain left players with such a profound feeling of emptiness and loss, and that's the real reason they felt it was unfinished. It's not because of any actual missing content - MGS2 had far more cut content, backed up by documented evidence, not just internet memes. But the difference with that game was that there was no falling out between Kojima and Konami - a convenient scapegoat for any aspect of the game that wasn't what fans expected, anything that hit players the wrong way. But that gnawing void you feel playing this game, the feeling that something is missing? That was intended, and it's honestly pretty heavy-handed and obvious when you approach the game on its own terms. I mean do I even need to say it? The pain from something that's missing? It's barely subtext.
Kojima purposefully denied us almost all of the campy, goofy nonsense we love about the Metal Gear Solid series to force us to confront how fake and hollow the legend of "the world's greatest soldier" really is. The level to which this game irrevocably shattered the minds of Metal Gear fans, leaving them eternally chasing their White Whale (the Moby Dick references weren't for nothing), is a testament to how the whole experiment was a resounding success. It snuck past gamers' emotional defenses, subverted their media illiteracy, and made them actually fucking feel something for once. Something real, something about their actual lives even.
There's a reason the game ends on a mirror - it's because the game is trying to hold one up to its players. And they could never forgive it for that. For turning their shallow, campy video game funtime, where I get to be a cool secret agent and Solid Snake is my dad, into a challenging work of art that interrogates their life. Because it's true: you are Venom Snake. You're a slave to the whims of others, your own desire for satisfaction. You do not know why you do the things that you do. And everything you're doing here - in this video game, in the digital realm - is ultimately fruitless. Fans complain about how there's no real resolution or ending to the story in MGSV, but it seems to me like that's the point: There is no resolution to be found here - not for Snake, and not for you. None of this is moving toward any conclusion or moment of truth. If you spend your life playing video games, you certainly won't ever see one. Like Venom, you'll never understand yourself, never have a real identity. The only way out, to freedom, is to stop fighting - to stop gaming. You can't save MSF, or Paz, or the Boss, or even Snake - you can only save yourself. Get out while you can. In the words of Naomi at the end of MGS1: "You have to live, Snake."
And that's the way this story ends. No Mission 51 "Kingdom of the Flies", no unwinnable boss fight against Solid Snake like fans wanted. Not even a sudden cut to black à la the Sopranos. Just the same meaningless thing over and over again, but somehow getting worse, until it's just... over. Not with a bang, but a whimper. If Metal Gear Solid 4 was about accepting the death of something that has clung on to life far longer than it should (the Metal Gear Solid series), MGSV is about being denied that noble death, brought back to life in some profane necromantic ritual, forced to live a tortured, half existence for all of eternity.
MGSV is best summed up as Kojima's way of saying "You guys wanted to keep playing Metal Gear Solid forever? Fine, here you go. Enjoy yourselves." He knows that he'll never be able to give this series a conclusive ending - he already tried that with MGS4. Instead, Kojima hands it off to the player, letting each of us come to it on our own, privately. One day, each player will get tired of the same missions and the same fucking helicopter ride and quietly decide for themselves, once and for all "Alright... I guess Metal Gear Solid is over. I'm done." and turn the game console off.
I had to play the Sins of the Father-jeep scene with people in the room with me.
An absolute masterpiece tragically assaulted on all sides by myths of having no story and being incomplete.
His custom playlist sprang to life in his ear "city pop hits", nostalgia for a life he had never had, a life that wasn't very good anyway; the future spiralled out before him, a rote, ruinous world, routine until fated death- feared and awaited in equal measure. He took a long smoothe draw of his e-cigar and watched his reflection on the world as it slipped past the window. The closest stop to his target still necessitated a long walk under the baking sun, depending on the day and mood his opinion of the trek varied- sometimes it was pleasant and meditative, other times it was simply dull. He had arrived at his target, He was supposed to be the Big Boss of this operation, that's what it said in the mirror, but he knew he was just the same as everyone else, only he had more paperwork at the end of the day.
"Welcome to McDonnell's, can I take your order?"
"Welcome to McDonnell's, can I take your order?"
By far the series’ best gameplay base. It expands on systems from both Snake Eater and Peace Walker, sets them in this huge, open ended world, and makes your character the most mobile and fluid he’s ever felt. Every mechanic is thought out and feeds into the next, the only other game where I’ve had this much fun toying around with it’s mechanics is Breath of the Wild. Between your enormous toolkit and the dynamic world, every mission can play out a hundred different ways. What really makes it above and beyond though compared to the other Metal Gear games is the introduction of adaptive difficulty. Rely on headshots? The enemies will eventually start wearing helmets. Choose to attack at night every mission? They’ll start wearing night vision goggles. Like bull rushing them with cqc? They’ll equip riot shields. Go kill crazy? Some factions will deploy child soldiers (which if you kill, it’s an instant game over). It encourages you to mix things up, try not to use the same strategy over and over, every adaptation the enemies take on has a counter of it’s own, flashlights will blind enemies in night vision goggles, child soldiers are far more susceptible to non-lethal takedowns, etc. On top of that the game is far more punishing when you’ve been spotted, with enemies alerting other outposts to your presence keeping patrols agitated pretty much until the end of the mission. Gameplay-wise I only have one complaint, and that’s how going out of bounds just straight up aborts the mission. Early on it establishes that once you finish your mission you can exfiltrate either by helicopter or just by leaving the mission area. Some missions however only give you the helicopter option, and I remember the first time I did mission 12, it was too hot to extract by helicopter, so I just made a break for it on horseback aaaand got told I had to do the entire mission over again. It was annoying, but just a hiccup in an otherwise flawless playable experience.
Story-wise, it’s the weakest in the main series. Not as atrocious as some say, it has sequences that still floored me, the prologue, the subplot with Paz, every sequence involving Those Who Don't Exist or Metal Gear Sahelanthropus, and just seeing all these characters who were so loveable and jovial in Peace Walker reduced to bitter, broken wrecks was heart wrenching to me. But it demands the most foreknowledge from the other games and ultimately adds very little to the overarching picture. And you have plot threads that lead nowhere, you have moments like the car ride with Skullface. Yeah, some of them would’ve had more satisfying payoffs had the game’s final chapter been completed, but I struggle to see how it could’ve saved others.
For it’s playability alone, I’m very tempted to give this game a perfect score. I just can’t get over the fact that Konami didn’t let Kojima see through his complete vision. It’s not a broken kind of incomplete, the game is polished to an immaculate sheen. It's just inconclusive and it’s frustrating to know that there’s an important part of this game that fans will never get to see. The game as it launched is astounding, top 3 Metal Gear games for me, yet I wonder how much better it could’ve been if not for Konami’s cynicism.
Story-wise, it’s the weakest in the main series. Not as atrocious as some say, it has sequences that still floored me, the prologue, the subplot with Paz, every sequence involving Those Who Don't Exist or Metal Gear Sahelanthropus, and just seeing all these characters who were so loveable and jovial in Peace Walker reduced to bitter, broken wrecks was heart wrenching to me. But it demands the most foreknowledge from the other games and ultimately adds very little to the overarching picture. And you have plot threads that lead nowhere, you have moments like the car ride with Skullface. Yeah, some of them would’ve had more satisfying payoffs had the game’s final chapter been completed, but I struggle to see how it could’ve saved others.
For it’s playability alone, I’m very tempted to give this game a perfect score. I just can’t get over the fact that Konami didn’t let Kojima see through his complete vision. It’s not a broken kind of incomplete, the game is polished to an immaculate sheen. It's just inconclusive and it’s frustrating to know that there’s an important part of this game that fans will never get to see. The game as it launched is astounding, top 3 Metal Gear games for me, yet I wonder how much better it could’ve been if not for Konami’s cynicism.
I'm blocking Everyone who says this is unfinished. It literally isn't. One of the weirdest collective copes I've seen
This game is a moron filter. If you hate (dislike =/= hate) this game you're, simply put, a moron. Do not interact with me
This game is a moron filter. If you hate (dislike =/= hate) this game you're, simply put, a moron. Do not interact with me
A lopsided mess that i can't help but still love despite its flaws. I have fond memories of skipping school to play this game
Metal Gear Solid serisi oynarken fazlasıyla etkilendiğim bir oyun serisiydi ve bu serinin 5. oyununa bakmam fazlasıyla uzun sürdü her taraftan hikayesi yarım şöyle böyle diye duyumlar aldım. Bu duyumlardan kaynaklı 5. oyuna karşı beklentisiz şekilde girdim ve ne diyebilirim ki oyunu fazlasıyla beğendim. Fakat oyunu böyle hikayesel bir başyapıt olarak beğendiğim söylenemez ama oynanış olarak muhteşem bir yapım olmuş. Hikayenin yarım olmasının çok fazla nedeni varmış ama onlardan öte oyunun sinematik sunumu fazlasıyla güzel oyunun ilk yarısı güzel bir sunumla ilerliyor fakat oyunun ikinci yarısına geçildiğinde hikayeye neden yarım denildiğini anlıyorsunuz. Oyunun ilk kısmında olan sinematik sunumudur görevleridir aşırı eğlenceli olurken oyunun ikinci yarısına geçtiğimizde ilk yarıda olan görevlerin extreme, total stealth olan daha çok challenge olabilecek görevler dizilip ilk yarıda olan sinematik sunumun oyunun ikinci yarısında tırnağı bile gözükmüyor. Üstelik ikinci yarıda olan extreme görevler yüzünden benim oyun zevkim fazlasıyla düştü oyunun ikinci yarısında bazı beğendiğim şeyler var zaten o beğendiğim şeyler ise ikin yarının extreme olmayan tamamıyla ikin yarı için tasarlanmış olan görevlerini beğendim. Hikayenin yarım oluşunu kapatmak için oyunun hikayesinin neredeyse hepsi oyunda ilerledikçe bize gelen kasetlere dizilmiş. Fakat bu kasetle hikaye dinleme işi aşırı saçma olduğu için birini bile düzgün dinlemedim. Oyunun yarım hikayesini en çok kapatan özelliği oynanışı olduğunu söyleyebilirim.
MGS V'in oynanışı gizlilik ve aksiyon için tam tadında yapılmış fakat aksiyon odaklı ilerlemek oyunun büyük bir kısmını çok kolaylaştırıyor. Bunun dışında oynanış tarzınıza bağlı olarak değişim geçiren düşman zekası var. Mesela oyun boyunca aksiyon odaklı gittiniz düşmanların çoğu zırh veya kalkan kuşanıyorlar. Başka bir örnek olarak fazlasıyla keskin nişancı olarak oynuyorsanız kask takmayan askerler sonrasında kask takmaya başlıyor. Oynanışa başka bir ek olarak ekipmanların çeşitliliğinin bol olması bir görev için kullanabileceğiniz bir sürü ekipmanınız oluyor. Bu ekipmanları kullanmak ne kadar eğlenceliyse onları geliştirmek o kadar uzun süreli bunu dememin sebebi yapımcıların ilginç bir tercihinden kaynaklı bu tercih ise silahlarınızın gelişimi veya başka şeylerin gelişimini açmak için size mobil oyunumsu bir şekilde size 1-2 saat beklemenizi istiyor. Dersiniz amaaan oyun oynarken geçer gider zaman bu geliştirmeler ilerledikçe günleri geçen geliştirme süreleri olması aşırı saçma bir tercih olmuş fakat bu geliştirme süreçlerinin bazılarını oyun içi kazandığınız bazı birimler sayesinde direk geliştirmesini açabiliyorsunuz. Görevleri yapma konusunda bir başka çeşitlilik sağlayan özellik ise bize görev esnasında eşlik eden dost birimlerimiz var. Bu dost birimler farklı özelliklere sahip olduğu için görevlerde seçtiğiniz karaktere göre oynanış tarzınızı değiştirebiliyorsunuz. Fakat bu dost birimlerden ilki olan D-Horse bir noktadan işlevini benim gözümde kaybetmeye başladı bunun sebebi ise oyunda gelişmem üzerine artık görevde yanıma araç alabiliyor olmamdan dolayı pek D-Horse kullanma gereksinimi duymadım sadece başarım kazanma amaçlı birkaç yan görev için kullanmıştım sonrasında pek kullandığım söylenemez. Bu dost birimlerin bir seviye sistemi var bu seviye sisteminin ismi bond yükseltmek için o dost birimle göreve çıkmanız gerek sadece sonrasında yavaş yavaş yükseliyor. Yükseldikçe yeni özellikleri açılan dost birimleri daha çok kullanışlı olmaya başlıyor. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain benim için gayet güzel ve eğlence bir deneyim oldu. Tabii hikaye kısmında pek tam olmasa bile oynanış anlamında taş gibi bir yapım olmuş. Belki bir MGS oyunu olarak fazla tatmin edici gelmeyebilir ama bu oyunu taşıyan en büyük özelliği oynanıştır. Kesinlikle oynanışı için bile önereceğim bir oyundur zaten normal fiyatlandırması olarak gayet uygun olmasının yanında indirimli fiyatı da çok uygun oluyor kesinlikle alınıp oynanması gereken bir yapım olduğunu düşünüyorum.
MGS V'in oynanışı gizlilik ve aksiyon için tam tadında yapılmış fakat aksiyon odaklı ilerlemek oyunun büyük bir kısmını çok kolaylaştırıyor. Bunun dışında oynanış tarzınıza bağlı olarak değişim geçiren düşman zekası var. Mesela oyun boyunca aksiyon odaklı gittiniz düşmanların çoğu zırh veya kalkan kuşanıyorlar. Başka bir örnek olarak fazlasıyla keskin nişancı olarak oynuyorsanız kask takmayan askerler sonrasında kask takmaya başlıyor. Oynanışa başka bir ek olarak ekipmanların çeşitliliğinin bol olması bir görev için kullanabileceğiniz bir sürü ekipmanınız oluyor. Bu ekipmanları kullanmak ne kadar eğlenceliyse onları geliştirmek o kadar uzun süreli bunu dememin sebebi yapımcıların ilginç bir tercihinden kaynaklı bu tercih ise silahlarınızın gelişimi veya başka şeylerin gelişimini açmak için size mobil oyunumsu bir şekilde size 1-2 saat beklemenizi istiyor. Dersiniz amaaan oyun oynarken geçer gider zaman bu geliştirmeler ilerledikçe günleri geçen geliştirme süreleri olması aşırı saçma bir tercih olmuş fakat bu geliştirme süreçlerinin bazılarını oyun içi kazandığınız bazı birimler sayesinde direk geliştirmesini açabiliyorsunuz. Görevleri yapma konusunda bir başka çeşitlilik sağlayan özellik ise bize görev esnasında eşlik eden dost birimlerimiz var. Bu dost birimler farklı özelliklere sahip olduğu için görevlerde seçtiğiniz karaktere göre oynanış tarzınızı değiştirebiliyorsunuz. Fakat bu dost birimlerden ilki olan D-Horse bir noktadan işlevini benim gözümde kaybetmeye başladı bunun sebebi ise oyunda gelişmem üzerine artık görevde yanıma araç alabiliyor olmamdan dolayı pek D-Horse kullanma gereksinimi duymadım sadece başarım kazanma amaçlı birkaç yan görev için kullanmıştım sonrasında pek kullandığım söylenemez. Bu dost birimlerin bir seviye sistemi var bu seviye sisteminin ismi bond yükseltmek için o dost birimle göreve çıkmanız gerek sadece sonrasında yavaş yavaş yükseliyor. Yükseldikçe yeni özellikleri açılan dost birimleri daha çok kullanışlı olmaya başlıyor. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain benim için gayet güzel ve eğlence bir deneyim oldu. Tabii hikaye kısmında pek tam olmasa bile oynanış anlamında taş gibi bir yapım olmuş. Belki bir MGS oyunu olarak fazla tatmin edici gelmeyebilir ama bu oyunu taşıyan en büyük özelliği oynanıştır. Kesinlikle oynanışı için bile önereceğim bir oyundur zaten normal fiyatlandırması olarak gayet uygun olmasının yanında indirimli fiyatı da çok uygun oluyor kesinlikle alınıp oynanması gereken bir yapım olduğunu düşünüyorum.
This review contains spoilers
what a perfect game. as someone who's interested in the metal gear lore, as well as the metanarrative surrounding each game in the series, i'm truly satisfied with how much it delivered on both fronts.
I'm so glad this was the last game in the series under KojiPro, the way it concludes the saga's loop is the coolest thing ever, and the truth ending cutscene is probably my favorite scene in the whole series. it's just so powerful.
I was initially planning on writing a super detailed review to talk about everything surrounding this game and such, but honestly, aside from long analysis not being something i excel at. i don't think there's much i can add that hasn't been talked about yet.
...aside from one thing, i'm super disappointed by how everyone i've seen talking about the truth ending sees it as a gloomy one. sure, if we see it purely from Venom's perspective, he was certainly robbed of his identity. But i don't like how barely anyone ties Venom being an extension of the player into the ending. Big Boss is essentially thanking you, the player for sticking with him all this way! you've been with him practically his whole life, and he calls you his best man because you've essentially been playing and experiencing all of it! even Ocelot assures him not to worry and says that "he", as in "we" can handle it! it's SUCH a good send-off to the fans -and the creators, if we think of Big Boss as a self insert of the team- I absolutely adore it.
I also just wanna mention how rad Code Talker being voiced by an actual indigenous guy is, i feel like that's something that doesn't happen often. it's super cool.
I'm so glad this was the last game in the series under KojiPro, the way it concludes the saga's loop is the coolest thing ever, and the truth ending cutscene is probably my favorite scene in the whole series. it's just so powerful.
I was initially planning on writing a super detailed review to talk about everything surrounding this game and such, but honestly, aside from long analysis not being something i excel at. i don't think there's much i can add that hasn't been talked about yet.
...aside from one thing, i'm super disappointed by how everyone i've seen talking about the truth ending sees it as a gloomy one. sure, if we see it purely from Venom's perspective, he was certainly robbed of his identity. But i don't like how barely anyone ties Venom being an extension of the player into the ending. Big Boss is essentially thanking you, the player for sticking with him all this way! you've been with him practically his whole life, and he calls you his best man because you've essentially been playing and experiencing all of it! even Ocelot assures him not to worry and says that "he", as in "we" can handle it! it's SUCH a good send-off to the fans -and the creators, if we think of Big Boss as a self insert of the team- I absolutely adore it.
I also just wanna mention how rad Code Talker being voiced by an actual indigenous guy is, i feel like that's something that doesn't happen often. it's super cool.
I'll finish the game and change this review eventually, but so far it's alright. It is outclassed by its predecessors however.
Just as impactful as mgs 3.
Just as cinematic as mgs 4.
But more fun to play than any mgs before.
It feels like the game is missing a final chapter in the story, it hurts almost. This phantom pain of something that is missing.
Just as cinematic as mgs 4.
But more fun to play than any mgs before.
It feels like the game is missing a final chapter in the story, it hurts almost. This phantom pain of something that is missing.
Crawling through the sands of Afghanistan and baking in the the oil drenched humidity of Africa makes The Phantom Pain the perfect Summer game to lock yourself in with, escaping from the heat by stewing under the sweltering virtual sun of Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear swan song. I first played this on PC, but was so swept up in the hype that I just had to have the collector's edition as well. While all the extra curios that came with it certainly look nice on my shelf, I never did bother to pop the Playstation 4 version of the game in to see how it compares until now.
Granted it's been a while, but the most immediate thing that leaps out to me about The Phantom Pain that doesn't gel with my previous experience is how buggy it is. Enemy AI routines are frequently disrupted, causing mission targets to loop into and out of vehicles, fail to initiate dialog, or trigger events that progress the mission overall. This becomes especially frustrating if you're like me and you suffer from a horrible compulsion to platinum games you already have on other platforms just because you know you can. I don't recall ever having any significant issues knocking out mission tasks or obtaining S ranks on PC, but on console I flat out gave up. There's just too much working against the flow of the game that it reduces most tasks to dumb luck. Either the AI will cooperate, or it will go dog dumb on you.
Unfortunately, I found that restarting from a checkpoint usually doesn't alleviate these issues, and if a target's AI goes completely haywire the only reliable way to correct it is returning to the ACC and redeploying, which brings me to a gripe I have with The Phantom Pain that is more structural in nature. Every time you start a mission or side op that deploys you into an area of operation, you have to sit around on your helicopter and chill out for like, a full minute before your feet can touch the ground. Now add multiple loading screens on top of that and, well, you better bring something to read.
On PC, loading times were lightning fast, but on console they're downright glacial. Perhaps I'm already spoiled by the Playstation 5's SSD, but compared to other PS4 games I've enjoyed on the PS5, the wait in MGSV is interminable. This even extends to menus on the iDroid, with individual screens taking several seconds to load up. God help you if you need to call in a supply drop during a mission, you're liable to get caught if you aren't hidden well enough due to how long it takes to putz around in menus.
Now this is where I throw up a big fat asterisk, because I've never played this game on Playstation 4 hardware. Instead, I'm playing it on the Playstation 5, which as far as I'm aware, the game has no specific optimization for. It runs, sure, and the framerate seems pretty good overall, but the glitches and issues with loading times I encountered could be due to some compatibility weirdness, maybe. I don't know. I have nothing to substantiate this other than the fact that I don't remember things being this rough on PC. Unfortunately, I just don't see Konami ever doing a current-gen update to this game.
That said, there's still a lot about The Phantom Pain that I think holds up! Missions are structured in a way that encourages creative approaches. Where you drop in, what buddies you take with you, your tool set and infiltration point are all up to you. You can absolutely get by with just a silenced pistol and a sniper rifle, but the open-ended nature of The Phantom Pain gives you an unprecedented amount of control over how you approach the game in a series that's well known for encouraging experimentation. Stealth feels feels better than it ever has. Mission locations are playgrounds that are a joy to sneak through, though I did have to leave reflex mode on during the early game given how much the camera likes to hug to Snake's shapely ass when indoors. This is alleviated once you have D-Dog, who marks enemies and traps for you, or the sonar, which outs the last known location of surrounding enemies, both of which you get pretty early. The more gadgets and buddies you add to your arsenal, the more fun it is to go back to previous missions and improve your times, which gives this game a lot of replayability.
When not taking on missions you can manage Mother Base by assigning staff members to specific divisions and building new facilities. This eventually opens up into a sort of Souls-like multiplayer mode where you can invade other player's bases, rob them of crew and resources, and generally make their lives miserable. I actually like this mode quite a bit, and the level of control that was later patched in allows you to fine tune your defenses to be absolute hell for invaders. I could honestly waste a lot of hours making my platforms death traps if I allow myself.
However, one draw back is that having your resources stolen can really put a hurt on you when it comes to developing new items intended for the single player portion of the game. You can avoid this entirely by never invading another player (which in turn makes it so you cannot be invaded) or by purchasing POF insurance, which is a scam. Something I came to realize on this second playthrough of The Phantom Pain is how this game is a ticking time bomb. Resources and GMP are split between what's available in single player and what's stored online, and the division between what's accessible on and off the server is grossly skewed towards needing a stable internet connection. I'm talking 80% of your GMP just vanishing if your internet cuts out. You can still play through story missions, sure, but good luck building any new weapons or constructing base platforms. When this game inevitably goes offline, these lost resources will be the true phantom pain.
Of course I can't end this review without talking about the elephant in the room: The Phantom Pain's story. I often see this game described as being the best game in the series, but the worst Metal Gear. Which is to say it's the most fun to play but is completely lacking in the idiosyncrasies that series is known for. There are no overwrought hour long cutscenes, no unique quirky codec conversations, and the story isn't an untangleable knot of conspiracies in the way past games have been. While some plot elements like the vocal chord parasites or The Man on Fire are definitely drenched in the typical Metal Gear weirdness, The Phantom Pain tells perhaps the most grounded story in the series since Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. It is surprisingly restrained, with hours of gameplay exceeding the hours of story you might come to expect from Kojima. Personally, I really like this balance. MGSV has a great flow to it, with story being metered out at the perfect times. My one complaint, really, is that too many key details are given in cassette tapes, and while in theory this means you can absorb the story while playing the game, I found more often than not I needed to just listen to them in ACC or else I wouldn't be able to pick up on audio cues from nearby enemies during missions.
Actually, I do have one other complaint about the story: it's not finished. This is well known, but the game is missing its last act, leaving a few important plot threads hanging. The game just kinda... ends, and it does so in a way that's very unsatisfying. There is no gratifying conclusion to the themes, problems or questions that the story sets up. There's plenty of videos and articles diving into the rift between Kojima and Konami, and plenty to be said about how this real world divide between long time partners reflects in The Phantom Pain both narratively and in how the final product ended up. It's not worth getting into here, though part of what made me want to play this game again was finding out that there's still an active community trying to unravel the mysteries of MGSV's lost act. I think it's insane that there are some out there who think it can actually be unlocked, that there's some part of this game that hasn't been exposed through years of datamining, that there is in fact an ending to be had if just the right conditions are met. There isn't. It simply is not there, cut off and abandoned like a dead limb long ago. Like one's lust for revenge, the only way to heal is to let go. Kojima and Konami certainly didn't plan it that way, but there's something kind of poetic about the obsession that drives fans of this game even today.
While this is certainly not how I wanted to see the series (at least under Kojima's creative vision) end, and while I definitely do have some serious grievances with technical elements of the game, I still really like The Phantom Pain. It's often on sale for around five bucks bundled with Ground Zeroes, and you can't go wrong for that price, but if you have the option to play it on PC then definitely go with that.
Huey is the biggest piece of shit who ever lived, 3.5/5.
Granted it's been a while, but the most immediate thing that leaps out to me about The Phantom Pain that doesn't gel with my previous experience is how buggy it is. Enemy AI routines are frequently disrupted, causing mission targets to loop into and out of vehicles, fail to initiate dialog, or trigger events that progress the mission overall. This becomes especially frustrating if you're like me and you suffer from a horrible compulsion to platinum games you already have on other platforms just because you know you can. I don't recall ever having any significant issues knocking out mission tasks or obtaining S ranks on PC, but on console I flat out gave up. There's just too much working against the flow of the game that it reduces most tasks to dumb luck. Either the AI will cooperate, or it will go dog dumb on you.
Unfortunately, I found that restarting from a checkpoint usually doesn't alleviate these issues, and if a target's AI goes completely haywire the only reliable way to correct it is returning to the ACC and redeploying, which brings me to a gripe I have with The Phantom Pain that is more structural in nature. Every time you start a mission or side op that deploys you into an area of operation, you have to sit around on your helicopter and chill out for like, a full minute before your feet can touch the ground. Now add multiple loading screens on top of that and, well, you better bring something to read.
On PC, loading times were lightning fast, but on console they're downright glacial. Perhaps I'm already spoiled by the Playstation 5's SSD, but compared to other PS4 games I've enjoyed on the PS5, the wait in MGSV is interminable. This even extends to menus on the iDroid, with individual screens taking several seconds to load up. God help you if you need to call in a supply drop during a mission, you're liable to get caught if you aren't hidden well enough due to how long it takes to putz around in menus.
Now this is where I throw up a big fat asterisk, because I've never played this game on Playstation 4 hardware. Instead, I'm playing it on the Playstation 5, which as far as I'm aware, the game has no specific optimization for. It runs, sure, and the framerate seems pretty good overall, but the glitches and issues with loading times I encountered could be due to some compatibility weirdness, maybe. I don't know. I have nothing to substantiate this other than the fact that I don't remember things being this rough on PC. Unfortunately, I just don't see Konami ever doing a current-gen update to this game.
That said, there's still a lot about The Phantom Pain that I think holds up! Missions are structured in a way that encourages creative approaches. Where you drop in, what buddies you take with you, your tool set and infiltration point are all up to you. You can absolutely get by with just a silenced pistol and a sniper rifle, but the open-ended nature of The Phantom Pain gives you an unprecedented amount of control over how you approach the game in a series that's well known for encouraging experimentation. Stealth feels feels better than it ever has. Mission locations are playgrounds that are a joy to sneak through, though I did have to leave reflex mode on during the early game given how much the camera likes to hug to Snake's shapely ass when indoors. This is alleviated once you have D-Dog, who marks enemies and traps for you, or the sonar, which outs the last known location of surrounding enemies, both of which you get pretty early. The more gadgets and buddies you add to your arsenal, the more fun it is to go back to previous missions and improve your times, which gives this game a lot of replayability.
When not taking on missions you can manage Mother Base by assigning staff members to specific divisions and building new facilities. This eventually opens up into a sort of Souls-like multiplayer mode where you can invade other player's bases, rob them of crew and resources, and generally make their lives miserable. I actually like this mode quite a bit, and the level of control that was later patched in allows you to fine tune your defenses to be absolute hell for invaders. I could honestly waste a lot of hours making my platforms death traps if I allow myself.
However, one draw back is that having your resources stolen can really put a hurt on you when it comes to developing new items intended for the single player portion of the game. You can avoid this entirely by never invading another player (which in turn makes it so you cannot be invaded) or by purchasing POF insurance, which is a scam. Something I came to realize on this second playthrough of The Phantom Pain is how this game is a ticking time bomb. Resources and GMP are split between what's available in single player and what's stored online, and the division between what's accessible on and off the server is grossly skewed towards needing a stable internet connection. I'm talking 80% of your GMP just vanishing if your internet cuts out. You can still play through story missions, sure, but good luck building any new weapons or constructing base platforms. When this game inevitably goes offline, these lost resources will be the true phantom pain.
Of course I can't end this review without talking about the elephant in the room: The Phantom Pain's story. I often see this game described as being the best game in the series, but the worst Metal Gear. Which is to say it's the most fun to play but is completely lacking in the idiosyncrasies that series is known for. There are no overwrought hour long cutscenes, no unique quirky codec conversations, and the story isn't an untangleable knot of conspiracies in the way past games have been. While some plot elements like the vocal chord parasites or The Man on Fire are definitely drenched in the typical Metal Gear weirdness, The Phantom Pain tells perhaps the most grounded story in the series since Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. It is surprisingly restrained, with hours of gameplay exceeding the hours of story you might come to expect from Kojima. Personally, I really like this balance. MGSV has a great flow to it, with story being metered out at the perfect times. My one complaint, really, is that too many key details are given in cassette tapes, and while in theory this means you can absorb the story while playing the game, I found more often than not I needed to just listen to them in ACC or else I wouldn't be able to pick up on audio cues from nearby enemies during missions.
Actually, I do have one other complaint about the story: it's not finished. This is well known, but the game is missing its last act, leaving a few important plot threads hanging. The game just kinda... ends, and it does so in a way that's very unsatisfying. There is no gratifying conclusion to the themes, problems or questions that the story sets up. There's plenty of videos and articles diving into the rift between Kojima and Konami, and plenty to be said about how this real world divide between long time partners reflects in The Phantom Pain both narratively and in how the final product ended up. It's not worth getting into here, though part of what made me want to play this game again was finding out that there's still an active community trying to unravel the mysteries of MGSV's lost act. I think it's insane that there are some out there who think it can actually be unlocked, that there's some part of this game that hasn't been exposed through years of datamining, that there is in fact an ending to be had if just the right conditions are met. There isn't. It simply is not there, cut off and abandoned like a dead limb long ago. Like one's lust for revenge, the only way to heal is to let go. Kojima and Konami certainly didn't plan it that way, but there's something kind of poetic about the obsession that drives fans of this game even today.
While this is certainly not how I wanted to see the series (at least under Kojima's creative vision) end, and while I definitely do have some serious grievances with technical elements of the game, I still really like The Phantom Pain. It's often on sale for around five bucks bundled with Ground Zeroes, and you can't go wrong for that price, but if you have the option to play it on PC then definitely go with that.
Huey is the biggest piece of shit who ever lived, 3.5/5.
I just can't get into it. The missions are so repetitive and boring, also the cutscenes at the start and end about the characters starring IN THE MISSION YOU'RE ABOUT TO ENTER spoil EVERYTHING. I tried to like this game about 3 times and I always quit some time after getting into the second map. Sure there may be insane sandbox potential but I just couldn't tap into that. Shame.
me when
"I laughed and shook his hand
And made my way back home
I searched for form and land
For years and years, I roamed
I gazed a gazely stare
At all the millions here
We must have died alone
A long, long time ago"
"I laughed and shook his hand
And made my way back home
I searched for form and land
For years and years, I roamed
I gazed a gazely stare
At all the millions here
We must have died alone
A long, long time ago"
This review contains spoilers
The Man Who Sold The World and The Man Who Saved It: A Short Retrospective on The Metal Gear Franchise
Note: this review covers my thoughts and feelings about the entire Metal Gear Franchise. Please skip to the bottom for my thoughts on just MGSV. Spoilers for each game follow.
Metal Gear
On December 23rd, 2023, I sat down and opened Metal Gear for the NES. Yes, the NES version, and not the MSX version. By today's standards, it's not a good game. The environments are bland, the combat is clunky, and the inventory systems are frustrating at best - debilitating at worst.
Despite this, it did two things that immediately kept me on the line: for one, the game is actually interesting. It's finishable. Not to come off as a Gen Z-er that can't play old games, but if I'm being honest Metal Gear is supremely accessible for what it is and when it came out. The video-gamey name of Big Boss and the interesting appearance of Gray Fox are chuckle worthy at a glance, and it creates a really unique tone that stays all the way throughout the series until (I'd argue) Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
The other thing that Metal Gear does that creates its appeal is actually in conjunction with Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. It's the birth(s) of the stealth gameplay system.
^not the first but you know what I mean.
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake
In Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, it seems to be played off as a
fun, slightly bullshit revival when Big Boss is revealed to be alive. But, it never mattered because these are NES era games. Hell, I welcomed it. Despite my frustration with Metal Gear, I really do think that Big Boss was interesting, even though I never knew anything about him. It even wasn't until later on in this series that I realized how important these events are.
On its own, though, this game is actually really decent. I can fully see why these games became a phenomenon when it comes to this game, despite its clunky backtracking and flawed UX/design philosophy.
Metal Gear Solid
Metal Gear Solid is finally a turning point in quality though - while there are many conventions established before this game, they're all solidified by this entry. The codec calls, the saving, the fourth wall breaks, the actually excellent stealth - it's all perfect. Moments like Psycho Mantis' boss fight, or the end credits scene are stand out moments to an already great game with inventive boss fights and wonderful level design. I do take most issue with the final boss sequence, which is honestly pretty frustrating because everything else is so good. But as an entry in the franchise, it's evident why almost every game that followed carried the SOLID subtitle.
There are a few negatives that have been carried through the series thus far, though. By this point in the series, the very genes of the series include incessant backtracking, frustrating combat (even in Solid, at times), difficult menu-ing, and despite some interesting stories, the characters sometimes feel flat.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty changes everything. It's impossible to put into words what makes this game special even among the series' entries. I can say with certainty that this is its best entry, in my opinion. The ending in particular is possibly one of the best, albeit indulgent, hours of gaming created thus far.
I am fully aware of the disdain for Raiden at this point. I unequivocally disagree with this general take. His tragic story felt very new and fresh for the series. While I liked Solid Snake, I knew that there was very little they could do to make him interesting at that point. Making him a side character, honestly, was one of the best options. He's characterized through Raiden, who's juggling conversations with "Rose" and "The Colonel" alongside completing his mission. The map design almost mirroring a Resident Evil type game with its comfortable, samey, yet easy to backtrack and explore design was a huge plus. This is especially true retrospectively. Again, the series exemplifies incredible boss design and it boasts possibly the best story in the franchise.
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater feels like the next turning point in design philosophy. I almost would split the franchise in three parts - this game is the beginning of the second part. This is the beginning of the linear, mission-based gameplay. This game also contains possibly one of the best video game OSTs in the medium, alongside, again, an incredible story. (Getting a little repetitive, right?) Playing as Big Boss was an extremely interesting experience, especially knowing what he was to become later in the series' timeline. The End, The Sorrow, and The Fear are three of the series best boss fights, and the franchise as a whole has another tone setter in this game.
However, this game also marks a turning point in its intended audience. This, of course, is not necessarily a bad thing. However, it becomes more evident from this point on that Kojima and Konami were developing for Western audiences more and more.
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots continues that trend from the very beginning of the game. This game contains a new difficulty selection - the difference between Solid Normal and Naked Normal. A Western Normal, and an Eastern Normal. It mirrors an addition in Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3 - the European Extreme - but this time, more and more players can engage with a difficulty select that mirrors Western audiences' capabilities with shooters. It's also more possible than before to play Metal Gear Solid 4 loud rather than quiet.
This game, from my understanding now, was not well received on launch. I think I can see why that was the case. Mission 3's tailing mission, Old Snake's addition and rationale for existence, and the cutscene lengths are especially unique to this entry. And yet, it finally feels like an ending to the franchise. And if I'm honest, it's a damn good ending. The twists are good, the last boss is amazing and mirrors everything great and bad about the franchise. It embraces it all. That's really Metal Gear Solid 4's strength.
The franchise could have just stopped there. I could have stopped playing the games and be happy the rest of my life knowing that the series ended there.
Both fortunately, and unfortunately -
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is my least favorite game in the series. Remember how I said that this franchise can be split into three parts? We're now fully in the last part. I'll save most of my main criticisms for this game when I get to Metal Gear Solid V, but there are so many things I fundamentally disagree with when it comes to the game philosophy going forward.
Reaching back into the franchise's roots, the game features plenty of misguided, absurd, and non-explanatory functionality especially surrounding its base building systems and Metal Gear Zeke building. It also features an absurdly convoluted secret ending sequence, which, to be open, I couldn't get! It's too hard! and literally every website has a different explanation on how to get it, and none of them worked. The gameplay mirrors Metal Gear Solid 3, but a lot of this game is part of the new push towards Fulton Gaming, or otherwise kidnapping the enemy for more base building. This is an art in and of itself, and it's a boring one.
Additionally, the time sink for this game, a PSP game, is abhorrent. It's really cool for those looking for a game to play long term, but as someone who played only the singleplayer functionality, it doesn't work. Metal Gear Zeke building also relies on repeated boss fights, which checks one of my gaming cardinal sin boxes.
Lastly, the story of this game is extremely lackluster, and the cutscene design is very hard to look at. This game also includes some really uncomfortable moments during cutscenes, such as being able to x-ray some characters' clothes.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
I don't feel the need to say a lot about this game - it's been talked to death in the past three years. But I do have some criticisms that people don't typically talk about from what I usually see.
For one, the stealth in Metal Gear Rising is abhorrent if not nonexistent. The movement is way too clunky to do minute movements for stealth actions, and none of it works that way. Secondly, going into the game, I was happy to see more Raiden and in a role that people really like him in. But I realized pretty quickly that Raiden really has no personal attachment to the events transpiring like he does in 2 (and kinda 4). It's slightly disappointing. Lastly, the game lacks enemy variety and that is probably its biggest issue.
Again, I loved the game, but anything I could say about it has already been said a lot, very recently. As a side note: after playing Metal Gear Solid 4, it's really strange to know that people play this game standalone. The story doesn't work standalone lol. It is so necessary to play 4.
Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
Alright. Finally. The ending of the entire franchise.
Let's get the comparisons to the previous entries out of the way. This game has very little in common with anything else going on in this franchise. The fun little UI bits during cutscenes, the fourth wall breaks, the hard hitting story, the lovable and flawed characters - GONE. None of it is here. The game has replaced all of the style of the series with gameplay. Luckily, this means there is so much gameplay. So much. But I can't help but miss a lot of what makes these games so good. Tongue is no longer in cheek.
The gameplay in this entry is revolutionary. I kept thinking about how this style hasn't really been emulated again - the stealth/open world combo worked incredibly well. Items and development and hell, even the side ops in the combined open areas were so well designed. I think that some of the game gets a little, a tadge, a smidgen repetitive. But every time I felt that way, I switched up my style. I picked a new weapon, a new arm, a new buddy. Boom - new game. It feels so good to experiment.
I did about 150 of the 157ish side ops in the game. Similar to Peace Walker, these did not feel important, but the gameplay does genuinely make them work in this format. It was lowkey strange to see "important side ops" (why not make them main missions???) but the nonimportant ones were decent encounters to tackle.
However, what the game gets so, so wrong are the boss fights. Sahelanthropus is a pushover. The Skulls are exceedingly difficult. Quiet is fun, but it's one of the only, very very short instances of great boss design. It's disappointing.
The game does not have a particular take on killing or going non-lethal, which felt really out of place. I did mostly non-lethal, and the only real indications for these things are the shrapnel and the codenames you receive. It's another disappointing part of the game.
Metal Gear Solid V's story gets really close to being great. I would probably say it's just good. Maybe just decent. There's not a whole lot of it. And had I stuck with just the first credit roll, the one after Chapter 31, it's bad. The twist(s) after are really good, and the way it recontextualizes the original games (where are the remakes!!) is incredible. Really what sucks is the prevailing theme that this Boss is just a terrible person. He's an antagonist in the franchise for a reason. So is Ocelot. It genuinely is hard to play as Big Boss sometimes, even during cutscenes. There are many, many uncomfortable torture scenes, some filled with gore and other impossible-to-look-at scenarios. I have a pretty good stomach for these things and yet this game pushed my buttons.
This brings me to probably the most conflicting and confusing part of Metal Gear Solid V - the game is cruel. It's weirdly cruel. I had this thought many, many times throughout the game. The torture scenes are one thing, but even then this game generally just seems to have a disposition towards making the player do more and more difficult things for no real reason. The sickness in the game is tragic but the game never makes you feel the weight of the losses in a meaningful way. Even the ashes scene is very short lived and doesn't actually account for anyone in the first wave of the sickness. We stopped Skull Face from unleashing his language disease throughout the world and I don't feel like a hero. You're not supposed to. It's intentional, and yet I feel bad. The strong feelings the game elicits out of me are worth the discussion for sure, and it feels intentional to feel this way, but I'm not a fan of this decision. This is especially true knowing that Kojima goes to Death Stranding next, a game build on love and connection - these games are night and day. So strange.
I have a lot more I could say on each game I mentioned. But I don't want to bloat this retrospective up. I played every game within a month, and I would need more reflection on each anyways. I know that 2 is my favorite, but 4 is the one I want to replay the most. V feels like such a black sheep, and it's not even the worst game in the franchise. If you've made it this far, you've most likely already played these games, but if you haven't, please do give them a try. Even V and Peace Walker. I knew going in that this was a massive hole in my library, and I feel changed after this series in a way that I couldn't explain in words. It's too bad that V feels this way, but the main universe and vision that Kojima and crew had when making these games is so unique and wonderful and grounded and real and fantasy. This dichotomy is what made this series such an amazing experience.
I wanted to write this retrospective on the whole series but focus on V (this is the V page and all) but I do have a lot more thoughts on each game. Feel free to pick my brain (especially about V, 4 or 2 smile) or criticize my takes in the comments. Can't wait for Death Stranding 2 and OD. Thanks all.
Note: this review covers my thoughts and feelings about the entire Metal Gear Franchise. Please skip to the bottom for my thoughts on just MGSV. Spoilers for each game follow.
Metal Gear
On December 23rd, 2023, I sat down and opened Metal Gear for the NES. Yes, the NES version, and not the MSX version. By today's standards, it's not a good game. The environments are bland, the combat is clunky, and the inventory systems are frustrating at best - debilitating at worst.
Despite this, it did two things that immediately kept me on the line: for one, the game is actually interesting. It's finishable. Not to come off as a Gen Z-er that can't play old games, but if I'm being honest Metal Gear is supremely accessible for what it is and when it came out. The video-gamey name of Big Boss and the interesting appearance of Gray Fox are chuckle worthy at a glance, and it creates a really unique tone that stays all the way throughout the series until (I'd argue) Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
The other thing that Metal Gear does that creates its appeal is actually in conjunction with Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. It's the birth(s) of the stealth gameplay system.
^not the first but you know what I mean.
Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake
In Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, it seems to be played off as a
fun, slightly bullshit revival when Big Boss is revealed to be alive. But, it never mattered because these are NES era games. Hell, I welcomed it. Despite my frustration with Metal Gear, I really do think that Big Boss was interesting, even though I never knew anything about him. It even wasn't until later on in this series that I realized how important these events are.
On its own, though, this game is actually really decent. I can fully see why these games became a phenomenon when it comes to this game, despite its clunky backtracking and flawed UX/design philosophy.
Metal Gear Solid
Metal Gear Solid is finally a turning point in quality though - while there are many conventions established before this game, they're all solidified by this entry. The codec calls, the saving, the fourth wall breaks, the actually excellent stealth - it's all perfect. Moments like Psycho Mantis' boss fight, or the end credits scene are stand out moments to an already great game with inventive boss fights and wonderful level design. I do take most issue with the final boss sequence, which is honestly pretty frustrating because everything else is so good. But as an entry in the franchise, it's evident why almost every game that followed carried the SOLID subtitle.
There are a few negatives that have been carried through the series thus far, though. By this point in the series, the very genes of the series include incessant backtracking, frustrating combat (even in Solid, at times), difficult menu-ing, and despite some interesting stories, the characters sometimes feel flat.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty changes everything. It's impossible to put into words what makes this game special even among the series' entries. I can say with certainty that this is its best entry, in my opinion. The ending in particular is possibly one of the best, albeit indulgent, hours of gaming created thus far.
I am fully aware of the disdain for Raiden at this point. I unequivocally disagree with this general take. His tragic story felt very new and fresh for the series. While I liked Solid Snake, I knew that there was very little they could do to make him interesting at that point. Making him a side character, honestly, was one of the best options. He's characterized through Raiden, who's juggling conversations with "Rose" and "The Colonel" alongside completing his mission. The map design almost mirroring a Resident Evil type game with its comfortable, samey, yet easy to backtrack and explore design was a huge plus. This is especially true retrospectively. Again, the series exemplifies incredible boss design and it boasts possibly the best story in the franchise.
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater feels like the next turning point in design philosophy. I almost would split the franchise in three parts - this game is the beginning of the second part. This is the beginning of the linear, mission-based gameplay. This game also contains possibly one of the best video game OSTs in the medium, alongside, again, an incredible story. (Getting a little repetitive, right?) Playing as Big Boss was an extremely interesting experience, especially knowing what he was to become later in the series' timeline. The End, The Sorrow, and The Fear are three of the series best boss fights, and the franchise as a whole has another tone setter in this game.
However, this game also marks a turning point in its intended audience. This, of course, is not necessarily a bad thing. However, it becomes more evident from this point on that Kojima and Konami were developing for Western audiences more and more.
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots continues that trend from the very beginning of the game. This game contains a new difficulty selection - the difference between Solid Normal and Naked Normal. A Western Normal, and an Eastern Normal. It mirrors an addition in Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3 - the European Extreme - but this time, more and more players can engage with a difficulty select that mirrors Western audiences' capabilities with shooters. It's also more possible than before to play Metal Gear Solid 4 loud rather than quiet.
This game, from my understanding now, was not well received on launch. I think I can see why that was the case. Mission 3's tailing mission, Old Snake's addition and rationale for existence, and the cutscene lengths are especially unique to this entry. And yet, it finally feels like an ending to the franchise. And if I'm honest, it's a damn good ending. The twists are good, the last boss is amazing and mirrors everything great and bad about the franchise. It embraces it all. That's really Metal Gear Solid 4's strength.
The franchise could have just stopped there. I could have stopped playing the games and be happy the rest of my life knowing that the series ended there.
Both fortunately, and unfortunately -
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is my least favorite game in the series. Remember how I said that this franchise can be split into three parts? We're now fully in the last part. I'll save most of my main criticisms for this game when I get to Metal Gear Solid V, but there are so many things I fundamentally disagree with when it comes to the game philosophy going forward.
Reaching back into the franchise's roots, the game features plenty of misguided, absurd, and non-explanatory functionality especially surrounding its base building systems and Metal Gear Zeke building. It also features an absurdly convoluted secret ending sequence, which, to be open, I couldn't get! It's too hard! and literally every website has a different explanation on how to get it, and none of them worked. The gameplay mirrors Metal Gear Solid 3, but a lot of this game is part of the new push towards Fulton Gaming, or otherwise kidnapping the enemy for more base building. This is an art in and of itself, and it's a boring one.
Additionally, the time sink for this game, a PSP game, is abhorrent. It's really cool for those looking for a game to play long term, but as someone who played only the singleplayer functionality, it doesn't work. Metal Gear Zeke building also relies on repeated boss fights, which checks one of my gaming cardinal sin boxes.
Lastly, the story of this game is extremely lackluster, and the cutscene design is very hard to look at. This game also includes some really uncomfortable moments during cutscenes, such as being able to x-ray some characters' clothes.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
I don't feel the need to say a lot about this game - it's been talked to death in the past three years. But I do have some criticisms that people don't typically talk about from what I usually see.
For one, the stealth in Metal Gear Rising is abhorrent if not nonexistent. The movement is way too clunky to do minute movements for stealth actions, and none of it works that way. Secondly, going into the game, I was happy to see more Raiden and in a role that people really like him in. But I realized pretty quickly that Raiden really has no personal attachment to the events transpiring like he does in 2 (and kinda 4). It's slightly disappointing. Lastly, the game lacks enemy variety and that is probably its biggest issue.
Again, I loved the game, but anything I could say about it has already been said a lot, very recently. As a side note: after playing Metal Gear Solid 4, it's really strange to know that people play this game standalone. The story doesn't work standalone lol. It is so necessary to play 4.
Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
Alright. Finally. The ending of the entire franchise.
Let's get the comparisons to the previous entries out of the way. This game has very little in common with anything else going on in this franchise. The fun little UI bits during cutscenes, the fourth wall breaks, the hard hitting story, the lovable and flawed characters - GONE. None of it is here. The game has replaced all of the style of the series with gameplay. Luckily, this means there is so much gameplay. So much. But I can't help but miss a lot of what makes these games so good. Tongue is no longer in cheek.
The gameplay in this entry is revolutionary. I kept thinking about how this style hasn't really been emulated again - the stealth/open world combo worked incredibly well. Items and development and hell, even the side ops in the combined open areas were so well designed. I think that some of the game gets a little, a tadge, a smidgen repetitive. But every time I felt that way, I switched up my style. I picked a new weapon, a new arm, a new buddy. Boom - new game. It feels so good to experiment.
I did about 150 of the 157ish side ops in the game. Similar to Peace Walker, these did not feel important, but the gameplay does genuinely make them work in this format. It was lowkey strange to see "important side ops" (why not make them main missions???) but the nonimportant ones were decent encounters to tackle.
However, what the game gets so, so wrong are the boss fights. Sahelanthropus is a pushover. The Skulls are exceedingly difficult. Quiet is fun, but it's one of the only, very very short instances of great boss design. It's disappointing.
The game does not have a particular take on killing or going non-lethal, which felt really out of place. I did mostly non-lethal, and the only real indications for these things are the shrapnel and the codenames you receive. It's another disappointing part of the game.
Metal Gear Solid V's story gets really close to being great. I would probably say it's just good. Maybe just decent. There's not a whole lot of it. And had I stuck with just the first credit roll, the one after Chapter 31, it's bad. The twist(s) after are really good, and the way it recontextualizes the original games (where are the remakes!!) is incredible. Really what sucks is the prevailing theme that this Boss is just a terrible person. He's an antagonist in the franchise for a reason. So is Ocelot. It genuinely is hard to play as Big Boss sometimes, even during cutscenes. There are many, many uncomfortable torture scenes, some filled with gore and other impossible-to-look-at scenarios. I have a pretty good stomach for these things and yet this game pushed my buttons.
This brings me to probably the most conflicting and confusing part of Metal Gear Solid V - the game is cruel. It's weirdly cruel. I had this thought many, many times throughout the game. The torture scenes are one thing, but even then this game generally just seems to have a disposition towards making the player do more and more difficult things for no real reason. The sickness in the game is tragic but the game never makes you feel the weight of the losses in a meaningful way. Even the ashes scene is very short lived and doesn't actually account for anyone in the first wave of the sickness. We stopped Skull Face from unleashing his language disease throughout the world and I don't feel like a hero. You're not supposed to. It's intentional, and yet I feel bad. The strong feelings the game elicits out of me are worth the discussion for sure, and it feels intentional to feel this way, but I'm not a fan of this decision. This is especially true knowing that Kojima goes to Death Stranding next, a game build on love and connection - these games are night and day. So strange.
I have a lot more I could say on each game I mentioned. But I don't want to bloat this retrospective up. I played every game within a month, and I would need more reflection on each anyways. I know that 2 is my favorite, but 4 is the one I want to replay the most. V feels like such a black sheep, and it's not even the worst game in the franchise. If you've made it this far, you've most likely already played these games, but if you haven't, please do give them a try. Even V and Peace Walker. I knew going in that this was a massive hole in my library, and I feel changed after this series in a way that I couldn't explain in words. It's too bad that V feels this way, but the main universe and vision that Kojima and crew had when making these games is so unique and wonderful and grounded and real and fantasy. This dichotomy is what made this series such an amazing experience.
I wanted to write this retrospective on the whole series but focus on V (this is the V page and all) but I do have a lot more thoughts on each game. Feel free to pick my brain (especially about V, 4 or 2 smile) or criticize my takes in the comments. Can't wait for Death Stranding 2 and OD. Thanks all.
MGS4 decimated all the symbols and mannerisms of the franchise, until there was nothing left to enjoy. Phantom Pain exists in a completely irrelevant space, it is a game that has no "story to tell", because all the stories are already established.
More post-modern than MGS2, it serves to prove that Metal Gear never had a "fourth wall" and canonize the player as a in-universe character. We are a phantom that repeats the steps of the legend, but we are the legend. Venom Snake doesn't take more actions than the player would, because he does what Big Boss would do... and the player has already been Big Boss -twice-.
You are Venom, Venom is Big Boss, Big Boss is Snake, Snake was Solid Snake and Raiden. Choose who you want to be today, choose the game you want to play. Let it die but with hope for the future.
More post-modern than MGS2, it serves to prove that Metal Gear never had a "fourth wall" and canonize the player as a in-universe character. We are a phantom that repeats the steps of the legend, but we are the legend. Venom Snake doesn't take more actions than the player would, because he does what Big Boss would do... and the player has already been Big Boss -twice-.
You are Venom, Venom is Big Boss, Big Boss is Snake, Snake was Solid Snake and Raiden. Choose who you want to be today, choose the game you want to play. Let it die but with hope for the future.
Currently a 10 but sometimes a 2 but also can be a 5 sometimes.
This is the most difficult game to review/rate I have ever played. It's amazing but it's also godawful. As a game, it's damn near flawless, as a Metal Gear Solid game it ruined so many things.
This is the most difficult game to review/rate I have ever played. It's amazing but it's also godawful. As a game, it's damn near flawless, as a Metal Gear Solid game it ruined so many things.
This review contains spoilers
The Phantom Pain is the ultimate rejection of everything the fans wanted Metal Gear to be. It encapsulates the messages and themes of all past games while also telling a story about the meaninglessness of revenge, loss and VOICE! It purposefully makes an entirely unsatisfactory second half to make the player FEEL a phantom pain of everything they've lost! By having our POV protagonist be an unreliable narrator it also seemingly creates a sort of meta narrative where EVERYTHING you do during gameplay could have happened just as easily as it couldn't. Coupled with the fact that by passing the baton to the player, and its placement in the MIDDLE of the timeline, every person can interpret this story as anything from a 1984 retelling where everything was the patriots' design and Skullface merely acted upon their will or simply a story of broken people who've lost their identity trying to fight for a better tomorrow. While ALSO having their own interpretation of how each character ends up where they do in the titles set further in the timeline! And whether or not that was the INTENTION with the game is honestly irrelevant as "think for yourself" is a message Kojima has been trying to hammer into the player since MGS2. It utilizes its identity as "Video Game" to evoke such strong feelings of self reflection and appreciation for media as a whole that should be deservingly praised. All of that without touching upon the phenomenally designed stealth jungle gyms that when matched with the intricately developed gameplay systems makes every enemy outpost infiltration feel like your very own distinct adventure from all the rest. And for that I easily consider this game to be my ALL time favorite piece of media of all time. Its the most perfect conclusion the Metal Gear saga could've asked for. It's everything Kojima wanted Metal Gear to be since MGS2 and i find that beautiful. Don't you, bro?
This review contains spoilers
“You're still happy now. Changing your lies to suit the listener, and getting by on slipping through the cracks. Building layer upon layer of convenient stories until nothing means anything to you anymore. You're happy all the time, because you don't even notice you're doing it. Think hard. Who are you really? You're not a victim, and you're not the silent majority. You're a perpetrator. And a petty hypocrite. The real world doesn't make you suffer. It's the other way around!”
You most likely have already heard just how much of a technical marvel this game is and yeah, that indeed is the case and many would probably agree that the gameplay is treated quite fairly at least when compared to the games of its time. Now where the game is not being treated fairly, I think, is its story-telling and even if I do not mind players not caring about narratives in video games, I will still try to appreciate it here, since I consider MGSV’s plot to be at least as good as the rest of the series and quite frankly I do not have much else to talk about.
That being said, this will be a mini-review and I won’t really be talking about a wide variety of things that can be discussed about it and won’t really bring many examples.
I think people mostly not click with Phantom Pain because it connects to the entire series in an overly subtle manner but otherwise has very grounded and small scale conflict and its not as expressive as the rest and also it requires from the player to take it into account that its moreso a prologue (you could overthinking as it coming back to the very first Metal Gear game to form an ouroboros from various angles) to the rest of the series and thus they should not be expecting a cathartic ending - which is also highlighted by how it fundamentally mirrors Sons of Liberty - but the way its using the entire series for its own good is what makes it the best
How well do MGS2 and MGSV contrast one another is already elaborated here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV4wY2rjAWY and to put it shortly, we have two cases of identity crisis being born by the influences of the Snakes and how the reaction (or lack of thereof) by these people (re)shapes the MGS world. A spontaneous descent into ‘evil’. Many might have been disappointed by how said promised descent was not really directly focused in long-winded sequences and instead we have not even played as Big Boss as he was absent for the whole game, but that is exactly what makes it more natural and plausible to me. We did not have to witness the change in Big Boss, we only needed one big reality check to realize that he has always been one, come make the point sounds. As a result, we get a room to sense the noticeable (unless you are Venom) change in Big Boss after the events of Ground Zeroes as the ‘ideological clash’ - of what kind of a person everyone (by the most closest one, The Medic) thought Naked Snake was in the romanticized lenses and what kind of a person he actually turned out - is born between his current self and his present self, or rather what Venom (We) understood of him in Snake Eater and Peace Walker. Vices come from short-sightedness, after all…
... the 'evil' of Big Boss being, of course, doing the very thing that was done to The Boss to his comrade, essentially becomin whatever he sought to fight against...
… in 1984 Metal Gear universe is full of aimless proxy wars and impending apocalypse of information.
Everything is a lie to establish another lie.
Everything is a trap to establish another trap.
Everything is a gambit to establish another gambit.
And then we have ten thousand peoploids split into small tribes, the Diamond Dogs - on the surface, a group seeking to appease their loss and establish a place gathering people regardless of their age, ethnicity and gender (diamonds are a girl’s best friend, and a dog is a man’s) all while letting them learn to use their skills for good and leave whenever they please, as well as building separate territory to the ones not indulging in warmongership and educating them in civil manner.
Beneath the surface, we have good old manipulators, accomplices, puppets, rapists, war-criminals, victims, perpetrators, traitors, torturers and whatnot, all keeping the 'Outer Heaven' grounded to the existing reality.
Contrary to the RPG nerds' beliefs, MGSV's pseudo open-world is doing exactly what it should be doing - we are not getting a talking simulator full of lousily connected (if at all) side-quests detracting from the main plot, but the aspect exists with the sole reason to immerse as in the freedom of espionage. It may feel bland, sure, but it is 'an official' war-zone between people with a thick language barrier, all that is left to them is to kill and manipulate and be killed and manipulated. Not to mention how emptying the environment (to safety) is also a part of their job and that's a refreshing thing about Phantom Pain's world, it is not about what quests you are taking and what is the extra context that characters are telling you about their lives, but what you yourself are doing and how are you doing it (the world having to adapt to your legendary status) every bit of task and mechanic further drives that point, with no unnecessary content to be found.
All in all, we get a game completely focused on (in)direct progression of its mechanics and narrative. Although, side-ops would have benefited if the locations had missions with different contexts instead of repeating the same thing over and over again, especially when, say, you are supposed to rescue someone in a certain location, they will always be at one fixed location. And if I mention another issue I have with the game, it is the boss battles - Now unlike others, I do not think we got the small amount of boss and battles with them, in fact there is a very good amount of fights and part of them are simply more than just fights-to-death like in other MGS games, showing clear maturity, but that very maturity and realism gets a bit too much when these boss fights are not getting their own 'stage' of sort, to give them their own unique flamboyance to them, as the boss fights get influenced too much by the game being open-world to the point that they feel like engaging in average MMORPG type action with them and there really is not much to do against them, they come off as very easy, be it you getting free missile launchers, airplane help or just blatantly run away from them easily without you being affected in any negative form because it does not even affect your mission rank.
The game would also massively benefit from more indoor sequences/set-pieces and whatnot. Prologue showcased a fantastic example of what could have been achieved, but unfortunately it is never repeated.
What I appreciate a lot in MGSV is that it is up to the players to decide whether story content gets in their way or not. Or we can just get the minimal amount of information or just dig in the cassettes and interpret various things in various ways. We can take the name of the series as an example. Hell, we can take one letter from the name as an example - V - and take connections such as… it is not a proper number because the game is some sort of a spin-off… it being two lines mirroring one another… it represents peace or victory… or maybe it is Vendetta... or it could also be used by the villain to give a hint with double meaning as to where the bomb is located…
… there is a mission in MSGV where Venom Snake is being bit by venomous snake so funny and full of meaning he biting himself and generally Snakes and clones all die by other snakes' hands… and this is basically how MGSV manages to be a free resident of my mind, you can connect to one another as much as you like.
Sure there are a lot of questionable plot development and connections to the lore established in the previous installments… for example, how the final mission with Skull Face starts, our veteran Venom Snake almost announcing to Skull Face that he was indeed approaching him for the kill, in the open field, which seems very weird at first, but then we can look at the mask of the Third Child (who is in fact Psycho Mantis, but never gets named for exactly the lore reasons) and it becomes clear that he was manipulating Venom through his bloodlust, given the visible horn on him, the detail that keeps changing according to who the child is manipulating at the moment. So yeah, slowly and surely, thinking about such satisfying details and making sense out of the game is exactly what makes it age so well for me.
Basically, you could even skip all of these cutscenes and just play the missions, indulging in the mechanics as you please, the story won’t get in your way, aside from explaining some mechanics here and there. What’s more, gameplay itself plays a vital part in the development of at least one narrative point. You can see Automata’s Ending E being praised by anyone and anything and it is quite easy to do so, given how blatant and shoved down your throat it is (not to say that I do not like the ending), but barely anyone appreciates MGSV doing the same thing with its nuclear disarmament, but in much more subtle manner.
I know, I know… having to listen to cassettes is the gravest sin towards writing and all… but on one hand they are not really necessary and on the other hand, video games are not advanced enough (if they will ever be) to hold such high standards for them in this very medium, so I really do not see the reason to be so unforgivable and harsh towards MGSV.
Of course, there are other interesting mechanics… one of the memorable ones being how the soldiers you recruit learn to speak more and more languages, which then gets directly revealed as a theme, language’s power, that which was very well elaborated in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8EJyHh2xfM
"Your favorite song... Nicola, Bart — immigrants, wrongly executed... But their deaths served as a message to others: that ours is a society that murders the innocent. Do you, too, believe that your sacrifice will change the world?"
(says the guy who basically proudly delivered everything catastrophic that was about to happen in the MGS-verse before he himself - or should I say, got turned into a phantom pain to the world? Alright, sorry for the lame joke… and he is as much of a shadow to Big Boss as much Venom Snake is… foreshadowing, foreshadowing…)
what I love about Phantom Pain, aside of its relatable language power theme that serves as clear message in comparison to pure emotions that other series are trying to convey via vague resolutions that are not really saying anything, is that even if characters are doing questionable things in a harsh world, it's not a 'necessary evil' propaganda, but Venom Snake's squad is constantly improvising and questioning the missions they are provided to complete. Were they vaguely asked to kill and it turns out they were asked to kill children? They just record fake video and if it works it works, if it does not work then they won't care about the mission and when they take children back, they don't turn them into soldiers, but make separate space for them to get educated. it starts as a seemingly random band but it grows and shapes as an interesting system in itself
And then all of it crumbles… the final nail being put by Big Boss himself… making Venom realize that the point of no return has been crossed by not only himself, but his present environment too, and it's too late for him to fight for his own good, so he should do it for the next generation.
Well I love the whole cast - even Ocelot, who is seemingly ‘not himself’, but actually cleverly plays with the expectations once again and Huey who I find as a fantastic subversion to the expectations built by his son (in addition to the proofless and self-(un)aware bickering between Huey, Ocelot and Miller that makes the matter unreadable and unpredictable through the various possible outcomes) - but I will solely focus on Venom here. The shadow of Big Boss that still remained as the expendable shadow even after literally turning himself into the Big Boss himself. Or on meta level, us, the players, towards whom the Venom is looking as we break the mirror and there remains nothing to reflect on.
The way he was given the most freedom and agency out of the protagonists and at the same time he was the least person you would call 'free', the way he can bond with the system he built and various individuals and commit atrocities towards enemies and his own people alike, all with their own consequences and having psychological issues of his own on top of that, while also make poor choices both in how he judges people and how convincing he is - in just a single game - makes me appreciate him on quite a high level, as it is an achievement that none of the protagonists have achieved (and Sutherland nails it the way I do not see Hayter being able to do, for this particular character)
I also liked how it does not really feel like the game is making a 'twist' out of his identity and it is only a fault of main character's identity crisis/twisted perception and maybe player not giving much attention to A LOT of details telling you that he is not the real Snake (heard people already knew he was not Big Boss, from the original trailer alone... with very simple and natural details like what they are smoking and etc). But then again, all of the Snakes and 'clones' in general are very close, so I don't really care about their ranking. He kinda lacks catharsis and is probably the most brooding of them all in how silent he is, that downplays him a bit, but at least he is not pushing people away like you would expect from such an archetype and its also done with its own interesting purpose (as he is supposed to be the self-insert, in comparison to Raiden who was supposed to have his own life and it could not have been suppressed in favor of Snake's role machinations)
Venom might be ‘mute’, but he still an individual, making his own choices that can go against his surroundings, not being influenced by them, as seen in his judgment of releasing Huey and most definitely not using nuclear weapons in action, but just as a symbol, to completely negate Naked Snake in him. He is, of course, also capable of going with reasonable suggestions and change his mind, as seen by him changing his mind about the kids once Miller affirmed his stance to treat them well and put them outside the warfare. And, of course, he could be forced to commit things he does not want to commit or not commit just for the satisfaction’s sake, which can be seen in Skull Face’s final moments, Miller forcing his hand… and Miller himself is the one who respect Venom for not indulging in vengeance as his character progresses. After all, he has always been a medic and the role he is forced into is the complete anti-thesis to him.
See, everyone but Venom Snake desires revenge in the game. One might think that expressing the desire to vengeance is what would define someone and thus Venom Snake does not really have personality, but one thing is clear, that very specific desire is made universal in the game and not admitting to it can only be defined as the trait.
I love how Venom has memory problems and only retains romanticized view of Big Boss and then is trying to uphold it, thinking it's him and he feels more and more comfortable in it but at the same time feels guilty and pessimistic about his previous identity, self-unaware as he can’t even recollect in objective manner the most crucial event in his life, the one he feels guilty about. That he was unable to locate the bomb and got Paz killed. Or so he thinks, to not shift the blame to someone else, like Eli, but to himself. It was his fault. He should have been better… and that’s the transformation that occurs to Venom, he embraced his fate to weaponize in favor of the Boss’ wish.
Everything comes and culminates together in the final scene in front of the mirror. In the mirror. Which is in itself mirroring. It's his 'phantom self’ looking at what he has become on the one hand and despising, but another (something that is presented as ‘reflection’ to us, as the Phantom is reflecting on his life) probably is his gradual change looking at his 'phantom' self at every change and despising himself even more on top of that, as it is drifting further and further away.
I don’t feel like I have unpacked all of the scene myself, so bear with my rambling.
As the game starts by the view going into the tape and ends out of the tape too, the whole game is indeed what Venom was reflecting into.
That scene does not take place in one fixed time, but throughout the whole ‘Venom’s Life’ (you have heard of the life flashing in eyes before one is about to die). Blue color is about it happening in his gaslighted mind (the whole room is in blue and it is moreso when he is playing the second recording and we heard the noises, likely placed by Ocelot, who was also brainwashing even his own self), red is being influenced by emotions of vengeance (of the real Big Boss, that does not belong him so it is on the outside and not being accepted as part of Venom identity, he does not care about vengeance throughout the whole MGSV, but about himself. That is, up until the MGSV ends and MG1 starts) and then breaking the mirror (his face neither red nor blue, but moreso green/yellow, color of peace) seeing the general picture, sorta absorbing the blood, coming clean AND then starting uprising at Outer Heaven on his own from thereon to ruin the reputation of 'Big Boss' (lashing out, as that was the sole purpose that Big Boss reduced his life to) and maybe sacrifice himself to Solid Snake, to do with Solid what the Boss did to Big Boss and just like Skull Face leaving his phantom pain, he would leave one through Solid Snake... while OG Big Boss was doing MG1 plot to catch two birds by sending Solid Snake for them to kill Venom or/and die trying and freely continue the rest of his goals in Zanzibar.
Also, Venom is colorblind, so he mixes red and blue (as we see at the start of the game, blue bloodbath in the hospital) and that might symbolize his unawareness and confusion in the grand scheme of things as well. Red and Blue is also basically a subversion of Red Oni and Blue Oni tale that I need to research a bit, but the game was called Project Ogre initially (ogre = oni), the intent is present. Also how Ocelot is dressed yellow-ish, while having red scarf on the surface (probably symbolising how he does not really care about the revenge and is just there to help out OG Big Boss), to contrast Miller who is dressed yellow-ish on the surface but beneath its all red (and not forgiving OG Big Boss for what he did in MGSV, because revenge is important to him. Of course there were many other examples in the game (such as Huey’s judgment - between red and yellow) as the color symbolism is quite prevalent there.
Venom smiling after hearing how he too is a Big Boss would basically be something like 'you are telling me this now, huh' and then shifting the expression immediately, making his mind up about ruining Big Boss because his whole existence in basically Big Boss reputation at this point and by looking at the mirror, its him realizing what exactly going on and negating the attempts of brainwash and then breaking the mirror on his own, embracing what he is right now and making it unable for himself to reflect on himself ever again and stepping into the mist, being wiped not only from the history but from his mind as well (foil to Skull Face - who ironically dresses and acts as over-the-top American ideal chad while taking revenge on America... and like Venom, he understood the Boss' will (or lack of thereof) too... but when SF satisfied his personal desires despite failing at his goals, Venom achieved his goals, all of it to go in an exact opposite way as he would have wished) and that would at least give meaning to his and his fallen comrades forgotten lives, who would all have been already lost as the sacrifices to Big Boss’ grander plan.
There never was neither ‘You’ nor your idea of Big Boss. Nor did anyone have any proof of consent to do something so horrible, to rob someone of his life, to Venom Snake. That very idea of Big Boss has fled away in the mist with us. Venom Snake never needed the title of Big Boss to exist, but it is all to late now, no matter what he will try to do about it - he is Big Boss and will always be one, he sees himself as Big Boss and will always see himself as one, everyone sees him as Big Boss and will always view him as such, he has commited sins and there is neither redemption nor heaven awaiting for him, but at least there is future for Solid Snake, but for that he has to embrace embrace what he was made into.
As one of the tapes goes: “It is just a dream. It is all a dream. I am in it, and you are in it too. I am the dreamer, but you are having my dream. Do you get it now? You do, don’t you? Peace Day never came … Our wishes do not come true. We just cling on to our dreams, our phantoms. Mine and yours.”
Naturally, there is room for the head-canon in this interpretation (considering we only had revealed the connection between Venom Snake and the final boss of MG1, but not the answers as to how it all could have happened) and they all would be connected to Miller purposely going to Solid Snake and training him for this exact plot development, as he wishes ever since it was revealed to him as to what Big Boss did (likely after he was rescued by Big Boss at the start of the game - which would explain why would he be opposing Ocelot’s (towards which we were naturally catering) decisions throughout the game… it has always been interesting as to why would he be presented as someone so bickering despite how everything he was advocating for was in the framework of rational decision-making, so we had a nice ‘little’ pay-off to that)
Implications towards this can be found once achieving the unachievable, getting rid of every single nuclear in the online gameplay of MGSV and we get Venom talking to ‘the phantom that the Boss has left behind’: “I haven’t forgotten what you told me Boss. We have no tomorrow, but there is still hope for the future. In our struggle to survive the present, we push the future further away. Will I see it in my lifetime? Probably not. Which means there is no time to waste. Some day the world will no longer need us, no need for the gun or the hand to pull the trigger. I have to drag out this demon inside me and build a better future. That’s what I…heh…what we will leave as our legacy. Another mission, right Boss?”
As well as Miller’s reaction to Big Boss’ doings: “No…Big Boss can go to hell. I’ll make the phantom and his sons stronger, to send him there. For that… I’ll keep playing my role.” - Venom is about to become the weapon that would attack the very thing he was meant to protect. He might not get any achievements of his own, no celebration whatsoever and not even leave behind small bits of himself in any shape or form as he will be nullified from history, but at least he will indirectly destroy Big Boss’ whole being. And the better future might come through Solid Snake guiding Raiden, what could and should have been the relationship between Big Boss and The Medic.
You most likely have already heard just how much of a technical marvel this game is and yeah, that indeed is the case and many would probably agree that the gameplay is treated quite fairly at least when compared to the games of its time. Now where the game is not being treated fairly, I think, is its story-telling and even if I do not mind players not caring about narratives in video games, I will still try to appreciate it here, since I consider MGSV’s plot to be at least as good as the rest of the series and quite frankly I do not have much else to talk about.
That being said, this will be a mini-review and I won’t really be talking about a wide variety of things that can be discussed about it and won’t really bring many examples.
I think people mostly not click with Phantom Pain because it connects to the entire series in an overly subtle manner but otherwise has very grounded and small scale conflict and its not as expressive as the rest and also it requires from the player to take it into account that its moreso a prologue (you could overthinking as it coming back to the very first Metal Gear game to form an ouroboros from various angles) to the rest of the series and thus they should not be expecting a cathartic ending - which is also highlighted by how it fundamentally mirrors Sons of Liberty - but the way its using the entire series for its own good is what makes it the best
How well do MGS2 and MGSV contrast one another is already elaborated here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV4wY2rjAWY and to put it shortly, we have two cases of identity crisis being born by the influences of the Snakes and how the reaction (or lack of thereof) by these people (re)shapes the MGS world. A spontaneous descent into ‘evil’. Many might have been disappointed by how said promised descent was not really directly focused in long-winded sequences and instead we have not even played as Big Boss as he was absent for the whole game, but that is exactly what makes it more natural and plausible to me. We did not have to witness the change in Big Boss, we only needed one big reality check to realize that he has always been one, come make the point sounds. As a result, we get a room to sense the noticeable (unless you are Venom) change in Big Boss after the events of Ground Zeroes as the ‘ideological clash’ - of what kind of a person everyone (by the most closest one, The Medic) thought Naked Snake was in the romanticized lenses and what kind of a person he actually turned out - is born between his current self and his present self, or rather what Venom (We) understood of him in Snake Eater and Peace Walker. Vices come from short-sightedness, after all…
... the 'evil' of Big Boss being, of course, doing the very thing that was done to The Boss to his comrade, essentially becomin whatever he sought to fight against...
… in 1984 Metal Gear universe is full of aimless proxy wars and impending apocalypse of information.
Everything is a lie to establish another lie.
Everything is a trap to establish another trap.
Everything is a gambit to establish another gambit.
And then we have ten thousand peoploids split into small tribes, the Diamond Dogs - on the surface, a group seeking to appease their loss and establish a place gathering people regardless of their age, ethnicity and gender (diamonds are a girl’s best friend, and a dog is a man’s) all while letting them learn to use their skills for good and leave whenever they please, as well as building separate territory to the ones not indulging in warmongership and educating them in civil manner.
Beneath the surface, we have good old manipulators, accomplices, puppets, rapists, war-criminals, victims, perpetrators, traitors, torturers and whatnot, all keeping the 'Outer Heaven' grounded to the existing reality.
Contrary to the RPG nerds' beliefs, MGSV's pseudo open-world is doing exactly what it should be doing - we are not getting a talking simulator full of lousily connected (if at all) side-quests detracting from the main plot, but the aspect exists with the sole reason to immerse as in the freedom of espionage. It may feel bland, sure, but it is 'an official' war-zone between people with a thick language barrier, all that is left to them is to kill and manipulate and be killed and manipulated. Not to mention how emptying the environment (to safety) is also a part of their job and that's a refreshing thing about Phantom Pain's world, it is not about what quests you are taking and what is the extra context that characters are telling you about their lives, but what you yourself are doing and how are you doing it (the world having to adapt to your legendary status) every bit of task and mechanic further drives that point, with no unnecessary content to be found.
All in all, we get a game completely focused on (in)direct progression of its mechanics and narrative. Although, side-ops would have benefited if the locations had missions with different contexts instead of repeating the same thing over and over again, especially when, say, you are supposed to rescue someone in a certain location, they will always be at one fixed location. And if I mention another issue I have with the game, it is the boss battles - Now unlike others, I do not think we got the small amount of boss and battles with them, in fact there is a very good amount of fights and part of them are simply more than just fights-to-death like in other MGS games, showing clear maturity, but that very maturity and realism gets a bit too much when these boss fights are not getting their own 'stage' of sort, to give them their own unique flamboyance to them, as the boss fights get influenced too much by the game being open-world to the point that they feel like engaging in average MMORPG type action with them and there really is not much to do against them, they come off as very easy, be it you getting free missile launchers, airplane help or just blatantly run away from them easily without you being affected in any negative form because it does not even affect your mission rank.
The game would also massively benefit from more indoor sequences/set-pieces and whatnot. Prologue showcased a fantastic example of what could have been achieved, but unfortunately it is never repeated.
What I appreciate a lot in MGSV is that it is up to the players to decide whether story content gets in their way or not. Or we can just get the minimal amount of information or just dig in the cassettes and interpret various things in various ways. We can take the name of the series as an example. Hell, we can take one letter from the name as an example - V - and take connections such as… it is not a proper number because the game is some sort of a spin-off… it being two lines mirroring one another… it represents peace or victory… or maybe it is Vendetta... or it could also be used by the villain to give a hint with double meaning as to where the bomb is located…
… there is a mission in MSGV where Venom Snake is being bit by venomous snake so funny and full of meaning he biting himself and generally Snakes and clones all die by other snakes' hands… and this is basically how MGSV manages to be a free resident of my mind, you can connect to one another as much as you like.
Sure there are a lot of questionable plot development and connections to the lore established in the previous installments… for example, how the final mission with Skull Face starts, our veteran Venom Snake almost announcing to Skull Face that he was indeed approaching him for the kill, in the open field, which seems very weird at first, but then we can look at the mask of the Third Child (who is in fact Psycho Mantis, but never gets named for exactly the lore reasons) and it becomes clear that he was manipulating Venom through his bloodlust, given the visible horn on him, the detail that keeps changing according to who the child is manipulating at the moment. So yeah, slowly and surely, thinking about such satisfying details and making sense out of the game is exactly what makes it age so well for me.
Basically, you could even skip all of these cutscenes and just play the missions, indulging in the mechanics as you please, the story won’t get in your way, aside from explaining some mechanics here and there. What’s more, gameplay itself plays a vital part in the development of at least one narrative point. You can see Automata’s Ending E being praised by anyone and anything and it is quite easy to do so, given how blatant and shoved down your throat it is (not to say that I do not like the ending), but barely anyone appreciates MGSV doing the same thing with its nuclear disarmament, but in much more subtle manner.
I know, I know… having to listen to cassettes is the gravest sin towards writing and all… but on one hand they are not really necessary and on the other hand, video games are not advanced enough (if they will ever be) to hold such high standards for them in this very medium, so I really do not see the reason to be so unforgivable and harsh towards MGSV.
Of course, there are other interesting mechanics… one of the memorable ones being how the soldiers you recruit learn to speak more and more languages, which then gets directly revealed as a theme, language’s power, that which was very well elaborated in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8EJyHh2xfM
"Your favorite song... Nicola, Bart — immigrants, wrongly executed... But their deaths served as a message to others: that ours is a society that murders the innocent. Do you, too, believe that your sacrifice will change the world?"
(says the guy who basically proudly delivered everything catastrophic that was about to happen in the MGS-verse before he himself - or should I say, got turned into a phantom pain to the world? Alright, sorry for the lame joke… and he is as much of a shadow to Big Boss as much Venom Snake is… foreshadowing, foreshadowing…)
what I love about Phantom Pain, aside of its relatable language power theme that serves as clear message in comparison to pure emotions that other series are trying to convey via vague resolutions that are not really saying anything, is that even if characters are doing questionable things in a harsh world, it's not a 'necessary evil' propaganda, but Venom Snake's squad is constantly improvising and questioning the missions they are provided to complete. Were they vaguely asked to kill and it turns out they were asked to kill children? They just record fake video and if it works it works, if it does not work then they won't care about the mission and when they take children back, they don't turn them into soldiers, but make separate space for them to get educated. it starts as a seemingly random band but it grows and shapes as an interesting system in itself
And then all of it crumbles… the final nail being put by Big Boss himself… making Venom realize that the point of no return has been crossed by not only himself, but his present environment too, and it's too late for him to fight for his own good, so he should do it for the next generation.
Well I love the whole cast - even Ocelot, who is seemingly ‘not himself’, but actually cleverly plays with the expectations once again and Huey who I find as a fantastic subversion to the expectations built by his son (in addition to the proofless and self-(un)aware bickering between Huey, Ocelot and Miller that makes the matter unreadable and unpredictable through the various possible outcomes) - but I will solely focus on Venom here. The shadow of Big Boss that still remained as the expendable shadow even after literally turning himself into the Big Boss himself. Or on meta level, us, the players, towards whom the Venom is looking as we break the mirror and there remains nothing to reflect on.
The way he was given the most freedom and agency out of the protagonists and at the same time he was the least person you would call 'free', the way he can bond with the system he built and various individuals and commit atrocities towards enemies and his own people alike, all with their own consequences and having psychological issues of his own on top of that, while also make poor choices both in how he judges people and how convincing he is - in just a single game - makes me appreciate him on quite a high level, as it is an achievement that none of the protagonists have achieved (and Sutherland nails it the way I do not see Hayter being able to do, for this particular character)
I also liked how it does not really feel like the game is making a 'twist' out of his identity and it is only a fault of main character's identity crisis/twisted perception and maybe player not giving much attention to A LOT of details telling you that he is not the real Snake (heard people already knew he was not Big Boss, from the original trailer alone... with very simple and natural details like what they are smoking and etc). But then again, all of the Snakes and 'clones' in general are very close, so I don't really care about their ranking. He kinda lacks catharsis and is probably the most brooding of them all in how silent he is, that downplays him a bit, but at least he is not pushing people away like you would expect from such an archetype and its also done with its own interesting purpose (as he is supposed to be the self-insert, in comparison to Raiden who was supposed to have his own life and it could not have been suppressed in favor of Snake's role machinations)
Venom might be ‘mute’, but he still an individual, making his own choices that can go against his surroundings, not being influenced by them, as seen in his judgment of releasing Huey and most definitely not using nuclear weapons in action, but just as a symbol, to completely negate Naked Snake in him. He is, of course, also capable of going with reasonable suggestions and change his mind, as seen by him changing his mind about the kids once Miller affirmed his stance to treat them well and put them outside the warfare. And, of course, he could be forced to commit things he does not want to commit or not commit just for the satisfaction’s sake, which can be seen in Skull Face’s final moments, Miller forcing his hand… and Miller himself is the one who respect Venom for not indulging in vengeance as his character progresses. After all, he has always been a medic and the role he is forced into is the complete anti-thesis to him.
See, everyone but Venom Snake desires revenge in the game. One might think that expressing the desire to vengeance is what would define someone and thus Venom Snake does not really have personality, but one thing is clear, that very specific desire is made universal in the game and not admitting to it can only be defined as the trait.
I love how Venom has memory problems and only retains romanticized view of Big Boss and then is trying to uphold it, thinking it's him and he feels more and more comfortable in it but at the same time feels guilty and pessimistic about his previous identity, self-unaware as he can’t even recollect in objective manner the most crucial event in his life, the one he feels guilty about. That he was unable to locate the bomb and got Paz killed. Or so he thinks, to not shift the blame to someone else, like Eli, but to himself. It was his fault. He should have been better… and that’s the transformation that occurs to Venom, he embraced his fate to weaponize in favor of the Boss’ wish.
Everything comes and culminates together in the final scene in front of the mirror. In the mirror. Which is in itself mirroring. It's his 'phantom self’ looking at what he has become on the one hand and despising, but another (something that is presented as ‘reflection’ to us, as the Phantom is reflecting on his life) probably is his gradual change looking at his 'phantom' self at every change and despising himself even more on top of that, as it is drifting further and further away.
I don’t feel like I have unpacked all of the scene myself, so bear with my rambling.
As the game starts by the view going into the tape and ends out of the tape too, the whole game is indeed what Venom was reflecting into.
That scene does not take place in one fixed time, but throughout the whole ‘Venom’s Life’ (you have heard of the life flashing in eyes before one is about to die). Blue color is about it happening in his gaslighted mind (the whole room is in blue and it is moreso when he is playing the second recording and we heard the noises, likely placed by Ocelot, who was also brainwashing even his own self), red is being influenced by emotions of vengeance (of the real Big Boss, that does not belong him so it is on the outside and not being accepted as part of Venom identity, he does not care about vengeance throughout the whole MGSV, but about himself. That is, up until the MGSV ends and MG1 starts) and then breaking the mirror (his face neither red nor blue, but moreso green/yellow, color of peace) seeing the general picture, sorta absorbing the blood, coming clean AND then starting uprising at Outer Heaven on his own from thereon to ruin the reputation of 'Big Boss' (lashing out, as that was the sole purpose that Big Boss reduced his life to) and maybe sacrifice himself to Solid Snake, to do with Solid what the Boss did to Big Boss and just like Skull Face leaving his phantom pain, he would leave one through Solid Snake... while OG Big Boss was doing MG1 plot to catch two birds by sending Solid Snake for them to kill Venom or/and die trying and freely continue the rest of his goals in Zanzibar.
Also, Venom is colorblind, so he mixes red and blue (as we see at the start of the game, blue bloodbath in the hospital) and that might symbolize his unawareness and confusion in the grand scheme of things as well. Red and Blue is also basically a subversion of Red Oni and Blue Oni tale that I need to research a bit, but the game was called Project Ogre initially (ogre = oni), the intent is present. Also how Ocelot is dressed yellow-ish, while having red scarf on the surface (probably symbolising how he does not really care about the revenge and is just there to help out OG Big Boss), to contrast Miller who is dressed yellow-ish on the surface but beneath its all red (and not forgiving OG Big Boss for what he did in MGSV, because revenge is important to him. Of course there were many other examples in the game (such as Huey’s judgment - between red and yellow) as the color symbolism is quite prevalent there.
Venom smiling after hearing how he too is a Big Boss would basically be something like 'you are telling me this now, huh' and then shifting the expression immediately, making his mind up about ruining Big Boss because his whole existence in basically Big Boss reputation at this point and by looking at the mirror, its him realizing what exactly going on and negating the attempts of brainwash and then breaking the mirror on his own, embracing what he is right now and making it unable for himself to reflect on himself ever again and stepping into the mist, being wiped not only from the history but from his mind as well (foil to Skull Face - who ironically dresses and acts as over-the-top American ideal chad while taking revenge on America... and like Venom, he understood the Boss' will (or lack of thereof) too... but when SF satisfied his personal desires despite failing at his goals, Venom achieved his goals, all of it to go in an exact opposite way as he would have wished) and that would at least give meaning to his and his fallen comrades forgotten lives, who would all have been already lost as the sacrifices to Big Boss’ grander plan.
There never was neither ‘You’ nor your idea of Big Boss. Nor did anyone have any proof of consent to do something so horrible, to rob someone of his life, to Venom Snake. That very idea of Big Boss has fled away in the mist with us. Venom Snake never needed the title of Big Boss to exist, but it is all to late now, no matter what he will try to do about it - he is Big Boss and will always be one, he sees himself as Big Boss and will always see himself as one, everyone sees him as Big Boss and will always view him as such, he has commited sins and there is neither redemption nor heaven awaiting for him, but at least there is future for Solid Snake, but for that he has to embrace embrace what he was made into.
As one of the tapes goes: “It is just a dream. It is all a dream. I am in it, and you are in it too. I am the dreamer, but you are having my dream. Do you get it now? You do, don’t you? Peace Day never came … Our wishes do not come true. We just cling on to our dreams, our phantoms. Mine and yours.”
Naturally, there is room for the head-canon in this interpretation (considering we only had revealed the connection between Venom Snake and the final boss of MG1, but not the answers as to how it all could have happened) and they all would be connected to Miller purposely going to Solid Snake and training him for this exact plot development, as he wishes ever since it was revealed to him as to what Big Boss did (likely after he was rescued by Big Boss at the start of the game - which would explain why would he be opposing Ocelot’s (towards which we were naturally catering) decisions throughout the game… it has always been interesting as to why would he be presented as someone so bickering despite how everything he was advocating for was in the framework of rational decision-making, so we had a nice ‘little’ pay-off to that)
Implications towards this can be found once achieving the unachievable, getting rid of every single nuclear in the online gameplay of MGSV and we get Venom talking to ‘the phantom that the Boss has left behind’: “I haven’t forgotten what you told me Boss. We have no tomorrow, but there is still hope for the future. In our struggle to survive the present, we push the future further away. Will I see it in my lifetime? Probably not. Which means there is no time to waste. Some day the world will no longer need us, no need for the gun or the hand to pull the trigger. I have to drag out this demon inside me and build a better future. That’s what I…heh…what we will leave as our legacy. Another mission, right Boss?”
As well as Miller’s reaction to Big Boss’ doings: “No…Big Boss can go to hell. I’ll make the phantom and his sons stronger, to send him there. For that… I’ll keep playing my role.” - Venom is about to become the weapon that would attack the very thing he was meant to protect. He might not get any achievements of his own, no celebration whatsoever and not even leave behind small bits of himself in any shape or form as he will be nullified from history, but at least he will indirectly destroy Big Boss’ whole being. And the better future might come through Solid Snake guiding Raiden, what could and should have been the relationship between Big Boss and The Medic.
Desperately clinging to the only meme that defines his remaining identity, if there’s any at this point, is the role of a medic, someone who saves lives, someone who refuses to let go of lives he was determined to save, someone who wished for… peace. Except it’s nowhere to be found, it was never a thing to begin with. He can no longer save lives, instead every action he takes leads to another being lost. Spreading the venomous seeds of revenge, forced to play the role of a legend who perpetuates this futile cycle of hatred against his will. He has no meme or gene to pass on. No one will remember him. No one will speak of him.
I have so much to say about this game, but for now, I'll just say that, while my recent playthrough of MGS 4 made me like it a little bit less, replaying The Phantom Pain for the first time since it came out, far removed from all the hype and my own expectations for what I thought the game would be, made me enjoy it more and appreciate some of the elements that maybe I overlooked before, especially while contrasting it with the rest of the series and Kojima's games in general. It obviously has flaws, some really apparent, but I feel it also manages to convey its themes and messages through its story and mechanics in a very efficient way.
The worst in the series.
I got through all of the game's content looking for something interesting to do as a longtime Metal Gear player. The best it had to offer were the OSP missions in chapter 2, and that's not enough. 3 boring boss fights, and the freedom allowed crippled the game as far as challenge goes due to how easily exploitable the dog and Rocket Punch are. I could not find the fun even S ranking every mission with no alerts and reflex-mode disabled.
I am on the side of the fence that believes something good could've been done here had Kojima been allowed to finish the game and not been forced to adhere to a 2015 release date, but we're reviewing the game we got and not the one it could've been.
I usually give at least a 2/5 to something I was able to get through, or something I could realistically see myself getting through, but I only got through this due to the series and its creator's legacies. It's a 1/5.
I got through all of the game's content looking for something interesting to do as a longtime Metal Gear player. The best it had to offer were the OSP missions in chapter 2, and that's not enough. 3 boring boss fights, and the freedom allowed crippled the game as far as challenge goes due to how easily exploitable the dog and Rocket Punch are. I could not find the fun even S ranking every mission with no alerts and reflex-mode disabled.
I am on the side of the fence that believes something good could've been done here had Kojima been allowed to finish the game and not been forced to adhere to a 2015 release date, but we're reviewing the game we got and not the one it could've been.
I usually give at least a 2/5 to something I was able to get through, or something I could realistically see myself getting through, but I only got through this due to the series and its creator's legacies. It's a 1/5.
Boss get down! That's an enemy gunship. A single burst from its machine gun can cut a man in half. Stay low and crawl along the ground. That should enable you to sneak past enemies.
writing this before i finish the game and if they dont play The Man Who Sold the World during the credits I'm gonna be so disappointed
UPDATE: GOD IS REAL
This game feels pretty disconnected from most of Metal Gear but I honestly don't mind. This is definitely the best stealth game mechanically that I've played probably ever. Being able to approach missions in so many unique ways is just so fantastic and it's executed amazingly. Also, love having cassettes for music, because there is a KILLER soundtrack here.
I could give this a 10/10 on fun factor alone, but there are a lot of issues for me. My biggest problem is the linear story missions. I don't really think they work. A lot of the fun of this game, for me at least, is throwing shit at the wall at seeing what sticks. There were just too many missions that were overly scripted and didn't really have room for player expression. Bosses are pretty weak, too. Repetition is awful, and it genuinely feels so detached from the previous games to have such high amounts of vapid filler.
I will make an exception for the last stretch of main missions though, they really hit the narrative highs the series is known for. But the requirements to unlock those missions are just complete filler. Having to repeat missions is, very unfun. Especially with the tacked on challenges.
And that intro being so long is just inexcusable. Ground Zeroes is basically already a tutorial, the intro could've been a cutscene, and a much shorter one at that.
Overall though I think MGSV is... good, and a milestone for stealth games in general. Worst numbered entry though, and could've been improved by not having the terrible AAA design.
I'm gonna replay the MGS quadrilogy and review it soon :P
UPDATE: GOD IS REAL
This game feels pretty disconnected from most of Metal Gear but I honestly don't mind. This is definitely the best stealth game mechanically that I've played probably ever. Being able to approach missions in so many unique ways is just so fantastic and it's executed amazingly. Also, love having cassettes for music, because there is a KILLER soundtrack here.
I could give this a 10/10 on fun factor alone, but there are a lot of issues for me. My biggest problem is the linear story missions. I don't really think they work. A lot of the fun of this game, for me at least, is throwing shit at the wall at seeing what sticks. There were just too many missions that were overly scripted and didn't really have room for player expression. Bosses are pretty weak, too. Repetition is awful, and it genuinely feels so detached from the previous games to have such high amounts of vapid filler.
I will make an exception for the last stretch of main missions though, they really hit the narrative highs the series is known for. But the requirements to unlock those missions are just complete filler. Having to repeat missions is, very unfun. Especially with the tacked on challenges.
And that intro being so long is just inexcusable. Ground Zeroes is basically already a tutorial, the intro could've been a cutscene, and a much shorter one at that.
Overall though I think MGSV is... good, and a milestone for stealth games in general. Worst numbered entry though, and could've been improved by not having the terrible AAA design.
I'm gonna replay the MGS quadrilogy and review it soon :P
This review contains spoilers
I couldn't finish this game when I first started it due to burnout but I am really glad I revisited this game. Is it perfect? No. Is it finished? No. Is its storytelling and overall premise good? No. Does Konami suck donkey balls for booting Kojima and not finishing this game? Yes. But goddamnit I can't give it anything less than a 10/10.
This game is quite possibly the best open world game. Sure, other games give you a lot more areas to explore and have better stories and overall premises. But can you trick an enemy guard into losing their focus by putting an anime girl on the front of your cardboard box and then pop out and slam them to the ground? I didn't think so. The amount of creativity and freedom this game gives to the player is unmatched. There are quite possibly an infinite amount of ways for you to complete each mission in the game for both lethal and non-lethal routes. The different weapons and tools available allow you to pretty much play this game however you want. Other Metal Gear games have had this feature as well but it is obviously nowhere near where this game has managed to provide. That being said however, the mission structure itself is a big departure from the rest of the series. At first I hated it and eventually I grew to not disliking it, but the way you progress through the missions makes no sense. If they were going to do a mission structure I would at least appreciate it being more linear or at the very least not require you to play through tons of side content just to unlock the last mission in the game. Some side content was required and some main missions weren't required. Why didn't they just switch the places of these missions? Who knows, based Kojimber.
The characters are really good in this game, on par with the rest of the series. The Diamond Dog crew are all super entertaining and the supporting characters are also enjoyable. Skull Face giving the speech to the wrong person and then dying afterwards after being hacked by Psycho Mantis will always be hilarious.
Overall, this game grew on me a lot and I understand it has many flaws but I won't acknowledge them cause uhhh Venom Snake is cool.
This game is quite possibly the best open world game. Sure, other games give you a lot more areas to explore and have better stories and overall premises. But can you trick an enemy guard into losing their focus by putting an anime girl on the front of your cardboard box and then pop out and slam them to the ground? I didn't think so. The amount of creativity and freedom this game gives to the player is unmatched. There are quite possibly an infinite amount of ways for you to complete each mission in the game for both lethal and non-lethal routes. The different weapons and tools available allow you to pretty much play this game however you want. Other Metal Gear games have had this feature as well but it is obviously nowhere near where this game has managed to provide. That being said however, the mission structure itself is a big departure from the rest of the series. At first I hated it and eventually I grew to not disliking it, but the way you progress through the missions makes no sense. If they were going to do a mission structure I would at least appreciate it being more linear or at the very least not require you to play through tons of side content just to unlock the last mission in the game. Some side content was required and some main missions weren't required. Why didn't they just switch the places of these missions? Who knows, based Kojimber.
The characters are really good in this game, on par with the rest of the series. The Diamond Dog crew are all super entertaining and the supporting characters are also enjoyable. Skull Face giving the speech to the wrong person and then dying afterwards after being hacked by Psycho Mantis will always be hilarious.
Overall, this game grew on me a lot and I understand it has many flaws but I won't acknowledge them cause uhhh Venom Snake is cool.
This review contains spoilers
this is the way the world ends
this is the way the world ends
i have arrived, at last, at the end of metal gear – and what a strange conclusion it is. a genuinely challenging game, and not in the sense that the gameplay is difficult. who could’ve predicted that this series would go out on such a hollow, lonely, and above all dissonant note?
some wonderful thematic analyses of this game have already been written on this website, and i by and large concur with the game’s defenders – the “phantom pain” is intentional, as plainly evidenced by the game’s title. i love how hollow, confusing, depressingly repetitive and alienating the game is and how those qualities tie into the game’s deliberate abandonment of a traditional “villain arc” for snake, as well as the metatextual sense that the series is running on fumes, well past even the point of self-devouring (mgs4). but the word on this part of mgsv’s storytelling has already been written by people more capable than me (the best piece undoubtedly being caebl201’s review), so i’m not very interested in retreading that ground. likewise, it feels like there are very few original observations left to make about mgsv’s (stellar, series peak) broader mechanics. so instead, i'll settle for making some scattered observations that hopefully bring something a little bit new to the conversation.
- as previously stated, the dominant goal of mgsv seems to be to subvert and alienate by way of anti-climax and liberal blurring of truth and fiction. that said, this doesn’t account for everything that mgsv attempts to do. one of the larger themes of the game, one that seems somewhat disconnected from the above-mentioned aspirations, is the theme of language, which mostly finds its expression in the concept of the infamous “vocal cord parasites”, supposedly the catalysts of our species’ development of language, capable of granting supernatural abilities and being weaponized as language-targetting ethnic cleansers. to put it simply, i find this theme quite underdeveloped (if conceptually fascinating) and struggle to see how it ties into the game’s larger ethos. the most i can muster in terms of a connection is some notion of language’s causal relationship to truth and its subsequent unreliability (the game, after all, quotes nietzsche in the final mission), but this is tenuous at best. the parasites are mostly connected with the characters of skullface and quiet, both of which are extremely and fundamentally ridiculous and whose value to me lies mostly in their playing into the off-putting, anti-climactic feel of the game. skullface’s car monologue and the subsequent sins of the father needle drop is, as noted in caebl201's previously linked review, absolutely hysterical, and quiet’s parasite infection feels like a blatant, contemptibly cynical excuse to make the hot woman side kick scantily clad and unable to express herself. i think it’s a stretch, however, to say that kojima included the theme of language solely as a practical joke when it’s so frequently elaborated on and emphasized, so what we’re left with a major part of the game’s narrative that feels pretty undercooked and silly (the alternative is that i’m stupid and not grasping the true depth and utility of this theme, which is entirely plausible).
- something i really came to like in this game was the absence of traditional boss fights. they're here, but they're treated instead like any other obstacle you're going up against and the battle is crafted around what's fitting for the type of enemy you're fighting and not from the ad hoc perspective of what would create the most intense, empowering gameplay experience. the result is a rogue's gallery that will see you engage in a thrilling sniper-duel against a superpowered assassin, and also put you up against a scary, borderline impervious fire man, where the only recourse seems to be to send an entire water tower crashing onto him before booking it. yeah, you could be honorable and employ cqc against the dipshit kid who wants to fight you... or you could decimate him with stun rounds in no time. the approach is not only refreshing but it allows for both player expression and further identification with venom as an avatar.
- it’s a shame that ground zeroes was sold as a seperate product instead of being more directly integrated into the phantom pain, because it serves a similar role of misdirection that the tanker chapter in mgs2 does. it promises a shocking downward spiral into horror and madness, a grim, self-serious study of big boss’s turn towards villainy, his “one bad day”. and then the actual game consists of a confused, dead-eyed, deferential and borderline mute snake abducting soldiers, banally managing war crime spreadsheets, absent-mindedly taking job offers from anyone willing to pay, fighting battles to build up his army to fight more battles in a cycle that never actually ends, not after the credits, or the last mission on the list, or the “true ending” where you learn that you’re not actually big boss at all.
- the real big boss, as it turns out, had his villain arc off-screen. or did he? when you listen to the truth tapes, and hear him rationalize and go along with not only mentally decimating and enslaving one of his closest comrades, but also using an entire hospital staff as his personal meat shield, not long after waking up from his coma, you realize that his “one bad day” never came – naked snake became the sort of person comfortable with throwing a bunch of people (including personal friends that trust and rely on him) to the meat grinder gradually, over a prolonged period of time, through events you tagged along with, and it all happened before this game even begins.
- i think sutherland deserves more credit than he gets for his performance in this game - his big boss is as gruff as he is charming, but venom is perpetually half-bored, confused, aimless, glum, and speaks with a sort of dazed, lethargic cadence, as if sleepwalking through life. this soulless performance totally distinguishes the two characters, despite them sounding and looking identical, which i think is a pretty damn impressive feat. that said, the few moments of genuine emotion that venom gets, sutherland totally sells – more, i suspect, than hayter ever could (no disrespect to him, though, i think he was great in mgs4)
- in a game where so much of the storytelling feels like an elaborate joke at the player’s expense, what maybe surprised me most is that it contained what i consider to be kojima’s most successful dramatic payoff, something that affected me far more emotionally than mgs3’s ending. and what’s more, it’s through probably kojima’s most ridiculous, tasteless character yet: quiet. but the scene where she guides pequod through the sandstorm is elegant in a way that kojima’s attempts at drama very rarely are – it’s not a monologue, it’s not a lengthy exposition dump, it’s not histrionic, affected melodrama; it’s just an earnest, somber expression of love and sacrifice through action. that it managed to make me forget what is probably the worst mission in the game preceding it is a testament to its genuine quality.
- kojima is a man, above all, of Big Concepts, and i think his decision to cap off the series by way of ouroboros, with snake eating his own tail (or phantom) – is one for the books. metal gear will never be game over. i'm stiiiiiiilll in a dreeeeeeaaam....
this is the way the world ends
i have arrived, at last, at the end of metal gear – and what a strange conclusion it is. a genuinely challenging game, and not in the sense that the gameplay is difficult. who could’ve predicted that this series would go out on such a hollow, lonely, and above all dissonant note?
some wonderful thematic analyses of this game have already been written on this website, and i by and large concur with the game’s defenders – the “phantom pain” is intentional, as plainly evidenced by the game’s title. i love how hollow, confusing, depressingly repetitive and alienating the game is and how those qualities tie into the game’s deliberate abandonment of a traditional “villain arc” for snake, as well as the metatextual sense that the series is running on fumes, well past even the point of self-devouring (mgs4). but the word on this part of mgsv’s storytelling has already been written by people more capable than me (the best piece undoubtedly being caebl201’s review), so i’m not very interested in retreading that ground. likewise, it feels like there are very few original observations left to make about mgsv’s (stellar, series peak) broader mechanics. so instead, i'll settle for making some scattered observations that hopefully bring something a little bit new to the conversation.
- as previously stated, the dominant goal of mgsv seems to be to subvert and alienate by way of anti-climax and liberal blurring of truth and fiction. that said, this doesn’t account for everything that mgsv attempts to do. one of the larger themes of the game, one that seems somewhat disconnected from the above-mentioned aspirations, is the theme of language, which mostly finds its expression in the concept of the infamous “vocal cord parasites”, supposedly the catalysts of our species’ development of language, capable of granting supernatural abilities and being weaponized as language-targetting ethnic cleansers. to put it simply, i find this theme quite underdeveloped (if conceptually fascinating) and struggle to see how it ties into the game’s larger ethos. the most i can muster in terms of a connection is some notion of language’s causal relationship to truth and its subsequent unreliability (the game, after all, quotes nietzsche in the final mission), but this is tenuous at best. the parasites are mostly connected with the characters of skullface and quiet, both of which are extremely and fundamentally ridiculous and whose value to me lies mostly in their playing into the off-putting, anti-climactic feel of the game. skullface’s car monologue and the subsequent sins of the father needle drop is, as noted in caebl201's previously linked review, absolutely hysterical, and quiet’s parasite infection feels like a blatant, contemptibly cynical excuse to make the hot woman side kick scantily clad and unable to express herself. i think it’s a stretch, however, to say that kojima included the theme of language solely as a practical joke when it’s so frequently elaborated on and emphasized, so what we’re left with a major part of the game’s narrative that feels pretty undercooked and silly (the alternative is that i’m stupid and not grasping the true depth and utility of this theme, which is entirely plausible).
- something i really came to like in this game was the absence of traditional boss fights. they're here, but they're treated instead like any other obstacle you're going up against and the battle is crafted around what's fitting for the type of enemy you're fighting and not from the ad hoc perspective of what would create the most intense, empowering gameplay experience. the result is a rogue's gallery that will see you engage in a thrilling sniper-duel against a superpowered assassin, and also put you up against a scary, borderline impervious fire man, where the only recourse seems to be to send an entire water tower crashing onto him before booking it. yeah, you could be honorable and employ cqc against the dipshit kid who wants to fight you... or you could decimate him with stun rounds in no time. the approach is not only refreshing but it allows for both player expression and further identification with venom as an avatar.
- it’s a shame that ground zeroes was sold as a seperate product instead of being more directly integrated into the phantom pain, because it serves a similar role of misdirection that the tanker chapter in mgs2 does. it promises a shocking downward spiral into horror and madness, a grim, self-serious study of big boss’s turn towards villainy, his “one bad day”. and then the actual game consists of a confused, dead-eyed, deferential and borderline mute snake abducting soldiers, banally managing war crime spreadsheets, absent-mindedly taking job offers from anyone willing to pay, fighting battles to build up his army to fight more battles in a cycle that never actually ends, not after the credits, or the last mission on the list, or the “true ending” where you learn that you’re not actually big boss at all.
- the real big boss, as it turns out, had his villain arc off-screen. or did he? when you listen to the truth tapes, and hear him rationalize and go along with not only mentally decimating and enslaving one of his closest comrades, but also using an entire hospital staff as his personal meat shield, not long after waking up from his coma, you realize that his “one bad day” never came – naked snake became the sort of person comfortable with throwing a bunch of people (including personal friends that trust and rely on him) to the meat grinder gradually, over a prolonged period of time, through events you tagged along with, and it all happened before this game even begins.
- i think sutherland deserves more credit than he gets for his performance in this game - his big boss is as gruff as he is charming, but venom is perpetually half-bored, confused, aimless, glum, and speaks with a sort of dazed, lethargic cadence, as if sleepwalking through life. this soulless performance totally distinguishes the two characters, despite them sounding and looking identical, which i think is a pretty damn impressive feat. that said, the few moments of genuine emotion that venom gets, sutherland totally sells – more, i suspect, than hayter ever could (no disrespect to him, though, i think he was great in mgs4)
- in a game where so much of the storytelling feels like an elaborate joke at the player’s expense, what maybe surprised me most is that it contained what i consider to be kojima’s most successful dramatic payoff, something that affected me far more emotionally than mgs3’s ending. and what’s more, it’s through probably kojima’s most ridiculous, tasteless character yet: quiet. but the scene where she guides pequod through the sandstorm is elegant in a way that kojima’s attempts at drama very rarely are – it’s not a monologue, it’s not a lengthy exposition dump, it’s not histrionic, affected melodrama; it’s just an earnest, somber expression of love and sacrifice through action. that it managed to make me forget what is probably the worst mission in the game preceding it is a testament to its genuine quality.
- kojima is a man, above all, of Big Concepts, and i think his decision to cap off the series by way of ouroboros, with snake eating his own tail (or phantom) – is one for the books. metal gear will never be game over. i'm stiiiiiiilll in a dreeeeeeaaam....
(this is not a proper review, more like a ramble)
gonna try to write about this game without spoiling it, this is genuinely as close to perfection Kojima could get with trying to end the franchise
he isn't held back by tech or restraints on making an insanely layered combat style, he's finally allowed to go moviehead with the visuals and not rely on long long cutscenes even though he was pretty cinematic in direction by MGSV
The story is an evolution of everything he's done so far, considering where in the timeline it takes place it's the perfect way to add substance to everything that comes before and it and deconstruct the legacy of BB before ending it
The shift in tone might be jarring to some but it feels like Kojima was finally allowed to go all out with the kind of tragedies war covers so it's a much appreciated change
And to end this, this is truly the best ending a player could ask for if they were invested in the franchise thus far
gonna try to write about this game without spoiling it, this is genuinely as close to perfection Kojima could get with trying to end the franchise
he isn't held back by tech or restraints on making an insanely layered combat style, he's finally allowed to go moviehead with the visuals and not rely on long long cutscenes even though he was pretty cinematic in direction by MGSV
The story is an evolution of everything he's done so far, considering where in the timeline it takes place it's the perfect way to add substance to everything that comes before and it and deconstruct the legacy of BB before ending it
The shift in tone might be jarring to some but it feels like Kojima was finally allowed to go all out with the kind of tragedies war covers so it's a much appreciated change
And to end this, this is truly the best ending a player could ask for if they were invested in the franchise thus far
This review contains spoilers
“Who knows? Not me
We never lost control
You're face to face
With the man who sold the world"
It’s difficult to talk about Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain without acknowledging the elephant in the room. This is the most awkward Metal Gear entry to sit down and pick apart because it’s the only one where the troubled development and behind-the-scenes drama between Kojima and Konami has bled into the game. It’s where you can really feel Kojima’s vision, storytelling and gameplay wise, has just been compromised into a stitchwork pattern of some of the best moments in the entire franchise that shows how much Kojima and his team has evolved with some of the most unsatisfying parts that make you step back and question a bit. There’s an argument to be had on if MGSV is truly ‘unfinished’. Kojima and company nowadays seem content with the state of the game as it is. There exists tangible proof of cut content during production that wasn’t given enough funding by Konami to make it fully realized and in the actual game. Mission 51 is baffling because regardless of what Kojima or Konami says, this is clearly something very important story-wise, especially with who the mission is centered on, that I cannot understand why it wasn’t deemed worth keeping in. If I was to agree to the level of, yeah, maybe this wasn’t technically ‘unfinished’, this was roughly meant to be what it is in the end of the day, but it gives truth to the fact that there was so much that felt lacking and missing to make MGSV feel like the best possible version of itself that we’ll never get.
I dunno about you but ‘Open World Metal Gear Solid’ sounds like the tackiest idea I’ve ever heard. It does scream like a series very set in what it does uniquely, selling away its own creative freedom in favor of mindless mass consumption trying to give you a depthless version of freedom. 8th Gen, looking back at it now, is also mostly just creatively tunneled vision into sprawling, massive open worlds with resource gathering, crafting, and base management being the real grind to keep your runtime hitting the 80 hour mark. Like, it’s funny how people generalize all RPGs as being 100+ long grind fests when that’s more rare than you’d even care to look at in actuality, and that stigma feels much more deserving for the open world genre. MGSV is admittedly one of the better 8th Gen open world games from this period. This is where doubting Kojima proves futile because he knows how to take these design staples and make it feel fun. The Metal Gear Solid formula, though undergoing so many levels of evolution, bounces back at the core gameplay idea of handling obstacles with a wide variety of different solutions that typically draws the least amount of attention to you. Or, you could just say ‘fuck it’, and just go full explosive guns blazing on enemy guards and outposts with no regard for being sneaky or quiet. Not quite how I imagine you get the best experience for why these games excel hard in game design but it’s not like it’s ever discouraged too much since you’re still given weapon and tool options to choose and play with. Dropping this into the sandbox of an open world is surprisingly a natural step for Metal Gear’s continuing evolution and shakeup. It takes cues from MGS3, MGS4, and Peacewalker to deliver a solid playground where you can ride your horse, travel Afghanistan or Africa, vibe with your radio cassette set to some banger licensed tunes, scout out enemy outposts to infiltrate/assault, and maybe even kidnap the enemy soldiers and send them flying to your Mother Base to force them to serve under you! Fulton Extraction and the Mother Base system, first introduced in Peacewalker, feels fully conceptualized, though not refined, as something worth engaging with. The first dozen hours of the game I was immediately impressed by all of this. The prologue especially is some of Kojima’s greatest work, showing off how unbelievably ahead of its time the Fox Engine is graphically, while being a prime showcase of how ready Kojima is to tackle survival horror in what could’ve been Silent Hills. I don’t normally let expectations, especially from what’s been said surrounding this game, really get to me much when I play something. Here, I was willing to be this game’s strongest soldier…until it becomes very clear why MGSV: The Phantom Pain is unfortunately deserving of its status as being messy, woefully underdeveloped, and confusing but not because of the story but because of what it tries to pull itself together creatively as a Metal Gear game.
This is a roughly 60+ hour game to try to complete, yet throughout my extensive playthrough I felt like I only experienced maybe 4 hours worth of story material that’s stretched thinly yet offered sparingly. What’s frustrating isn’t that the story material itself is ‘bad’, as I feel some might easily write it off as because of how it’s presented and executed, I think it’s actually quite strong for the most part. I appreciate how it contributes to the larger Metal Gear Saga with how it puts the characters introduced in Peacewalker into a radical new dramatic context, exploring incredible themes that makes me appreciate some of the past entries in a better light through juxtaposition. Take Huey Emmerich; originating from MGS2 but properly introduced in Peacewalker, who more or less served as this cheeky wink to the fans over how Solid Snake and Otacon’s dad share the same voice actors and baseline dynamic their sons inherited later down the timeline. Aside from how seeds were planted to see how his character withers into here, there wasn’t a lot to Huey than that. I didn’t expect Huey Emmerich to wind up becoming one of my favorite villains in the whole franchise. Metal Gear has a roster of memorable villains embodying different philosophies and beliefs about the status quo. Though, you can argue many of them are at least understandable, misguided, ‘human’ I dare say, in why they’re driven this way. You can’t say the same for Huey Emmerich. He’s just the worst. An actual insufferable, petty, cowardly, hypocrite with no moral responsibilities for anything he’s done which caused indirect or direct pain and loss to the characters, not just in this game, but throughout the rest of the series. Having him share Otacon’s likeness, demeanor, and voice actor was a brilliant creative decision because we of course associate Huey with Hal, the most genuinely endearing character, only to see how that’s betrayed and subverted once his true colors became ugly and plain to see. Every single detestable thing about Huey is just further ammo for why we absolutely adore Otacon since he could’ve easily been just as low as his father but he chose not to. It’s the way they’re both broadly similar but meaningfully different in the finger details that enriches the Metal Gear Saga in close reflection. It’s not even just Huey who gets this treatment. Revolver Ocelot has been a recurring character who we’ve seen through different stages of his life that paint an interesting picture of who he really is and this is no exception. Skull Face is an underappreciated main antagonist who could’ve benefited from more screen time but once you’ve cracked who he is deep down, he makes for a surprisingly effective foil for Venom Snake for, uh, spoilery reasons I don’t want to dive into. To keep it brief; his motivation regarding his loss of identity and taking revenge on a world that took it away feels oddly resonant when you remember what this series, especially by MGS2, is all about.
It’s only too bad that most of these character beats are just not frequent enough to chew into. You have to slog through so many repetitive missions and side-ops to get even a nugget of a cool cinematic or story moment. The Mother Base management system reveals itself to be shallow as no matter how much you upgrade or develop it, the actual Mother Base you can return to see your progress of building up an army is severely uninteresting to witness. You can…drive around to platforms you just built? There’s maybe a few more generic guards who greet you autonomously and maybe have conversations you could overhear? You might even come across a cutscene that happens with certain important characters stationed there when you make enough mission progress, but, uh, that’s it. It’s quite unrewarding and boring which made me feel like I was playing through some of the most tedious excess of an 8th Gen open world game again and all its warts. Chapter 2 is the worst offender for this because it’s framed as the “postgame” or “epilogue” even though that’s where you’ll get some proper closure for loose story threads that haven’t been resolved yet. To get access to these story related missions, however, you have to play through a bulk of ‘new’ missions which are just older ones you’ve already gone through but at a higher challenge level. Keep in mind, the missions have mostly been repetitive as hell, devolving to the same “find outpost, infiltrate/assault, and eliminate/capture target” formula for hours on end. You don’t technically need to finish these missions to unlock the ones that actually matter, doing leftover side ops does the job kinda, but this is still egregious busywork to have some semblance of finality with a story hinting at incredible themes that just doesn’t pan out well.
This is the only Metal Gear game that I had trouble rating for. Rising should be shot into the sun for how it irreparably damaged the cultural perception of the series, so there were no hardships there, believe me. Peacewalker was interesting, had some fun, but clearly too limited by its design to amaze me in any way that broadened my love for these games. But Metal Gear Solid V, severe flaws and all, emboldened my passion for this franchise with what Kojima tried to tackle, only to get crushed through the grinder of Konami. I guess this game was my own Phantom Pain after all.
We never lost control
You're face to face
With the man who sold the world"
It’s difficult to talk about Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain without acknowledging the elephant in the room. This is the most awkward Metal Gear entry to sit down and pick apart because it’s the only one where the troubled development and behind-the-scenes drama between Kojima and Konami has bled into the game. It’s where you can really feel Kojima’s vision, storytelling and gameplay wise, has just been compromised into a stitchwork pattern of some of the best moments in the entire franchise that shows how much Kojima and his team has evolved with some of the most unsatisfying parts that make you step back and question a bit. There’s an argument to be had on if MGSV is truly ‘unfinished’. Kojima and company nowadays seem content with the state of the game as it is. There exists tangible proof of cut content during production that wasn’t given enough funding by Konami to make it fully realized and in the actual game. Mission 51 is baffling because regardless of what Kojima or Konami says, this is clearly something very important story-wise, especially with who the mission is centered on, that I cannot understand why it wasn’t deemed worth keeping in. If I was to agree to the level of, yeah, maybe this wasn’t technically ‘unfinished’, this was roughly meant to be what it is in the end of the day, but it gives truth to the fact that there was so much that felt lacking and missing to make MGSV feel like the best possible version of itself that we’ll never get.
I dunno about you but ‘Open World Metal Gear Solid’ sounds like the tackiest idea I’ve ever heard. It does scream like a series very set in what it does uniquely, selling away its own creative freedom in favor of mindless mass consumption trying to give you a depthless version of freedom. 8th Gen, looking back at it now, is also mostly just creatively tunneled vision into sprawling, massive open worlds with resource gathering, crafting, and base management being the real grind to keep your runtime hitting the 80 hour mark. Like, it’s funny how people generalize all RPGs as being 100+ long grind fests when that’s more rare than you’d even care to look at in actuality, and that stigma feels much more deserving for the open world genre. MGSV is admittedly one of the better 8th Gen open world games from this period. This is where doubting Kojima proves futile because he knows how to take these design staples and make it feel fun. The Metal Gear Solid formula, though undergoing so many levels of evolution, bounces back at the core gameplay idea of handling obstacles with a wide variety of different solutions that typically draws the least amount of attention to you. Or, you could just say ‘fuck it’, and just go full explosive guns blazing on enemy guards and outposts with no regard for being sneaky or quiet. Not quite how I imagine you get the best experience for why these games excel hard in game design but it’s not like it’s ever discouraged too much since you’re still given weapon and tool options to choose and play with. Dropping this into the sandbox of an open world is surprisingly a natural step for Metal Gear’s continuing evolution and shakeup. It takes cues from MGS3, MGS4, and Peacewalker to deliver a solid playground where you can ride your horse, travel Afghanistan or Africa, vibe with your radio cassette set to some banger licensed tunes, scout out enemy outposts to infiltrate/assault, and maybe even kidnap the enemy soldiers and send them flying to your Mother Base to force them to serve under you! Fulton Extraction and the Mother Base system, first introduced in Peacewalker, feels fully conceptualized, though not refined, as something worth engaging with. The first dozen hours of the game I was immediately impressed by all of this. The prologue especially is some of Kojima’s greatest work, showing off how unbelievably ahead of its time the Fox Engine is graphically, while being a prime showcase of how ready Kojima is to tackle survival horror in what could’ve been Silent Hills. I don’t normally let expectations, especially from what’s been said surrounding this game, really get to me much when I play something. Here, I was willing to be this game’s strongest soldier…until it becomes very clear why MGSV: The Phantom Pain is unfortunately deserving of its status as being messy, woefully underdeveloped, and confusing but not because of the story but because of what it tries to pull itself together creatively as a Metal Gear game.
This is a roughly 60+ hour game to try to complete, yet throughout my extensive playthrough I felt like I only experienced maybe 4 hours worth of story material that’s stretched thinly yet offered sparingly. What’s frustrating isn’t that the story material itself is ‘bad’, as I feel some might easily write it off as because of how it’s presented and executed, I think it’s actually quite strong for the most part. I appreciate how it contributes to the larger Metal Gear Saga with how it puts the characters introduced in Peacewalker into a radical new dramatic context, exploring incredible themes that makes me appreciate some of the past entries in a better light through juxtaposition. Take Huey Emmerich; originating from MGS2 but properly introduced in Peacewalker, who more or less served as this cheeky wink to the fans over how Solid Snake and Otacon’s dad share the same voice actors and baseline dynamic their sons inherited later down the timeline. Aside from how seeds were planted to see how his character withers into here, there wasn’t a lot to Huey than that. I didn’t expect Huey Emmerich to wind up becoming one of my favorite villains in the whole franchise. Metal Gear has a roster of memorable villains embodying different philosophies and beliefs about the status quo. Though, you can argue many of them are at least understandable, misguided, ‘human’ I dare say, in why they’re driven this way. You can’t say the same for Huey Emmerich. He’s just the worst. An actual insufferable, petty, cowardly, hypocrite with no moral responsibilities for anything he’s done which caused indirect or direct pain and loss to the characters, not just in this game, but throughout the rest of the series. Having him share Otacon’s likeness, demeanor, and voice actor was a brilliant creative decision because we of course associate Huey with Hal, the most genuinely endearing character, only to see how that’s betrayed and subverted once his true colors became ugly and plain to see. Every single detestable thing about Huey is just further ammo for why we absolutely adore Otacon since he could’ve easily been just as low as his father but he chose not to. It’s the way they’re both broadly similar but meaningfully different in the finger details that enriches the Metal Gear Saga in close reflection. It’s not even just Huey who gets this treatment. Revolver Ocelot has been a recurring character who we’ve seen through different stages of his life that paint an interesting picture of who he really is and this is no exception. Skull Face is an underappreciated main antagonist who could’ve benefited from more screen time but once you’ve cracked who he is deep down, he makes for a surprisingly effective foil for Venom Snake for, uh, spoilery reasons I don’t want to dive into. To keep it brief; his motivation regarding his loss of identity and taking revenge on a world that took it away feels oddly resonant when you remember what this series, especially by MGS2, is all about.
It’s only too bad that most of these character beats are just not frequent enough to chew into. You have to slog through so many repetitive missions and side-ops to get even a nugget of a cool cinematic or story moment. The Mother Base management system reveals itself to be shallow as no matter how much you upgrade or develop it, the actual Mother Base you can return to see your progress of building up an army is severely uninteresting to witness. You can…drive around to platforms you just built? There’s maybe a few more generic guards who greet you autonomously and maybe have conversations you could overhear? You might even come across a cutscene that happens with certain important characters stationed there when you make enough mission progress, but, uh, that’s it. It’s quite unrewarding and boring which made me feel like I was playing through some of the most tedious excess of an 8th Gen open world game again and all its warts. Chapter 2 is the worst offender for this because it’s framed as the “postgame” or “epilogue” even though that’s where you’ll get some proper closure for loose story threads that haven’t been resolved yet. To get access to these story related missions, however, you have to play through a bulk of ‘new’ missions which are just older ones you’ve already gone through but at a higher challenge level. Keep in mind, the missions have mostly been repetitive as hell, devolving to the same “find outpost, infiltrate/assault, and eliminate/capture target” formula for hours on end. You don’t technically need to finish these missions to unlock the ones that actually matter, doing leftover side ops does the job kinda, but this is still egregious busywork to have some semblance of finality with a story hinting at incredible themes that just doesn’t pan out well.
This is the only Metal Gear game that I had trouble rating for. Rising should be shot into the sun for how it irreparably damaged the cultural perception of the series, so there were no hardships there, believe me. Peacewalker was interesting, had some fun, but clearly too limited by its design to amaze me in any way that broadened my love for these games. But Metal Gear Solid V, severe flaws and all, emboldened my passion for this franchise with what Kojima tried to tackle, only to get crushed through the grinder of Konami. I guess this game was my own Phantom Pain after all.
Metal Gear Solid V sucks so much if it wasn't one of my favorite games ever in terms of gameplay I'd give it 2 stars.
To go through positives: it has absolutely stunning gameplay. Missions that I feel like would be boring and uneventful in other games are fun and exciting due to the masterful controls and style that only falters in terms of cqc which has been reduced to practically just a punch/kick button. I honestly loved the open world but I fully believe it's no where as good as it should or could be.
The prologue and first mission are treasures. The opening of the game is one of my favorites it's just such a wonderfully nightmarish experience of horrible stressful events one after another with shocking moments around every corner. In a way the prologue being so good was almost a detriment to the rest of the game. The whole world clearly "wants me dead" there, but the rest of the game has no where near the same tension.
Overall the best missions in the game are the ones that are straight up just horror. The hospital mission, the quarantine center mission. I'm also quite fond of the introduction to Sahelanthropus. i can criticize MGSV for days but I could never be mad at Sahelanthropus. I think its just worthless to complain that a 2015 game doesn't hold up to 1987s tx-55. Sahelanthropus is just so massive on scale that when it's hovering over you and stalking you it truly feels like a scary opposing threat.
MGSV when its at is best is just so incredible that I can never be truly upset with it, but it has its long list of drawbacks.
Kojima has made many many of my favorite games, and he has created games I'd call near masterpieces, but I would never call him a great writer. He wrote quiet in 2015, which is frankly embarrassing. I think he was able to avoid plenty of MGSV criticism due to all the issues with Konami, when his writing should have been targeted a lot more. Like everyone else I have gripes with Konami and I'd love to see the game MGSV could have been but there were so many issues at it's core.
MGS3 worked as a game since it understood it was a prequel and provided context to the games before it. That context being what lead to big boss becoming a horrible war mongering man, but as these prequels continued on this introspective shifted from looking back on a horrible person to idolizing him and giving him unneeded tragic backstories one after another. It's no wonder people walk out of Metal Gear games wanting to join the military and view Big Boss as a hero when Kojima paints him in such a light.
The villains are so weak in the phantom pain because Big Boss and his entourage are already so bad. Skull face as a concept is laughable, hes so ridiculous, but comes out to be one of the most boring villains including main villains and side villains in all of Metal Gear, and Eli, although Liquid is a great and funny edition, is literally twelve and he never even got his moment to do anything because the second half of the game never gets its moment to do anything.
MGSV is just so disconnected as a game. It has a promising beginning and honestly a twist I would have liked if it had more work put into it, but the middle is a mess. It's one half a weak but completed story and then just nothing for the rest of its run time. It's a shame to see where MGSV ended up when it had so much to work with. It could have focused on the Patriots, it could have shown the falling out of Big Boss and Kazuhira, it could have been the connecting piece between the Big Boss and Solid Snake games and focused on Outer Heaven or Zanzibarland. Instead its about the most ridiculous bland man you will ever see, a horrible person who we are pretending is tragic, a 12 year old, literally one of the worst written female characters ever, and Huey
There is a shopping list of other issues I wont even bother to get into MGSV is a game I like rambling about, but I feel like I give it too much time for what it is. It's a shame to see this game, from a series known for its intricate and well thought out narratives, be so painfully sloppy and regressive. I hate it. It'shorrible. 4 stars out of 5. I played it multiple times a week for months.
To go through positives: it has absolutely stunning gameplay. Missions that I feel like would be boring and uneventful in other games are fun and exciting due to the masterful controls and style that only falters in terms of cqc which has been reduced to practically just a punch/kick button. I honestly loved the open world but I fully believe it's no where as good as it should or could be.
The prologue and first mission are treasures. The opening of the game is one of my favorites it's just such a wonderfully nightmarish experience of horrible stressful events one after another with shocking moments around every corner. In a way the prologue being so good was almost a detriment to the rest of the game. The whole world clearly "wants me dead" there, but the rest of the game has no where near the same tension.
Overall the best missions in the game are the ones that are straight up just horror. The hospital mission, the quarantine center mission. I'm also quite fond of the introduction to Sahelanthropus. i can criticize MGSV for days but I could never be mad at Sahelanthropus. I think its just worthless to complain that a 2015 game doesn't hold up to 1987s tx-55. Sahelanthropus is just so massive on scale that when it's hovering over you and stalking you it truly feels like a scary opposing threat.
MGSV when its at is best is just so incredible that I can never be truly upset with it, but it has its long list of drawbacks.
Kojima has made many many of my favorite games, and he has created games I'd call near masterpieces, but I would never call him a great writer. He wrote quiet in 2015, which is frankly embarrassing. I think he was able to avoid plenty of MGSV criticism due to all the issues with Konami, when his writing should have been targeted a lot more. Like everyone else I have gripes with Konami and I'd love to see the game MGSV could have been but there were so many issues at it's core.
MGS3 worked as a game since it understood it was a prequel and provided context to the games before it. That context being what lead to big boss becoming a horrible war mongering man, but as these prequels continued on this introspective shifted from looking back on a horrible person to idolizing him and giving him unneeded tragic backstories one after another. It's no wonder people walk out of Metal Gear games wanting to join the military and view Big Boss as a hero when Kojima paints him in such a light.
The villains are so weak in the phantom pain because Big Boss and his entourage are already so bad. Skull face as a concept is laughable, hes so ridiculous, but comes out to be one of the most boring villains including main villains and side villains in all of Metal Gear, and Eli, although Liquid is a great and funny edition, is literally twelve and he never even got his moment to do anything because the second half of the game never gets its moment to do anything.
MGSV is just so disconnected as a game. It has a promising beginning and honestly a twist I would have liked if it had more work put into it, but the middle is a mess. It's one half a weak but completed story and then just nothing for the rest of its run time. It's a shame to see where MGSV ended up when it had so much to work with. It could have focused on the Patriots, it could have shown the falling out of Big Boss and Kazuhira, it could have been the connecting piece between the Big Boss and Solid Snake games and focused on Outer Heaven or Zanzibarland. Instead its about the most ridiculous bland man you will ever see, a horrible person who we are pretending is tragic, a 12 year old, literally one of the worst written female characters ever, and Huey
There is a shopping list of other issues I wont even bother to get into MGSV is a game I like rambling about, but I feel like I give it too much time for what it is. It's a shame to see this game, from a series known for its intricate and well thought out narratives, be so painfully sloppy and regressive. I hate it. It'shorrible. 4 stars out of 5. I played it multiple times a week for months.
Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain is messy. It’s a confusing game to say the least… It feels like there’s so much wrong with it, yet it’s still incredibly fun, and well made. Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain is a game that I’m very conflicted on, there’s so much fun to be had here, there’s a lot of great ideas and improvements here, but it falls short in a lot of aspects that I think are really important.
Mechanically, it’s definitely the most in depth, but I’d actually say that compared to 1-4, this might be the least fun one out of the main 5, either 5 or 4. I prefer 4’s structure of a more linear experience, with actual levels so I’m inclined to say this is my least favorite in terms of gameplay. Not that it is bad; far from it, I still think it’s fun! My main issue lies with how empty the open world is. There are some enemy camps on all the roads, but they’re small and have minimal buildings and structure. These aren’t much fun to sneak around, it’s honestly better to just take a car and drive through them, even if it gets you caught. There are some big buildings with actual complex structure and design, but
these aren’t as enjoyable as the actual levels of the previous games. These large buildings are also very far apart from each other most of the time. I think an open-world stealth game can work, but The Phantom Pain doesn’t really use it’s open world well. It’s two “levels” are just empty wastelands with few points of interest. It’s boring to traverse, and the missions that have you chasing around vehicles are usually very obnoxious because of how large and empty the level is.
Despite this problem with the world, the minute to minute stealth action is really great. Like I said before, mechanically this is probably the best in the series, and while I do prefer the linear format, I think the open ended missions are an interesting and refreshing change. You can be very creative with how you approach the objectives because of how many weapons and gadgets you can acquire. Finding combinations of load-outs and messing with enemy soldiers is really fun. A mechanic I’m not very fond of is “reflex mode”, I get why it was added, however it holds your hand way too much. Getting spotted and going into “reflex mode” is honestly an easier way to get past enemies in certain scenarios, so why wouldn’t you just get spotted on purpose and use the “reflex mode” to headshot the guards? This mechanic being turned off in the remixed missions is one of the reasons I think those missions are the best in the game in terms of pure gameplay.
The boss battles are really underwhelming. The Skulls are not very good, the male ones are damage sponges with glorified quick time events. The female Skulls are a lot more fun to fight, it’s a sniper battle in a jungle, which gives both sides a chance to hide or take vantage points. Quiet is also a sniper battle, but she is way worse. Her fight in theory should be good, she functions basically the same as the Female Skulls’ so what’s the problem? The boss arena is too big, and empty, she’s also way too easy to spot. That makes this fight pretty boring. Sahelanthropus is an amazing spectacle, and it’s the only boss with a more traditional health bar, but it’s gameplay is mainly just strafing and shooting. Metal Gear is known for multiple things, one of those being it’s legendary boss battles, and that’s an aspect this game is lacking in severely.
The cast of this game I think is pretty weak, Snake and Kaz are really the only interesting characters. The character that was done dirty the most is definitely Ocelot. He’s so crazy and entertaining in literally every other Metal Gear game, yet here he’s so normal… so boring. It feels like he’s lost his personality. He’s also so under-utilized, the game never expands on how he and Big Boss become friends. He is one of the most important characters to the over-arching story of Metal Gear, yet he does essentially nothing in this game. I don’t even need to talk about Quiet, she is mainly used for sex appeal and her role in the story is minimal. Huey is whatever, his involvement in the story is actually kind of interesting, however gets too little screen-time. Kaz is definitely my favorite character from this game, his determination and excitement is really fun to watch. I think he’s also the character that voices most players’ opinions. He speaks what most players are thinking during conflicts or indecisiveness. His motivations are pretty simple, but he’s a very likable character. Kaz also has my favorite voice acting in this game, Robin Atkin Downes does a really great job here.
The story is… really messy. I don’t want to say it’s bad, because I think there’s a lot of really good stuff here. The premise of expanding on what turned Big Boss into a villain honestly wasn’t really needed after Snake Eater’s ending, but I think following his downfall more closely is really interesting. The David Bowie song in the hospital room is a really cool hint at a major plot point. The subtle usage of media from the 80s to symbolize some of the characters is really well done. The presentation is really good, I like that all the cutscenes are a long take. The voice acting is great as usual with MGS. However, I think there are a lot of flaws. The pacing is awful. In Chapter 1, it feels like you are barely progressing the overall story a lot of the time. You do a bunch of missions, Kaz tells you they’re important to progress the story, but they never feel like it. The Phantom Pain suffers from having a weak cast of villains. Skull Face isn’t all that memorable, his plan is kinda cool at face value, but the more you think about it, the less sense it makes. There’s also a bunch of characters from later Metal Gear games that have no reason to be there, their inclusion feels like it’s there purely for fan-service. Chapter 2’s pacing is even worse, you play a bunch of remixed missions (which play the cutscenes from the original mission again), and then things just sort of happen at your Mother Base. The Chapter 2 pacing is even worse because the game just randomly drops a huge plot twist on you, out of blue. It just… happens, no build up. This game doesn’t even have a final boss. Every Metal Gear game has a LEGENDARY final boss, yet here you just get a huge plot twist after re-playing some missions and the game ends. It’s so anti-climactic. There are obviously cool moments here, but I think it says a lot about the game’s story that these moments are often not even brought up when people talk about the best scenes in the series. One of the things I really think this game’s main story should’ve done is expand on the twist of MGS4. Instead, any sort of explanation about the villain MGS4 established is left in optional audio tapes. The audio tapes do re-contextualize some of MGS4’s moments to make them be more sensical, but I wish we could have seen these audio tapes be animated with a cutscene and be placed in the main story instead. The overall story of this game just feels so disconnected, it feels like a sequence of events instead of an actual story.
Although I have a ton of problems with this game, (some I didn’t even have time to elaborate on like how the world-building is wack because of how technologically advanced everything in this game is, despite it taking place before MGS1, 2, and 4), I still enjoy this game. I think the stealth action is amazing, it’s ambitious, and has a ton of depth. I find this game to be a bit of a sad case, its a good game, but it could’ve been so much more. I really do think The Phantom Pain had the potential to be the BEST Metal Gear game, but a troubled development held it back.
Mechanically, it’s definitely the most in depth, but I’d actually say that compared to 1-4, this might be the least fun one out of the main 5, either 5 or 4. I prefer 4’s structure of a more linear experience, with actual levels so I’m inclined to say this is my least favorite in terms of gameplay. Not that it is bad; far from it, I still think it’s fun! My main issue lies with how empty the open world is. There are some enemy camps on all the roads, but they’re small and have minimal buildings and structure. These aren’t much fun to sneak around, it’s honestly better to just take a car and drive through them, even if it gets you caught. There are some big buildings with actual complex structure and design, but
these aren’t as enjoyable as the actual levels of the previous games. These large buildings are also very far apart from each other most of the time. I think an open-world stealth game can work, but The Phantom Pain doesn’t really use it’s open world well. It’s two “levels” are just empty wastelands with few points of interest. It’s boring to traverse, and the missions that have you chasing around vehicles are usually very obnoxious because of how large and empty the level is.
Despite this problem with the world, the minute to minute stealth action is really great. Like I said before, mechanically this is probably the best in the series, and while I do prefer the linear format, I think the open ended missions are an interesting and refreshing change. You can be very creative with how you approach the objectives because of how many weapons and gadgets you can acquire. Finding combinations of load-outs and messing with enemy soldiers is really fun. A mechanic I’m not very fond of is “reflex mode”, I get why it was added, however it holds your hand way too much. Getting spotted and going into “reflex mode” is honestly an easier way to get past enemies in certain scenarios, so why wouldn’t you just get spotted on purpose and use the “reflex mode” to headshot the guards? This mechanic being turned off in the remixed missions is one of the reasons I think those missions are the best in the game in terms of pure gameplay.
The boss battles are really underwhelming. The Skulls are not very good, the male ones are damage sponges with glorified quick time events. The female Skulls are a lot more fun to fight, it’s a sniper battle in a jungle, which gives both sides a chance to hide or take vantage points. Quiet is also a sniper battle, but she is way worse. Her fight in theory should be good, she functions basically the same as the Female Skulls’ so what’s the problem? The boss arena is too big, and empty, she’s also way too easy to spot. That makes this fight pretty boring. Sahelanthropus is an amazing spectacle, and it’s the only boss with a more traditional health bar, but it’s gameplay is mainly just strafing and shooting. Metal Gear is known for multiple things, one of those being it’s legendary boss battles, and that’s an aspect this game is lacking in severely.
The cast of this game I think is pretty weak, Snake and Kaz are really the only interesting characters. The character that was done dirty the most is definitely Ocelot. He’s so crazy and entertaining in literally every other Metal Gear game, yet here he’s so normal… so boring. It feels like he’s lost his personality. He’s also so under-utilized, the game never expands on how he and Big Boss become friends. He is one of the most important characters to the over-arching story of Metal Gear, yet he does essentially nothing in this game. I don’t even need to talk about Quiet, she is mainly used for sex appeal and her role in the story is minimal. Huey is whatever, his involvement in the story is actually kind of interesting, however gets too little screen-time. Kaz is definitely my favorite character from this game, his determination and excitement is really fun to watch. I think he’s also the character that voices most players’ opinions. He speaks what most players are thinking during conflicts or indecisiveness. His motivations are pretty simple, but he’s a very likable character. Kaz also has my favorite voice acting in this game, Robin Atkin Downes does a really great job here.
The story is… really messy. I don’t want to say it’s bad, because I think there’s a lot of really good stuff here. The premise of expanding on what turned Big Boss into a villain honestly wasn’t really needed after Snake Eater’s ending, but I think following his downfall more closely is really interesting. The David Bowie song in the hospital room is a really cool hint at a major plot point. The subtle usage of media from the 80s to symbolize some of the characters is really well done. The presentation is really good, I like that all the cutscenes are a long take. The voice acting is great as usual with MGS. However, I think there are a lot of flaws. The pacing is awful. In Chapter 1, it feels like you are barely progressing the overall story a lot of the time. You do a bunch of missions, Kaz tells you they’re important to progress the story, but they never feel like it. The Phantom Pain suffers from having a weak cast of villains. Skull Face isn’t all that memorable, his plan is kinda cool at face value, but the more you think about it, the less sense it makes. There’s also a bunch of characters from later Metal Gear games that have no reason to be there, their inclusion feels like it’s there purely for fan-service. Chapter 2’s pacing is even worse, you play a bunch of remixed missions (which play the cutscenes from the original mission again), and then things just sort of happen at your Mother Base. The Chapter 2 pacing is even worse because the game just randomly drops a huge plot twist on you, out of blue. It just… happens, no build up. This game doesn’t even have a final boss. Every Metal Gear game has a LEGENDARY final boss, yet here you just get a huge plot twist after re-playing some missions and the game ends. It’s so anti-climactic. There are obviously cool moments here, but I think it says a lot about the game’s story that these moments are often not even brought up when people talk about the best scenes in the series. One of the things I really think this game’s main story should’ve done is expand on the twist of MGS4. Instead, any sort of explanation about the villain MGS4 established is left in optional audio tapes. The audio tapes do re-contextualize some of MGS4’s moments to make them be more sensical, but I wish we could have seen these audio tapes be animated with a cutscene and be placed in the main story instead. The overall story of this game just feels so disconnected, it feels like a sequence of events instead of an actual story.
Although I have a ton of problems with this game, (some I didn’t even have time to elaborate on like how the world-building is wack because of how technologically advanced everything in this game is, despite it taking place before MGS1, 2, and 4), I still enjoy this game. I think the stealth action is amazing, it’s ambitious, and has a ton of depth. I find this game to be a bit of a sad case, its a good game, but it could’ve been so much more. I really do think The Phantom Pain had the potential to be the BEST Metal Gear game, but a troubled development held it back.