Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain in-progress review

It has been three days since the release of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. In this time, I have put 22 hours into it and yet have only achieved about 18% completion (and I did a lot of side questing). I still clearly have quite a ways to go towards finishing the game; however, I couldn’t quite contain myself so I will make an exception for MGS V and do a review in-progress. I feel as though I’ve formed enough of an opinion on the game having sampled it for 22 hours.

Though I played through MGS 1 and 4, I admittedly couldn’t stomach the controls and camera system of 2 and 3 (which were a repeat of 1’s, which I barely managed to get through). I am by no means a diehard MGS fan, so I'm hoping my perspective on the series will entice newcomers to try out the games. I will refrain from giving away any plot details of MGS V, save for those mentioned in Ground Zeroes, the prologue to The Phantom Pain (which I highly recommend playing, especially if you feel like you need a taste of what TPP is like before purchasing it for the hefty release price of $59.99.)

For the gameplay, I have nothing but the highest of praise. The Metal Gear series is an icon of tactical stealth games, and The Phantom Pain is Kojima’s crown jewel in the series. Right away, when playing Ground Zeroes, what impressed me most was the way Snake controlled. Very few games nail movement, but in Ground Zeroes Snake’s movements were all believable; they carried weight, and yet were at the same time very responsive and easy to direct. The details in the animations, from the way Snake stands with whichever foot forward that his walking animation ended on, to the way Snake scoots himself forward regardless of stance when you tap the control stick a bit, are truly a sight to behold and a testament to how far animation technology has come since the early days of 3D gaming. A personal favorite touch of mine is the way Snake reacts to the player changing stances from prone to crouch while moving backwards - instead of getting up in the way he faces and then awkwardly turning around, Snake fluidly transitions from prone to crouchwalking using his hands and knees to maintain movement in the direction of input. In The Phantom Pain, there are even small improvements to movement - now there are continuously variable crawl and crouchwalk speeds, and Snake does a neat somersault if you quick dive off of a height instead of landing painfully on his stomach like in Ground Zeroes.

I can't help but drool.

A stealth game gets its challenge and replay value out of its AI - and thankfully TPP’s AI is no slouch. It isn’t amazing and can get a tad predictable after a while, but it is kept fresh by the fact that the AI counters over-reliance on a single tactic by arming itself against that tactic the more it is used - early on, my favored approach was to take out guards by headshotting them with a suppressed weapon if they were in my way. Soon though, a majority of the guards began wearing helmets as word got out of me leaving a wake of porous heads behind me. I then found myself resorting to other methods such as CQC or simply pure stealth.

The game offers a rich and satisfying customization system for your loadout. Almost anything you bring with you can be customized to a certain degree - even the camouflage I took on missions with me I would preselect in order to best match the area I was in (and since camouflage effectiveness is an explicit game mechanic in previous MGS games, I’m pretty sure it still matters in TPP.) You have a set of “buddies” you can bring into missions with you, the first of which is the D-Horse. I thought a horse would only hinder me in a stealth game, but surprisingly I grew to like the horse a lot and developed a lot of gear for it.

My faithful steed, D-Horse.

On top of all this customization comes a level of freedom unheard of in previous MGS games - TPP is open-world. And it suits Metal Gear, so well. You can come in at any angle you want, in whatever style you want, equipped with whatever you want, and at whatever time of the day you want. I’m already thinking of what my next playthrough will be like. I’m thinking I go Mongol warrior style and stay mounted on the D-Horse for as long as possible. The weather system in the game also delivers an appreciable impact on gameplay; rain covers the sound of your footsteps, and sandstorms obscure visibility beyond a very short distance for both player and enemy. Navigating the open world can be a little tedious because of its sheer size, but luckily the game has a fast travel system and also affords you mobility with D-Horse at the very least.

The game does fall short in a few areas. For big MGS fans, the voice of Snake this time around is Kiefer Sutherland instead of David Hayter. Not only does he deliver a much different Snake, Snake also has a lot fewer lines compared to previous entries in the series - it could be an attempt by Kojima to make the player place themselves in Snake’s shoes, but it is a bit jarring considering how much personality Snake previously had. The majority of Snake’s dialogue is contained in a bunch of backstory tapes which the player can listen to at their leisure - however, unlike Bioshock where interruptions to this experience were unlikely, the player can frequently be interrupted while listening to a cassette tape by story dialogue over the radio, and the tape will not pause. The only other major gripe I have with TPP so far is the lack of fluidity between changing locations. I spent a lot of time moving between home base, to the Aerial Command Center, to the field of operations, and much of this time was spent just watching Snake fly in the chopper. An option to skip the inconsequential fly-in portion of some of the missions would be great. You can warp to the ACC while in the field, but you must manually call in a chopper pickup if you are at your home base so that got annoying after a while.

My comrades in arms, at the ready. You almost make the boring chopper ride over here worth it.

Graphically, the game is great. I am not so much amazed by the graphical fidelity (which is great in its own right), but by how well-optimized the game is. A lot of games that look this good would make my rig struggle a bit. TPP runs at near max with no hiccups at all, 60 FPS. It’s refreshing to not have to fiddle with configuring a game’s settings to get optimal performance. It also cooperates pretty well with being alt-tabbed, a definite plus in my book.

Overall, I would be surprised if TPP didn’t go on to be my personal GOTY. I am biased since I love stealth action, but currently it is my favorite game this year (sorry Witcher III - I still love you.) If you’ve got any love for stealth games and can excuse the objectionable business practices of Konami one last time, I highly recommend Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.