TJ Okeeffe
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
The main man, big boss aka Mr Snake has awoken from a 9 year power nap and is now ready to boss the fools on the battlefield again as he’s back in action in this tactical masterpiece Konami has produced. 9 years after the events of Metal Gear Solid :Ground Zeroes the story continues..
“So all in all not a good first day back at the office for
Mr Snake.”
This is a brilliant game we have on our hands here, the opening half hour of this game was frankly jaw dropping, the cinematic cut scenes while involving minimal input at first from me got me gripped and whoever else was watching my screen, the wife’s attention was even drawn from the mind numbing soap opera she was watching as the utter chaos unfolded in front of us. You start off on a hospital bed, blurred vision from a nine year coma must be like using your eyes again, the 60 frames per second capture the moment and draw you in from the off.
The doctor gives Snake the bad news, nine years have past and in that time they have been removing shrapnel that covered a massive amount of his body and face. The big shock was that his lower left arm had been blown off! So all in all not a good first day back at the office for Mr Snake.
After coming in and out of sleep a few times the action finally kicks in, a cipher assassin tries to kill Snake, he has a guardian angel Ishmael as his bedside friend who has been looking after his best interests for the last 9 years. Que the cinematic carnage, after ducking and diving in between hospital beds and narrow corners as the hospital gets invaded by an army of highly skilled soldiers and circling helicopters who have only one agenda.. Kill.
Snake and his compatriot find themselves honey trapped with a load of other patients with soldiers to the front and back of them the situation looks grim. They opened fire with no remorse, bits of flesh and green hospital garments flying everywhere they flee to a convenient side room, dodge the firing squad and make for a nearby bed and hide. While a couple of minutes pass of tense atmosphere with size 11 army issue boots millimeters away from your face while you hide cowardly under a hospital bed you manage to escape, but only briefly…
As you make your way out of the room to check at how bad everyone is shot up the soldiers come back just to make sure they have killed everyone! Go prone and hide among the dead bodies in the hospital hallway to avoid being captured, but we get caught, our situation looks grim with no good ending available only the almighty himself can get you out of this one as a one armed Snake has nothing to offer. In floats psychic The Third Child, Tretij Rebenok, helped by his apparition, The Man On Fire the latter is a formidable opponent which seems indestructible but is undone by one bullet and the above sprinkler system!? Seems a cheesy way to get out of a situation when someone is on fire.
Anyway after you escape your burning surroundings which was your home for the last 9 years you are involved straight away in an epic car chase, again i have to reiterate the stunning visuals with flying fire engines being flung about by the The Man On Fire, your car chase comes to an abrupt end when you have then got to deal with an army helicopter bearing its guns and readying its hellfires to fire straight down your throat. In floats The Third Child which springs one of the most random moments in my gaming career… One slight lift of the child’s arm, A massive Flaming Whale burst out of the ground and swallows up the helicopter!
This was all in the first half hour of the game. I was gripped and was craving more carnage. It was liking watching an action movie only i was anticipating when it was my turn to get involved.
Mission time now, yourself and Mr Revolver Ocelot are perched comfortably on horseback in and among old ruins overlooking a war torn Afghanistan. At first the controls felt slightly odd and slow so I adjusted to a much faster camera speed and i was ready to go.
The user interface is newbie friendly although i found the blue background, light blue writing and white highlights a little annoying to navigate at first, you soon adjust to what you have.
The sandbox open world is on a big scale on par with Far Cry 4, perhaps marginally bigger with excellent vantage points for surveying countless outposts and villages, the chance of tactical espionage genius is again at my fingertips ready to outwit my opposition OR go in guns blazing the choice is truly yours. It’s refreshing to have a tactical game that does not have a certain way to complete missions. Instead you have the freedom to apply your own style and tactics to complete your objectives and get the hell out of there!
We are all different and have different ideas into how we wish about going about our business which is a big plus from me.
At first missions seemed repetitive and not much variety, you pretty much get on your horse, ride a few thousand meters and then survey and attack.. simple. But after the first few missions i realized it’s just giving you the dumb down version of how to really play the game an informal tutorial, i was surprised when i was extracting a friendly to the chopper to complete my mission that this time, the screen filled with unusual mist/gas and the skulls had arrived, these are an elite force of super soldiers. They move at high speeds and possess green eyes! Our helicopter had to retreat to a safe distance so i was stuck with nowhere to go apart from straight at them, full speed on my horse running like a coward with the Skulls jumping all over the place like demonic grasshoppers chasing and shadowing my every move but i managed to get away and complete my task!
“demonic grasshoppers chasing and shadowing my
every move”
The major downside so far to the game is some serious glitching which disturbs the gameplay so far after completing a hard task with an almost flawless display i was just about to call in my horse and leave the “hot zone” and complete my mission when my controls glitched out making me walk in a circle while a passing enemy noticed me
