Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Review (PC)

The Metal Gear saga has been around for decades and amassed a cult-like following for both its games and its creator, Hideo Kojima. After quite a few spinoffs and side stories, the famous designer is back with his magnum opus - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

Promising to deliver a new story with some classic characters as well as bigger worlds and more varied missions, the new title seems to be the quintessential Metal Gear Solid experience.

However, with recent turmoil at Konami and Kojima Productions, not to mention the lukewarm reception of the prologue, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, The Phantom Pain has a lot to prove.

Does the new game manage to live up to expectations or should Big Boss and his complex story come to an early end? Let's find out.

Story

The story of the Metal Gear saga is complex, to say the least. Many attempts at summarizing its events have fallen short due to the staggering amount of details included by Kojima in each of his titles. The Phantom Pain makes little effort to get newcomers up to speed and seems to focus more on veterans who have already played through pasts games at least once.

I won't post any major spoilers, limiting the review only to details that have already been confirmed by Konami through statements, videos, screenshots, and other such things.

As a result of the aforementioned lack of an introduction, the plot of The Phantom Pain can feel confusing, especially if you take everything at face value. You control Big Boss after the events of Ground Zeroes as he, alongside other acquaintances like Ocelot or Kazuhira, not to mention newcomers like the mysterious Quiet, goes to Afghanistan and Angola to stop Cipher from coming up with a brand new Metal Gear walker.

There are major twists along the way but most of the action still feels a bit confusing. Kojima has refrained from delivering lengthy cut scenes or dialog, but now many important things can only be found out if you collect and listen to cassette tapes, which are quite lengthy in their own way. As such, if you're not careful and thorough, you can easily miss out on some important things.

The overall story is solid and, as always, filled with references to past games, events, or characters. The aforementioned twists might not be to everyone's liking, however. It doesn't feel like a definitive ending although it's going to be interesting to see where Konami will take the series without Kojima's vision.

Sneak around in The Phantom Pain

Gameplay

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes served to ease fans of the series into the new mechanics of the game, as well as the new Fox Engine. The Phantom Pain uses most of the same features but adds a few refinements to make Big Boss even more agile, both when it comes to sneaking around and in guns-blazing situations.

A big deal was made about the two major open environments, in the form of Afghanistan and Angola. Both "worlds" feel quite impressive and expansive. Their missions and adventures are rather neatly constrained to smaller sections and exploring the rest of the areas feels relatively good, albeit a bit tedious if you can't snag a jeep or other means of transportation.

The actual missions are varied when it comes to goals, and in order to increase the replayability factor and keep things fresh, Big Boss can choose one of several allies to accompany him in battle. Each ally has different advantages. You can pick Quiet, who can snipe foes from afar, or a dog that can sniff out foes, or even a small walker that helps even out the odds when going in guns-blazing.

Another important aspect of the core gameplay relates to the Mother Base. You can customize it in different ways and even explore it, although you won't be able to do that much on it. During missions, you can use the always-hilarious Fulton Recovery system to recruit soldiers, animals, and all sorts of other things for the Mother Base.

Speaking of enemies, they're quite smart and quite persistent in The Phantom Pain. Fortunately, you have new mechanics, like the slow-mo Reflex that allows you to shoot opponents just as they're spotting you. You can once again employ the trademark box to sneak around, as well as distractions.

Using stealth options is highly recommended as the game's enemies don't go easy on you especially if you're being reckless. However, many of the enemy encampments have a huge number of blind spots, so you'll often be taken by surprise by soldiers whom you couldn't spot while examining the location from a distance.

Your skills really get tested in the different boss encounters. These are the cherry on top of the pretty tasty cake delivered by The Phantom Pain. The fights are open-ended and allow for varied play styles and some can even be avoided altogether if you play your cards right. However, some are quite cheap and require a lot of patience to get through.

Unfortunately, these intense moments are weighed down by the sequences towards the end of the campaign. Here, the game forces players to replay some previous missions with modifiers like full stealth, which automatically fails you if Big Boss gets spotted.

Explore Afghanistan in The Phantom Pain

Multiplayer

In terms of multiplayer, The Phantom Pain offers the relatively controversial Forward Operating Base. This feature extends the Mother Base system from the single-player story campaign. The new bases offer players access to more resources and income but they can be attacked by other players.

As such, you need to find a balance between creating defenses and actually investing in resource generation. The core features of the FOB are available free of charge to all players but you can score extras by spending MB coins. These are attained by completing story missions but you can also go the microtransaction route and spend real-world cash on them.

While this seems reasonable, the actual prices in MB coins were initially quite steep but have since gone down via an update.

The special Metal Gear Online mode was promised to release alongside the game, but apparently, Konami isn't quite yet ready to launch it. The experience is going to debut on October 6 for PS3, PS4, Xbox One, and Xbox 360, and in January, 2016 for PC.

Visuals and sound

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain shows that the Fox Engine can deliver some very impressive visuals. Both regular gameplay and the in-engine cut-scenes look very good. The animations are sharp but some of the textures leave a lot to be desired. What's more, the two huge worlds don't feature that much variety in terms of general colors and environments, so you'll often get pretty tired of the scenery.

The PC performance of The Phantom Pain is top notch, as it maintains a smooth 60fps on a lot of different configurations. Those with Nvidia graphics cards can also take advantage of a few exclusive settings like Dynamic Super Resolution or HBAO+ Ambient Occlusion.

The soundtrack is quite good, and while veterans may not approve, Keifer Sutherland does a good job of bringing Big Boss to life, especially on the cassettes. Other voice actors, such as Troy Baker as Ocelot, also perform really well and ensure that the story gets relayed in good way, even if things may seem confusing.

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The Good

The Bad

Conclusion