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

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is long-awaited, but has arrived not quietly and all stealth-like, but instead has kicked the door in and demanded you show it some love. The question is… does it deserve it?

I’m about to commit sacrilege to all the MGS fans, but after finishing and loving the first Metal Gear Solid on PS one I fell out of love with the PS2 Sons of Liberty due to the endless cut scenes and back and forth codec messages. I came back to the series on PSP with Metal Gear Acid. Not the game to renew my interest. My mistake, having not done my research I didn’t take to the turn-based strategy game play.

I dabbled with Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance on PS3, but that was a different style of game with a different main protagonist. (Raiden) Looking for some much needed quality games I picked up Metal Gear Collection on PS Vita but the action felt so stiff and dated. These games didn’t manage to reignite my interest either. I don’t know, I just felt stealth games had moved on for me. I had experienced Assassins Creed 2 or even Batman Arkham Asylum in the meantime, which permitted me to choose stealth or wade in if I wanted.

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Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Gameplay Walkthrough Part 1 – MKIceAndFire

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Ok, it’s 2015 and I missed Ground Zeroes having read it had a short-lived story It just presented another reason not to return to the series at the time. That game sits in my Xbox live and PSN games collection. It was a canny decision to allow Ground Zeroes to become free to monthly subscribers on the two big consoles. It’s the prequel, after all, and can be considered a small taster of what to anticipate in The Phantom Pain.

Anyone who is a devotee of the series has already bought this they will have had it on pre-order and they are already in Hideo Heaven. I’m reviewing this as somebody who finished the first Metal Gear Solid on PS One and never reached those heights of excitement since.

Thus, as I wait in anticipation, a cut-scene greets me. 3 cut-scenes later and I’m still expecting some action. We’re not off to a great start, here.

Fortunately the back and forth codec tennis you once had to suffer has gone, replaced by tapes that you can listen to when you choose rather than forced to sit them out, even if the characters do rudely talk over them while you’re attempting to glean intel or background info while listening to them.

Ah, but when the action finally does kick off, it’s relentless while you attempt to flee a hospital you wake up in after being in a 9-year coma. In fact, the amount of action Snake sees in the first 30 minutes of the game, I’m guessing he wishes he’d remained in the coma. There are a couple of insta-deaths during the first few minutes of the game which feel cheap, but at least you can correct your mistake on the second attempt rather than it being a frustrating experience that you have you re-visiting the same scene again and again. This is good news as each death kicks in an annoying loading screen as you begin again where you left off.

Go to page 2 for more thoughts on the game.

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Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Gameplay Walkthrough Part 2 – MKIceAndFire

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Not having kept abreast of the series characters, I wasn’t certain at some points if I was playing a Metal Gear Solid game or a Silent Hill game. From being pursued by a flaming behemoth of a character with a floating Psycho kid with a gas mask in tow, to a flaming whale?! I kid you not – a flaming whale makes an appearance! I remember Metal Gear having a slightly eccentric feel to it, but this was outright mental.

I was aware of how the series had aged Snake at some point. I’m not a fan of such matters in games or comic – for example, I’d never want to play a Tomb Raider game with A 70-year-old Lara Croft. Gravity and varicose veins come to mind, and I was distraught to see my boyhood hero Judge Dredd evolve into the old Dead man character. The Snake is no longer the healthy looking young man he was in Metal Gear Solid on the PS One but he’s not a decrepit geriatric either. He’s as agile as he was back then. Yes, years of action now see him lacking a lower arm and he has a large chunk of shrapnel protruding from his forehead, which cannot be removed as it imbedded itself in his brain. This shrapnel gives him the appearance of a demon as it rather looks like a horn. He reminds me of one of the many lower demons you would see in the old Monkey Magic TV series. I suppose if you have seen as many combat operations as he has you can’t expect to just have a couple of grizzly scars as a war veteran would in a Hollywood movie.

I’ve digressed. Anyway, back to the game. After having made your escape – which saw you escaping more traditional foes in the form or armed soldiers also involved avoiding raining fire engines to being chased on horse, by the flaming behemoth on a flaming horse. It’s not all fantasy, though. During certain combat you can sustain injuries that will have a bearing upon your combat effectiveness. For example, if you dislocate a knee, you won’t be able to sprint. The same works for drawing a gun with an injured arm. Take too many hits to the torso and you will need a first aid kit. You need to head for cover to take time to reset dislocations or apply first aid. The game subtly guides you through these situations early on along with basic controls. Pressing the touch pad on the PS4 will bring up further insight on how to take cover if you desire. The hospital is effectively training delivered on the fly for the basic movement and the like, which is less obtrusive and good for those who just desire to get going with the game.

Once free of the hospital, the game begins proper and you are cast into an open world sandbox type game with missions across the regions of Afghanistan and Africa.

The action still involves stealth and as mentioned, from time to time if you fail to act stealthily during acts that necessitate stealth you will face instant death. During the course of a normal mission, though, if you are discovered, the game slows down time and goes into Reflex Mode. This affords you the opportunity to take foes out before they have the chance to alert someone. Just make certain you either kill or subdue them with a silenced weapon or your hands as firing an assault rifle is still going to put the base on alert and have guards come running to the location of the noise.

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Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Gameplay Walkthrough Part 3 – MKIceAndFire

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As I was cutting my teeth in the first few missions, I epic-failed at keeping my cover. Each time I was discovered, I ended up in a huge gunfight with the whole base alerted. The game didn’t punish me directly for my incompetence; in fact, I was able to use the disturbance to my advantage. Taking out the soldier who had initially discovered me, and then circling around the soldiers who had flooded to the point where all the commotion had occurred, I then proceeded to use stealth takedowns where possible and repeat my tactic of gun and running to flank them and pick them off as they searched my last known location. It was then I realised I was having a hoot with a Metal Gear game. The way Snake moves is fluid and the controls feel natural (once you grow used to the button layout). Diving for cover out of the direct line of sight of a soldier before lining him up for a headshot was fun.

Before long, you will find yourself at Mother Base, which is as it sounds – your base of operations. Ocelot is there to inform you about resource management by collecting resources out in the field. These can be anything from diamonds you may spot lying around, to all types of wild flowers and herbs you may come across brief cases that carry various metals and composites in them, to the soldiers themselves who can be brainwashed and redeployed as personnel in your own Diamond Dogs army. I groaned inwardly at hearing all this. The last time I was forced into a different style of game play in an action/stealth game was Assassins Creed Brotherhood. The Tower Defense style battles in that were wooden and interrupted the flow of the game. Yes, I know you could ignore them, but it impeded your progress on the map and I felt like I wasn’t playing the game properly by not indulging in them. Thankfully, the resource management here doesn’t interrupt the main game, but complements it. Now I realised that even though the game didn’t punish me for killing all those guards, I just wasted an opportunity to recruit them to my cause. The need to develop Mother Base made me think twice about my previous tactics. Although, when the proverbial poop hit that proverbial pan, I still wasn’t averse to firing without prejudice. Still, I was less inclined to attempt lethal kills wherever possible, instead using the tranquiliser gun and Fultoning them (a tiny deployable balloon that floats them out of the theatre of battle back to Mother Base).

Use the tranquiliser gun too much though, and the guards on bases will take to wearing helmets. Luckily, while you are on Mother Base you have to opportunity to hone your hand-to-hand combat skills to take opponents down alive but unconscious. Side-op missions may also pop up to take down a storage facility or a manufacturing plant. Complete these and the guards will find themselves without equipment like helmets again, so as you can see there is a lot going on here. You can ignore the resource management of Mother Base if you prefer and you will still progress, but the game would be harder because as you play and your base develops, more items will become available to you – upgraded weapons for instance.

Go to page 3 for more thoughts on the game plus conclusions.

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Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Gameplay Walkthrough Part 4 – MKIceAndFire

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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