#review

I am playing on PS4 and I'm currently at mission 21/~50 after 150+ hours; overall 51%.

Arguably the fifth entry in the main series, “Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain” is a stealth sandbox game that, on the one hand, has an anti-war agenda with how it encourages and rewards players for avoiding fatal conflicts. On the other hand though, it glorifies war with its 500 billion too many choices of weaponry, that on top have a great level of 3D modeling, animation and even gameplay detail, and the ability (later on) to customize them. Plus, there's no real punishment for *not* avoiding fatal conflicts – though to be fair, the guns-ablazing approach against a bunch of dudes who know how to shoot back has its own difficulty.

The legendary mercenary Snake, or sometimes called Big Boss, awakes from a nine-year coma with a piece of metal stuck in his skull after the events of “Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes” (MGSV:GZ) Spoilerdestroyed his Mother Base. He is intent on rebuilding it a second time – ignoring his questionable grasp on reality.

The game is set in the 80s, but like everything in the franchise, in a pseudo-sci-fi version of that era that is just here and there a couple more decades advanced. As such, you're gonna find plenty of cassette tapes (remember cassette tapes?) that Snake can play on his walkman, many of which contain great music from the 80s – fuck yeah! – like “Take on Me” from A-ha … while he has to deal with bipedal tanks.

The visual fidelity is just as amazing as in MGSV:GZ because it's based on the same engine, and more or less even the same engine build. Light and shadow FX from the sun, search lights, lamps, flare grenades and even barrel fires look great and add to the stealth gameplay variety as well throughout the entirety of the day/night-cycle. The character models are all nicely detailed, capable of conveying emotions, with hair not looking too off-putting.

The gameplay is mostly super fun and for me personally the main drive for playing this game – as it should be. I have only little gripes with the actual controls – like, how the automatic wall-sticking is a bit too oppressive; or how the context-sensitive "one button for all" sometimes does not quite do what I want it to do, because I was still moving or whatever: "No, don't climb. Extract!" Granted, each D-pad direction having a circle menu of its own is a bit much, and sometimes confusing – especially when shit hits the fan. But a menu like this also has its benefits. Look at how much stuff you're carrying! Neatly organized and somewhat fast to reach.

Though indubitably, the unlocking of the "skill tree", so to speak – developing the weapons, equipment and base – that's so diluted that this long-term gameplay aspect isn't much fun at all. Acquiring the staff needed to level up the departments takes forever, and you get too little money on a regular basis for how long the staff acquisition takes. I will be as old and senile as Old Snake when I'm done with my all-female Mother Base staff side project!

You get an open sandbox experience with many military bases of varying size to infiltrate where the game dynamically adapts to the player's playstyle, both short-term and long-term. At the beginning, no one knows of your presence, so the guards are all guarding very casually. But once they've spotted you – once, twice, a couple of times – they will either return to an idle but alert state, or they are actively hunting you.

· Crawling on the ground a lot? – They learn to spot you.
· Sneaking up on individual soldiers a lot? – They learn to pair up.
· Fulton-extracting a lot? – They learn to shoot the balloon.

And eventually, they are being constantly provided with resources like flashlights, night-vision goggles, helmets, snipers and more – a provision wich you can temporarily disrupt. Unfortunately, this disruption happens with as little gameplay as sending out a dispatch mission from a menu. Too bad.

Next to the gradually growing Mother Base, there are actually *two* large disconnected sandbox maps which are tied to a whole by "taking the chopper" – the small interior of the chopper is basically the overworld hub. You constantly return to the chopper; each mission ends in the chopper; you sit in the chopper for dozens of minutes to do some menuing; some menus are *only* available in the chopper. In other words: you spend a lot of time in this chopper.

Which is why I don't understand why they chose this kind of sound design. As it is now, there is no background music at all, and it is a constant level of low but stressing environmental rotary noise, with the occasional dashboard control "click clack", menuing, and "buddy shifts in seat" sound FX. I swear to Batman, I get headaches from this stupid chopper soundscape.

And most boss fights don't feel like boss fights at all – let alone, MGS-typical boss fights.

At least you can gather plants and rescue animals. That is nice for a change. It has little purpose, but it's nice. The plants are barely visible – even when utilizing all your best equipment – and those randomized animals that you can't see but have to capture with cages in specific locations could at least have environmental audio hints or something. So all in all, considering the visual and gameplay implementation, I feel like “Red Dead Redemption (1)” did these two things better – but I appreciate it being there in the first place. It provides me with comfort.

Narratively however … it's weird; and not in an MGS-typical way. The story is disappointing at times, and boring at others. Sometimes even awkward, with no one speaking for way too long. And I personally don't feel invested at all in the "who provides all these enemy soldiers with all that equipment" branch. Overall, there's less dialog-- or rather: the dialog has been moved to the background. It happens without interrupting the gameplay, unlike in previous games where the focus was specifically placed on the codec calls. Now everybody keeps talking *at* Snake (also like background noise) rather than *with* him. Why did they even bother getting Kiefer Sutherland on board? He barely says anything!

And in most cutscenes there is a lack of things that are actually happening which is hidden behind complex camera movement. Kojima gets too caught up in his crazy camera rides; so much so that he is forgetting all the other important aspects of great storytelling. Please someone, take away his new toy!

As for Quiet … it's sexist. Definitely sexist. No two ways about it. Kojima can downplay or defend this with narrative reasoning all he wants – Spoilershe needs this outfit to "breathe through the skin", yeah right – the whole character design is sexist from start to finish. With her, he has created a pet version of a girlfriend who keeps her mouth shut and walks around in nylons and a bikini all-the-time. She was even "tamed" like a wild animal; *and* even *then* she's being kept in a cage. — And I am in conflict, as usual.

… Anyway.

Whereas the first MGS for the PlayStation was a thriller (and sometimes action) movie, this one is more comparable to a long-winding episodic "reality" show; like “COPS” … but with the occasional twist or reveal every season finale. That's how it feels to me, at least. Might be because I'm taking my sweet-ass time.

In conclusion, this one is quite difficult to recommend – especially to someone new to the series. I would argue that this is a very misrepresenting entry for the series. But fun in its own, different right. Granted, I haven't finished this yet, but so far I prefer MGSV:GZ over this.

I'll give it a comparatively low score based on the things I mentioned – but at the same time, the fact that I kept playing for many hours and I'm gonna keep playing some more stands for itself.

7.5 / 1o.o