Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Review

After, quite frankly the worst exfil in the history of... mankind... Snake begins Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain with a bang. His journey takes him from Afghanistan to the Seychelles, across Africa and beyond, all to find and punish the ones responsible for the loss of the original Mother Base nine years ago, making it now 1984.

Full disclosure, I have only played the numbered Metal Gear Solid’s, so my knowledge of Portable Ops and Peace Walker are limited. I also have only a couple of missions done on Ground Zeroes, which might have affected how much I got out of the game in terms of the ability to upload my save from that, to unlock content in this.

More horse riding than Horse Riding Simulator

I’ll spoil the score, because people will wonder why this isn’t an instant 10, and not bother reading the entire review to find out. It’s a fun game, there is plenty to do and lots of replay value, but it’s not a perfect game. At the start and end of every mission, you see the main character names before a quick run through the main production credits. There are 50 main missions in this game, meaning you see Hideo Kojima’s name about 500 times, if you play zero side missions. I respect what the man has created, but people blast Warner Bros. for putting their logo up every time you start a game -- at least that’s only once! This is one game, not a series of episodes, and that’s honestly my biggest grievance.

But it’s far from the only one. It takes far too long to get into the game, with telling you about autosaving, then logging into the server (which might even disconnect after ten minutes of gaming), then a number of server messages to read, before an unskippable five-second Konami logo -- finally allowing you to press Options to load your game.

I CLEARED YOU EVERY DAY FOR FIVE DAYS! I KNOW!

The checkpoints, which autosave, are difficult to work out: I completed a side mission on one section of Mother Base and it told me it saved, so I went to another section to complete a second side mission. I made a wrong turn, slipped and died, having to reload -- to before I had even started the previous side mission. This meant I had to resupply, shower and go to the marker again. I did it all, then took a (slow) helicopter over to the other section only to accidentally die once more: but I had read that selling resources will force a save, so on the helicopter I did just that. I reloaded the checkpoint only to need to resupply and shower once more, before the first side mission...

With the new Mother Base being in the Seychelles, and Snake travelling everywhere via helicopter, it more than stretches belief. It's almost 3,000 miles in a straight line between Kabul in Afghanistan and the Seychelles. "If you travel with an airplane (which has [an] average speed of 560 miles [an hour]) between Afghanistan to Seychelles, It takes 4.97 hours to arrive." I mean, I know Boss was in a coma, but he can't be that far behind in his reading that he has something to do for each 10+ hour round trip, in a vehicle travelling under 200 mph (don’t get me started on the standard range of a helicopter…). And these are for things like your men wanting you back for a morale boost, or to check up on a buddy! You can get a shower, which helps increase the ‘reflex’ time when spotted by an enemy for a few in-game days, but I never felt it was worth the extra loading time.

Though, damn, Snake gets bloody...

The Mother Base itself is actually a great place to go. It lets you see that all of the missions and trials Snake is being put through are having an effect. You use his iDroid to get the crew to build and upgrade platforms, meaning that your Mother Base can be a good few miles from one end to the other. This causes a problem when you have to either have a slow fly over in the helicopter, or risk running down one of your own men with a jeep. And trust me, they frown upon that -- it gives you a game over if you so much as tranq one and chuck him over the side… Or tranq one, put him in the passenger side and accidentally drive off the side...

But with the name "Greedy Dingo", you're doing him a favour...

Speaking of tranqing, there is a Buddy system in The Phantom Pain. You select a Buddy to take into the battlefield with you, whether it is D-Horse, D-Dog, D-Walker or D-Quiet. Uhh, that last one might just be Quiet… I actually skipped the fight with her, and lost some hero points in the process, because it had been ten minutes and I was still having trouble taking her down with my tranq gun. In fact, apart from D-Horse, the Buddies are entirely optional, though you will miss out on their contributions. Depending on the Buddy, you get different assists from detecting enemies to hopping on their back for a speed boost.

After every mission, you get GMP (Gross Military Product), possibly resources and men, and hero points. If you finish a level without killing anyone, and within about 10 minutes, you get an S-ranking with loads of hero points. If you go in and murder everyone and take an hour, you get an E-ranking and fewer hero points -- and many demon points. That is an invisible number, which gradually affects Snake’s appearance, making him look more demonic, and less like Big Boss, hero to PFs (Private Force) everywhere.

You can also unlock parts to create your own PF emblem!

The resources and GMP are spent on either upgrading Mother Base or crafting new equipment for you to use. As you explore the open world areas, you find cases of materials, or animals and plants that you can grab and send back. For instance, creating a new type of cardboard box will require a certain amount of GMP and black carrots, or a gun will require GMP and common metal. Even enemy troops are a resource, if you attach a balloon to them and send them back to Mother Base (called a Fulton extraction). You can even eventually choose to be one of them during missions instead of Snake. Vehicles are also Fulton-able once you upgrade it, which allows you to take them into combat, or deploy them with your men on missions of their own.

I would go on to Fulton everyone, quickly spending 80000 GMP in the process...

In a similar fashion to a few of the Assassin’s Creed titles, you can get GMP and resources by sending your men on missions which have an arbitrary time set them them. Some of them are minutes, others are hours, and a lot of them require you to be in-game for the timer to count down. There are so-called online deployments, which gain you more resources but take far longer -- but the timer is in real-time.

The open world is very much a departure from the confines of previous Metal Gear Solid’s. There is a lot of travel involved getting from one mission to the next, even with over 100 side ops, meaning there can be quite a bit of downtime if getting there yourself, or loading time if you go by chopper. Unlike frozen Alaska or the Big Shell oil rig were set areas with potentially limited numbers of enemy troops, you’re never more than a couple of minutes from someone. If you, for instance, take over an outpost by knocking out, Fulton-ing or killing all of the guards, you don’t get to hang out and relax. A truck or band of wandering guards might come through, and investigate when they find nobody is there -- or find the bodies.

Though sometimes it doesn't matter as a boss will attack...

Luckily, if you catch a look at enemies with your binoculars (or, telescope, because he’s wearing an eyepatch…), it keeps them marked on your HUD and the map. This is also carried through to the mobile app, which hooks up to what’s currently going on as a decent second-screen experience. It works via Wi-Fi only, as it’s connecting directly to the console through your home network. It shows you the current map, which means you don’t have to stop moving to check everyone’s position with the iDroid, but it does mean you’re looking away from the screen for vital seconds instead. You can use it to easily request a helicopter or resupply though, so long as your device’s screen is big enough to touch the commands with ease.

You’ll still want to use the iDroid, however, as the app is very much a watered down version. You can view mission logs and listen to cassette tapes you find in the field, for example, which leads to some strange experiences as you listen to Europe’s The Final Countdown whilst sniping people -- though you could instead listen to Ocelot or Miller chat to Snake. Some missions end with a short debrief as usual, but also unlock cassettes for you to listen to at your leisure, rather than the enforced cutscenes of past games.

It beats singing "One man and his dog" over and over again...

The one thing that Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain excels at, is allowing you to do missions however you want. If you want to sneak in and tranq everyone, you can. Go in loud with smoke grenades and rockets, perfectly valid. Sneak around the back and don’t interact with the enemy at all, go for it. Call in air support and let it soak up attention and enemy fire whilst you trot over and complete the objective, sure thing! Order an airstrike, C4 the guard tower, chuck three tranqed guards into a jeep and Fulton it, before getting on D-Horse and riding off into the sunrise if you like! Or do any of that in the middle of the day if you really want!

You can skip time forwards by puffing on your "Phantom Cigar" -- yes I'm serious

I was stuck on one mission, and only by going from ‘tranq them all’ to ‘murder everything’ was I able to pass it. Another mission had me tracking a truck as it made a few stops, and I couldn’t capture it when it stopped at one outpost, despite trying half a dozen times. I then went to the far side of the base, where the truck would head next, and had a much easier time capturing it. With the amount of weapons you can develop through Mother Base, there really is a loadout for any way you want to play. And since the Buddies are optional, you don’t even have to have one accompany you, giving you even more choices.

Although it has its flaws, and may not be what anyone thinks of when they think “Kojima’s Metal Gear”, it is very fun to play. It can infuriate you, but when that happens you just have to approach it from another direction: often literally. A lot of the side ops are the same things over and over, but each one presents a very different challenge. The environments are varied, though often quite empty, and making sure you have enough resources to keep building up Mother Base will cause you problems, but these are minor things. The game is massive, with about 100 hours worth of content, should you wish to collect, develop, construct and capture everything to an S ranking.