Announced in 2012, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is Kojima Productions’ upcoming stealth-adventure game. While it can serve as a standalone, it is intended as a sequel to Ground Zeroes, with both games comprising the larger Metal Gear Solid V.
In Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan has brought a new edge to the Cold War, and in 1984, a one-eyed man with a prosthetic arm appears in the country. Those who know him call him Snake; the legendary mercenary who was once swept from the stage of history and left in a coma by American private intelligence network Cipher. Snake is accompanied by Ocelot, an old friend who saved him from attack when he finally awoke.
Perhaps to build on that, the game features an episodic structure, complete with credits and all. These credits give players an inkling of who they’ll be facing, as well as highlighting who was responsible for designing each episode. Each mission constitutes an episode, and can be undertaken in any order, allowing the player a choice in how they play the game.
Now, despite its 80s setting, I found the early stages of the game to be decidedly era-neutral. Sure, the presence of Soviets in Afghanistan did allude to the Soviet-Afghan War, though this was just about the extent of it. While that may be harsh, and there certainly may be later stages of the game that disprove this, but I would have preferred to have seen more contextual references to help construct the game’s narrative.
On a minor note, I felt there was a sort of episode imbalance early on, which caused a lull in the continuous thrill of the game. By that, I mean the choice to construct an entire (although very short) episode around a tutorial, which I believe could have easily been introduced into the game another way without really pausing the narrative.
That said, I also found that the game’s many different elements catered to the style of different players – whether they wanted to creep by their enemies or go in guns blazing. For one, the continuous passage of time meant that guards would change shifts, providing an opportune time to strike. On another level, seeing fixed machine gun and anti-air emplacements was just a bit too alluring for me, and all my stealth went out the window.
I must also praise Kojima for offering up a game that is not simply engaging and cinematic, but is one that also grants the player some agency in how the story plays out. From the start, I was hooked, despite this being my first foray into the Metal Gear franchise. That being said, while the game serves as a sequel to Ground Zeroes, it works equally just as well as a standalone.
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is set for a worldwide release on September 1. Press Start Australia attended a review event for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain in Sydney, Australia.
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Come on! This game comes nowhere near a 9, its a hard 7 at best. Super repetitive gameplay, horrible vehicle controls, and it still has the same old Kojima embarrassing nonsense for a "story". Splinter Cell Blacklist tops this as a stealth game any day. Splinter Cell was linear too.
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The image was mirrored. I recognize the second image from one of the trailers. I'm not sure why he didn't just use the original and put the text to the left though.
Very bizarre scoring: 10+10+9 =29 29/3 should be 9.666666 . Besides, taking 1 point just because the tutorial is a tutorial... come on! The tutorial, (specially for someone wanting to be a filmmaker) is being said to be a cinematic mastarpiece alone! So, thos review is very inconsistent and simplistic... Disapoointed...
I noticed the same thing...so stupid. If it was something that made sense, that's one thing. But this makes no sense whatsoever.
Kevin James Arnesen "attended a review event" lol
The review crashed your website
this seems to have crashed your site lol
Great review, good words, perfect length..
This wasn't on my pre order list, now im debating that.
Thanks for this.