I started playing the game. "The Man Who Sold the World" comes on the radio and I sat in awe that I was finally playing the game. What a great song to open with; my face immediately lit up. That was until I noticed something, it took me aback, it was something I then chose to ignore and thought "Well maybe that wasnt intentional". I forgot about it for a time. Right up till the final mission when you play the first mission again, and I realized it wasn't unintentional; because based on the previous 100 hours how could it. Whilst Snake is laying in bed, the player has control over a first person view in which they can look around the room in blurred vision. Unfortunately, during this sequence a nurse leans over exposing her rather large cleveage. I thought the industry was passed this? Clearly, Kojima didn't get the message, as one of the games main characters spends the entire game undressed, over sexualized, parading around trying to ... entice the gamer? I'm not entirely sure. But as I'm sure you're aware many critics have talked in detail about Quiet and her 'movements', and indeed the game's portrayal of women in general. And I would direct you to the jimquisition for a much better analysis than I could ever produce. http://www.thejimquisition.com/2015/09/the-jimquisition-a-quiet-conversation/Instead, I will focus on purely the gameplay aspects. As previously stated, I was all set up to join the bandwagon and love every minute of The Phantom Pain. I was ready (as you'll note in previous posts) to place The Phantom Pain at the top of the pile for my personal Game of the Year. So, why is it that I can't help but be massively underwhelmed by the game? I'm not saying that the game is bad. In fact, the moment to moment gameplay and the controls of Snake are some of the best I've ever seen/played. It's incredibly enjoyable to play the game when infiltrating a base, taking out guards and fultoning them out. But there's just something severely lacking in the game.
For all the talk of the game's innovative approach to gameplay and the almost limitless solutions the game boasts to have on offer. The simple tactic of sneaking in, fultoning out the guards and progress with little resistance; is arguably the most logical way to progress. For me, I did this for near the entire game. I bought so many guns and equipment that I'm not even sure why. I never used hardly any of them (something I'll get back to later on). This method, is simply the best way to play the game. It's the easiest, most rewarding (theoretically and mechanically speaking) and 'correct' way to play.
- When approaching a base, the player will usually look to find a high vantage point that overlooks the base. This might be a Watch tower or tall building, but more often than not its a cliff that encompasses the target area. Most successful missions will start like this, regardless of approach.
- Once all enemies are marked, the player will sneak down to the base and take out any guards patrolling the external area. I found that in most cases, the player can make plenty of noise up to roughly 25-30 meters from enemies. This means that the player can takedown and exfiltrate any enemies without alerting anyone as long as their distance is greater than 30 meters. It should be noted, that the player can pickup downed enemies and move them (just like any MGS). So the player can move enemies out of this "30 meter" zone and fulton them from further away.
- At this external stage of the map, the player should make use of CQC (close quarters combat) to takedown enemies silently, gain additional information and most importantly, save the Suppressor on their tranquilizer gun. The CQC hold also leaves the enemy incapacitated for longer than the tranquilizer.
- Once inside the base, it becomes more difficult to manage multiple targets that might be closing in on you, so the player should make use of the tranquilizer now. But only in absolute circumstances, make sure to be patient and wait for guards to break from their patrolling pattern.
- The player doesn't need to remove all the guards, just the ones closest to the objective. If all goes well, the player should have a fairly simple journey to and from the objective.
Outside of this Base infiltration gameplay, we have some very, very strange decisions. When you enter one of the 2 large open spaces, you have many missions to carry out inside. Usually, you'll drop in via helicopter at the location closest to the mission your about to undertake. You then do the mission, like above. But once you're done you're left with 2 options. Either get a helicopter to pick you up from the location you dropped in. Or run (usually across the entire map (up to 20 minutes)) to your next destination. It's in these moments I encountered my first great frustration with the game. The Level Design is completely all over the place. Most of the well designed areas are self contained buildings in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by abandoned buildings. Nearly all the buildings are shacks that have been copy and pasted. I loved the previous games in huge part for their level designs. I can remember nearly every location from the games, inside and out. In this open world; I can only remember a few locations at best, and that's not because they're well designed / thought out. But in most cases they're the only one of it's kind in the game, for instance, the Oil Plant. These areas are fun to play inside, but they never feel entirely together. Most buildings you can enter are bare bones. The buildings that actually look interesting can't be accessed.
I believe this is because the whole game is based around this open world mechanic, the stealth scenarios are setup for an open world; and would be completely negated within walls. Unfortunately this leads to large open sections of the player just running, and running, and running. For me, this open world just negates the value of stealth in general, especially when it was arguably highly refined by GOTP. What I mean by this is, in previous games if you had to hide you couldn't simply run out of the area, you had to find a hiding spot, be it in a locker, behind a barrel etc. It seems strange to me that the open world setup is quite prominent in games today; that's not to say I don't enjoy them; but I found myself longing for some linearity and limitations to what I can do. Leaving me to find the solution under pressure like previous games. The difference between an open world game like the Witcher 3 and this, is that; in the Witcher, there's a necessity for the open world. There's people to meet to expand your knowledge of the game, characters who not only interact with you but may give you missions great and small. There's environmental storytelling, which tells a story which is completely seperate from the game, one that the player will never be a part of; making the world feel alive. There's secrets to find within these locations, new loot like a shiny new sword, books which tell a story about the location your in, and indeed more quests to find treasures and such. In the Phantom Pain, there's none of this, making the open world feel dead. The most the player can do is walk into huts and press pickup on incidental resources. This leaves me very confused. What's the point of an open world if there's nothing to explore?
This conveniently leads me onto my next point which is about Mother Base. In the open world, there's little reason to explore. In previous games, the player was rewarded by exploring; finding new items and weapons. "Procure all weapons on site" is the information often told to Snake in the previous games. That moment, when you hop in the back of the truck in MGS1 and find the SOCOM Pistol, was a magical moment. It's a standout moment from my childhood. Now, in The Phantom Pain, I'm told requirements that need to met. I pickup vague Blueprints for 010111WHOCARES, only to find out that my R&D Team is too low a level. And even then, I have to wait an hour or so for them to make it. And then, I have to spend more resources for them to drop it in to me. What the fuck is this? This isn't Metal Gear. I bought many of these weapons and tools but hardly ever used any of them. Not only because my method of play was clearly the best, but also I had no attachment to them. No backstory of the hundreds of men I had to kill in order to acquire them. No wonder of "how will this weapon change gameplay?" I already knew what they were like. Instead of developing new weapons, these "valuable" resources can also be used to develop Mother Base; something I imagine even the diehard Phantom Pain fans couldn't say they liked. It's so lifeless, there's so little to explore. It might as well not be in the game, there's no reason to ever go to Mother Base other than forced Cutscenes. The entire game, I was waiting for it to get attacked and when it finally does, the game plays a cutscene. Each of the struts (very reminiscent of the Big Shell from MGS2) are so far apart its ludacris, it takes minutes in some cases to reach other struts via a car! This time can be shortened by using the delivery fast travel. But if the designers knew the distance was so far that it required a fast travel; why not just move the struts closer? It would have looked more epic and at least; I might have had the desire to explore them.
The Foward Operating Bases, serve as another way to spend these in-game resources. These feature a base infiltration mission but on another player, which is closer to what I wanted from the game. But even they appear to be locked behind a pay wall of microtransactions yet setup exactly the same as Mother Base and indeed the development of Weapons and Tools. It leads me to suspect, that the microtransactions were at one stage a larger part of the entire game. With the final section of the game cut and Kojima being fired and brought back as contractor, I believe this to be the cause; the microtransactions that had flooded his idea for the game. It seems odd that their are so many options for microtransactions that arent there. Ability to buy the weapons and tools ahead of R&D for example. I'm not say that I wanted it, but feels like the game was setup to use such a system. Especially when the game is full of management and micro economy systems.
Finally, my biggest complaint with the game is the lack of any boss battles. There are few moments where you fight "The Skulls". But theyre for the most part just normal enemies that have armour to act like bullet sponges, that you can finish off with Quick Time Events. Yes. Those. Every previous Metal Gear has had epic boss battles. The moments when you finally get to unleash the arsenal you've been carrying for 10 hours and see what it can do. It's incredibly rewarding and satisfying. Especially as you're usually fighting Metal Gear, giant walking mechanical monsters that can crush you like a fly. It's amazing. In the Phantom Pain you have 1 of those missions. And it's not at all satisfying, firstly because its not very hard and secondly because you don't feel like the odds are stacked against you. In a very bizarre approach; the game often tells the player through credits at the start of every mission; exactly who is going to appear in the mission. What's the point of this? I've no idea. It removes all suspense, especially in moments where the player will think "Oh, I've finished the mission, but didn't the credits say that the Skulls were in it? Oh. There they are. Guess I haven't finished it yet". It breaks immersion, pacing and possibly worst of all; the surprise. Those moments could have actually been good if handled better. The Credits also tell the player exactly what to prepare for, almost like it's saying "Hey you should bring that Rocket Launcher with you! You'll need it!". Instead of just letting the player develop a solution on the fly like the game appears to encourage. And as the game progressed, and those credits rolled, the boss fight I was waiting for, I realized wasn't going to come. The game has Psychic called the Third Boy who is in all probability, Psycho Mantis, one of the most interesting boss battles ever. Do you fight him? No. The Man on Fire, the embodiment of hatred against Snake, manifesting itself in the re-animated body of Volgin. Do you fight him? No. Skull Face, the big boss of the entire game. The one who blew up the base in Ground Zeroes and responsible for everything. Do you fight him? No.
In my conclusion, was the game even necessary? To go off script and talk about the storyline; the game series was very well tied up in both Snake Eater and Guns of the Patriots. Both had epic moments with boss battles and very exciting and engaging gameplay. We got our resolution in GOTP, between Snake and Liquid and in Snake Eater we have our reason for why Big Boss becomes the bad guy. It didn't really need to be expanded on. Instead the story we would have liked to see; how Major Zero is actually the real bad guy; barely gets mentioned. At one moment, Liquid reveals to Big Boss that he's his son, but Big Boss doesn't seem to even care. And in the twist ending, it makes it even more bizarre that Big Boss would become the villain. Not to mention nearly all the moments of story in the game are shown in the trailers. I mean. What? The removal of discovery, an open world that is empty, the tedious missions that you have to do on repeat, the lack of a proper storyline outside of casette tapes, the lack of any boss battles. I have to ask, is this game even Metal Gear? Sad Face.
