In Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes Solid Snake makes his jump to next-gen in a stand-alone prequel to the upcoming Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Does Hideo Kojima’s latest project have the chops to stand with its predecessors in this beloved and venerable series? It took less time than you think to find out.
Changing the Game
MGS vets will notice that a few things have changed since the series jumped to the new consoles. First, Kiefer Sutherland is the new voice of Snake, and he does an admirable job, but it’s still going to piss off the fanboys. Cardboard boxes are also apparently a thing of the past and players actually must be stealthy in a Sam Fisher kind of way: utilizing low-light areas, tall grass, and obstacles. Codec conversations were also omitted this time around in favor of regular radio and cassette player.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrIB3HKVz9Y&feature=youtu.be
Just the Tip
MGS V: Ground Zeroes’ main mission is set entirely in an installation on the tip of Cuba. XOF bad guys, led by a dude named Skull Face, for obvious physical reasons, captured two of Snake’s allies in order to initiate a Trojan Horse attack on Snake’s FOX group. Snake’s mission is to rescue the allies, a boy named Chico and the explosive Paz, and deliver them to safety in time to eat lunch during a UN nuclear inspection of Snake’s mother base. Several side missions, all set in the same installation as the main mission, vary in mission objectives. One mission is a double assassination, one is a rescue mission, and there’s an intel grab. Nothing terribly groundbreaking here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBodu8XrYEM&list=UUeUIaIHNJKlpTBo0iXuaLAw
The Groundbreaking Part
Although the missions have sort of an old hat feel to them, this game is doing some brand new stuff that I have never seen in a video game, and I don’t mean that in a good way. I don’t know how to break this gently to the fanboys, so I’m just going to say it: the game is criminally short. The game is so short, in fact, that it isn’t much more than a demo. I personally have no problem with game demos, until somebody tries to charge me thirty fucking bucks for it...then it’s a problem. Konami is charging thirty dollars for a game where the main mission took me just 61 minutes to complete. Yeah, there’s a handful of side missions, but the play time on those is only 10-15 minutes each. That puts total game time somewhere between 2-3 hours to finish everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PwqQF8IK2Q&list=UUeUIaIHNJKlpTBo0iXuaLAw
Something else I have never personally seen in a game is the dev placing himself prominently as a character in one of the side missions. Check this out, Hideo Kojima not only puts himself in the game, but once the mission is over he hangs out with Snake in the chopper on the menu screen and fucks around with the mission list. I’ve seen devs put themselves on posters in Duke Nukem 3D, while Doom 3: BFG had messages from the development team in email form on the marine’s PDA, and even Rare used likenesses of their guys as faces on the bad guys in Goldeneye, but they never put them in a fucking helicopter next to the main character! What kind of egomaniacal dick puts himself in his own game? The good news is that you can kill him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5dt5JzV5P8&list=UUeUIaIHNJKlpTBo0iXuaLAw
Sarcasmo Says
The game looks great, the voice acting is top-notch, the graphics are fluid and very smooth, and the story is engaging. However, charging folks $30 for a demo is a classless fucking money-grab and sets a very dangerous and expensive precedent for future games if this kind of thing gains traction.
Final Verdict
Fuck Hideo Kojima’s overpriced demo and wait for the full game.
