Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain on PS4 – The DVDfever Review

New to the series are Buddies. You start out with a horse that is useful for getting you over larger distances that would be a trek on foot. You can also utilise the horse for cover by leaning over on the opposite side of your enemy and popping up and that last second to shoot them if you choose.

Along the way you can gather more Buddies such as:

• Quiet, a bra-wearing sniper (Yes Metal Gear has that blend of quirkiness mixed in with serious subject matter that only Japanese developers can pull off). Who can be used to get you out of a difficult spot.
  
• D-Dog who you initially find as a pup, but later can be taken be used to give you the location of enemies on the map.
  
• D-Walker – a small Mech or an Exo suit that snake can use to add greater firepower and speed to snakes arsenal or act like a clunky early proto-type Iron Man suit of armour without the helmet.

All the Buddies skills can be developed to be more useful to you. You can only take one Buddy on a mission with you and each Buddy will change how you approach a level. The beauty of The Phantom Pain is you can replay each mission and take a different Buddy you to help you try and achieve a maximum rating for a level.

…Or you can be stupid like me and decide to see what occurs if you shoot your horse with the mini gun in the helicopter at the beginning of a mission. A quick volley of fire saw blood spatter D-Horse’s maine. A 2nd burst saw him go down (he’s my horse so he’s a “he” ok?) Gulp I’ve killed him I thought, but after a few seconds he was back on his feet Phew! Until I let loose a 3rd barrage just to see. He went down again and this time he was automatically Fultoned back to Mother Base for treatment at a large cost of resource to me and I was left to make way to the first waypoint on foot.

You can choose what time to deploy on some missions. The night helping with stealth, but reducing your shooting accuracy. Daytime having the opposite effect of increasing your shooting accuracy, but making you easier to be spotted. There are sandstorms that make you invisible and hard to hear, and as long as you did your recon beforehand, you will still know where your enemies are located on the map.

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Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Gameplay Walkthrough Part 5 – MKIceAndFire

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I could go on and on as The Phantom Pain is such a big game and I’ve barely scratched the surface. As I said at the start, I wasn’t overly excited to play the latest in the series, but what Hideo Kojima has managed to pull off is a masterpiece of gaming. The tragedy being now that I want more. This is Hideo Kojima’s swan song for the series and his cinematic influence is felt throughout. He has taken heed of those like myself who didn’t like the endless cut-scenes that made some of the earlier games feel more like an interactive movie. Yes, without keeping up with the Metal Gear lore, I did feel lost with some of the references and the bizarre scenes that played out before me, but the gameplay itself is the story. How you can complete a level any which way you like is creating your own narrative, and the fact that you make your own stories rather than have to watch someone else’s scripted story make it a far more attractive proposition.

The game looks beautiful using the Fox engine. The details in the scenery and the fluid animation of Snake add to the immersion and sense of occasion. The presence of sounds like the alert noise the guards make when they detect something is still in there, and produced a smile every time I heard it. The voice acting can feel over-egged at times, but for the most it does a great job. Kiefer Sutherland for his part, doesn’t have a lot to say as Snake but that’s ok as the less waffling there is then the more gaming, right? There aren’t too many cut-scenes and those that are, are well-produced. That’s not to say there aren’t a bunch of cut-scenes, but they don’t feel unnecessary and don’t take over the whole game as they have done in the past.

I didn’t try the online side of thing as each time I started the game up on my PS4 there was some mention of some issue getting online. There was so much to do in the game as it stood I didn’t concern myself to much with it as I don’t usually like to go online in games until I’m fully competent at a game in single player. It would have been nice to see a co-op mode, especially with the Buddy system in place. Having another player as Quiet, sniping enemies from a distance would have been totally awesome but you can’t have it all, I suppose.

(PS. I’ve since learned, about the online aspect, that it was originally to launch on September 1st, but Metal Gear Online has been postponed to October 6th on all consoles, and January 2016 on PC.)

So the million-dollar question is – should you buy it? Well, as I said the fans of Metal Gear will have done so already. For those still sat on the fence, I can safely say come down and go and buy it. I was one of those skeptics. Let the game get properly started. Remember the hospital is just basic training and once your 5 or 6 missions into it all, the game will have managed to relieve you of all those doubts you may have had.

There’s hours of fun to be had and, most importantly, I didn’t feel stressed playing as I do with stealth games like the Metal Gear Collection or the last Splinter Cell game I played, Blacklist. That is because the game doesn’t push you to use stealth – instead it will reward if you do, but it isn’t the be-all and end-all and that helped make me fall in love with The Phantom Pain.

Thanks to those Youtube channels featured for the gaming footage.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is out now on PS4, Xbox One, PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

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Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain – Launch Trailer – KONAMI573ch

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Important info:

• Publisher: Konami
• Players: 1 (plus online from October 6th on consoles & Jan 2016 on PC)
• HDTV options: up to 1080p
• Dolby Digital 5.1 sound: Yes

GRAPHICS SOUND GAMEPLAY POTENTIAL	9 9 9 9
OVERALL	9

Directors: Hideo Kojima and Junji Tago
Producers: Hideo Kojima, Harry Gregson-Williams (music producer) and Eduardo Khorram (creative executive producer)
Screenplay: Hidenari Inamura, Hideo Kojima and Shuyo Murata
Music: Justin Caine Burnett, Ludvig Forssell, Daniel James and Akihiro Tereuta

Cast:
Venom Snake/Big Boss: Kiefer Sutherland
Kazuhira Miller: Robin Atkin Downes
Ocelot: Troy Baker
Quiet: Stefanie Joosten
Huey Emmerich: Christopher Randolph
Eli: Piers Stubbs
Zero: Time Winters
Code Talker: Jay Tavare
Skull Face: James Horan
Man on Fire: Dave Fouquette
Tretij Rebenok: Clayton Martin
Paz Ortega Andrade: Tara Strong