The pacing might be terrible, the dialogue incoherent, the character motivations incomprehensible, and the ending woefully unsatisfying, but Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is, really, an excellent video game.
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It’s an impeccable stealth-action game, clearly inspired in all the right ways by modern series like Far Cry, and it’s got a level of moment-to-moment joyfulness that kept me satisfied even when I was slogging through harder versions of levels I’d already beaten just to see the “true” ending. Metal Gear Solid V is the best Metal Gear yet, and has immediately become one of my favourite video games of the last few years. It’s a very dramatic microwave corridor.) (If you haven’t played Metal Gear Solid IV, well, take my word for it. One particular late-game sequence is on par with the series’ greatest moments, like Metal Gear Solid IV‘s microwave corridor. Metal Gear is to dialogue as teenage goths are to poetry, and yet - yet! - there are moments in this game that sent shivers through my body, made all the more evocative by the fact that I was in control of the action. As I watched the story unfold, I found myself constantly frustrated, yelling “no way” at my television every time I witnessed a preposterous plot twist (there are a couple) or listened to an inane conversation (there are many). įor all that’s changed, The Phantom Pain has one big thing in common with other Metal Gears: It is both profoundly stupid and incredibly provocative. While it is still predominantly a game about sneaking into bases, knocking out guards, and occasionally fighting weird boss battles, The Phantom Pain feels modern, fresh, and resoundingly different than any of Kojima’s other games. It’s not just the tone that’s changed - Metal Gear‘s musty mechanics and clunky tropes have also been massively overhauled. The Phantom Pain is often grave, filled with men yelling at one another about revenge and how they’re all already demons. Sure, you can make your horse poop, but that feels tame compared to the porn-lovers and pants-shitters of Metal Gears past. Gone are the shlocky routines that characterised previous games in Kojima’s longrunning series, which turned 28 - 28! - in July. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, a video game directed by popular Twitter influencer and film enthusiast Hideo Kojima, takes itself very seriously - more seriously than any Metal Gear before it.
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If you don’t know how to reconcile those two things, then, well, you probably haven’t played Metal Gear Solid. A dozen missions later, there’s a harrowing sequence that ranks among the best video game scenes I’ve ever played. There’s a cutscene, late in Metal Gear Solid V, that’s ostensibly serious but contains a musical interlude so awkward it sent me into giggle fits.