Release: 2015
Platform: PC
Developer: Konami
Genre: Third person, Shooter, Action, Stealth
Gameplay Stats: 106 hours, 35/42 (83%) Steam achievements, 72% completion in game
Oh man, I'm so stoked to finally be done with my "year" of Metal Gear. I'm through the main entries in the series and maybe at some point I'll do a series retrospective or something. I do have some opinions on the series as a whole and writing those down might be beneficial for me on my quest to get better at expressing my feelings about things. Without further ado!
Visuals: This is definitely a strength of this game! The people in this game are very good looking. Not in the attractive sense, but in the looking like people sense. The animals and most of the materials also look good. The plants are a bit iffy, but they look good in high density zones like the jungles. In the desert, they do not. The visual style of the game is quite good, and all of the information is conveyed well enough to suit the game without being a hindrance apart from when you're learning it.
Audio: This one is kind of a mixed bag. There's very little unique music in the game. Largely, the soundtrack is made of sounds in the environment and music that you can play on your iDroid (the game's menu system). The music that they picked for the game is appropriate 80s music for the time period the game takes place. The sound design of the environmental sounds is extremely good as are the voices used in the game. I'm not a fan of Kiefer Sutherland taking over the role of Solid Snake, but I guess that's Kojima's decision. It kind of makes sense in the scope of the story, but also kind of stinks. I preferred David Hayter anyway.
Gameplay: This is definitely the strength of this game. This game plays better than so many others. The upgrades are strewn throughout the game mostly organically through development upgrades that you're always aware of the requirements for. You can customize your loadouts and play the game however you like for the most part. I preferred to play the game stealth most of the time, but it's also viable to play the game louder and tank some damage. In fact, a couple of the later missions force you into playing loud, so make sure you are comfortable with the gun play and have some rocket launchers upgraded. They do pad the game quite a lot, expecting you to do more or less the same side mission several times in the same place over the course of a playthrough. They also expect you to play through each mission probably 3 times if you don't mess up or consult a guide. The first time for the story, the second time for the optional objectives, and finally to finish it quickly. The game handles well, but asking you to do the same thing so many times over is extremely redundant. The game doesn't seem to respect the players time and that really bothers me.
Plot: I don't really have a whole lot to say here... It's a Metal Gear Solid game. I came in expecting something that was mildly amusing but didn't make a damn bit of sense and that's overall what I got. My only issue here is the pacing. The story is written like a normal story where you could play through the whole story in a sequence, but that's not how the game is structured for the most part. You have to do the main story quests and then a slew of side missions before you can see what happens next in the story. Through some clever writing it kind of makes sense, but the pacing overall isn't very good.
Overall this is probably my least favorite MGS game, but that doesn't really say a whole lot considering how I feel about the series. This game is a straight improvement in terms of controls, but a step back in most every other dimension. I walked away from the game feeling pretty salty and that my time didn't mean much at all to the creators of the game. With this amount of padding I actually have a hard time recommending the game. It's fun! But the end is far more fun than the beginning and the time requirement to get there is absurd. [7.5/10]
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