Game Reviews Volume 2

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (PS4, PC, Xbox One, PS3, Xbox 360)

I am a relatively new fan to the Metal Gear franchise, having onlyexperienced the games for the first time last year in the lead up toThe Phantom Pain. Unlike many I haven't spent the last few decadeswith these characters, I haven't grown up with it and I've neveractually felt the pain of waiting for the next release in the series.But what I do share with every Metal Gear fan is a love for thissimply amazing series that has been consistently producinginstalments for longer than I have actually been alive. Metal GearSolid V is Hideo Kojima's final Metal Gear game, bringing an end tothe series that has been a part of so many lives and inspired so manycreators along the way.

The Phantom Pain is truly unlike any other game I have ever playedand over the next few pages I am going to attempt to explain to youwhy this is.

Pickingup 9 years after the events of MGSV: Ground Zeroes, The Phantom Painopens with Big Boss waking from a coma as an assassination attempt isbeing made on him by one of Cipher's assassins. He is quickly foundby Ocelot who helps him escape to the new mercenary company he worksfor, Diamond Dogs, set up by Kazuhira Miller following thedestruction of MilitairesSans FrontièresMother Base, there he adopts a new codename as Punished 'Venom'Snake.

Whensearching for clues about Cipher's whereabouts Snake ventures intoAfgahnistan during the Soviet-Afghan war and the Angola—Zaireborder during the Angolian Civil War. Whilst there he discoversvarious sinister plots that are being put into motion by Skull Face,an accomplice of Cipher, including the development of a new MetalGear, Sahelanthropus.

The Phantom Pain is relatively light on story in comparison toprevious Metal Gear games. Instead of being told through lengthycutscenes and overly complex dialogue, the story this time round thistime is told mostly through briefing and debriefing audio logs thatare available to you through completing the missions. There is storytold in the more traditional means, though to a much smaller scalethan what we are used to with Metal Gear games.

The whole reason behind this is to put a much greater emphasis onallowing players to build their own story in the massive open worldenvironments they deploy into. There is very little gameplay that isscripted in The Phantom Pain, meaning that the experiences you'll betalking about with people will be of your own doing rather than ascripted story event.

When referring to The Phantom Pain as something unlike anything elseI have ever played, I mean this in regards to the mind numbinglydeep, occasionally unfathomable depth of the gameplay that is onoffer to you.

The basic gameplay styles can be split into three types. Firstlythere is the missions, main-ops and side-ops. There are 50 main-opsthat tell the story of The Phantom Pain and 157 side-ops to challengeyour skills and allow you to collect various resources for the basemanagement mode.

In this mode, similar to Peace Walker's base management features, youmust expand Diamond Dogs Mother Base facilities, hire staff andassign them to the best suited jobs, research equipment to use in thefield, send staff out on missions to earn rewards and resources aswell as various other features that are far too complex to divulgeinto here.

You also have the opportunity to explore the two gameplayenvironments, Afghanistan and Africa, completely of your own accordto take down outposts, collect resources and recruit staff for MotherBase.

ThePhantom Pain is a game that requires an extraordinary amount of yourtime to even come close to completing the main story. In order tosucceed you'll need good equipment, in order to create such equipmentyou'll need staff and resources, to get these you'll have to play alot of the side-ops and explore the game world of your own accord.You need a workforce the equivalent of an actual army in order tofinish the game. I invested around 150 hours to The Phantom Pain justto get the main-ops finished and I've only seen around a third ofwhat the game has to offer according to the completion percentage.