Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain (& Ground Zeroes) - keeping me waiting

Pictured: Big Boss as of Ground Zeroes. All credit to Yoji Shinkawa and Konami.

I’m lumping GZ and TPP together as they’re more or less 1/3 or 2/3 of the same overall experience.

MGS:GZ is a cool little romp in a semi-open area. Big Boss comes to an off-the-grid CIA Black Site to rescue a few important people, and here we come face to face with TPP’s primary antagonist: Skull Face. GZ exists entirely as set up for the larger game of TPP, and as that it does its job well.

Now, I’m personally not the best fan of Big Boss being recast in GZ and TPP, and I know that isn’t a unique opinion either, but I had to mention it nonetheless.

Especially because playing Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain is a slog. Just like Peace Walker before it, TPP is a long, drawn-out game, though it forgoes the awful boss fights and instead pads the game with a lot of busywork missions. The story is stretched out, with a series of important events that either take a long time to get to or are quickly placed together depending on how little or how much you grind the game.

Snake is out for vengeance against those who wronged him, and his new team is more than willing to take part in that vengeance. The issue is, as with PW, that grinding these missions helps to unlock better gear and weapons for use in the game itself.

With two long acts and a third that was never finished, MGS:TPP feels like an interesting idea that needed reigning in at certain parts and expanding on others. There’s a large gap between TPP and Metal Gear 1/2, and it feels like there was more that could’ve eventually been done to bridge that gap, but that delves into complications that are far beyond basic game pacing.

Oh, and TPP has microtransactions which are gross (as far as I’m concerned).

All in all, I think I’d have been less irritated with TPP if I hadn’t spent an extreme amount of time doing the same grind in Peace Walker prior. It definitely affected my enjoyment. But as a game, TPP is (decently) good overall.

Pictured: Big Boss or ‘Venom’ Snake along with Quiet, a member of his group. All credit to Yoji Shinkawa and Konami.