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The Phantom Pain or The Phantom Game?

Better described as 'Peacewalker 2', rather than a main series entry, the titular pain comes in the form of grinding gameplay gears. The end result will leave fans divided. Those blinded by nostalgia over the short-but-sweet cinematic stealth of old will be left unsatisfied. In contrast, those in lust with the apparent modern gaming necessity of open-world busywork and games designed to last, above all else, will be pleased. As for myself, I just feel that if not for Kojima's name and the circus surrounding it (REALLY) being his last attached - as well as wolf-dog enthusiasts - MGSV would have received more criticism. Either that or Quiet's... err, totally believable photosynthesis need to only wear a bikini and thong (as well as rolling in water as if in softcore porn, once) has a lot to answer for! Seven points from 'critic' perfection it most certainly is not.

Metal Gear Solid V ends where it begins, in a manner which made me want to end myself after 50+ hours of frowning persistence. So, I shall begin bluntly with the end, which is best described as an insult to my remaining sanity. Only in this series could an entry with gameplay emphasis take an already convoluted over-arching narrative and make it TRULY nonsensical by - worded vaguely - hypnosis rendering cloning redundant. Revolver Ocelot seeming to abruptly transition from intense triple agent rivalry to a... ret-con'd subordinate wolf-dog trainer was bad enough! But, perhaps more irksome, the game ended CLEARLY unfinished, with plot threads left forever hanging and a COMPLETE REPEAT OF THE PROLOGUE; crawling and all for a 'final mission'. Only missions #43 & #45 (which STILL hit players with a sucker punch: DO NOT DO #43 UNTIL FINISHING GAME! I lost hours reverting to a Cloud save) salvaged the game's half-arsed finale. Mission 45's optional 'Last Stand at the Alamo' ended Quiet's subplot better than mission 46 'ended'... anything. It almost made me wish the game was built around Quiet entirely. But, regardless: expect to be kicked in the teeth rather than rewarded.



Bittersweet irony leaves me conflicted; a 'phantom pain', if I were to imitate Kojima. MGS4 made me fear watching more than playing, and MGSV's gameplay emphasis swayed me. The lesson here is to be VERY careful what you wish for since quantity was valued over quality. More for the sake of more, yet far less than was desired. Rather than a sequel, it is the antithesis of the series: prisoner extract / kill target repetition, located within an empty, samey and pointless open-world. It COULD last longer than MGS1-3 together, yet to achieve this it sacrifices narrative immersion for busywork addictiveness.
What baffles me is that MGSV is a direct sequel to a PSP spin-off disguised as a main series entry. MGSV bizarrely adopted Peacewalker's 'PSP limitations' mission-based structure where you get a 'Mother Base' hub in need of expansion, pick either main missions or 'side ops', select equipment and deploy. Ballooning goons to enslave them (a novelty that wears thin after 100-1000 times); grinding for supplies; the re-usage of graphical assets... THE SAME. Wonderfully optimised, smooth visuals and an indistinct open-world that fools me not with its illusion of freedom are the main differences. Pokemon inspired Kojima when working on Peacewalker, and MGSV is structured more like a stealth RPG. Perhaps it was created as an apology for the self-indulgent, unbalanced narrative end that was MGS4, or perhaps Kojima's ego made him want to prove that he creates games rather than games that want to be movies?...

A selling point for many was MGSV's open-world "accessibility". The flip-side of this coin is 'Big Boss' stubbournly refusing to sodding talk. 'Immersive' indifference: relatable but uninteresting. Visualise a third-person Far Cry 3/4... where animals exist for no real reason. This is worsened by the minimilistic 'WHO CARES?' presentation. And since everyone that does talk is an arse (/Miller) and/or pseudo-intellectual arse (/SkullMan), ONLY the wolf-dog (wolf-dog's generally do not talk, thankfully) and aptly named 'Quiet' are worth caring for. Quiet being as talkative as her name suggests results in a strangely intimate bond with Boss; making the silence have a poignant edge.
Unfortunately - even though the story was largely inconsequential - this silent subtlety is later negated by THE WORST of Kojima's writing, with little characterisation to ground it. The first warning sign was earphones being forced into throats, involving parasites and a tribal Indian. But I was not prepared for the parody-esque villain rambling, which both I and Big Boss endured during a never-ending jeep ride in silence. Far be it from me to spoil, but it must be shared: "I shall eradicate language. I blame my traumatic childhood on language. ZERO! Then, with language gone, I shall create true peace via nukes. REVENGE!" - The "WHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO?" part in particular was cringe. Such grandiose pretentious waffling: simplistic or absurd? Maybe it was a blessing in disguise plot details were ignored... until the end. Just to get SOME understanding, listening to 1-10min codec conversations disguised as cassette tapes is vital. FUN.



Following a ONE HOUR cinematic intro broken up by occasional crawling, players are let loose into Afganastan. Unsurprisingly, it is very brown and mountainous. Later Afrika is added, but add some green to the brown and you have another indistinct, barren landscape. The open-world increases tactical options (i.e kill target en route to base), but sneaking with your trusty tranquilizer handgun / game-breaking sniper is always option #1. It is just, now you can use a tank, if need be. STEALTH! Near identical guard-posts are everywhere. And there is little point taking them over since, if you do, new guards appear. I quickly learned to ride around them; being careful to stay out of the guard's now 20/20 vision. Long gone are the days of cone-vision. This realism is not a negative, but it limits stealth to night unless you are masochistic. The A.I. does adapt to your playstyle with night-vision googles and the like, though--a nice touch. The hyper-alert A.I. do initially seem challenging, but the guards are NOT smart: shoot one > another goes to check > shoot him > REPEAT.
The 'difficulty' is offset by the best and most enjoyable aspect of the game: the 'buddy system'. A horse, wolf-dog, Tit Sniper or robot can go with you on missions. The wolf-dog automatically marks nearby enemies; making stealth a breeze. Tit Sniper takes out entire bases on her own, if positioned right. And the robot destroys even tanks in seconds with its gatling gun. Even without a buddy, though, getting S-rank scores is often laughably easy since the grading is FAR too lenient. You only lose 5000p for check-pointing and 5000p for using reflex mode (bullet time) as many times as you like, and you are graded based on speed above all else. I suck at stealth yet got S-ranks on many first tries. Once for going Rambo with a grenade launcher!

What is TRULY frustrating about MGSV is NOT how it plays. In fact, the button-mapping and controls have a free-running fluidity older MGS titles lacked; ropey auto-cover mechanics and awkward-suicidal jumping aside. The problem is the way MGSV is structured. You HAVE TO do irrelevant rescue / assassination busywork missions in order to unlock an occasional mission relevant to the story after every 5-10 or so, where you will maybe get a glimpse of the villains and/or a Zone of Enders Metal Gear. Worse yet, near the end main missions become EXTREME ARSEACHE repeats of earlier missions: 14/50 main missions being hard mode replays. And I had to do one to unlock a story mission. It just screamed padding. There is just nowhere near enough effort put in to distinguish main missions from optional ones. They are usually just longer, with occasional 'Parasite Unit' appearances: the villain's overpowered supernatural hit squad. And the best part is, the game either expects or allows you to just run from them most of the time.
There are NO showdowns with entertainingly cartoonish super-villains here, or trademark MGS boss fights at all bar the inevitable Metal Gear showdown, which was made decidedly less epic by being charged money for ammo mid-battle and only a single helicopter from your small army as support. In the only two parts before then that could be described as a boss fight, the game has you hide behind rocks (seriously) in one and stun the other with water (no 'FireMan' boss battle here, folks), then get on a helicopter to flee. The Metal Gear battle was the first and only time a boss health bar was visible in the game, and that is kinda depressing. Especially after how FireMan was built up during the prologue.



The mini-mission structure is paired with RPG-esque grinding. Want new weapons? Well, you better be prepared to spend millions unlocking various guns in each category that share very similar stats, just to unlock other guns. The joy of backtracking to the armoury with keycards to find new equipment is very much dead here. You even have to wait up to an hour (much longer for base development) in real-world time for equipment to be developed! But before that, you need Mother Base's R&D staff to be a high enough level, as well as other departments, and perhaps a weapon specialist on your staff. BUT BEFORE THAT, your base needs to be expanded so each department has enough staff, and for that you need both money and materials. Simple right?... WRONG. Mother Base first needs to process materials after you find them, and it does so every 30-60 minutes. At the end of the game, I received 2500 of most materials. For the final base upgrades, you need 48000 x2. The math is not pretty.
To be honest, improving my base and unlocking new gear DID become rewarding the longer I played. Especially end-game when I could sell resources for millions at a time and S-ranked goons could be ballooned. Being able to customise my weapons added to the fun. But the amount of worthless, overpriced equipment reliant on grinding just served to emphasis everything wrong with the game. Take outfits, for example: you can buy various colours to blend in with the environment, but at the start you get a sneaking suit for stealth and battle armour of tanking. 99% of players only used these two outfits, yet no doubt they also got the other outfits to work towards getting the 300 item trophy. Adding to the grind are dispatch missions for money and materials, where you send your staff on stat-only missions... which take up to THREE HOURS real time!

And this brings me to online play: infiltrations. One of the changes from Peacewalker is that you can explore Mother Base rather than it just being a menu. But unless you like empty metallic mazes and NEVER-ENDING connecting bridge driving, it is worthless... UNTIL online play. The way it works is the game eventually forces you to build a 'Forward Operating Base', which is a second Mother Base other players can invade; even when offline. Every self-respecting grinder should at least build a FOB because doing so adds +30 max staff to every base department; even if you play offline. Think Dark Souls but with the invader attempting to steal, rather than kill. The system is 110% unbalanced against the invader since the base owner is auto-alerted if online and gets unlimited 40sec revive lives, where as the invader only has one life and an army of A.I. against. BUT, if you target a base with only one or two platforms (to win, you have to reach the final platform out of a max of four), poor defenses and the owner is offline, you can balloon all their material containers and kill/balloon their staff. It is a rewarding form of trolling which I did enjoy before the flaws became problematic. The player you invade can return the favour if you are detected, but once you have multiple platforms and armoured staff they have little to no chance. I did briefly get hooked invading, and with a few balancing tweaks, it should remain an enjoyable distraction. A reason for continuing to grind post-game, perhaps.



All in all, depending entirely on what you want and expect, MGSV is a good game with a lot to do. But beyond that?... Neither as memorable as MGS1&3 or as controversial as MGS2, it will be played and forgotten by many.
Eventually I was worn down by what became something of an addictive chore. Initially fun and rewarding, but repetition takes its toll. By the time I had seen that damned pre-mission, unskippable helicopter 'HIDEO KOJIMA DID EVERYTHING' faux-end credits intro for the 100th time, atmospheric immersion gave way to tedium. In MGS1-3 there was repetition in the form of backtracking but it was always a means to an end; whether to reach a new area or to find new equipment. MGSV had no such needs, yet the lack of mini-mission variety and indistinct open-world, when paired with a lack of narrative driving force, left it as a gear that just kept spinning, pointlessly. For me, MGS3 found the perfect balance between gameplay and an engrossing Big Boss origin arc, where as MGSV takes the 'The End' sniper duel from MGS3 and makes that the whole game, with some base building on the side and 'Big Boss' barely saying a word. Ultimately, the series ends with an inexplicable whimper even fan-fiction could best, and the open-world is yet another example of appealing to modern gamers with empty space. Not bad; just very disappointing.

Final Score:
6.5/10



PS: I never experienced any noticeable frame-rate drops and the game was mostly polished. BUT, one bug I did experience prevented me from leaving Mother Base. The screen just went blank after taking off. No clue what triggered it but others have had the issue and it can be remedied by leaving from certain platforms. For one horrible moment, I thought the game was borked. The only other 'bug' I experienced is when attempting to navigate the iDroid's horribly cluttered interface: it tends to load slowly when connected online.

PS2: Annoyingly, you can not fast travel via your helicopter in the open-world: you have to go back to your helicopter 'mini-base' then re-deploy. Fast travel does in fact exist outside of the cargo drop-off points located at Mother Base (via cardboard boxes, naturally), but I only discovered they existed in the open-world late on due to A) mostly doing missions at night and B) the small drop-off points not being highlighted on the map. Good luck finding them!