Jesus Christ, I don't think I have ever felt so stone cold after playing this game. I wanted to jump into this game thinking that Konami could not have done me so wrong.

Going into this game blind was like going into the gas room in MGS1 without the 02 Mask.

I was eager to see how magnificent this entry could have been since it's the very last game before Kojima was booted out of Konami for good, and I would have assumed he would go out with an absolute bang. I adore the Metal Gear series. Pretty much every game from Solid 1-4 are within my top 15 favorite games of all time. But to see The Phantom Pain as a complete letdown is just depressing.

When Ground Zeroes came out I had some concern in regards to the direction the franchise was being taken in. And to be honest I thought that this game was completely unnecessary considering how masterfully Metal Gear Solid 4 concluded the saga. But regardless I got really damn hyped from all the trailers of The Phantom Pain.

I was like Come on, this is Metal Gear Solid 5, it's gonna be fucking amazing!! I don't understand what exactly is going on, but it looks really damn exciting. And oh my god Kaz Miller and Ocelot are here, THAT'S MY DAD RIGHT THERE!

And the games media hyped the game up as well with 10/10 Masterpiece reviews and whatnot. But upon playing this game, it wasn't just a disappointment... it was worse. Oh Sweet goggly Jesus on a tricycle it's a lot worse.

This review is going to contain spoilers for Metal Gear Solid 1, 3, and 4. Read this at your own discretion. But this is necessary so I can expose just how atrocious the narrative is in MGS5.

{ Story }

You know, even though MGS4 ended everything so well, something about it just made me crave more. Whether a continued adventure of Big Boss was worth telling even though it was rounded out so well in Snake Eater was up to debate.

But what we did end up getting is just a stale, laborious, underwhelming, and flat-out balls to the wall frustrating experience. And that's not even the worst of it.

The game is unfinished, terribly paced, and the most creatively bankrupt entry the series has ever seen, well, at least until Metal Gear Survive came out, but uhhh, heh heh heh.... Oh man. What the fuck even is Metal Gear Survive?? Lmao

MGS5 just feels pointless because anyone who has played the previous games will already have known the fates of all the characters. MGS3 was a great prequel in the sense that it told a story that we couldn't infer already. Back then before Snake Eater we didn't understand how Big Boss became the villain he was in the first two Metal Gear Solid games or much about him at all. But seeing that story play out was intriguing.

Then MGS3 comes along and perfectly tied itself in with MGS1 with the creation of FOX-HOUND and leaving on an excellent note. The government made this guy fuckin' kill his mentor/best friend, so you can see how he would become the dodgy bastard he was later on. And then the credits music would kick in and you're just like "holy shit, that was amazing."

There was no need to have a bunch of sequels that would amount to just giving us meaningless information. Seriously, I just don't understand what the point of Peace Walker, Ground Zeroes, and the Phantom Pain are.

Well, does The Phantom Pain tell a good story? Well, to justify the game's existence, there are a lot, and I mean a lot of retcons in here, but even then, the things that they could have done to make the game worthwhile and a worthy successor to MGS3 and 4 is far overshadowed by a story dedicated to a lame ass skullface villain and Kojima's new sniper bikini waifu.

The one big thing that would have been amazing was some more development given to Zero and giving some more explanation as to him being the main bad guy of the whole series. Because that major twist just came out of the blue and it was a pretty hard pill to swallow. But no, that shit isn't expanded upon in The Phantom Pain.

How about the relationship between Big Boss and Liquid? That would have been pretty sick as well. But no, not much really happens in this game. Hell, it doesn't even elaborate on Big Boss's villany, and there actually is a reason for that. I mean, the game didn't really have to after Snake Eater's ending, but they might as well have made him a pretty big asshole after the shit that happened to him, making his later actions justifiable.

Now lemme talk about Cipher. Jesus what a disappoinment of an antagonist this guy is. They hype this guy up in all the trailers for years until release but then he turns out to be one of the biggest jokers the franchise has ever seen.

Basically he creates some virus that can wipe out all the people he pleases and then he builds a Metal Gear and accidentally fucking kills himself with it. Whoops!! You see, he needed that Metal Gear because it was like very 2 Spooky 4 Me and the whole planet was gonna lose their collective shit. Also he hates Zero for some reason, that's never explained. Whatever I guess.

Remember that one trailer where Snake is walking down this hellish corridor and he is surrounded by dead bodies and you had that amazing music playing in the background? I thought no doubt that would have some insane impact on the characters and the story. But, no. It's just some self-contained mission where you walk around and slaughter terminally ill people... Good God.

Or how about Zero? I couldn't wait to see him in this game as an antagonist. He sounded really awesome in the trailers.

...

Wait, what's that? He's not in the game? He is just in some cassette tapes?

..Oh. Okay then.

Oh yeah, I mentioned Liquid was in this game. I wonder what kind of amazing scenes we are gonna get with him. Well first off, he is barely ever given any screen time because the cutscenes are so short and are spread so far and in-between, and at the end of the game he just.. leaves Mother Base. And the final mission was cut from the game so... there goes that plotline. So much for being able to see Liquid use that Metal Gear he hopped into.

And the whole Huey arc is just insanely predictable. We already know he has to be alive for the other games so of course he is going to be shipped off.

What about Quiet the sniper lady? Man, what a deep character she was... She says almost nothing for the entirety of the game so I don't really get how I'm supposed to connect to her. All I know is that she wanted vengeance for the condition that she was given but really, it's just.. dumb as hell. Apparently she has to wear less clothing so that she can breathe because she got some virus and was nearly drowned by some Russian soldiers. Hmm...

But then that plotline gets dropped in favor of her wanting that Big Boss dick.

But the one moment in the whole game that pissed me off so much to no end and made me absolutely despise the narrative of this game, was the sudden twist with Big Boss himself.

See, it turns out that Big Boss is not actually Big Boss. The real Big Boss disappeared randomly after the prologue of the game. So you're telling me this mute asshole that I have been playing as throughout this 40-50 hour game was never actually Big Boss, but just some random guy who is using the name of Big Boss?

Whaaaaaa??

This shit just comes out of absolutely nowhere and I am expected to just accept it. Wouldn't that mean that this game doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things because it doesn't affect anything that happens later on in the timeline?

What was the point of playing it then?!!

Agh, I'm gonna have a stroke. It's like a bad fever dream. I hate this story. Fuck this story. This game has the worst methods of presenting its narrative in the whole series. It needs to die. It's like the game is actively trying to waste the player's time. I don't think I have seen such disregard towards the established universe. It's like the people who wrote the narrative for this game have never actually played the other games or even know what Metal Gear is.

There are no Codec conversations, the cutscenes are spread far and in-between hours upon hours of gameplay, and the cutscenes are a small fraction in length compared to the older games, so the narrative just breadcrumbs you the whole time. It's just not like what we got before.

Story is almost everything in Metal Gear, but when you botched the story and the lore, you have essentially botched the whole game and have made it very, very difficult for the player to get engaged, regardless of how good the gameplay is. Too bad the gameplay in this game is also shit.

And I don't give a fuck about the cassette tapes. Defenders of this story try to say that you have to listen to the cassette tapes in order to get more context, but, I'm sorry??

Why are important story elements being hidden behind cassette tapes? You don't fucking put important story details inside of items that are meant to be OPTIONAL. And what if you're missing cassette tapes? What, I gotta look up guides on the internet just so I can obtain items containing story information, instead of it being provided in the game itself, like, I don't know...

Cutscenes? Codec conversations?

This is seriously some of the dumbest shit I have ever heard of.

{ Gameplay }

The gameplay in this game suffers from what I like to call Mafia 3 Syndrome. Because the minute to minute gameplay moments in this game are just repetitive busywork. It's like playing Death Stranding but in the Metal Gear universe.

Everything in this game just feels laborious, which sucks because what you gotta give credit towards Metal Gear as a franchise for is how everything the player participates in affects the story and the world. Level after level, cutscene after cutscene, scenario after scenario, it was never ending how much these games tried to blow your mind.

The missions in Phantom Pain feel like they were just put in for the hell of it. There are around 50 Main Missions in the whole game, but 90% of them don't have anything to do with progressing the story.

Mission 3: Eliminate the Spetsnaz Commander

Mission 4: Identify and destroy the comms equipment at the Eastern Communications Post

Mission 5: Extract the captive engineer

Mission 6: Secure the Honey Bee rocket launcher

Mission 7: Eliminate three commanders at three different locations

Mission 8: Destroy three tanks

Mission 9: Destroy an armored vehicle and multiple gunships

Mission 10: Extract the Mujahideen prisoner

Mission 13: Shut down the oil transfer pump

Mission 15: Destroy Walker Gears

Mission 17: Extract two Intel Team members being held captive

Mission 18: Eliminate a former rebel soldier, eliminate 5 prisoners being held captive held at Kungenga Mine, extract child prisoner

Mission 19: Identify and eliminate the PF commander, the Major

Mission 20: Extract Shabani

Mission 21: Identify and eliminate the CFA Official

Mission 22: Eliminate the enemy commander

Mission 23: EXTRACT THE WHITE MAMB--


Fuuuuuckk meeeeeee!!!


Do you see what I'm getting at here? Does this sound boring to you or what? Because trust me, it will be after a while. And you wanna know what's funny? All 17 of these missions I just listed have NOTHING to do with advancing the plot. It's all just meant to pad out the run time. It's all just filler. Only a few of these missions actually matter in terms of giving the player what they were waiting for.

There are about 50 Missions in this game, not including the Side Ops.

And even then, the cutscenes themselves are either underwhelming, they dump pointless exposition, they're way too short, or the performances are very awkwardly done.

Seriously, why am I doing all of this shit? None of it relates to the narrative. I'm only doing it because Kaz told me to do it I guess. And this can make the more bullshit sections in the game that much more frustrating, and trust me, this game has the most balls to the wall aggravating parts in the whole franchise. Lemme give you a little experience of mine:

Mission 29

Oh ho ho my fucking God, Mission 29.

Mission 29 is basically where you rescue this guy named Code Talker who actually knows the solution to curing the disease that caused a severe epidemic on Mother Base. But then the helicopter gets attacked by these teleporting, bullet sponge enemies called the Skulls and it crashes.

So you have to protect Code Talker while also fighting off the Skulls but there are major problems with this.

The Skulls are absolute fucking bullet sponges, they are almost bulletproof meaning that you will be wasting mags upon mags upon mags of ammo just to kill one of them. A rocket launcher is literally the most effective way to damage them and yet there are times where they teleport in front of me and I ended up blowing myself up and dying like a complete dumbass. So I either use up time and ammo just simply shooting at them or go the more dangerous approach and risk killing myself with a rocket just so I can effectively damage them.

These fuckers are more bullet spongy than a Tom Clancy's The Division 1 boss. They just don't fucking die.

Not to mention shooting at them risks me getting shot as well, and since Snake is more nimble than a flacid penis, I literally have to run and take cover just after taking a few shots. And yet it takes AN ETERNITY for your health to regen, meaning you can get damaged while taking cover trying to recover.

It really does make me miss the days of Metal Gear where we had health bars and Rations. But then The Phantom Pain comes along and goes the Call of Duty route with regenerating health bullshit.

But then I get ass fucked again because taking cover and sitting still risks me getting hit by rocks that rise from the ground underneath me, and if I don't move my ass, the rock will explode, and I'm even a foot too close to it, the explosion will kill me in 1 hit. Not to mention one of the Skulls can throw rocks at me, and another two can teleport in front of me and hit me with a machete which brings me down to near death. So basically, I gotta be moving at all times.

There is so much fucking multi-tasking you have to do, and it just feels like I am ill-equipped to handle what the game is throwing at me despite being almost 30 hours into it. It seems like the developers' idea of challenge is to just spam the player with bulletproof enemies and yet you can barely take any damage yourself.

I spent an hour beforehand just developing new weapons and equipment in case of a section like this, and yet I am still being anally molested from every direction.

I got so aggravated that I had to stop playing. And normally I don't do that when I play games. It's that kind of atrocious design choice that made me stop playing the game in the first place. And after that insane onslaught I just thought to myself

"No wonder I never finished this game."

It's bad enough the game suffers from an insanely underwhelming and disappointing story that just rectons everything before it. And it's further exaserbated by monotonous and utterly irritating gameplay.

Metal Gear has always had hits and misses in the gameplay department, but if a section was getting on the nerves in the older games, you would know that afterwards there would be some insane payoff.

But here in Phantom Pain whenever I was getting really agitated during a mission, all I knew was that after that I would be put back onto a helicopter and Kaz would tell me what everything that I just went through was super "important."

In Metal Gear Solid 4 if I was blowing the fuck out of things for 10-15 minutes it was because Raiden was fighting Vamp and he needed some backup while he activated Metal Gear Rex. There was purpose behind doing what I was doing, not just because some guy told me to do it.

Not to mention I was gitty every 5-10 minutes during MGS4. It was full of absolutely incredible moments, all of my questions and desires being fully addressed. But in MGS5, nothing like that ever happens.

I mean, I was really fucking hyped when I saw Ocelot and Kaz on screen during the introduction but then after that I proceeded to be bored for the next 5+ hours, watching unskippable chopper rides to every mission and doing the same shit over and over and over again for little to no payoff, and watching the same credit sequences over and over again for no fucking reason. And I have to traverse an empty map for 5-10 minutes before I can even start the mission to begin with.

Seriously, why are there credits in every mission?? Something about it feels wrong. I'm pretty sure this is a game Kojima made, I don't need to see his name pop up on the screen every single time a mission starts. I get it, this is a Kojima game. But I doubt he was proud of it. Far from it.
If anything Kojima must have been fuckin' embarrassed of this game.

It also doesn't help that the credits spoil the characters that are going to be in the mission. I don't think I have seen any other game that does this shit.

There are quite a lot of weapons in this game but you are restricted to three at a time. So the nuts on the fly arsenal of MGS4 is gone. And you don't even get anything cool like a doll that possesses enemies. But why have that when you can just run up to someone, hit Right Bumper and instantly knock them out? Or just shoot everyone in the head with a tranquilizer pistol?

But what pisses me off the most is how developing new equipment works. I don't know it 100%, but from what I know, as you expand Mother Base and build expansions, you get more space to hire staff.

There are many different divisions, but the one for developing new weapons and equipment is the R&D Team. It levels up depending on two factors: The number of staff and the rankings of each staff member. Staff can range from E to S++.

As the division levels up, you unlock more stuff to develop. Better guns, upgrades, etc.

And as you develop weapons, you unlock Tiers for that specific weapon. The higher the Tier, the better the gun performs. But you need to develop one Tier before you can develop the next one. But it gets worse.

For every single item you develop, weapons, skins, and every other item in the game, you have to wait on a timer for the item to be developed before you can use it. And the higher Grade the item is, the longer the timer. Those higher Grade items can actually take between 1-4 HOURS to develop.

Are you kidding me?? Is this a Triple A Metal Gear Solid game or a fucking mobile game? Why are there timers in this game?

Not just the weapons, but expanding the Mother Base takes time as well. Remember what I said earlier, you expand the different base facilities in Mother Base so you can hire more staff.

Doing this requires resources. But getting these resources requires you to grind. Either by farming them in the open world or by doing mundane challenges. There are 7 divisions:

Command Platform
Combat Unit Platform
R&D Platform
Base Development Platform
Support Platform
Intel Platform
Medical Platform

Now, imagine having to grind resources to expand every single one of these divisions. Some of these are really fuckin' important. Now, imagine having to wait in between expansions.

There are 4 levels of expansion. And the higher the level, the longer it takes to reach the next one. And it can take upwards of 24 HOURS to finish.

Unless..

There is a catch.

Unless you spend MB Coins to instantly skip the wait. What are MB Coins?

What do you think? They're fucking mictrotransactions. Of course right?

Konami has the fucking audacity to charge players real world money in their single player game in order to make grinding less tedious and time consuming. It's all over their Online mode as well. Many character skins, gun camos, and ACTUAL WEAPONS, they are locked behind paywalls.

Mictrotransactions. In a Metal Gear Solid game.

They played us like a damn fiddle.

You could easily say fuck this game merely because of the fact that there are paywalls in a single player Metal Gear Solid game but bringing up everything else in this review wouldn't be favorable either.

Also, there is no reason to be on Mother Base. There is literally nothing to do on it aside from participating in a shooting range or walking up to your staff and watch them salute at you all the time. It's just an empty base with barely any people on it. Oh, and you can beat the shit out your staff. Which increases their morale... for some reason. Jesus that just sounds masochistic.

You can get companions in this game like a horse, a wolf, and human buddies like Quiet, but it doesn't really change the game much except how easy you want enemies to get killed without your involvement. Or make traversing the empty wasteland less time consuming and tedious.

Since this game is open world you have to traverse an empty map with nothing happening on it for a period of time in between missions, when you're not stuck waiting in a chopper. Yeah! Progress!!

I think that's the most stupefying aspect of this game being open world. Nothing ever happens in it aside from weather changes. This is supposed to be a game where you're taking back Mother Base and fighting a war against Cipher, not to mention the Afghans are at war with the Russians. Where is the conflict?? Why isn't there anyone fighting each other?

Instead you run around a map where it's just you and the open wilderness with no one to meet and talk to. And there aren't any locations that would provide diversity to the gameplay that would justify an open world setting. It comes nowhere near as close as many other open world titles already on the market.

This means that there isn't much incentive to explore the map. Also, you are restricted as to where you can go. If you wanted to travel from one part of the map to the other, you're not able to take any shortcuts.

And there is no Fast Travel. Well kinda. But it's one of the worst implementations of Fast Travel I've ever seen in a video game.

If you want to go somewhere in a hurry, you have to call in the chopper, go to the landing zone, get on the chopper, wait for it to take off, sit in a loading screen, then you pull up the iDroid to select the landing zone you want to go to, then you're put into the preparation screen where you choose your weapons, equipment, buddies, etc. Then you sit in another loading screen, and then when the game loads you still have to wait for the chopper to land so you can get off of it. And after that, you still have to travel to the mission objective.

Wow. Just... Wow. This is just Insanity. All of this bullshit just to FAST TRAVEL? It's not even Fast Travel, it's fuckin' Slow Travel. It's actually faster to just get on your horse or a jeep and ride there.

Not to mention, you have to follow all of the roads, which makes traveling from Point A to B even longer.

You can't get on top of any of the mountains, which means two things: you can't take shortcuts and you can't get any vantage points when approaching an enemy base. Want to go prone on a cliff and take out enemies down below with a sniper rifle?

Well tough shit. You can't do that.

The AI in this game is laughably bad. They have such a small field of vision you can stand in front of an outpost in broad daylight and they won't see you. They also walk on predetermined paths so you can expect them to be in the same spots all the time.

Another thing that breaks the stealth in this game is that when you are spotted, the game goes into slow motion, in which you have a few seconds to take out the enemy before he alerts his comrades. And this means that you can just run and gun everything if you have any suppressed guns. And since you can call as many Supply Drops as you want from your base, you can have an infinite supply of ammo and suppressors.

Even then, the AI are insanely inconsistent. When you're not detected, you can just shoot everyone in the head and clear out outposts with not much effort, but if you do get detected.. you get fucking bombarded.

Seriously, you get spotted by one guy and immediately the entire base, outpost, or whatever are instantly notified of your location. And this begins an absolute onslaught of enemies swarming you and shooting at you from many different angles, whether on foot, in an attack helicopter, on a Walker Gear, etc.

There are literally two states of play: Not detected or getting bombarded from every angle. And remember, you can't take much damage in this game, and health regeneration is slow as fuck. Know what that means? You gotta camp. It's probably the most viable option for surviving gunfights.

Remember how many rockets you could tank in the older Metal Gear games? Well you'd be lucky if you can take more than one in Phantom Pain, regardless of impact.

It also doesn't help that there is no mini-map in this game unlike in the previous games. All you get is some binoculars to ping enemies and an area on the map screen on where the enemy could be. Meaning you will be opening up the map constantly just to see where enemies are located and that's just fun isn't it?

Boss fights are almost completely mitigated in this game. Remember all the legendary iconic boss fights from the older games?

Name any and or every boss off the top of your head from MGS 1-4. Almost all of them are beloved moments in each game in one way or another.

But here we have.. hide from Quiet the sniper lady, ram a human torch Colonel Volgin (who says nothing by the way) into a river, or.. hide and escape from a Metal Gear, or my favorite, teleporting rock fucking bullet sponges in Mission 29.

Are these even boss fights? These feel nothing like the ones we were used to. Since when were basic bitch bullet sponge enemies considered a boss fight, or running away from a Metal Gear?

Seriously, even the BNB from MGS4 are like legends compared to this shit. Remember Laughing Octopus? How she would play all of those tricks on you and then she tries to grab you in that weird skintight outfit making you question what she is?

And then Drebin calls you on the Codec and gives you a fucked up backstory on the person you just killed, giving you added context to the horrors of war and what impact that has led on the world of that game. That shit is on a whole other level compared to the shit in Phantom Pain.

Hell, there isn't even a final boss fight. Yeah, no joke. Think about Metal Gear for a second again.

Every single Metal Gear game had legendary final bosses.

MGS1, Metal Gear Rex and escaping Liquid Snake while shooting at him on a jeep

MGS2, Solidus Snake

MGS3, The Boss

MGS4, Liquid Ocelot

ALL of these guys are legendary. These are all absolutely incredible final bosses, some of the greatest fights in video game history.

But then Phantom Pain just.. ends. And I guess this is due to the cut content from the game. Though from what I have read and seen, the cut content just consists of fighting the same bosses for a second time so welp, that sucks. So much for making up.

In fact, unlocking the last few missions of the game requires playing through older missions you already completed but on Hard difficulty. Seriously?? I mean, I guess I'm not surprised. This game is nothing but padding.

The boss fights here don't feature any of the creativity or enginuity that the boss fights from the previous games had.

And the enemy variety here is completely lacking. There are no cool, interesting enemies like the Gecko from MGS4 or anything like that. It's just a regular guy, a regular guy with armor, a guy driving around in a Walker Gear, a guy in an attack helicopter or a tank, or annoying as fuck bullet sponge enemies that can turn people into zombies. Yeah, zombies, real creative guys.

This game also has a habit with following too many modern video game sins. The first mission of the game is nothing but lying in a bed for 10-15 minutes and then once you finally have control you are crawling on the floor at a snail's pace while tutorials pop on the screen and scripted segments happen in front of you.

And this mission goes on for like an hour.

And whenever you reach a certain moment in the game you are forced to just walk and listen to people talk. I'm used to this in games but here it just feels so unnecessary.

Another thing that you gotta give credit towards MGS is that despite people bemoaning the series for its very ample use of long ass cutscenes, you still had 100% control the second you hit gameplay. And you were not interrupted during gameplay with Codec conversations unless if you really wanted to listen to the dialogue.

The only times you would get Codec conversations in the middle of gameplay is either for tutorials or for major story revelations containing lots of character development.

Not to mention you can choose to ignore the tutorial calls. And the calls that you are forced to pick up you can skip them as well. But I don't see why you would though, I love being in the Codec as much as I could. I love listening to the characters talk, which is further complimented by the masterfully done performances.

Even MGS4, which is a game that gets criticized for its over abundance of cutscenes and narrative, the moment you were in the game, you were in the game. No interruptions or slowdown because of condescending tutorials, forced walking sections, and scripted segments.

This shit in MGS5 leads to one of the most, if not the most awkward moments in all of Metal Gear: The fucking jeep ride.

Yeah, one of the trailers had some amazing music, but then the music is used not during a boss fight or some insane moment in the game, but during a long ass, boring, and very awkward jeep ride.

"Big Boss" just sitting there, quietly, not saying a word, staring dead eye at Cipher as he reveals his master plan and it was one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen in a game. I couldn't help but lose control of my laughter at this. How was this okay? I don't understand it. That music was just gone to waste.

{ Final Thoughts }

Well.. what more can I say? I hate this game. I think that I have made that pretty clear. This game is a disgrace to the lineage of Metal Gear. It just doesn't feel like a Metal Gear game at all. This is one of the most disappointing games I've ever played.

Metal Gear is a very story heavy franchise, and it's fucking awesome, and it's complimented by just as awesome gameplay. But here we have laborious, tedious, and frustrating gameplay complimented by a paper thin plot that is badly told.

And that just isn't what Metal Gear is no matter how you put it. I love Metal Gear. I remember MGS1 being one of the first PS1 games I ever played. I was only like, eight or nine years old when I played it, and I loved the series ever since.

I have a burning passion for this series as these games culminated in me getting exposed to a community where I met a good chunk of my bestest friends because they share the same love for Metal Gear as I do.

I've owned this game since 2017 and to this day I have never finished the game to completion. I must have come back to this like 3 or 4 times, and every time I struggled to get through it.

The game lacks any sort of end goal so I as a player don't have the motivation to care about it.

Metal Gear was one of the few franchises that had not been ruined yet. It was on a massive killstreak but to see it go out on Phantom Pain and Metal Gear Survive considering that MGS4 had such a good climax is just depressing.

I have absolutely no respect towards Konami as they are mainly responsible for the game being the way it is. I feel for Kojima. I could tell that he just didn't want to make this game but he was forced to by Konami because their stocks were plummeting and they needed a new console game, so they just thought "Let's make Kojima make another Metal Gear game."

Even though he wanted the series to end after MGS4. It also doesn't help that Konami cut off the budget at some point during development forcing the team to cut content and release the game early, and from I've read online, the team were under pressure because they were being spied on by Konami.

I also don't find it coincidental that as soon as the game released, Kojima was immediately relieved from the company and was not allowed to attend any award ceremonies. So I can tell in the back of my mind, Konami is to blame for all of this.

Just like with Silent Hill and Castlevania, Metal Gear has only become an afterthought in Konami's minds. Metal Gear is now only a cash grab. Oh, and a series of Pachinko machines (slot machines).

Yeah remember when Konami announced that Snake Eater Pachinko machine? That still makes me sick in the stomach to this day, and.. watching my favorite Tactical Espionage Third Person Action franchise that gave me a fetish for eye patches go down this dark path is just, really sad to me.

Thank you Konami for taking my childhood and not letting it die on a sunrising mountain Red Dead Redemption 2 style, but in a ravaging burning house fire or a nuclear explosion.

At least I still have the older games. To me, Metal Gear ended after MGS4.

Because The Phantom Pain literally gives me phantom pain.

4/10