![]() The Phantom Pain is a serious overhaul for Metal Gear Solid The Phantom Pain gives you far more freedom than any Metal Gear Solid game - it’s a serious overhaul, comparable to how Resident Evil 4 transformed its own series from antiquated survival horror to a massively influential action game. It’s easily the least verbose game in the series, and mostly just lets you get on with your objectives you can often even select in which order you want to carry them out. The Phantom Pain’s open-world, mission-based structure will be catnip to anyone who wished the series would ditch its linear designs and overwrought storytelling. When everything clicks - when you manage to get to your target undetected because you executed on a strategy you had to come up with on the fly - there’s no more exhilarating way to hold a game controller this year. Each mission takes place in a vast environment that gives you incredible freedom to play the way you want generally you’ll need to be stealthy, but there are countless ways to go about achieving that. This is mostly a very satisfying loop because, as my friend Chris pointed out, The Phantom Pain is a huge triumph in game design. So, Snake finds himself in Afghanistan and Africa carrying out missions for Diamond Dogs most of these earn you money to spend on new gear, or new soldiers to send out on missions to earn money for new gear, or new staff members to work on your base to help develop new gear. While that process would be depicted as a montage in most games or ‘80s action movies, it takes up the vast majority of your time with The Phantom Pain. That is basically the setup for The Phantom Pain: Miller and Snake are upset that a Cipher unit called XOF blew up their previous base in prologue episode Ground Zeroes, so they build up an army to take revenge on spooky leader Skull Face. The game opens with Midge Ure’s cover of "The Man Who Sold the World" in the background, and you can find cassette tapes from the likes of The Cure and Joy Division scattered throughout the environments.) (Director Hideo Kojima really wants you to know that he likes David Bowie and ‘70s-‘80s music in general. ![]() Snake links up with old friend Kazuhira Miller and old frenemy Revolver Ocelot to build up mercenary group Diamond Dogs. The Phantom Pain’s opening hour is as outlandish and intoxicating as anything in the series to date, but the game quickly settles down into a more sober affair. Got it?) The Phantom Pain settles down into a sober affair (Just so we’re all on the same page, with apologies to series fans for the simplification: Metal Gear Solid V is a sequel to Metal Gear Solid 3, which was a prequel to Metal Gear Solid, which was a sequel to Metal Gear, a game in which Solid Snake, the character you play in Metal Gear Solid 1, 2, and 4, kills Big Boss, the protagonist of 3 and V. The sequence is as virtuoso as it is bizarre, combining wonderfully tense direction with flaming blue whales and gratuitous butt shots of a scrubs-wearing man named Ishmael. Your character, variously and inexplicably referred to as Big Boss or Punished "Venom" Snake, awakes from a nine-year coma and suddenly finds his hospital turned into a war zone by a shady group called Cipher and a man on fire called The Man on Fire. It's the sort of reversal that sets the tone of the game right there in the first five minutes: don't trust anything, least of all Hideo Kojiima.Things start off well enough with The Phantom Pain’s spectacular, semi-interactive introductory sequence. And then - the doctor gets killed and you're stuck with the face you've got, no matter the character creation screen. ![]() But also, if you play the games, you know that weird things can happen at any time for any reason, and so, maybe they're changing Big Boss's face?Īnd so you design your face and get the sliders just right, spending however long you usually do on these things. It's a bizzare moment for anyone that's played the other games - we know what Big Boss looks like, after all. And thus we go to a standard character creation screen, full of sliders and choices of nose type, hair length, etc. There are people who don't want you alive, he says, so he needs to change your appearance. The doctor - who is himself a subject of real-world controversy - gives you a brief run-down in what all seems a very normal tone, before telling you you've been in a coma for nine years. You start Metal Gear Solid 5 in a hospital, recovering from Big Boss's extensive wounds.
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