Is metal gear solid 5 worth picking up?

big fan of metal gear, played and beat 1-4. I originally wasn't too super into number 5 when it was announced, mainly because it was open world and I feared the story would suffer. Fast forward to when the game came out, it got great reviews, however apparently the story was bad. I ended up reading spoilers for the game because I was really worried. I know the big twist in the game already, and it messed with my head a bit but eventually I started to like the idea. I hear the gameplay is fantastic, would the game still be worth getting even though I know the main story twist? I love metal gear gameplay, but the stories always were my favorite of any series ever. Would this game be a good fit for me? It's still like 60 bucks Canadian and I don't want to spend money on something terrible. Thanks for the help!

It's a tough question.

I'm like you. I love the story in the Metal Gear games and it's always been the appeal of the games. As you say, the story in 5 is not great and the story beats are few and far between.

The thing is though, it is a really fun game. It plays incredibly and I can't deny that I had loads of fun with the 70+ hours I had with it.

I wouldn't say it was terrible. I would say I was disappointed in the story, but you know that already.

If you like open world games, it is a fantastic open world game.

If you're solely wanting to play it for the next part in the Metal Gear saga, I would say wait for a sale.

@coffeeaddictedgamer: It's a fantastic game. Maybe it's not the best Metal Gear game, but there are plenty of hooks and callbacks to earn the title and the gameplay more than makes up for it. Of course that last part is something entirely subjective. I'm a huge fan since having played the first game on a PS1 and while I agree the story is the weakest part in this newest release, the amount of hours I dumped into simply having fun doing missions and messing around in the sandbox are undeniable.

You like Metal Gear? You like games that control and play really well? Then yah, you should probably get it.

This was something I was wondering as well. The game seems super neat but after all the post-patch crap Konami pulled, I started to wonder if the game was worth playing anymore. In the end, I've basically resolved to have Metal Gear Scanlon be my window into MGS V but every once in a while I begin to wonder again...

I would say yes. I only came to metal gear from scanlon and what I loved about it was the story. The crazy kojima cutscenes and the thought behind the story. This lacks a lot of the crazyness of four and two (oh man the cutscenes in four) but what is there is actually good. And the gameplay oh man the gameplay. I do not like first person shooters usually but I bought ground zeroes and fell in love with this gameplay. I freaking love stealth games which was a revaluation to me. (I should probably go check out thief). The base building I am also having fun with and the tapes are fantastic. Maybe pick up ground zeroes (which if you do enough stuff in boy does it make the opening of phantom pain so much easier) see if the gameplay speaks to you? Get all the tapes in zeroes and REALLY want to kill skullface (as I said elsewhere man talk about good voice acting). I love it but it may not be for you. The post patch stuff can be ignored. It slows down your development if you play offline but you can do that or you can just not invade anyone else - if you don't go up the pf levels you are unlikely to get attacked I expect. Is it annoying the higher levels of base development take 3 hours and you can pay to have it done immediately? Yes - but gives you time to do some of the cool side missions (wandering mother base soldiers) and listen to the tapes.

I think you should try it. I was very disappointed in the story(and guessed the twist within the first mission), but it plays amazingly. If you're like me, you will be somewhat frustrated, but you will still have 50+ hours of enjoyment thanks to the very good gameplay.

Yes.

I actually think the big twist is the kind of twist that is way cooler if you know it beforehand. Counterintuitive, I know, but I was personally super disappointed with the reveal and had I known it I would have had the time to get used to the idea (I love the twist on MGS2, for instance).

It was my most disappointing game of last year and also one the best games I've played the past few years. Just go in knowing what you're getting (which it seems like you do), not expecting a typical MGS game and you'll have fun. Totally worth it.

Get Ground Zeros and see how you feel about that.

That will show you the basic gameplay this time around. I imagine it's fairly cheap now too.

If i could go back in time i would tell my past self to not get it.

This is the only MGS game i regretted buying.

metal gear solid 5 wins a yes vote from me simply because of how well it plays. I've loved the Metal Gear Solid series since the PS1 and this is by far the biggest departure from the formula but is also most enjoyable of them to actually play. Each mission deployment gives you a taste of that feeling you got when you first arrived at the docks in Shadow Moses but it makes you feel more like a commando dropping in behind enemy lines, to complete an objective and get the hell back home. Little by little the game makes you feel less like a vulnerable super spy all by yourself and starts making you feel more powerful and capable. It's rewarding when things are going well and when a mission just completely goes to crap. Then instead of hiding under a desk and waiting for the alarm phase to end like you would in past games, you find yourself calling in an extraction chopper with enemies in pursuit and having to deal with them or outrun them and extract. it's really good.

@coffeeaddictedgamer Like someone else mentioned, you might do well to pick up Ground Zeroes to get a feel for how the game will play, because they're mechanically identical (sans fultoning, of course). Are you playing on PC or on console?

If you're on the fence like this you're better off just buying it and finding out for yourself whether or not it was worth it.

It's fine that you know the plot and twists already, because that way you don't have to waste time engaging with the audio tapes and can spend more time enjoying what is probably the most technically refined and complex stealth game ever fucking made. It is the most flexible a stealth game has ever been (you can go full ghost and you can get out of just about any hiccup in your sneaking in a variety of ways at all times), and should you decide to abandon cunning in favor of force, the flawless stealth is paired with shooting gameplay that meets and beats most all third-person shooting on the market. Make no mistake: MGSV handles story poorly, and it is definitely not an MGS game in the way that you (or anyone) expected it to be or may even have wanted, but its gameplay is a rock-solid pillar of modern 3D action gaming and a new high-water mark for stealth. Very little comes close. I know this sounds like hyperbole, but it's just...not. It's not.

Play MGSV.

When people say "It controls/plays like a dream!" I get the impression that what they really mean is "it controls/plays like other third-person, open-world shooters." I thought it controlled fine, but playing it wasn't some transcendent experience that would reshape how I think about games; it simply controlled the way I would expect any other third person shooter to control. If that was always your hangup on Metal Gear, then maybe I can understand how that would be cool, but the people that were saying it was 'the best-controlling game I've ever played!' are out of their goddamn minds. I also, personally, never thought the other games controlled badly; the controls just weren't intuitive. Once I learned the controls, I never had a problem making the character do what I wanted it to do. I was always in it for the insane story anyway; the gameplay was always secondary for me in MGS.

I played about 15 hours of the game waiting for either the gameplay to grab me (it didn't; I'm not one for 'make-your-own-fun-in-our-open-world-with-wacky-AI, emergent gameplay') or for the story to make up for having to slog through a bunch of boring, repetitive missions (we all know how that turned out); neither ended up happening.

Breathes in.

As someone who's played the post game off and on since release and thought about the story perhaps too much here's my suggestion.

Gameplay wise it's fantastic and does what neither MGS4 or Peace Walker did which was translate the complexity of control of MGS2&3 to the third person shooter controls of today which was needed for the scale it's going for. Moment to moment wise be flexible and try to break the traditional rules. Experiment with items and weapons. It's tempting to just deploy with the tranq, default rifle, and tranq sniper but later game missions increase the number of heavily armored soldiers almost makes all three of those weapons useless and make missions frustrating if you don't adapt. Once you unlock the sneaking suit don't bother using it for daytime infiltration unless you think the mission will last until dark and even then you could just get a supply drop for it anyway.

There's enough variety of location to not be an issue for the first chapter but the second can get stale if rushed through. Chapter 2 is best played casually and not in long multi-hour sessions. As far as post launch fuckery by Konami it's still kinda fucked if you don't have a semi-decent internet connection but your arguably safer from FOB invasion then at launch because of a new kind of optional invasion type they introduced that most high level players should be using. You'll still be invaded a couple times but it'll be by less experienced players.

As far as story goes you'll probably be bored listening to exposition you've already spoiled the jist of but beyond that the game seems to structurally enforce MGS2's big push for subtext and context considering that almost all the cutscenes were shown before release leaving only the context and subtext linking them together. I know I'm going to be laughed out of the room for implying that the game's cutscenes include subtly or any kind of subtext but hey you already know the story might as well keep an open mind when seeing it. Paying more attention to the things happening in a given scene over what characters say or in the case of certain Ocelot/Huey tapes why they're really saying them. At worst you hate the story which probably wouldn't be any different then not bothering.

@coffeeaddictedgamer: Like many people, I've been in the same boat.

As far as the story goes... In short, there are small, spur-of-the-moment Kojima-isms in MGS V which are great. This game definitely still feels like a Kojima game, because it is one. However, the narrative and Easter Egg-based density of both environmental and cinematic storytelling in the previous Metal Gear games is largely distilled into a compartmentalized, aesthetically separate story presentation in V. It's its own thing, for the most part, though there are quite a few callbacks to previous games and their events and it's officially part of canon. You will largely have to rely on cassette tapes to glean backstory details. The game focuses MUCH less on the classic MGS style of '90s anime/Japanese sensibilities merged with American action movie blockbusters like the previous games had, which I count as a net loss, but what exists instead is pretty enjoyable in its own way. There's still plenty of action, it's just not really connected to the greater world as well as previous games were.

As far as gameplay... it is the most instinctually playable Metal Gear Solid game in the entire franchise, it's just wonderful. If you've played or seen footage of Ground Zeroes at all, it is basically the same as far as mechanics are concerned. If you enjoyed or otherwise tolerated the individualistically complex gameplay and controls in the previous MGS games, it'll take a bit to get used to but it borrows a little from other contemporary, modern third/first-person action games so it should be pretty understandable at first glance and it'll become second nature in a couple of hours.

I think the answer depends on whether you are what I would call a "mechanics" gamer or not. By which I mean are you the type of person who can lose yourself experimenting and mastering a ton of mechanics if there's a lot of repetition and not much story to go along with it.

I ask because mechanics-wise, the game is an undeniable triumph - both from a technical perspective as well as being by far the best playing game in the series. That said, I personally found that it got mind-numbingly repetitive after a while. The story really lost steam pretty quickly and then there wasn't much to do beyond running the same missions for a higher rating.

So, if you are the kind of person who enjoys spinning out a truck full of guys with horse poop and then blinding the occupants with a squirt-gun for no other reason than because you can, the game has a lot to offer. If you want story or varied game play, probably not so much.

wow thanks everyone for all the responses. This is my first post here and was unsure what to expect. I think I will pick it up, I have played ground zeroes aswell and that was pretty good. This game just seems so weird, I thought metal gear 4 was the best game on the ps3, but number 5 seems so messed up that it actually makes me really wanna play it more and more lol. Thanks for your help though everyone!

Eventhough there are a lot of dissapointing aspects to MGS5, it's still one of the best games of last year.

I feel your pain, fellow video game-buying Canadian. XCOM 2 is 79.99 on Steam.

You should listen to the "Truth tapes" btw if you haven't already, best story stuff for Metal Gear fans in the game.

That game is bogged down by a bunch of dumb bull shit, but it still is one of the best games of 2015. It is absolutely worth playing. No doubt about it. The stealth gameplay is sooooo good.

Plays very different from 1-4, but it plays very well! I really enjoyed it and recommend the game - it was my personal GOTY. Story was interesting, but not as good as earlier games, but this is more than balanced by the rest of the game.

Couple of people in this thread have suggested playing Ground Zeroes first to save money and make sure the gameplay is enjoyable to you. Great suggestion.

Yes. Get it immediately I have completed all 157 side missions and am slowly going back and doing the optional main missions, for me at least it is one of those games I can just pop back in every month or two and get lost in it's world.

The game is an incredible time sink with very little payoff, so I recommend waiting until the game is much, much cheaper. Think of it as an excuse to exercise your delayed gratification virtues.

It's not my favorite MGS because of the story; that was disappointing, and the twist (there's actually more than one, which go hand-in-hand), while really interesting, isn't really good enough to satisfy my want for the story, nor do they have much of an impact on the overall story, which is a bummer. It answers a question no one really had. The gameplay was superb, though I don't think I found it to have as much replay value as others, as you do the same thing over and over, and for some, that was okay because they found the game fun enough to keep doing it, but for me, I couldn't keep going, I wanted to move on. You should pick it up if you hadn't already, but just know that you may not love every aspect you'd hope to like. Also, it's unfortunate you didn't play Peace Walker from the sounds of it. That game is basically MGS5 with a story more in line with other MGS', and great gameplay (though not quite as good as MGS5's) to go with it, but I wouldn't necessarily say it's better than five. Peace Walker takes a bit of grinding, which is the downside to that game. Story wasn't my only issue with five though; MGS has always had great, interesting settings, and to me, MGS5's open world was pretty generic by comparison; nothing noteworthy. I should say there were at times where the story had interesting moments, but still, it's weak by MGS standards, if MGS story is your thing. I'd say MGS5, though disappointing in some major respects, was good enough to be my third favorite game of 2015, and perhaps the best playing. There is one mission near the end that is ass too. Seems I wasn't the only one with issue on it. LawGamer is correct in what he says too.

If you can find enjoyment in approaching dynamic, clockwork worlds in all sorts of different ways, you will love MGSV. There's just so many cool, useful tools at your disposal with controls that allow you to use them smoothly. If you prefer a more tailored gameplay experience, you probably won't enjoy it as much.

@kcin: Agreed. 100%

Another satisfied customer!

Once you pick it up and play it let us know what you think!

I got a game breaking bug a few missions before the end of the game. So, no.

Its great, but also has some shitty issues. ALMOST LIKE EVERY OTHER METAL GEAR GEAR EXCEPT FOR AC!D 2 AKA THE PERFECT METAL GEAR GAME

@ajamafalous: You're basically describing my experience with the game. I'm a big Metal Gear fan (even bought a PS3 specifically for MGS4) and MGS5 was my most dissapointing game of 2015. Also played roughly 15 hours before I gave up.

That was a pretty dumb move. But yeah, go play it.