one of the goats
knotty, novelistic, sprawling and more than a little exhausting in its sometimes repetitive and always bordering on non-linear structure...if i could give a score to the first like 30ish missions i would probably give this another 5/5, but i have to admit the extremely long time it took me to finish is to the game's detriment, and that's 50% life events but 50% a near-constant gamer fatigue!!
it's all actually encapsulated nicely in the first and final mission; almost exact mirrors with minor differences and of course a new perspective the second go round...the issue is that this novelty applies to the cutscenes and not so much to going up against all the same obstacles...it felt tedious in a way that's surely intended but comes off flat-out unenjoyable rather than reflective or even meditative, as Death Stranding would achieve across my entire playtime
i think a lot of that comes down to the incongruity between incentives and aesthetics; we feel compelled to keep the story moving in the same sense as the prior games, complete the missions and move forward, and yet the open world formatting invites us to linger, challenge ourselves, breath in the environment...but when one does that you start to notice how quickly the novelty of these environments, these copy/paste setups...it lacks that Death Stranding mirage, the way it feels like you're lingering as you're still pushing things forward, that clear distinction between what's optional and what's core to the experience
as much as i want to engage with this directly as is, i can't help but see in its feverish ambition yet numerous failures to reconcile incentive and aesthetic nothing more than a really pretty dry-run for Death Stranding...it makes me appreciate that even more for what it manages to do without ever showing its hand, the tightrope it manages to walk between linearity and open-world sandbox
i don't think MGSV pulls that off anywhere near as well, in fact, i think it could have been better served by a less is more approach, sharing the same density of storytelling as an MGS4 but with its evolved, silky smooth gameplay...it's not that the decision to scatter narrative to the wind bothers me so much as the incongruity between form and function
still, i have been and will be chewing on it for a long time to come...and i do not regret even a second of the year+ i've spent finishing out the Metal Gear series///i feel like it was a great way to clearly understand the strengths and weaknesses of this medium i'm still only sorta familiar with, and i look forward to comparing every single subsequent game i play to its exemplary invention, it certainly casts a wide fucking shadow...the series already takes up more room in my daily thoughts than maybe any body of work period!!
it's all actually encapsulated nicely in the first and final mission; almost exact mirrors with minor differences and of course a new perspective the second go round...the issue is that this novelty applies to the cutscenes and not so much to going up against all the same obstacles...it felt tedious in a way that's surely intended but comes off flat-out unenjoyable rather than reflective or even meditative, as Death Stranding would achieve across my entire playtime
i think a lot of that comes down to the incongruity between incentives and aesthetics; we feel compelled to keep the story moving in the same sense as the prior games, complete the missions and move forward, and yet the open world formatting invites us to linger, challenge ourselves, breath in the environment...but when one does that you start to notice how quickly the novelty of these environments, these copy/paste setups...it lacks that Death Stranding mirage, the way it feels like you're lingering as you're still pushing things forward, that clear distinction between what's optional and what's core to the experience
as much as i want to engage with this directly as is, i can't help but see in its feverish ambition yet numerous failures to reconcile incentive and aesthetic nothing more than a really pretty dry-run for Death Stranding...it makes me appreciate that even more for what it manages to do without ever showing its hand, the tightrope it manages to walk between linearity and open-world sandbox
i don't think MGSV pulls that off anywhere near as well, in fact, i think it could have been better served by a less is more approach, sharing the same density of storytelling as an MGS4 but with its evolved, silky smooth gameplay...it's not that the decision to scatter narrative to the wind bothers me so much as the incongruity between form and function
still, i have been and will be chewing on it for a long time to come...and i do not regret even a second of the year+ i've spent finishing out the Metal Gear series///i feel like it was a great way to clearly understand the strengths and weaknesses of this medium i'm still only sorta familiar with, and i look forward to comparing every single subsequent game i play to its exemplary invention, it certainly casts a wide fucking shadow...the series already takes up more room in my daily thoughts than maybe any body of work period!!
LOVED the first half, but once that halfway point hit I did start to get a little bored doing similar stuff. As fun as the sandbox style is, it felt like I subconsciously developed an optimal style and did it the most. Still a great game overall.
Some of the best sandbox stealth gameplay I've experienced to this day. Could have been a perfect game with a more complete ending.
The man who sold the world, sold the complete game to the Abyss and that left me with a Phantom Pain.
Since this is just the full version of V its is a more full experience but I really do wish the TPP part of the game took more from GZ in terms of atmosphere and gameplay considering the open world aspect and lack of major indoor military installations made the game feel a bit foreign. Lack of cutscenes also dragged the game down but still a solid mgs title and Ill take this over PW any fucking day.
A beautiful unfinished mess, one of my favorite games of all time. Amazing gameplay and “story.”
Ground Zeroes sets up a lot of narrative and themes that The Phantom Pain gleefully ignores, which makes me dislike them both. The thesis works a lot better in MGS2 than in MGSV. There's so much needless cruelty. Great gameplay, though.
"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."
Probably the most theory heavy game out there and, sure, you could say "Well, fans make up the theories to cope for the incomplete story line!! 🤓" But, we're talking about A Hideo Kojima Game here, they are almost made specifically for the fan theories and heavy speculation, given how complex and cryptic this series and Kojima is as a person, half of the fan theories I wouldn't even be surprised if they were actually real, but I digress.
Why I bring up theories is because I feel like they are what complete the game for me, not Konami or Kojima, but the blank spaces that are hinted towards, even in Ground Zeroes, that really makes you think about not just Venom Snake as a character, but the course of events throughout the whole game. There are so many subtle innuendos through the story that if you blink, you almost miss it, in classic Kojima fashion too. But, yeah, sure, Chapter 3 would have been nice, where did Sahelanthropus go? What happened to Eli? To be fair, at least one of these questions can be answered if you have a history with the franchise and where in fact you know that Eli is literally Liquid Snake, I guess you can really make the rest up and come to your own conclusions? Maybe I'm reaching a bit here in an attempt to defend this game for some of it's flaws, but to me, the missing chapter isn't that huge of a deal when you see what it's about, everything else felt like it was somewhat wrapped up and left up for interpretation, so...
But that's what I loved about this game, interpretation and the aforementioned theories, it just makes the game that much more eerie and interesting. For example, I've seen a lot of complaints towards the game's ending twist, people either felt betrayed or thought it was just shock value, where in both cases I can see where those people are coming from, but personally, I think it's one of Kojima's most ambitious twists, up there with Metal Gear Solid 2, and probably one of the most ambitious twists in gaming and to say that it... comes out of nowhere? I really don't understand that take, did we play the same game? Did we not see The Boss' AI pod literally refer to Venom as not Jack??? Why did Volgin back off??? There are SO many subtle references leading up to the twists that any other fan would kind of question themselves about these strange, unexplained occurances, it's like Kojima is almost feeding you the spoilers before you get to them, hiding in plain sight.
In any case, there is one glaring flaw this game does admittely have... where the fuck are the codec calls? Is half of this game's story really told through casette tapes? You will miss out on a lot of things if you don't listen to them, such as Venom literally being responsible for having a village wiped off the face of the map, that's never even mentioned by the characters outside of those tapes, it leads a lot of room for exposition that was needed tremendously, because otherwise, most people wouldn't even understand what the fuck is going on. And, look, I get the reasoning for removing codecs, it does sort of interrupt the flow of gameplay in the older games and to be fair, this game itself has a lot of content already, the story is pretty long, just imagine how much longer it would have been with all those codecs and extended plot exposition? But, it still would have been nice to have a few of the very, very important ones and honestly I see their exclusion more of a "we don't have the budget for this" than "think of the gameplay", very much one of the aspects I agree is incomplete due to either time constraints or Kojima blowing the game's budget on other things.
Gameplay wise, though, this is probably the best in the series. Perfecty blending stealth with action, there is no correct way to go about things (unless absolutely required), you can tackle your objectives with different approaches. Take the classic Metal Gear route or take Venom Snake to his full potential and put that rocket or stun bionic arm to work and fuck their shit up. FOX Engine really was a godsend and it is a shame how hard it is to work with and even moreso that it had to be abandoned, but all these years later, it's aged so well and I'm intrigued to see what they come up with next for the MGS3 Delta remake.
A pretty choppy review, but a revised one in retrospect to how I feel about the game now having played the whole series months later, a new found appreciation for this game and what it's trying to do that just makes it much better.
Probably the most theory heavy game out there and, sure, you could say "Well, fans make up the theories to cope for the incomplete story line!! 🤓" But, we're talking about A Hideo Kojima Game here, they are almost made specifically for the fan theories and heavy speculation, given how complex and cryptic this series and Kojima is as a person, half of the fan theories I wouldn't even be surprised if they were actually real, but I digress.
Why I bring up theories is because I feel like they are what complete the game for me, not Konami or Kojima, but the blank spaces that are hinted towards, even in Ground Zeroes, that really makes you think about not just Venom Snake as a character, but the course of events throughout the whole game. There are so many subtle innuendos through the story that if you blink, you almost miss it, in classic Kojima fashion too. But, yeah, sure, Chapter 3 would have been nice, where did Sahelanthropus go? What happened to Eli? To be fair, at least one of these questions can be answered if you have a history with the franchise and where in fact you know that Eli is literally Liquid Snake, I guess you can really make the rest up and come to your own conclusions? Maybe I'm reaching a bit here in an attempt to defend this game for some of it's flaws, but to me, the missing chapter isn't that huge of a deal when you see what it's about, everything else felt like it was somewhat wrapped up and left up for interpretation, so...
But that's what I loved about this game, interpretation and the aforementioned theories, it just makes the game that much more eerie and interesting. For example, I've seen a lot of complaints towards the game's ending twist, people either felt betrayed or thought it was just shock value, where in both cases I can see where those people are coming from, but personally, I think it's one of Kojima's most ambitious twists, up there with Metal Gear Solid 2, and probably one of the most ambitious twists in gaming and to say that it... comes out of nowhere? I really don't understand that take, did we play the same game? Did we not see The Boss' AI pod literally refer to Venom as not Jack??? Why did Volgin back off??? There are SO many subtle references leading up to the twists that any other fan would kind of question themselves about these strange, unexplained occurances, it's like Kojima is almost feeding you the spoilers before you get to them, hiding in plain sight.
In any case, there is one glaring flaw this game does admittely have... where the fuck are the codec calls? Is half of this game's story really told through casette tapes? You will miss out on a lot of things if you don't listen to them, such as Venom literally being responsible for having a village wiped off the face of the map, that's never even mentioned by the characters outside of those tapes, it leads a lot of room for exposition that was needed tremendously, because otherwise, most people wouldn't even understand what the fuck is going on. And, look, I get the reasoning for removing codecs, it does sort of interrupt the flow of gameplay in the older games and to be fair, this game itself has a lot of content already, the story is pretty long, just imagine how much longer it would have been with all those codecs and extended plot exposition? But, it still would have been nice to have a few of the very, very important ones and honestly I see their exclusion more of a "we don't have the budget for this" than "think of the gameplay", very much one of the aspects I agree is incomplete due to either time constraints or Kojima blowing the game's budget on other things.
Gameplay wise, though, this is probably the best in the series. Perfecty blending stealth with action, there is no correct way to go about things (unless absolutely required), you can tackle your objectives with different approaches. Take the classic Metal Gear route or take Venom Snake to his full potential and put that rocket or stun bionic arm to work and fuck their shit up. FOX Engine really was a godsend and it is a shame how hard it is to work with and even moreso that it had to be abandoned, but all these years later, it's aged so well and I'm intrigued to see what they come up with next for the MGS3 Delta remake.
A pretty choppy review, but a revised one in retrospect to how I feel about the game now having played the whole series months later, a new found appreciation for this game and what it's trying to do that just makes it much better.
A inconclusão perfeita
Um dos jogos da minha vida e o primeiro que fiz questão de platinar de tão bom que é, isso pq é incompleto, se esse jogo fosse completo, puta merda kkkkkk... não platinei o Ground Zeroes(ainda)