Whether it is riding horseback across the deserts of Afghanistan or zooming across the marshy wet lands of South Africa, I could proudly place the Punished "Venom" Snake on a high vantage point and look down on an outpost with a smirk on my face from the pleasure I was about to have taking it for my own. Not even 10% of the way through the game, players can confidentially come across a random outpost and think about the many different ways of going about taking all the guards out and making their resources, your resources. I personally may have gone a little evil minded with the whole situation as I built my army of guns, gadgets and men/women ready to lay down their lives for me but that's the thing, Metal Gear Solid 5 is devilishly fun with it's approach to re-establishing yourself into the world with Snake at it's helm once more. The world is literally yours for the taking.
After the introduction sequence that catches you up with what happened to Snake all those years ago, you stand over and Afghan wasteland and told to make the Diamond Dogs a powerful group once again. How you do this is entirely up to you and the sheer amount of free will that you are left with is staggering. The old Metal Gear Solid games featured a much more linear world to be explored than it's latest title, before you would go on missions and complete the assignments with deadly stealth but now you're running the show and will take whatever missions you want and do them the way you want. At first you may be a bit overwhelmed by the amount of knowledge that is crammed down your throat, I know I stood out over the desert landscape for a moment and asked myself, "What the heck do I do?" Once the ball got rolling however, everything began to flow together seamlessly as you build your "Mother Base," gain new soldiers for your organization and work on tracking down the agency responsible for your new shrapnel horn jutting out of your head.
While the story behind Snake's efforts to track down the group known as "Cipher" turned out to be the underwhelming aspect for the game, it was in no way a detraction from it. The lengthy but enjoyable opening sequences is by in large the biggest story portion to the game you will see as all other cutscenes from this point onward are brief and to the point. This again proves to be a departure from what players have seen before from the Metal Gear series but the fact that little is said doesn't mean not a lot gets accomplished. The main story moves along quite smoothly as you complete main missions and garner more information and attention from your old enemy. I felt genuine urges to press forward with each encounter I faced with the leader of Cipher, Skull Face, and was wrapped up in the very Ghost in the Shell/anime styling to which the story now presented itself with between the robotic hand, electronic cigars and iDroid device on hand that basically controls your every operation in-game (wow, that's scary to think about actually).
This was all capped off by the stunning level of animation work that is placed on the characters and the world. I cannot tell you how beautiful even the dreariest rain storms can be as move across the various environments and outposts throughout the story. The same goes for each and every character for the game who are not only pleasant to look at but behave and act like real flesh and blood people. Perhaps the moment that I truly noticed the degree of work placed on the game was when I met my second companion D-Dog. You find this companion as a puppy somewhere in Afghanistan and he will quickly grow to be one of your most valuable assets once he grows to full size. At the home base I found myself looking at him through my binoculars and noticing just how much like a real dog he looks and behaves as, I felt I could almost reach out and pet him myself.
Outside of the main story missions are a myriad of other side portions to MGS5 that fill in any down time you could possible conceive of having. The concept behind "Mother Base" has already been previously established in another Metal Gear Solid game but was never done to such a degree. Thanks to the Fulton device system players can extract just about anything they want from the playable world which includes, people, vehicles, mounted weapons and cargo crates filled with valuable resources. These all are used to further the development of your Mother Base forces which can be upgraded through in-game materials and GMP earned from jobs. As you get further into the game, your base can be upgraded and changed however you'd like and will expand in a number of areas like R&D and Combat Units. R&D will probably be the most useful as it serves to develop new weapons, clothes and items to aid you in your missions.
Things are even taken another step further by allowing you to customize and change anything about your base or command your people in whatever way you see fit. Staff members that you hire will succeed better in different areas and while the game will often assign the best position for your men you can freely change where they work. Certain staff members will also help you develop better and new weapons as well as allow you to have better intel in the field. Having interpreters on hand at your base helps with language barriers and understanding new intel from certain areas, while others such as gunsmiths can allow you to augment your weapons. There's also firing of "transgressor" soldiers to improve moral and a baffling amount of other features such as independent assignments for your combat units and much much more. The degree to which you can customize and command every aspect of your base is simply staggering and while you may question why someone would go to such a degree with all of this, it quickly becomes the heart and soul of your gameplay experience.
This same level of care and flexibility transfers over to the time you will spend performing your missions. Again, how you go about your situations is entirely up to you and is not scripted. I could enter any situation such a prisoner rescue and wonder whether I should take every single soldier out or get in and out without anyone or anything being disturbed. It was entirely up to me and I took advantage of everything I had handed to me especially since I spent very little time avoiding outposts and bases to gain their resources. Movements are smooth and easy to pick up, the stealth mechanic is fairly straight forward as you move crouched and his behind objects and move slower near enemies to get the drop on them. Players can also extract information out of subdued enemies in order to find objectives or hidden elements like weapons blueprints within the mission area.
Even in the moments where you do get caught or a situation doesn't go your way, you can quickly turn the situation back around. In situations where you get caught by that enemy you missed, a reflex mode is activated in order for you to quickly take out the person who spotted you before things turn sour. There are also your mission companions like D-Dog and Quiet who can aide you in taking down anyone who comes to pester you. This is capped off by the other features like air strikes, calling in a mechanized walker unit or even phone in a gunship to make sure the situation doesn't get too dicey. There is simply no end to the amount of action to be taken in whatever situation you end up in so it is never dull to roll up on a base and experimented with all the tools at your disposal.
The Phantom Pain is the pinnacle of what it means to have an open world style of game at your fingertips. Almost everything you can possible think to do or not even consider doing is possible to take command off and is done like no game ever has before. Things are not inspiring everywhere, there were moments of dialogue (or lack there of with Snake) and again, some story issues that will hopefully be resolved with the upcoming DLC but this did not detract from the sheer pleasure that I had playing MGS5. The ability to which I could adapt, customize and forge my own path has set the bar for every other sandbox title that has come before and will come down the line. In many ways though, I just don't know how anyone will be able to top it.
Good:
- A true open world experience like no other
- Expansive customization capabilities that expand to almost every aspect in-game
- Flexibility to play in anyway you see fit
- Overwhelming number of gadgets, tools and abilities
Bad:
- The story is still missing it's critical pieces
Scully Rating: 10 out of 10
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