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The Games We Played: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

By: David (@friendshipguy_)

I’m perhaps the biggest Metal Gear Solid fan I know. Barring the purchase of accessories and other paraphernalia, I’ve analyzed Snake’s speech about memes at the end of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty for my final in my critical analysis class about a year back, and vividly remember staying up one night of my sophomore year in high school trying to piece together the entire series and when they took place. 

My entrance into the series was playing on my uncle’s first generation PlayStation, and wondering what this boring spy game was. It wasn’t until I watched my brother play Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, that I fully immersed myself in the series from the ground up. I played through the entirety of the first entry, except it was the infamous Twin Snakes print developed by Silicon Knights. Continuing the off-kilter nature of my experience with the series, I played through Sons of Liberty on the Xbox, only finally playing through a proper PlayStation copy when I came upon an old collection of PS2 games; Snake Eater lay in the midst of them. I also own the 360 version of the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, as well as the Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection for PS3. Three copies; that’s the exact count of how many versions of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain that exist in my library. I didn’t want to deviate from the nature of the beast, so I bought the limited edition for my PS4 – it’s the one that has the scale replica of Boss’ arm. The other copies exist through gifts and coincidence; my brother gifted me the Xbox One version which I’ve yet to touch, and my Steam copy that I’d accidentally redeemed as a promo code when buying a graphics card for a friend. I love them all equally.

The Phantom Pain is a very, very good game; that’s not a biased opinion, since it’s such a vast departure from the entirety of the series. Kojima could’ve probably renamed, or removed any mentioning of the namesake weaponry in the game, or the organizations and characters that exist within the fiction, and it probably would’ve been received just as well as it was, if not even better than the actual reviews, and reviewers claimed it to be. The transition to an open-world third person shooter was pretty effortless; shooting felt good, if not better than some games that adhere strictly to that camera format, with vehicle control being the only real thing that suffered. Seriously, controlling anything other than your horse seemed like a monumental task if you wanted to go anywhere other than straight. That being said, riding horse back for the majority of the game wasn’t that bad. It certainly gave me a huge amount of time to really soak in the deserts and jungles of Afghanistan and Africa respectively. It’s one of the only games that I haven’t completed a full run through, though. Everything is sparse in the game, and the conditions you have to meet to really max out everything seems almost coincidental, but I had a hell of a time tranquilizing my zoo into existence. On that not, I really missed the weaponized snakes in Snake Eater, even if they really only raised an alert status for a few moments. Even the lack of boss fights didn’t bother me so much. I’d grown incredibly used to seeing the group of bad guys I’d be taking out – be it lethal or nonlethal – later on in the game, and I suppose they do show that in The Phantom Pain, but the bosses are awfully bland. Not only that, there’s a big departure from previous bosses in the franchise, save for the few unique characters that you actually have to square off against, and the inevitable fight against the machine itself. The Parasite Unit as their called are just super soldiers, and a lot of their moves can be dodged with quick time events. It killed off a lot of the vibe that the older games had; being able to run away from my fights is a neat inclusion, but fighting them wasn’t exactly rewarding either.

I have a lot of problems with The Phantom Pain, and so do a lot of other people as well, though I don’t muddy my problems with the petty - yet highly outlandish – termination of David Hayter from the franchise, nor is it the sordid affair between Konami and Kojima that no one saw, but everyone knew was happening. My major problem with The Phantom Pain had to be the direction the game went. When people heard about an open world Metal Gear Solid game, speculations were high, and the delivery was pretty successful for an open world game. They nailed everything – Kojima’s pretty good at games, he’s been doing it his entire life. Delivering power to the player in the form of being Boss in an open world is incredible, even if you have to build from the ground up to achieve a playstyle you like. Pacing is a complete drag, however. The entire first “chapter” of the game is horrendously slow with how it tells its story. The second chapter is entirely sporadic with the narrative it provides, but there are far graver consequences in the second “half” of the game that you get to tangle with, even if it’s incredibly rushed. Out of 51 missions in the entire game, only 37 are uniquely different. Rehashes are abundant, but some missions reuse the same environment with a time shift. The writing on the other hand is pretty sloppy. I get that Kojima’s a movie buff, we all are. The Phantom Pain is a humungous love letter to the films of the 80’s, but the plot for this iteration really just seems to try as plug as many holes in the interweaving stories, while simultaneously making more. I get that nobody plays these games for intrinsically good writing, but campy writing with some heft to it that still makes it a substantial story.

I honestly don’t know how I feel about The Phantom Pain, I had fun, I had a whole bunch of fun being able to share it with friends who hadn’t grown up with the series like I had, but I’m honestly more entertained at this point by popping in the extras disc that came with my copy, and marveling at everything that was left out, and just how clear and concise Kojima’s vision was of his final project with the series. It’s an honest shame to see the FOX engine reduced to pachinko machines – those Snake Eater cut scenes look damn good in the modern day.