Before i being, if you haven't played the game, again this review contains spoilers, my advice is wait till price drop, you probably will like the game more if you only pay 30 dollars or less. This bad score had nothing to do with the game being over hyped, i don't believe in that crap, if something is good, it will be good not matter if it is over hyped or not. And for those that already finish it and just wanna know other opinion, well here it is:
Its hard for me to give such a low score to a game that is part of my favorite game series. But I can't let the love i have for this series blind me. I have to say it how it is, from my point of view this is the worst Metal Gear game I have ever played.
There are some good stuff like the gameplay and the graphics, and some cool cut-scenes. But even then i cant remember the cut scenes well because non was memorable in my opinion, the gameplay was fun, but it has his flaws without a doubt.
Let me tell you my point of view on each category one by one so you can understand why I'm so disappointed with this game.
--Story: The story is short, of 50 missions only 20 missions, give or take, are relevant, the rest is those same mission you already did on hard mode(Which could have being part of the side ops perfectly, but for some reason they decided to include them in the story missions). The little story there is is boring as hell, rescue this informant, rescue this prisoner, kill this guy, find this blueprint, maybe a boss fight, maybe a cut-scene, end. Basically the same things you do on Side Ops.
The rest of the story are contained on cassette tapes, making you wander, why create the Fox engine, and such beautiful graphics if you gonna show the story through cassette tapes... boring cassette tapes. The idea was that gamers could "play" more and "watch less", but the time i have spend on load-screens and traveling on my helicopter are probably more than the time i spend playing the goddamn game.
Also Kojima said that this was gonna close the gap between Big Boss story and Solid Snake. Lies! Not only you never see Big Boss become a villain, you are NOT EVEN BIG BOSS, you are a nobody mother base staff member, A MEDIC, that is working as Snake double. But for some reason now you are amazing at CQC, so good that the FAKE you control beat Quite, that has super abilities, on a hand to hand fight on one of the cut scenes, he also beats metal gear and save the world from a virus weapon. None of those heroic things where done from the real protagonist of the series, but by a guy no one knows or care....
By the way, some scenes are fake ( or rather they have parts cut out on purpose), as you progress you unlock what really happen. Even the prologue Ground Zeroes, the one you paid 30 dollars for, do not tell you the whole truth. THIS GAME STORY IS A SCAM, it try to be a psychological thriller, not by being clever, but by giving you scenes that are missing parts and then trying to make you feel stupid by making you think you missed something, when that is not the case. Lazy as hell. And the ending? It does not have one, Eli stole the metal gear and runs away, you never get to go after them, wanna know why? cause they cut the end, look it up, mission 51. and you know why is that?... DLC. Just like ground Zeroes and the mcrotransactions, the ending is gonna be sold to us.
And just so we are clear, an open world is not excuse for a poor written story, we have games like Red Dead Redemption, GTA5, Dragon Age Inquisition ( which by the way have multiple maps just as big as the 2 we got in this game, plus cities, dungeons and mansions and houses you can get inside) Witcher 3 and more that have proven you can have open world game with great stories and different unique side quests. There was no excuse after all of those games for this game to be this mediocre. IT should have been better!
Another important thing that makes me give this game such a low score is that every scene in the game is shown in the trailers, there is nothing new to watch here. Even worse there are some missing scenes from trailers in this game. They took all of what they had in order to make the trailers, this is how little cut scenes there are.
--Story contradictions: So now Big Boss, the real one, never meet Liquid, and all the crap Liquid said on MGS1 of his relationship with big boss might as well be all a lie. Big Boss never had contact with him, never told him he was the inferior clone or named him Liquid, and that brings the next contradiction, who gave Solid Snake his title? the Phantom? because he was the one in charged of FOXHOUND at the time, while the real Boss was on Zinzabarland making his nation and waiting for his time to make a comeback like Ocelot himself says, meaning that the name of our main character was giving by a FAKE Big Boss, that made an appearance in a new game.... LAME. We waited for this game to see how the relationship with Eli, Ocelot, Kaz and other develop and have a satisfying transition. But no, they all have a friendship with a man that we cant care at all about, because he is not Snake.
Another thing that i didn't understand. Why was Big boss( the real one) in that hospital to begin with? He waited for 9 years for this dude to wake up? Why? He could have being hunting Zero and Skull face all that time. You might say "well in one of the cassette tapes with Zero says that Big Boss was in coma for 2 years". But didn't Kojima said that Big Boss was on a coma only once? That time they cloned him, remember? And that this was gonna be explained here? Well it is not. And that leaves 7 years where Big Boss could have done something other than wait. Its so stupid.
If the message is that anybody can be Snake, why wait 9 years for this guy? they could have gotten anyone else to do it, beside 9 years? really? why wait that long? what if this guy had never woken up? So weird. Now if from the very beginning i had created my avatar, and Big Boss himself had told me to be his double and help him get skull face by faking being the real Boss, that i would have accepted and even loved, working for the legend himself, instead, we got a poor written plot twist just so Kojima can hear that he is a genius. Well good sir, if you read this review, YOU ARE NOT A GENIUS, this was crap!
--The fake: why is this fake such and amazing soldier, he was just a medic, now he is as good as the greatest soldier of the 20th century? Snake tells Ocelot that he was one of the best on mother base, but for some reason i just don't buy it. If the idea is that anyone can be Snake, then what makes Snake so special now? Why clone him? There is nothing special about Big Boss now, they should just hypnotize all solider into thinking they are big boss. Seems more effective to me than the genome-soldier project.
--Relationships: none of the relationships you build matter, because I personally don't give a crap about how this Fake Snake gets along with Quiet or Ocelot or Miller because he is not Snake. Hell even him being merciful to Emmerich don't matter, because it does not come from the real Snake, the reason why we all wanted to play this game, to see how he falls from greatness. And no he is not me, he is the Medic from Ground Zeroes, this is not mass effect, you have no dialogue options.
--Fall of big boss: If you played the first games, there is no miss understanding or cover up to make Big Boss look like an evil dude like US did to The Boss. Big Boss was losing it and that pretty clear, and here we where suppose to see how this hero falls from greatness, but none of that happens, this dude you play as claims to be a Demon, but he is a freaking Saint. And it does not matter if you kill everyone and every animal in this game, get the large horn and blood all over your face, you get the same cut scenes where you are a nice man, so don't tell me is up to you how evil he is because canonically he is good.
--Code Talker: lets play a game, every time Code Talker says "Vocal cord Parasite" you drink a shot, that way you wont be bored to death with his explanation of the stupid parasite, the weapon suppose to surpass metal gear, that never again will make an appearance in the future of metal gear games.
--Skull Face: if you played Ground Zeroes even though it was short you probably felt like this game was great, dark as hell and that skull face would be the most mysterious interesting character in Metal Gear. The dark tone on Ground zeroes was amazing and it made me feel sad for all the characters involved in the accident, even Paz that was a villain on Peace Walker. Then Phantom Pain comes and change what happen in the prologue by taking both bombs out of Paz's body, having Paz survive, screwing up with such an amazing atmosphere created on Ground Zeroes and making of Skull Face the most melodramatic boring villain ever. You never know why he hold's such a grudge against Zero or Big Boss, he was an agent working for Zero, but for some reason he hates them and you never know why. I heard all cassette tapes still don't understand what this men did to this dude to be so angry. The way his story develop and how they portrait Skull Face it in this game compare to Ground Zeroes is very very disappointing.
--Paz Story ending didn't make any sense at all, its like trying so hard to be "artistic" and different, and ends up being funny in a bad way when she dies again by an imaginary bomb. And the fact that she is alive and Ground Zeroes was an incomplete version of what happen that night hurts in my wallet, i payed to play a demo that had incomplete information! Beside they removed her vital organs to make space for the bomb on Ground Zeroes, she had 24 hours to survive, now she is alive 9 years later?, That means someone had to find her in the middle of the Ocean, take her to a hospital, then the doctors had to find out she had her organs remove, find a donor and then operate. Its like Kojima forgot what he wrote in the PROLOGUE of this game.
Some people say that is all in Snake mind, but Miller and Ocelot clearly see her, and you get cassette tapes from her(yea cassette tapes from an ILLUSION). If it is all an illusion, and Fake Snake is losing his mind, they should had pick a sane person and not a crazy one for this important mission, don't you think? And why would he feel guilty? He did what he could. Besides she was a freaking spy, an enemy! Even if she had a change of heart, how would the medic know about that! And why all that love for this girl? why not have an illusion of poor Chico, he was just a kid and a loyal staff member that die horribly, but no instead have the almost NAKED girl, that is a crazy spy that wanted to kill you in the last game. Because it selling sex is what Metal Gear is all about now.
By the way Zero send Paz to kill you on Peace Walker if you didn't join his organization. Now on Phantom Pain he is you best friend lamenting that you almost die in Skull Face's hands and saving you and hiding you on a hospital till you can wake up and destroy his vision of the Boss's will. Bravo more contradictions. But no problem Kojima fanatics gonna find some way to justify all the contradiction, not with facts, o no, but with what they think Kojima is trying to tell LOL, that what i call "good" story telling.
--Quite story ending made me feel nothing at all. I felt nothing for this character, I the player, never got the create a bound with her, even though she was my main companion because every scene they are showing me her boobs and her behind, i couldn't take her serious like most perverts did. And at the end she talks, meaning that the parasite should be out in the world, infected the Fake Snake and killed her, but seems like that is not the case because logic in this game is rare. Listen I know some of you see this and think this is art and different from Hollywood bla bla bla, but the simple truth is, it is not, and is poorly done.
--Quiet being almost naked because she breath through her skin, then seeing Code Talker, that has the same thing going on with him with full cloth bothers the crap out of me. Kojima said we where going to understand why she dress like that and we where gonna shut our mouth, but with Code Talker fully dress and not dying like Quiet does seems like people where right and he just wanted to have a naked female character to sell more copies.
I don't mind having a sexy female in my games, hell that is awesome. But Quite just made me laugh every time there was a serious scene and all of a sudden they will show me some of her body part XD. She is a joke. I don't care she left my party D Dog is better!
--Online FOB: I got a message that my base was being invaded, i responded, and got a message saying that couldn't create the game session. I tried 3 more times till the option didn't even appear anymore. 5 minutes later i get a message saying that i lost the match and staff members... 3 S rank soldiers and one S++. DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO FIND THESE SOLDIERS?????? And i lost them because this serves sucks!!!!!!!!!!!!
This mode also feels more like a punishment that game mode to have fun with friends. After 2 days offline, i turn the online mode and found out i was invaded. I lost half a my soldiers and tons of materials, meaning that FOB is a mandatory part of the game, even if you are offline and one that punish you for losing.
--Ocelot hypnotize himself to believe that The Fake Snake is big boss, but at the end of it all, he is talking to Miller, who ask "why was it all for?". Why is Ocelot telling the truth to Miller? Ocelot himself question Kaz saying" What if you are a spy?" and then goes on to reveal biggest secret of the game to a man that can betray Big Boss(which he actually does on Metal Gear 2, and even in this game he says " to hell with Big Boss" after finding about it). And why does Ocelot still know that Fake Snake is fake? This is not art, is not genius, this is poor written and if it is a writers choice, they are poor choices because you are contradicting yourself on every scene in this game.
--In the first scene of the game the doctor says "this is how you look till this point" when you look at it you look like Big Boss, then in the TRUTH(mission 46 i think) scene, the doctor says the same thing and when you look at the mirror you look like you avatar. Cool I bet Kojima thought he was being clever, like he quote from Friedrich Nietzsche about interpretation, like trying to say to you "oh look you didn't saw this one coming" No only the whole internet saw it coming from the first PP trailer, showing how predictable this Director has become, is so badly written you have to wonder why did the Fake Big Boss believe he was big boss when he saw his face from the very beginning and even tells his real name and date of birth to the doctor (assuming that you are the Medic and you give your name). He doesn't even think he is John or Jack however Big Boss name is. It does not make any sense at all.
And this come from a man how actually like MGS2, when they did this with Raiden, but the difference is, Raiden is a well written character, he has horrible yet interesting past, he has a disturbing father and son relationship with the antagonist and it resembles Big Boss and Gray Fox. And Solidus is a badass villain. This medic has not past, they want to force him to me saying he is me, but I'm not that freaking medic just as I'm not Big Boss, I'm a gamer, a fan of Snake and i wanted to see his transition, and be part of Snake journey one last time, not the journey of this character that has no emotional impact with anything in this series. Big Boss created Military Saint frontiers, with Miller, it should have been his revenge and his fall, not this mother base staff medic, that never become evil to begin with. Hell Big Boss didn't even had to become evil, I just wanted to be him one last time, not the medic, not a fake boss, and i didn't wanted the message that "YOU ARE A BIG BOSS". To hell with that crap!
By the way, Kojima used the same twist in 2 different games, i mean has the dude lost his creativity XD
-- Snake is more of bad friend that he is a villain, he creates a double from the man who save his life in that helicopter accident, putting him in terrible danger and running away hiding in Zinzablarland.
--What made Snake,Ocelot or Zero think that the medic would have wanted this as they claim? they could had ask him first. And if they didn't wanted to ask him to begin with, why didn't they operate on his face earlier, like 9 years earlier. Instead they show him his face in a mirror taking the risk of he realizing he is not the real Big Boss and BOM! they transform him into Big Boss and he never says "mmm weird i looked like a Calvin Klein model before, what was that about?" My god this game tries so hard to make this plot twist work in so many lame, lazy and contradictory ways.
--Why Venom has Big Boss voice? never explained.
--Phantom Cigar: why does Snake needs a lighter to turn on a electric cigar? Because F logic that why. And why if you are trying to be Big Boss would you used a fake cigar, use a pony tail and be silent if this are not thing the real Big Boss would do. Even with the crap that "you cant be someone else completely" from MGS4, this guy could have done a better job at being Big Boss, he is terrible at his job.
--Gameplay: even though this part is fun, addictive as hell i might say, it has too many commands and actions, all in the same buttons, that i keep on doing things i didn't wanted to. Also as enemies adapted to my headshot by using helmets, they where protected by them even when i aimed at their face, even though i could shot them in the face and tranq them on reflect mode. Same with enemies that had shields, i shoot them in the arms but the shield somehow defended them regardless, making this game harder in the wrong ways. plus the game is inconsistent with its difficulty, on one mission you might be having fun, the next you gonna be frustrated, its almost as if the RULES OF THE GAME CHANGE for specific missions in the game.
--Side Ops: there are 150 of this mission, but they are an illusion, to make you think this game has a lot to offer, but is basically the same 5 mission again and again and again, and again. They didn't even try to be creative and give you long range of variety, after 7 years of making this game, they came up with 5 different types of mission, on 2 open world maps, that are not even that big. If you played Ground Zeroes multiple times, this is exactly how you will feel playing this game, like you are doing the same things again and again.
--Mother Base: With staff morale drooping if they don't see you and the long chopper rides to get there, make this feature feels more like a phantom pain in the ^$$ than anything else. Plus you can't go inside any platform and again the size is all an illusion, Mother Base is not even that big if you cut its large arms, It would be just as big as the Zoo you create for the animals you capture. Now that does not make it small if you create all 4 platforms for all the different types of platforms, but they try to make it look bigger than what it really is. Plus the base feels empty as hell even though i have 960 soldiers.
--Boss Fights: there are 3 cool boss fights, 1 of them is so easy is not even fun. Quite boss fight, Eli(easy one) boss fight and the metal gear boss fight. They are good but in a game you spend hours and hours you would imagine they would have more interesting characters that would be awesome bosses. Then there are the optional boss fights with the skull and the man on fire. The man on fire boss fight was boring and the skulls are cool but is basically the same thing 3 times... after beating them the first time it was kind boring fighting them again, specially because this group do no have a personality, they are just zombies..
--Credit rolls: Kojima seemed like a frustrated film director to many, now he is a frustrated TV series director. Not only you are forced to watch his name and his staff name again and again on every story mission, like they where each a different episode, the credits are full of spoilers. You never surprise to find a character on a mission, because their names pops out at the very beginning of the mission. Which take me to the end of Chapter one, when you end the first chapter the idiotic director decides to give you a mini trailer of what coming on chapter two, spoiling it all, because chapter 2 is even shorter than chapter 1. He wanted to create the illusion of a series second season, but honestly it makes him look like a fool that is in the wrong business. He should have stop watching Breaking Bad and focus on what made Metal gear special to begin with.
--Checkpoints: they are pretty bad, many times i finish my mission, working hard to get it done and then die after im all done, and instead of loading me where i was before i die, done with this mission, It made me start the mission from the very beginning, making it so frustrating.
How people defend this poor written crap? I don't' know. And yes I'm a true Metal Gear fan, but I'm not a fanatic, i can see when something is just bad, nonsensical and artless even when it comes from something i love.
Yea the game play is amazing, Metal Gear solid online 3 probably gonna be the best thing ever. But this is the story mode and the story is BAD, incomplete and melodramatic (see Scull face screaming "WHO!!!" XD) but most importantly, and why I don't give this game a high score, its the repetitive nature of all missions, the lack of creativity for side ops, lack of creativity on chapter 2 and chapter one is boring anyways, the best scene is when Snake and Miller shoot Skull Face, sadly that powerful moment means nothing anymore to me because is not the real Snake.
And yea every game has repetition, but you don't feel it, you know why? Because of the writing, everything has a meaning and a purpose in the story, or a story of its own. Every great game of this nature has intriguing characters and situation, why couldn't this game aim at such high standards? Instead it stays dull, repetitive and without life other than the people you interact on mother base and you basically do to them the same things you do to enemies, shoot them with tranq bullets and CQC them.
IT would have make the world feel more alive if you have villages with actual people in them, suffering for this war, kids getting abducted and you having to stop this abductions as side ops just to give some variety, to give more meaning to what you are doing. I thought this game was suppose to be controversial, hit you hard, but i never felt the horrors of war or the sad lives of the child soldiers. I think i saw more boobs and horse taking a crap than serious touching moments.
Some people believe that as time passes by, people gonna come back and realize that this game is a master piece just like MGS2, but i think the contrary will happen, people gonna come back to it, and get bored fast, see all the contradiction they probably missed and realize that this game is the worse in the series, regardless of the good gameplay. I really doubt Kojima is gonna get away twice with false advertising and using the sames plot twists on his games( I don't mean that he needed to spoil the story on the trailers, but not tell us that this is the game that Big Boss becomes a villain and all the false promises). Specially how lazy it was done here, the same mission twice, really? not even on original mission or chain of mission to unlock it in an epic way? By the way, why did Big Boss had a cassette tape telling Venom "now do you remember?" really? Who gave him that cassette tape? Did he just find it on his pocket after he remember that he is the Medic? or did Ocelot gave it to him after Hypnotizing himself to believe Venom was the fake Boss XD
I still play the game, I have done all the mission, got S rank on 48 mission, just 2 more to go, i have done all Side Ops, and done the ones you can redo to the point I'm sick of them. At the time of this Review I'm just waiting for Metal Gear 3 Online, practicing moves trying weapons and getting all i can get done on my development board. The game play is addictive, no doubt about it, i just wish i had more variety on the Side Ops mission to keep me going till MG 3 online comes, but if not ill pick it up again then.
In CONCLUSION, this game is bad, the great game-play didn't save it, in my opinion, from its repetitive mission objectives, not so big 2 open world maps and its boring, short story, that is more of a lie horribly told than anything else, making you play as a FAKE instead of the real Big Boss, my personal favorite of all Snakes, who seem not to give a crap about what Skull Face did to his friends on mother base, instead he goes on to do something probably far more interesting than what was gave to us in this game. And now that Kojima is done with Metal gear, we will never know what that was, but to be honest after this fiasco, i rather never know now. Why people are giving this Fake 10's and 9's I dont understand, i respect it, but can't see myself doing it, even thought I love this series. This is a sad goodbye to my favorite game series.
****Update: MGO 3: this game mode is now out, i have a level 28 and a level 11 character. They share the same controls yet they feel slightly different, but honestly there is no need for leveling another class in my opinion. There is customization, but is very limited. There are 3 game modes and a couple of maps, but i feel tired of this game mode already because now that im level 28 it feels a little to slow for me and the rewards i get for leveling are not as exiting as the first 20 levels. Still is a lot of fun and its really hard going against other dudes. This new type of challenge with real people combined with this graphics and gameplay its just fantastic and as they add more maps and more customization this game mode is gonna be the only reason to buy metal gear solid V. I rate this mode a 8.5