Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain gamescom Preview

We’re only a week away from MGSV: The Phantom Pain, yet it’s still hard to believe the long-awaited title is nearly here. I don’t think anyone would dispute that what we’ve been shown of the game has been pretty astounding. The game’s incredible history meshing with modern game design looks to be a match made in gaming heaven (otherwise known as Hideo Kojima’s brain). Plus, Ground Zeroes proved to be a fantastic taster of what we can expect from The Phantom Pain, and considering the impressive depth of that little game, we can only imagine how huge the full game will be.

Saying that, following this year’s gamescom we’re now much more clued in to the overall shape of the game. As well as an excellent gameplay video demonstrating the Mother Base features of The Phantom Pain, I was also treated to a live demo of one of the game’s pivotal story missions. It’s well worth checking out the gamescom public video first though; I must confess that I was never a fan of the Mother Base mechanic in MGS: Peace Walker, but that was largely because it presented nothing but boring menu screens. This time around, everything is presented in-game, with each department receiving its own extended platform. The system also looks to be much more ingrained within the gameplay; it was easy enough to get through Peace Walker without paying much attention to your merc group, the Diamond Dogs look as though they’ll require a lot more consideration.

Then there’s the base invasion stuff that could be a really neat diversion from the central gameplay; a sort of mid-point between the single-player and Metal Gear Online. While it turns out that players won’t be invading your actual Mother Base (but rather off-shoot Forward Operations Bases), I love the idea that holding down an FOB comes with a degree of risk and reward. From your FOBs you can gain extra resources, but the payoff is the risk of constant attacks from other players. What’s more, the incredibly extensive options for setting up FOB defenses look fantastic; players can even set where their guards patrol. I’ll admit to once being a little skeptical about the base invasion system, but so long as the rate at which people attack your FOBs is controlled, it could be a lot of fun.

As for the proper live gameplay demo I saw, it was mostly pretty standard MGSV stuff, the likes of which we’ve seen in publically available videos. The fact that it was played live, however, did allow me to see how the game reacted to the player making slightly unusual decisions or blatant mistakes. A rather amusing little moment saw the player cock-up his very first shot with a tranq gun. He’d expertly placed D-Horse in the middle of a road in an effort to stop the truck the bad guy was driving from moving on, but instead of taking him out the guy missed completely, startling the driver and nearly killing D-Horse in the process. Funny little moments like this are bound to be what separates MGSV from other open-world titles, as they’ve long been a staple of the series.

The rest of the mission was indeed very familiar, although the new setting was interesting; a long winding road through a small valley that led directly to the enemy camp. The demo really highlighted the game’s stealth mechanics - thankfully relatively unchanged from Ground Zeroes. That winding road made it slightly difficult for the player to sneak past guards, but by using some classic diversion tactics he made pretty quick work of it. Probably on purpose, he decided to go loud for the final part of the demo, in which we were treated with a dramatic gunfight including rocket launchers, helicopters and a very scared horse. We were told that no matter how many times they demoed that one level, something different happened every time - and while that’s usually just a load of PR waffle, I couldn't help but believe them this time.

What’s really incredible though is that through all of this, and all of the past information released, it still feels as though there’s plenty of new content to discover once we finally get our hands on The Phantom Pain. We know very little about the story, and for an MGS fiend like me, that’s an incredibly important aspect of the game. We also don’t know all that much about the open-world and all of things we’ll be able to discover in it. The reason I mention this is because some people have noted that far too much of the game has been unveiled pre-release, and while I agree to a certain extent, I can’t help but point to the unbelievable depth and breadth of previous games and know that The Phantom Pain will be no different. There’s so much we don’t know about, and I’m really looking forward to discovering it all for myself.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain will be released 1st of September for PS4, Xbox One, PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. It’s nearly time for Big Boss to get bad.