Reviews

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain - PS4 Review

Posted on: 2015-09-24

Each time you go on a mission you?ll have the opportunity to choose your load out of weapons, equipment and your buddy that will be accompanying you during the mission.

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Metal Gear Solid has to be one of my favourite game series with its cinematic story telling which defined the way story telling is done in games of today, to the great stealth and espionage gameplay where you’re hiding in the shadows waiting and preying on your enemies. So is this the great final chapter that we want in the series? Let’s find out.

Strap in with the story because it’s a bit of a doozy, You play as the legendary soldier known as Big Boss who is a founder of a private military company called the Militaires sans frontiers (Soldiers Without Borders). It’s not until they’re attacked by a mysterious enemy unit called XOF disguised as a UN nuclear inspection team and they destroy Big Boss’s base called Mother Base. He is then seriously injured and is then put into a coma for 9 years then finds himself in a hospital and the year is 1984. The same unit attacks the hospital trying to kill him and he then escapes and forms a new PMC called The Diamond Dogs and he must get his revenge on XOF. The story does delve into some dark themes such as child soldiers and post-traumatic stress, the game shows that war is nothing to laugh about.

The gameplay is very familiar if you have played Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker which was originally released on the PSP back in 2010, but you can get it on the HD collection on Xbox 360 and PS3 if you want to play it. You have the standard Metal Gear stealth gameplay such as hiding vents, knocking out guards and getting Intel on targets. However this time Metal Gear Solid is no longer a linear adventure as it is now set in an open world so how you handle a mission is completely up to you. There is no wrong way of infiltrating a base in the two sandboxes Afghanistan and Central Africa. You’ll part take in various missions such as taking down a Soviet Commander of a tank unit or rescuing prisoners Rambo style where you flee enemy gun fire as you have a POW on your shoulders.

Each time you go on a mission you’ll have the opportunity to choose your load out of weapons, equipment and your buddy that will be accompanying you during the mission. You’ll be dropped into the area via helicopter and you must travel to the base or area either on foot, horse or vehicles that you capture whilst out on the field. When you get to the location you must scout the area and you can do this by finding a high vantage point looking for the enemies and targets with your binoculars which will then highlight enemies. Later on when you upgrade them they will tell you what skills they have.

The big feature in this game is managing your Mother Base which is the heart of your operations. You can recruit soldiers while out on the field and how this works is you can knock them out and use the Fulton recover system which is a helium balloon that shoots them up to the helicopter, so you basically kidnap soldiers and persuade them to join your cause. Later on you can upgrade the Fulton balloon to extract containers that have valuable resources to help build up your base and you can also steal vehicles as well that you can request while on a mission. This not only to help you fight they play various roles such the R & D team who help you develop new weapons and upgrades to your current tools and weapons. The Intel team help by telling you about important information about the mission or area, the medical team make sure that your soldiers are taken care of health wise and base facilities that help extend the size of Mother Base.

The presentation of this game is beautiful the Fox Engine makes the environments and character models look insanely detailed with the dusty and sun bleached sand terrain of Afghanistan to lush green jungles of Central Africa. All the characters are voiced superbly with Kiefer Sutherland playing Big Boss where he puts in a decent performance even if he doesn’t speak that much, but when he does it’s great. It also helps that they did facial capture on all the actors so you can really see their emotions when they start talking. The cutscenes are well directed instead of having jump cuts the camera constantly follows the characters it a single shot so it feels like you’re in the same room with them.

The only negative that I have with this game is the criteria you have to fulfill in order to continue the story in chapter 2 because you have to reply missions on harder difficulty setting such as Extreme mode where you take more damage, Subsistence where you’re dropped in with no weapons or buddy and total stealth were you can’t get spotted. It really killed the pace and it was a tad aggravating because it took a long time and I had to do it to get the true ending.

Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain is a beautiful final installment to a nearly 30 year old series which is not afraid to cover real world problems this is a must own if you’re a long-time fan or new to the series.

 

4.5/5

Reviewed by Sam Coles, The Bristolian Gamer, for 365Bristol - the leading events and entertainment website for Bristol.

Tags: Review, Game, Gaming, Playstation, PS4, Computer, Console.

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