In Ground Zeroes, we see what MGSV could have been at it's best. Big Boss (or Naked Snake (or John)) infiltrates the Guantanamo Bay inspired 'Camp Omega', a black site for unlawful CIA operations. His objective is to extract Chico and Paz, two of his child-soldier that now pose a liability to his operations. Camp Omega has brilliant, rich level design, making it a truly rewarding experience to master it's ways. It's a far, far cry from anything but three or four places in The Phantom Pain. And that's something I'll never understand why. Why do we spend so much time riding around in the deserts of Afghanistan or in the african savanna between tiny, uninspired enemy outposts!? WHY?!?!?!!?

I don't think it's unfair to say that big open world level design, as those featured in MGSV, was never one of Kojima's strenghts. The evolution of MGS's level design from the first to the third installment shows that, while Kojima was excellent at making very tight and dense spaces, he also had an interest for the idea of making spaces that could be bigger and still dense with possibilites of player expression. It is in my opinion that one of the biggest strenghts of MGS3 is the open nature of it's level design: it hits the spot just right between linear and the non-linear. From eating snakes to feeding poisonous anfibians to enemies, the absurd amount of player expression contained in MGS3 is a great deal more effective than TPP's shallow grandiosity. Ground Zeroes gave us a next-gen taste of that, it's just plain fun to mess with all the hidden secrets Camp Omega has in storage. Also, great story. This game saw some controversy for it's allusion to rape, but I personally think it was very well-handled. At least compared to fucking Quiet.

ENGLISH [Traducción al Español mas abajo]
At this point, it's basically a demo of what you can expect from "The Phantom Pain" as far as gameplay goes, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have some fun... It still bothers me that you have to buy this prologue separately tho.
MAYBE!. just maybe, it would be worth it if you find it with the lowest price on sale.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
ESPAÑOL
En este punto, es básicamente una demostración de lo que puedes esperar de "el dolor fantasma" en lo que a jugabilidad se refiere, pero mentiría si digo que no me divertí aunque sea un poco... todavía me molesta que tienes que comprar este prólogo por separado.
TAL VEZ!. solo tal vez, valdría la pena si lo encuentras con el precio más bajo en oferta

Okay so I've never played a Metal Gear game before, and I suck at stealth games to the point where I generally just avoid them. The definitve edition version of MGSV was on sale for about £3 so I just kinda bought it and hoped I wouldn't hate it. Anyway, this is literally just a prologue which is basically what I assume would be the length of a mission (assuming the game is mission based) in the main game, and it's given me a general idea of whether I'll actually be able to enjoy the main game. I enjoyed this for what it is, but there's really not much here. I do feel like anyone who bought this at the price it was released at was kind of ripped off, but I imagine someone that likes the series enough to buy this on release was probably able to get more out of it than a non fan like me that just did a super basic playthrough.