Metal Gear Solid V, The Phantom Pain – Video Game Review.
11/6/2015
Picture it! You’re in the dry terrains of Afghanistan. Riding on horseback, the heat is beating you down as you travel the rugged landscape. All is quiet until you see a guard outpost far off in the horizon. You pull out the well worn binoculars in your inventory and spy a gang of bored guards just lazy-ing around. These people are supposed to be guarding important intel, weapons or innocent citizens and victims? Taking a moment to survey the best route of entry and your options you plot our your plan. You can go in guns blazing, hide n snipe, or just sneak in and get what important and sneak back out. The choice is yours, but either way you’re going in there.
In Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, you can experience this and more! The open world experience is very enjoyable. Being a new addition to the Metal Gear Solid franchise, the choices to interact with the playing environment are wide open. From the free roam on either horseback or vehicles, to saving animals, grabbing items and soldiers for building your Mother Base which is a pretty neat bonus to the many missions the game offers, you are only limited by your imagination.
One of the mechanics I loved about this game was the weather and time changes while playing. Hearing the AI announce “Sandstorm Approaching” gets me a tingly inside because I get to get all ninja like. Soon as that sandstorm hits that guard outpost, I run right in k.o.ing every guard I come across. Such a great feeling when that happens. Another favorite was the anytime supply drop and new weapon drop requests. Even the option of capturing guard outposts after either killing or knocking out all the guards there was a great addition that I personally love a lot.
However, one thing about the game that I found disappointing was the lack of cinematic cut scenes that I enjoyed in the previous MGS games. I felt that this MGS was a bit of a “filler” to the series, it just gives that type of vibe. Don’t get me wrong this game is amazing and one of the best in the franchise. The graphics are beautiful. Audio is sonically lush and the game mechanics are easy to use and respond awesome. Even some of the story’s scenarios were pretty exhilarating.
Yet, I felt lack of the story left a bad aftertaste for the game to me. I did enjoy playing this game very much, however it just disappointing to learn of the fallout between the father of the MGS series game creator Hideo Kojima & Konami. Ibtime.com states that there was a recent report on Konami even shutting down their LA Studio where they developed the Metal Gear games. [Update 11/6/2015, 0647 – Konami closes down the LA studio.] Polygon also stated that this is not true and that Kojima is taking a “long break” & Konami explained that game developers usually take long vacation breaks after finishing creating a game. All we can do is just hope that this is true and Kojima will be back at creating amazing story plots to the MGS & Silent Hill series. Until then Metal Gear Solid V : The Phantom Pain is a amazing & fun play, and if you like community play they recently released Metal Gear Online to keep you busy until the next one.
Slickster Magazine wants to know what you think? Did MGSV The Phantom pain kick ass!? Leave a comment below.