Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

September 1, 2015 marks the launch of the much anticipated video game Metal Gear Solid V; yet another installment to the Metal Gear series. First off I want to say that the graphics are perfect, so absolutely perfect I can see pores and wrinkles on faces as if they were real. Now when you start the game it does feel to move a bit slow but it introduces what happened. You wake from a coma after nine years and are told by a doctor you were in an explosion gaining at least 108 foreign bodies including shrapnel as well as human bone shards and teeth. As you learn what happened; being brought up to speed on what you missed in your coma the game does an amazing detailed why of making you feel and think as everything unfolds in front of you. You also get to pick the name and birthdate, I feel this was about what you would have put on the dog tags and giving it a sense of this is my game; my play through.

When the game starts picking up in pace, you’re informed your enemies are pretty much seeking you out to ensure you are dead. They have you pick out how you look; giving you an even better sense of it’s my style. The doctor shows you how you first off look saying he must change your features to hide you from your enemies and so the customization begins.

And guess what? It was a Kojima trolling. HA! GOTCHA!

Now what happens after that I really don’t or better yet won’t spoil for you. All I will say is it was amazingly epic and worth you experiencing for yourself.

I will move back to commenting about the graphics. It not only makes faces look real but fires, objects within the area and more look like I could reach out and touch them. Textures we’re all present; what was cloth looked like cloth, and what was meant to be leather looked exactly like such material. Even facial hair looked real and moved like hair would instead of being ‘stuck’ to the player’s head or face. Interaction with objects in the area react like they would in real life and even sounds are spot on during the play through. The text or subtitles during dialogue doesn’t make me squint to read what they are say but I also can hear the voices loud and clear enough not to feel the need to read the subtitles which made me feel the creators had us in mind. They wanted the game to play smooth, play at an audible level and be appealing to the eyes.

During the first moments of you taking control, you get a sense of frustrating helplessness as you are dragging yourself along the floor. You know you can’t defend yourself when you can’t even stand yet making you feel this heaviness of ‘I need to hurry’ or you feel the guy leading the way could have perhaps helped you up to your feet instead of just walking ahead of you motioning and saying to follow. Though frustrating and being helpless you continue to follow watching as you try to get up but fail at near every attempt you make. Yet soon enough after a few freaky events you find you can’t go the way you planned and must detour with a now what appears to be broken arm or dislocated. Good luck.

Once you’re to your feet though, you’re not out of the woods. You stagger; that feeling you can’t do anything yet is still present and still going to force you to feel you have to hurry or that you wish the coma effects would go away already. You keep following the man as the hospital burns and the presents of smoke is drifting just above you. Every detail captured in great perfection making you keep feeling it’s very alive and real. You could almost put yourself in the character’s shoes.  Sure enough suspense it greatly present which could make even you playing the game have a racing pulse. Feel and hear your pulse in your ears yet?

As you continue on and gain a weapon now you start to feel less like playing cat and mouse and more like Snake ready to strike. The one leading you around also gives you minor tutorial mentions saying to hold down the aim button and hit the attack button to fire. It is easy to figure the entire hospital prologue is the entire tutorial section hidden as an actual level. The only thing that gives it away is the pop ups that say what buttons to push to do certain actions like heal serious injuries, crawl, crouch, and so on. In my opinion this has to be the best tutorial introduction in a game I have seen to this day. It doesn’t feel like you’re a grunt in training but makes you feel like they are just updating you on what buttons to push. This gives the prologue level a huge purpose not only to introducing you (Or reintroducing, if you played all the other games) but also to putting a big point into the plot of the game itself.

At the end of each episode you get a score chart that depicts your play rating as well as any bonuses, what the episode play rank is and what your Code name is. There is also a heroism scale that depending on how you did increases. Now something I noticed was how the camera moves. At certain points it looks and acts like someone else (Perhaps the player) is following around with a camera capturing everything and thus makes the camera move away from the characters to focus on other places then move back. With a camera moving like that during cut scenes it makes me feel like I’m playing a game and movie hybrid which gives the game a sense of uniqueness and sets it apart from other games I’ve reviewed this year.

Each new level is not only considered episodes but goes by chapters. As I stated before the prologue is not only the piece to start the game off but a tutorial getting you ready for the next chapters that follow afterwards. During the prologue only other characters spoke until the beginning of Chapter one then we hear Big Boss (Aka Punished Snake, Snake—eh you get the picture) utter one word before being told the events of the world while he was in the coma. Soon the last arm you have gets replaced from the hook which is hard to maneuver and use to looking to have a hand of some sort. A hand you do see in the introduction scene before you wake up. If you played other games and so on you knew how he lost that hand already, plus the prologue also explains a bit.

After being outfitted with a new hand, you venture to go find a friend. This is where you really start the game and not just the prologue tutorial, but you will want to keep what you learned in mind as you play the game. For returning players you’ll have no trouble but new players will have it a bit harder or perhaps not at all. It mostly depends upon what type of gamer you are.

Anyway if I was to give this game a rating from a scale of 1 to 10, I’d have to score it at a 10. Everything works so well together, audio is spot on and voices fit the characters very well. If you’re a fan of Metal Gear I highly recommend getting this game and enjoying it for everything it has to offer. Even if you’re not a fan I suggest getting it and opening up your gaming favorites because this is a game you don’t or better yet, shouldn’t miss out on.