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| Metal Gear Solid 5 stands of from the crowd for all the right reasons |
METAL Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is something that the gaming industry badly needs, a unique experience created not so much through groundbreaking gameplay but an attention to detail that blows the competition away.
From its title, right down to its enemies and storylines, The Phantom Pain attempts to be different in a way that gamers can truly appreciate.
Big Boss is back, scurrying his way out of an incredibly lucid prologue to emerge as the leader of the Diamond Dogs, a private army with a certain bone to pick with the world.
The game is a testament to director, Hideo Kojima's amazing gift to mix reality, sci fi and outrage into one big title and pull it off.
Anyone new to the series may have played the first thirty minutes probably feeling a little stumped by what was occurring on their screens, while fans would have been readying themselves at the thought of exploring this incredible world without the same linear constraints imposed in the past.
You start the game based in Afghanistan, facing a hostile environment filled with Soviet Union soldiers and rebel fighters, all hoping to cut your adventure short.
The land itself feels lived in, cliff faces can be climbed, bridges can be crossed and guard towers can be ripped asunder with ridiculous weaponry.
The Phantom Pain is split into episodes that need to be completed to unlock further goodies and story options which can be completed in several different ways.
Fans will soon discover that earning the top rankings at the end of a mission, takes more than your average run-through.
And with Kojima at the helm, that could mean finding simple but ingenious way to use your equipment.
Stealth and action go hand-in-hand and the game's Reflex Mode allows for a couple of seconds to take down an enemy that has spotted you or to scram sharpish.
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| The Phantom Pain merges strange ingredients that help bring things to a close |
As I said in the intro, Metal Gear Solid 5 thrives more on the attention to detail than the gameplay mechanics themselves.
Bullet time options and stealth missions are not new but using an inflatable decoy or a crate drop to knock out an enemy is.
They aren't features that can be put on the front of the box to sell the game but they are the components that make this game such fun.
The missions themselves are not particularly unique, although the setting and options open to you make them engaging events.
Listening to a cassette to find out about the mission parameters is a nice touch, while using cover and random events to your advantage can make sneaking your way through a level thrilling.
One of the Phantom Pain's strongest points is how you upgrade your gear, with the help of your very own fortress.
Mother Base returns and allows you to recruit personnel to expand your armoury.
Completing missions opens up new expansion projects at Mother Base, while, ahem, recruiting in the field allows your research teams and defence squads to grow in strength, allowing you take on bigger ideas.
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| Buddies can play a vital role in The Phantom Pain |
An open world complete with the option to upgrade and craft the weapons you want is a match made in heaven and means you can play the game the way you want.
It also gives the game replayability, you can go back to mission 12, packing some new gadgets that allow you to complete it in a different way.
Replayability plays a big role later in the game and sometimes feels a little forced that you have to achieve a certain level from an earlier missions, making it feel more linear than it should.
The story itself is well put together and makes you wonder what your motivations really are, how can you be hoping to make the world a better place while creating an ever-growing destabilising force built on violence? What is the goal?
Revenge is what you're after but sometimes you may forgo the real-time movements of the story and focus on the huge list of side-missions that can prove just as difficult as a full episode.
You may find yourself almost to the end of one, having not been seen, to suddenly finding yourself unable to stun gun your wait of a situation.
There's no individual ranking system for these operations, meaning that you can end up fighting your way out of a base without needing to be worried about being given a grade at the end.
Even though you have these options open to you, you may also find yourself resorting to stealth again after you discover that one of the soldiers trying to finish you off is pretty skilled and would be a massive benefit to the Diamond Dogs.
Knocking them out rather then killing them will mean you can tie them to a big balloon and transport them back to your base and who doesn't want to see that?
There's quite a list of objects that can be attached to balloons and each is pretty satisfying to watch.
By boosting your ranks back at Mother Base, you'll reach new levels of skill but you must also be careful to manage your people right.
Checking the stats of each solder can be tedious but will also mean getting the best out of them and avoiding troublemakers who can mean fights breaking out among your staff.
When the game reaches a certain point, you even send some of these men out on missions, helping you to expand further while also giving them more of a purpose.
I have to admit that when on Mother Base, the list of things to do isn't huge and one complaint could be that just driving around taking in the view isn't really enough.
Online options connected with the game can also make the Mother Base more enjoyable but it seems unfair to review this fully until Metal Gear Online is launched later this year.
When you're looking to deploy, buddies can be used to make missions easier. these will give you a range of options, allowing to create distractions, taking out enemies or helping you get somewhere quickly.
The companion system is quite a large part of the game and is a feature that has been specially crafted for the Phantom Pain, it gives yet another option to fully customise your tactics before heading into the field and a detail that shouldn't be overlooked.
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| Metal Gear Solid 5 offers a huge range of choice when it comes to gear |
For some fans, completing the game and finding out what happened to Big Boss will be their main aim, for others it will be to try out as many options possible and build a Mother Base fit for a king.
The answers they may find in the Phantom Pain might be just what they were looking for, or could frustrate, it really depends how your story pans out and if you enjoy the smaller details like I did.
Having to pace yourself while fighting your way across battlefields can get a little exhausting and sometime it does feel like there should be more to knocking off target or attaching them to balloons.
For me however, I think games like these are so important to the industry, The Phantom Pain can join an exclusive list of titles that successfully entertain in a way that means it can't be considered a clone of something else.
Exploring this open world with Big Boss is a treat, I wouldn't expect everyone to agree but I do feel credit is due to how this game has been crafted and most gamers will agree that some of the game's slower peaks are worth enduring so you may enjoy the whole, a beast made up of tiny parts.
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