Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Hideo Kojima's probable last hurrah at Konami is, independent of the quality of the game, one of the most interesting case studies in terms of game design and development of the last decade.

In recent years, much has been discussed about the decline of the once influential Japanese game. Masters like Miyamoto, Sakaguchi, Mikami and other prominent names like Kojima himself, were responsible for many of the breakthroughs that captured the imagination of modern developers that when were kids wanted to make a game "like that" and today implement such revolutionary ideas that we take as granted.

The Metal Gear franchise (especially the "Solid" arch) is one of the few survivors of that era. Japan has turned to cell phone gaming, both consumers (with their vagrant lifestyle) and publishers (with those amazing profit margins). Expensive games to make like Metal Gear are more and more an endangered species. And to talk about those rarities, we have to mention Mr. Kojima, who, despite his flamboyant attitude, is regarded by his peers and other artistic minds as one of the biggest visionaries we have in the creative industries.

So, to get back to the point of the first line of this text, it is mind blogging, to me at least, that such a creator with a very specific style of doing things, from a country that has been suffering a bit of an innovation crisis, is capable of changing so much from what we know of Metal Gear. As an introduction I just want to say that I found this to be very admirable. A huge plus in my book.

To contextualize this review, I played approximately 90 hours of the game in a PS4, completed all missions and side ops, developed 300 items but never touched the online portion of the game. Oh, and my favorite Metal Gear of all time is 3.

Firstly, MGS V is a gorgeous game. Its budget was very well implemented in the audiovisual department. There is something to be said about a great frame rate and field of view. Light and sound effects are top tier and the production of camera angles, effects and artistic style are all blended in a very heavy but meaningful style that are really the better coherent realization of the themes that Kojima wanted to invoke (I will talk about my problems with cohesion down below).

I loved the minimalistic approach to the production of this game (not feeling cheap at all), but the real star and most surprising aspect of this game (bear in mind the first paragraph of this text) is how the Controls feel in your hand. Let's be honest, Metal Gear games, with all their praises, had controls that were always behind the curve to borderline frustrating. MGS V is, if not the best, in the podium of 3rd person shooters of all time in terms of freedom of movement and overall control of actions your brain wants to conduct. Amazing, and I played Bloodborne this year.

Now comes the paragraphs where I justify why I can't give this game a 5 out of 5. Metal Gear Solid V is what we generally denominate an "Open World" game. To start my complains, I never felt it to have a "World". Traversing always felt monotonous and inorganic, even with vehicles or your Horse buddy. I gave it a chance since it's the component of open world games that I find more fascinating and always captivates something in me (I hate fast travel mechanics). By the whatever hour I no longer could stand the sound of Snake's boots running - at least let me give praise where praise is due, that is a very detailed and realistic sound. The game felt very antiquated in this aspect to me, which is a shame, because the controls made each sandbox very fun to challenge and experiment with. But ultimately that's what the Open World in MGS V ends up being - an old design of multiple sandboxes that you jump from mission to mission with your on-rails helicopter serving as fast travel from your unimaginative central hub. It never felt that you created your own adventure from traveling fluidly between missions like many games have been doing for more than 7-8 years.

The first hour of MGS V is a masterpiece in storytelling through giving control and taking it away with very deliberate tense swings (makes me wonder how the Silent Hills project with Guillermo del Toro would end up). But after 5-6 hours you start to have a feeling that this game has some serious pacing issues. The gameplay loop starts becoming very tedious in their structure (once again, the controls are great) and the meaningful missions more and more diluted. This doesn't sound like a typical Metal Gear game, does it? Well, that's what you get when you replace a 15 hour orchestrated design with a 40 hour free market experience.

But the biggest problem I have with the game is not its incentives for jumping from sandbox to sandbox to collect numbers without a glue to the main missions. You can (as open world suggests) main line it. The problem is that the story is not that interesting, or even over the top to keep you engaged. The tropes feel repetitive even for Metal Gear standards (I love biology but Kojima's new take on nano machines is too much fluff) and the twists and surprises are weak and predictable. There is enough fan service, but most is done through cassette tapes that even with distinctive voices like Kiefer Sutherland and Troy Baker rapidly become a monochordic continuum with very fragmented writing that makes you suspect that many were scenes to be done through screen action but there was no more time and budget. In my opinion, key aspects of the plot and connections to past Metal Gear games were left on this poor excuse of storytelling.

In conclusion, Metal Gear Solid V is such an interesting event in gaming. A Metal Gear game with great controls and boring story. And the more surprising part of it is that it was still made by Kojima. It definitely proves that even the biggest authorities can change and that is a very positive observation we all can make of this game. Commending to say the least. I say that everyone should play this game. It has its flaws but it is full of content and it is hard for me to imagine that you can't find something you enjoy in this package. The production alone is the best we have in the industry, despite the story taking out something of the fervor. And the controls are addicting and help mitigate a lot of the boring loop of jumping from mission to mission. On a final note I would like to bring to the spotlight an aspect of the game that I feel has been poorly covered: not killing. Not because it's a Stealth Game, but because you are trying to build an army and you should use sleep darts or rubber bullets to then extract those stunned soldiers to your Mother Base and convince them to enlist to your cause. Great premise and very innovative for this genre of game. With just one problem, you end up extracting almost everyone because you are also not penalized for it, and a great mechanic that they introduce in your binoculars that lets you differentiate soldiers by their attributes is rendered unimportant because you extract everyone and then by a click of a button you just auto assign them by rank. Still, high praise for their non lethal take of this game. Glad to see it at the core and coherent (finally!) with the themes of Big Boss and Outer Heaven.