Now Playing: Metal Gear Solid V

I wish I was only reviewing the first half of MGSV. If you’ve read my First Impressions post, you’ll know I was initially very impressed with the title. I had some issues with the opening prologue/tutorial elements, but once I’d got stuck into the game, I was completely hooked. The first half of MGSV is fantastic. It has its flaws, but I’d be happy to slap a solid 8/10 on the end of this review based on that particular content.

Unfortunately, I’m not reviewing only the first half of the game but the complete experience. And sadly, the second half of MGSV is where the experience suddenly begins to fall apart. But before we get too negative, let’s talk about why the first half is so damn impressive.

As I mentioned in my First Impressions, the game opens with a prologue chapter which, although intriguing from a narrative perspective, I found rather tedious to play. You’re locked into an extended tutorial during the early stages of the game, as it slowly reveals new features and abilities as you progress.

But the game does open up, and when it does it’s hard to pull yourself away. The first half of MGSV is comprised of 31 core missions. These take you to every major location across the two open world maps of Afghanistan and Africa. In addition to these are the side ops. By the time I’d hit mission 31, I’d completed roughly 70 of these (of a total 157). Although short, and largely repetitive in terms of mission variety, the side ops will take you to every corner of the maps, both large locations and small.

 

The core missions have a great deal of replay value thanks to the sheer variety of gameplay styles available to the player. As you progress, you’ll unlock all kinds of wonderful toys – weapons (lethal and non-lethal) gadgets, tools, outfits, support strikes, vehicles and ‘buddies’. It allows you to approach missions in a variety of creative ways, both by stealth or by force.

It’s this variety of gameplay options where MGSV really shines. There’s certainly an element of responsibility on the player to make use of all these options. Yes, there are more ‘efficient’ and easy ways to go about things. In a sandbox like this, it’s not that hard to find ways to cheese the systems in place or abuse particular mechanics. But if you’re willing to invest the time and effort and experiment with the various tools and abilities, you’ll enjoy some of the most creative and rewarding sandbox gameplay yet.

If I had to criticise the gameplay in any way, it would simply be that it can be a little too easy, especially when you unlock certain tools or abilities. Your buddy Quiet – a sniper – can be tasked to silently take down an entire outpost as you sit back and watch. And if you’re not concerned with rankings, there’s no reason not to drop a tank from the sky and roll over everything in your path. But as I said, it’s really up to you how you want to go about things and I can’t fault the game for allowing the player to do that.

Another negative aspect is the matter of location variety. There’s little to differentiate the environments between the two open world maps. Small outposts are all essentially the same, and larger locations, with one or two exceptions, are still surprisingly small and simple, particularly when compared to the military base featured in the Ground Zeroes prequel. In fact, I’d say no location in MGSV matches the variety, complexity or quality of that single map. And outside of the outposts and bases, the world is pretty empty, lifeless and pointless to explore.

The narrative aspects of the first half are surprisingly sparse. There are very few cut-scenes between missions, and the game relies far more on radio transmissions and cassette recordings to impart important information. Snake, the main character, barely even speaks. As I said in my First Impressions, there are some odd aspects to the story that felt a little out of place, but as I’m not all that familiar with the Metal Gear series, it’s hard for me to judge how this fits into the overall story.

 

All I can say, is that the story elements are a little weak. I didn’t have any trouble following what was going on, but when so much of it is exposited through numerous and often tedious/worthless recordings, it was hard to ever really connect or care about the characters or story. Some aspects of it, both in terms of gameplay and narrative, are also pretty silly and a little tongue in cheek, which may be par for the course as far as the Metal Gear series goes, but it doesn’t quite feel tonally consistent with the story aspects of Ground Zeroes, which was far more dark.

As you progress through the first half, you’ll slowly expand your Mother Base. This is a big part of the game, but sadly one that’s a little undercooked. The idea is that you’re building your own private military force. And you do get a great sense of progression as you watch your base and personnel expand, unlocking new upgrades or equipment. When you’re in the field, you’ll always be on the hunt for talented soldiers you can ‘recruit’ into your organisation, or resources to collect to further expand your base.

Managing Mother Base is kept relatively simple, although the multiple menu systems get a little irritating to switch through and sort, particularly the personnel. The real problem with the Mother Base element is how the actual base is a whole lot of nothing. It’s just a big, open series of platforms. There’s nothing really to see or to do there. There’s no ‘life’ to your base and you have very little reason to physically visit the place when you can manage everything from its menu system.

And that’s really what Mother Base is – a menu system. It only loosely ties into the gameplay during one or two missions but is something you’ll otherwise ignore, at least in terms of visiting the bloody thing. And whilst I still enjoyed managing my Mother Base, certain elements of it really irritated me. Such as the need for development of certain items to take up to 40 minutes or more of game time. Why? What’s the point of these time limits?

And why does it take so long to process raw materials? This slows base expansion to a tedious crawl during the final stages, especially when you’ll need one type of materiel – fuel – in far greater abundance than any other. There’s no real need for these limits. It wouldn’t be so bad if development and processing was continued whilst out of the game, but they only occur when you’re actively playing.

The first half of MGSV certainly has its flaws, but they don’t detract from the fantastic sandbox gameplay. The missions may follow a somewhat repetitive structure of eliminate/extract a target, but they mix things up just enough and throw in a few twists here and there to keep it feeling fresh. I completed mission 31 (plus about 70 of the side ops) with about 60 hours on the clock. And it did, to a degree, feel like an ending. Not everything was quite wrapped up or explained, but the core thread of defeating a particular bad guy and stopping his evil plans was done.

 

That said, there’s no way I could consider this first half to be a ‘complete’ experience. Too much is left unresolved, the story and characterisation is too weak, and whilst the gameplay provides a good degree of variety, the locations and missions certainly don’t – few missions are memorable due to the repetitive objectives, and the ones which are tend to be so for the wrong reasons. At the time, however, I thought I had an entire second chapter to play through and I couldn’t wait to see what would happen next.

Oh dear. According to the stats, I’d completed 50% of the available content at the conclusion to Chapter 1, but this figure was misleading. Because Chapter 1 really is 95% of the content. I’ve seen Chapter 1 described as the ‘core’ game whilst everything that follows is ‘post-game’ or ‘bonus’ content. But personally, I think that’s a load of bollocks. Chapter 1, whilst great, is only great as part of a larger whole. Except the larger whole simply isn’t there.

Chapter 2, although teased with a series of clips at the end of 1 suggesting it will be a complete experience, as fleshed out and involved as the first, actually turns out to be nearly entirely recycled content. There’s no new map or maps, so even the few ‘new’ core missions only take you to places you’ve already been – at this point, multiple times, especially if you replayed any of the original missions. In fact, out of the 19 missions in Chapter 2, only 6 can be considered new content. The other 13 are all recycled missions from Chapter 1.

I don’t have an issue with the game offering ‘enhanced’ versions of the main missions, designed to test the player in various ways – no starting items, failure upon detection etc – but only when these are optional, not necessary to continue to progress. But play through them you must, if you want to keep the threadbare story going. (Well, maybe not – I’m not quite sure how the new content triggers, because a new mission did kick in after completing several side ops, so maybe that works too)

And suddenly, I went from being unable to tear myself away from MGSV, to almost forcing myself to sit down and play it. You end up grinding through missions you’ve already done, or through several repetitive side ops, just to reach the next ‘new’ story mission. But as far as story missions go, these are incredibly disappointing. They don’t really resolve or wrap up any threads left outstanding from Chapter 1. Chapter 2 feels like a butchered mess, hastily stitched together with content ripped from the first half of the game.

And with no new maps or locations, MGSV runs out of surprises and its fantastic toy box runs dry. You’ve already unlocked pretty much everything, aside from various upgrades, and there’s really nothing new to see. Chapter 2 is a tedious grind through recycled content. The story elements are even more sparse, and by the time you reach the end you really won’t care. It sadly spoils the fantastic experience the first half provided and results in MGSV feeling like half a game, like half of the content is simply missing.

I can’t and won’t accept the notion that Chapter 1 is the ‘complete’ experience because that’s clearly not the case. It seems obvious to me that far more content was planned for Chapter 2 that for one reason or another, was never developed. Imagine if Chapter 2 had introduced a new map, with new mechanics, mission types or a buddy or two, that fleshed out and tied together the unresolved story threads from Chapter 1, and we could have a real game of the year on our hands.

 

But we don’t. What we have is a flawed, but fantastic first half, combined with a tedious and recycled second. And it doesn’t even provide a satisfying conclusion from a story perspective, taking what was an already sparse and tattered narrative and just not doing anything with it. The game ends rather abruptly, with story threads either forgotten or ignored, and by that point you’ve simply ceased to care.

Even the online multiplayer aspect feels half finished. The concept is solid – you build a secondary base which other players can invade and you can defend (or launch invasions of your own). But every base is the same. There’s no customisation, no planning of guard patrol routes or camera placement. I had fun invading a few bases, but the whole system feels kind of pointless and I quickly stopped bothering with it. I don’t want to knock the mode too hard, because I’m sure some people will enjoy it more than I did, but like the Mother Base management, I felt it was too shallow a system to get particularly invested in.

So let’s wrap this up. MGSV is a tough title to score. I wish I could just focus on all the good things and the first half of the game and forget about the second. But sadly I can’t. The second half really ruined the experience for me. I found myself growing increasingly irritated and simply rushing through the recycled missions as quickly as possible in order to unlock the new stuff – but even the new stuff felt weak compared to core missions in the first half.

The story never really engaged me. The characters never really came to life. And in the end, I was playing it more out of a sense of obligation to finish the damn thing than because I was genuinely interested. The game ran out of steam and had nothing new to offer. It’s such a damn shame, because the first half, while not without its problems, is so bloody good.

I know there’s been a bit of controversy surrounding the title and I know there’s rumours of a lot of missing/cut content. That wouldn’t surprise me based on what I’ve played. But I can’t rate a game based on what it could or should be, but rather what it is. I’m not in a position to say if it’s a great Metal Gear game – I don’t have the knowledge or experience for that. All I can say is that, overall, I enjoyed it, and if you like freeform sandbox type stuff, you’ll get good value out of it. But it’s far from the game it could have been.

7/10