I think I’ve just finished this game. It isn’t really very clear whether I’ve finished it or not, which I will explain.
MGSV is an open-world military/stealth/espionage game, where you spend your time using a combination of stealth and endlessly novel weapons and gadgets to infiltrate bases, rescue prisoners, capture outposts and defeat baddies, all while uncovering a mysterious plot involving worldwide nuclear threats and… paranormal experimentation.
Whereas usually in games the plot and the gameplay are intertwined, with MGS the two are so dramatically different that they can almost be considered completely independently of each other. The gameplay, game mechanics, level progression, base building etc on one hand, and a cut-scene heavy elaborate and mindblowingly confusing and extravagent plot and set of characters on the other. You could basically play the game without the cutscenes or story and have a great time, and similarly you could probably just watch all the cutscenes and enjoy a movie, albeit one that probably doesn’t make any sense.
So to look first at the gameplay itself, which is outstanding. As a long-time Splinter Cell fan, when I heard that this game was about ‘stealth’, but then saw screenshots in open sunny deserts, I was dubious. Stealth to me means creeping in the shadows indoors at night, not racing around in choppers and Jeeps, but MGS won me over – it really is brilliantly done.
Sneaky sneaky
You are Big Boss, general badass and leader of guns-for-hire Diamond Dogs and you have a wealth of weapons, gadgets and other tools available to you, all of which can be upgraded throughout the game. You can choose how to play the game, but you are rewarded by using stealth and not killing people (so, silenced tranquilliser guns, sleep and stun grenades, distractions and generally sneaky sneaky approaches, knocking out enemies one by one until you’ve secured the area), or you can just as easily go loud, deploying a tank and using rocket launchers, landmines and grenades to obliterate anything with a heartbeat. Both are fun, and both are completely equal in execution quality and options.
One of your buddies – D-Dog, who can sniff out baddies and other useful stuff
Not only are you a one-man-infiltration-machine, but you can call in “buddies” who can help you (a sniper, a dog who can sniff out enemies, a mechanical walking machine or a horse) and you can call for airdrops of anything from ammo to full-size tanks or other vehicles that you have acquired.
This endless array of options led to some really great gaming experiences. Sometimes I’d be infiltrating a base with a stealth load out, and then I’d be completely blindsided by a plot twist that meant I needed to go loud, so I’d call in a loudout drop from the chopper and completely change my tactics, sometimes even swapping out buddies as well. I might then steal a vehicle and go to the next mission or side mission, or call the helicopter to take me there. Sometimes the helicopter would come and help me with some air-to-ground barrage, but I’d have to make sure I hunted out any ground-to-air artillery first and take it out with some C4. Perhaps I would interrogate a guard and find out there’s a prisoner nearby which might mean a change in plan, or maybe I’d get caught and suddenly need to resort to drastic measures to survive. The game has a brutal (but rewarding) checkpoint system where you can lose a lot of progress if you die, so you really don’t want to.
Then there is a whole behind-the-scenes base-building aspect to the game, where the enemies you extract from the battlefield become your new recruits who help research items for you. You can visit your “Mother Base” and explore it, unlocking some hidden cutscenes. As it grows, so do the weapons and item upgrades that become available to you. You can even micro-manage which teams each staff member resides in, to maximise the base efficiency, but I just used the auto-manage option the whole time unless I needed a temporary boost to a particular team to meet a particular upgrade’s requirements.
The AI is intelligent and challenging, adapting to your playstyle. For example, if you always infiltrate camps at night-time (the game has a day and night cycle), soldiers will start wearing night-vision goggles and using torches, or if you always use gas grenades they might start wearing gas masks. This makes you adapt your approach, always keeping you thinking. You can even send out some of your mother base staff on behind the scenes missions on your behalf to disrupt enemy supplies of gas masks etc to try and turn the odds back in your favour.
The cutscenes are numerous, long and overly dramatic
That’s just a fraction of the gameplay, which is totally immersive and excellent and I had a blast playing it. There’s so much to it, and its all really well balanced and makes for one of the best 3rd person stealth/combat games I’ve ever played. On the flip side, there’s the plot and other theatrical elements which really mess with the formula. The plot alone is completely nuts and makes little sense unless you do a lot of background reading and listen to all the tapes that you collect throughout the game. It references huge amounts of back-story which went over my head because I’d not played any previous MGS games. It was quite enjoyable but I just got the feeling they went overboard. Every cutscene includes dramatic slow-mo moments, lens flares and climaxing music, as if this is some mini-movie. Every mission starts and ends in a full credits sequence (spoiling half the twists in missions because it tells you who is ‘starring’ in the mission before you’ve played it). The game designer Hideo Kojima’s name appears every time you finish a mission or do anything. The cutscenes are really long too; I wouldn’t be surprised if there was at least 2 hours of cutscenes in this game. There’s also an embarrassingly overly-sexed character with huge bobbing boobs in a tiny bikini, with a far-fetched plot device created to explain why she dresses that way. I think it is related to the culture of Japan etc, where this sort of thing might be normal, but it sticks out oddly in the game. The theatrics of the game are basically over the top, and I did find myself getting fed up with the long and bizarre cutscenes. Also your character, voiced by Keither Sutherland, is weirdly silent for most of the game, despite being pivotal to almost every scene. Then way he just doesn’t say anything ever is really strange. There must be a decision behind it, but the result is odd.
“Quiet”, a very useful but ridiculously ‘gifted’ woman
The only significant negative about the game is the pacing, although this can be counter-acted with some fore-knowledge. Essentially, the game is split into two chapters, but there can be no other explanation for the quality of chapter 2 other than they ran out of money or time. It is a mishmash of a few cutscenes, a handful of new missions and side ops and a load of replaying of old missions on a harder difficulty level. When you complete Chapter 1, you feel like you have legitimately beaten the game – the pacing up to that point is perfect, there is a decent finale etc, and then the end game credits. Then it says “End of Chapter 1”. The player is then left to believe that they are half way through the game, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. The slow realisation of how awful and non-existent Chapter 2 is makes for a real comedown after the climax of Chapter 1. I’ve read up on it and there are plenty of rumours about budget and time constraints fighting against an overly-grand vision by Kojima, but there is simply no excuse for this terrible execution. Chapter 1 should have been the end, leaving the rest of the side ops etc open for playing casually. What’s infuriating is that there are a few ‘secret’ missions in Chapter 2, unlocked only by achieving certain things (which you aren’t told about), which then explain the entire plot. There is no hint that these missions even exist (I just researched on the web and stumbled on it), but they explain a LOT. To bury something of such significance inside an otherwise pointless chapter is crazy.
Overall, this is a fantastic game that I highly recommend. The gameplay is brilliant, the missions and side ops are varied enough to avoid monotony, the plot is totally mad but intriguingly unusual and unexpected. There are a load of culturally-inspired decisions made that are confusing and unnecessary but they can be ignored. I would advise all players to consider “Chapter 1” to be the full game, to avoid disappointment, although I would recommend playing the important story missions in Chapter 2.
Filed under: Games, Technology
