Even though this Game is made by Kojima himself, its not as good as you think, yet it remains gloriously bad-ass.
The Metal Gear franchise is the brain child of the now legendary Hideo Kojima, and Metal Gear Solid V, The Phantom Pain was the last ever ''real'' Metal Gear game we will ever see. Even though the franchise was essentially created by Kojima, Konami, who turned Corporate around 2014, complete with corporate dicks who can't wipe there own arses, still hold all the rights to the franchise, even after Kojima and Konami went there separate ways. Without Kojima at the helm, there will never be another true metal Gear game ever again.
Narrative.
- As with any game that has Kojima productions involved, the story can get somewhat complicated, and indeed, with this game, it goes beyond complicated.
The Narrative can be broken down into 2 main sections, with Ground Zeroes, the precursor to the main story, and the Phantom Pain, the main story. Ground Zeroes was an overly large and elaborate playable Demo that was intended to not only show of the 'Fox Engine', but to give you the background behind the Phantom Pain. And Ground Zeroes needs to have its own separate review, as even though it is only one medium sized map, and a small handful of missions, the narrative itself is very interesting in how it ties into the Phantom Pain.
You start of the game waking up in a hospital bed in Cyprus, where you find you have been in a 9 year coma after surviving the events in Ground Zeroes. Your left arm is missing and you have shrapnel embedded in your forehead. An assassin, who you later find out goes by the name of, Quiet, tries to kill you but failed after a friend, concerned with your safety helps you. When trying to escape the hospital that is now flooded with enemies who are there to make sure no one survives, you run into a small boy with red hair, wearing a gas mask and who seems to be able to float. Those of you who know the franchise well, will recognise this boy as a young Psycho Mantis. This revelation is the first of many keys to let you know that this game is based before the events of the first Metal Gear Solid game. And then you are confronted with, who is only known as, the Man on Fire. And in typical Kojima style, the introduction of these characters and the cut scenes throughout the prologue are very cinematic and over the top, which is what we love.
After you escape the hospital, you are sent into Afghanistan, in order to rescue Miller, who you may recognise from the first game as the Foxhound survival specialist. Once rescued, he becomes the sub-commander for Diamond Dogs, based at your new base of Outer Heaven, which is located somewhere of the coast of south Africa.
There are two main antagonists in this game, one being, Skull Face, and the other being a young boy, who you initially know as, The White Mamba, but is later known as Eli, who is an exact clone of Big Boss, and is also the young version of non other than, Liquid Snake in the 1998 game, Metal Gear Solid.
In the first half of the game, with the help of a young Psycho Mantis, Skull face creates a parasite that will kill you if you speak a specific language. All because he lost his own ethnic language and speaks English much better, this is an attempt to prevent another ethnic group being destroyed by English speaking groups via globalization, unification and to prevent a one world order. Along with a character by the name of, Emmerich, they created what they call the Sahelanthropus, AKA Metal Gear, which was a bipedal nuclear armed tank that was basically a mobile nuclear launch platform. After several meetings, and a boss fight to end all boss fights, Skull face is killed and the Metal Gear is taken back to Outer Heaven.
In the second half of the game, you remove Eli from a position of power in south Africa as he was building a child army. You have several dealings with him, including a sort of boss fight in Outer Heaven, but it is more of a nuisance than anything. Psycho Mantis then helps Eli, to take possession of the Metal Gear, taking with him the young child solders Big Boss rescued, and you have no further dealings with him.
Unfortunately, the narrative ends very abruptly, with many of the missions in the second half of the game being repeated missions with an enhanced difficulty level. There is a secret mission 51 that is a slide show of concept art/story board slides showing you how the game was supposed to end with a showdown with Eli, but that is it.
There are several characters that are massively underused in this game, one of which being Big Boss himself. Kiefer Sutherland, who replaced David Hayter as the voice for snake in this game had very little to say. With only small one liners here and there... a far cry from the massive scripts that Hayter performed in the previous games. Skull face was another character that was massively underused, and died very pointlessly in the game. If you remember the boss fights in all the previous games, each one had a skill that snake had to overcome. In this game, he had to overcome nothing, as Skull Face was incapacitated in an accident and shot in the face by Emmerich, despite the fact he was already dying from his injuries. Sure the Metal Gear fight was awesome, but is was Mantis that was controlling it, not Skull Face. All he had going for him was his reputation for being very scarred. And finally, Eli was again, another underused character. This is more down to Konami releasing the game before it was finished, despite Kojima's protests.
Don't get me wrong, even despite the underused characters in this game, the story, as you are playing the game, is very gripping to be a part of.
Image Source/Credit - @TechMojo's Live Stream.
Visuals.
- This has to be one of the best looking and well optimised games in recent history. That is all thanks to the custom built Fox Engine that was designed by Kojima Productions. A lot of detail has gone into every aspect of the game. The textures and models on the characters are flawless, though for the most part, the animations of those characters are good and fluid, Snake on the other hand walks like he is constipated or he still has a dildo stuck in his arse. The map, even though it covers a wide area with much of it being wide open spaces, is still full of content. The sand in the desert areas has some awesome textures. The dense forests in the jungle areas can remove all sense of direction and a location where you can easily get lost, despite every part being very unique looking. Even the animals that you will encounter along your travels, all have some impressive, and very realistic looking models and textures.
The map as a whole in both Afghanistan and South Africa are beautifully designed with something new and different to see around each corner. With you spending most of your time in these areas, it is easy to see why there is so much detail put into these 2 main maps.
Outer heaven on the other hand is a little more bland. Yeah sure, it still looks awesome, but when compared to the 2 main maps and all the models and textures used there... this place is more bland with a lot more 'mix rinse repeat' mentality, with many of the same assets reused throughout the base. There are of course some subtle differences that you will pick up on as you increase the size of your base, but there is something that just doesn't ''pop'' like other areas of the game. One of the biggest flaws in this section of the game is the sea. It looks stunning when you only have a small section of it in view and you are up close... say looking down of the edge of a platform, but as soon as you look up, you can see the repetitive nature of the water texture and models that make it look like a sim game from the PS2 era of gaming. And I think this is something that couldn't be avoided since the base is based in the middle of an ocean.
If you are like me, you may play the game as stealthy as possible, not being hit, if at all by enemy fire. But if you do get hit, the blood build up on your character is very consistent with how much you were hit and where. Something that is not often seen in games. It is only a small detail, but it speaks volumes to how meticulous Kojima's work is.
Another visual aspect, that not a lot of people pick up on is the shrapnel in Big Bosses head. Depending on how you play the game, will ultimately be reflected in this tiny bit of character detail. If you are stealthy and only use non lethal weaponry, without killing anyone, then you may notice the shrapnel will shrink. But if you do use deadly force, killing anyone you come into contact with, then the shrapnel will grow. Its almost an ''Angel'' and ''Devil'' aspect that lets you, and others know what your play style is typically. The more you kill, the bigger your ''Devil horn'' will become, and vice versa. Its unusual, but then again, it is Kojima all over with his very subtle details he likes to throw into his games.
Visually, the game is stunning, and I would prefer to have seen what it would have been like, if Konami gave Kojima the budget and time he sorely needed to finish this game.
Image Source/Credit - @TechMojo's Live Stream.
Gameplay.
- As much as I am a fan of Kojima's cinematic style he likes to include in his games, I am however, not a fan of how each mission is treated as an individual episode, with full introductions and end credits. Sometimes for generic NPC's... and then the inclusion of the helicopter ride at the start of each mission, which you can not skip... it seems overly pointless, and gets old, very quickly. But it is not just the main missions that suffers from this, it is all the side missions too. Fortunately with the side missions, once you complete your objective, you can simply pause the game and return to the ACC... main missions on the other hand, you have to suffer. It is one of the biggest flaws in this game, and something that did not need to be put in there. We already had an extensive prologue that introduced us to most of the characters in the game, along with intro credits. On the other hand, I can see where Kojima was going with it, and how it would have impacted the game. Treating it as though it was an interwoven show, with one episode leading into another like Battlestar Galactica or Game of Thrones. Unfortunately, in this case, it has not worked and it hinders the overall experience, not enhance it.
When you are finally in game, it is entirely up to you how you play it. Despite the ''stealth action espionage'' nature of the franchise as a whole, you got to choose if that is how you want to play. So you could be stealthy and use tranquillizers on everyone, you could also be stealth, but kill anyone who gets in your way, you could be stealth again, and just use explosives, you could go in with a rocket launcher in one hand an an assault rifle in the other wearing full body armour. Hell you could use a tank if you wanted to. It truly is a sandbox for you to explore and play how you want. And when you compare it to the sort of linear gameplay of older titles, this is way more refreshing, and it serves the game well by allowing it to cater to the play styles of the individuals.
But the more you play, the more the game learns from you. If you tend to get nothing but head shots, then the NPC's will start wearing helmets. If you get them in the face, they will start wearing visored helmets. Same applies to every other part of the body. If you only ever choose to play the game during the evenings/night, the NPC's will start wearing night vision goggles in order to spot you more easily. And it is not just limited to the NPC's, I said the game learns.... So if you play the same mission the same way a couple of times, you will find that certain areas will now have hidden land mines to help prevent you from going a certain direction. Likewise, petrols will change frequency and some NPC's will even change there route, making it more unpredictable, while simultaneously, making it more difficult for you to complete your mission. Its like Kojima took the progressive difficulty from the 80's games to a whole new, and more intuitive level. It not only makes the game more challenging to play, but makes the replay ability much better.
The resource collecting is also something that was introduced in this game, combined with base building. You can Fulton enemies back to your base where they can become a part of your private army. This not only has the advantage of being able to research and develop better and more powerful weaponry and items, but you can also send those same solders on there own missions to help towards the in game cash you can earn, resource collecting and recruitment.
Konami did, of course, push the weight around and forced in micro transactions, they are limited to forward operating bases, that allow you to send more teams to collect resources, complete missions and recruit, but you do not need it in order to play the main game. It is just another aspect of the game that Konami destroyed in there vain effort of producing some cash.
Image Source/Credit - @TechMojo's Live Stream.
Conclusion.
- Konami essentially ruined what could have been the best Metal Gear game of all time. Because of a reduced budget and tighter/unrealistic deadlines, a lot of corners were cut in the making of this game. We only ever got to 50 missions out of a possible 100 if Kojima was allowed to finish the game, and only 30-35 of those missions were unique, with the rest being repeated with enhanced difficulty.
The game could have turned out so much better, imagine those underused characters having a more prominent role to play, better boss battles and a more complete narrative. Instead, the story was not completed, the game was supposed to answer a lot of questions about the franchise as well as tie up some loose ends, instead it left us asking even more questions that will never get answered.
Graphically, the game 3 years later, is still considered to be one of the better looking games in recent years. The story was immersive but ultimately unfinished along side many other aspects of the game..... the game was published incomplete, and it will never be completed thanks to those corporate dicks that need the cash to pay for dick enlargements.
No one knows for sure the exact details of Kojima's departure from Konami, but we know this game was at the heart of those confrontations, mainly budget and time... hell, Konami legally stopped Kojima from receiving his own award at a show. That just shows you how much of a dick Konami has become.
It is a crying shame that fans, like me, of the franchise, will never get to see this game completed or another game that will hold the Metal Gear name, with Kojima at the helm. (Metal Gear trying to Survive doesn't count). Well, if Kojima's new project works out well for him, which it undoubtedly will, he could maybe buy back the franchise and give us a game we the fans, need and deserve.
Image Source/Credit - @TechMojo's Live Stream.
7.5/10
- The game is severely flawed in some areas and performs better than expected in others. It is a game that you need to adapt to, but is ultimately enjoyable to play.
What is the Best Metal Gear game you have ever played?
Let us know in the comments below.
Thanks for reading.
Stu @TechMojo
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