A true one of a kind experience unlike anything else in the genre

The Phantom Pain is all the greatness of Ground Zeroes, but with an excess of obnoxious padding. When it lets you actually play, it is a true joy to play. However, it constantly wants to interrupt that joy with long, uneventful helicopter rides, constant visits to a shallow, uninteresting base, and endlessly scrolling through menus to micromanage things that are so trivial that it should have just been automatic.

Ground Zeroes stands as a testament to the level of quality a game can achieve when it sacrifices length in favor of polish.