Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes Review by: siksiksikki - 9.5/10
It's Not Big: It's Fun-Sized! Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes serves as the third chapter in what could be called the 'prequel arc' of the Metal Gear solid franchise and serves mainly as a teaser in both plot and gameplay for the next title The Phantom Pain. The short and satisfying entry released in March on the Playstation 3, 4, Xbox 360 and One consoles before being released later that year in December for PC through the Steam digital distribution platform. On launch the game was received relatively well, though there were definitely a notable amount of complaints regardless.
GRAPHICS – 10 Mind blowing, to say the least, Ground Zeroes truly shows the power of Kojima Studio's proprietary Fox Engine. From the sweat and rain that trickle down the subtle wrinkles on Big Boss' face and sleek Sneaking Suit to the surprising render distance and lighting mechanics once could log a couple hours in the game just by admiring the details that have gone into this appetizer.
I searched for anything- ANYTHING- that I might be able to toss a complaint at and failed as spectacularly at that mission as usually do at any other mission in any of the Metal Gear games: which is to say very, very badly. No obvious seams, no missing textures where a player may never even try to look, and not once in my many breakthroughs did I experience any even minor 'whoopsies'.
Even on the lowest settings in the graphics menu Ground Zeroes looks better to me than many other next-generation games that have released so far- though this can be easily attributed to the fact that it is such a small game.
SOUND – 7 Oddly enough, the sound design in Ground Zeroes will receive a lower score than I generally tend to give titles from the Metal Gear franchise. Sure, everything combat and ambient related is there and sounds just as good as it has in prior installments, but not much of the soundtrack outside of the song “Here's to you (Nikola and Bart)” really stood out. It's nice that they went back and added a few classic tracks from the first Metal Gear Solid for the Deja Vu mission, and a couple songs from Zone of the Enders for Jamai Vu- but the game still offers little in the way of original music scores.
At least they brought back the ability to listen to music which was a feature present in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and when playing on the Playstation 4 you have the ability to substitute your own music into the game. The custom music ability, however, isn't present on any other version of the game including, unfortunately, the pc version though with some tweaking and adjusting you can weasel your Green Day albums into it with mods.
ADDICTIVENESS – 9 This game, even more so over previous entries in the franchise, offers a SURPRISING amount of replayability despite it's size and scope. Ground Zeroes functions mainly as a playground for gamers to test out the new mechanics and playstyles that will be present in The Phantom Pain. For the first time the story is no longer linear- requiring the player character to traverse through multiple areas to reach his objective. Instead, Ground Zeroes drops Big Boss into an open world environment with a vague objective that will lead Big Boss to his overall goal for whichever mission he might be playing and from that point on it is entirely up to the player to decide where to go, how to get there, and whether or not you might need to take a detour to for ammo or to gather information from guard interrogation.
Outside of the main mission, the game also offers a handful of alternate objectives the player can pursue including but not limited to two extra missions called Jamais Vu and Deja Vu where the player instead fills the roles of Raiden from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and Solid Snake from the first Metal Gear Solid game respectively and have slightly different gameplay attributes depending on the mission.
Going futher- there are also multiple things to discover and even collect throughout the missions including many cassette tapes in each encounter. A plethora of weapons, and the different difficulty settings provide a player with even more reason to hit play again and try to 100% the game.
STORY – 7 Again while this may be attributed to the relatively small size of the game overall, Ground Zeroes is pretty light on plot. After the Peace Walker incident which was chronicled in the game of the same name, Big Boss and Kazuhira Miller find out the location of the double agent Pacifica Ocean AKA Paz who was more or less the main antagonist. Paz was captured and brought to a maximum security prison in Cuba after she was found afloat in the Carribean for interrogation. After a botched rescue attempt by Chico, another character introduced in Peace Walker, Big Boss and Miller decide the best course of action is to liberate Paz and Chico as Paz is the only link to the organization that used her to infiltrate Big Boss' soldiers paradise of Militaires Sans Frontiers and their headquarters on Mother Base.
The game opens with an interesting cutscene involving a new character, Skullface, who appears to be in charge of Camp Omega which is the prison facility in Cuba that Paz and Chico are being held. As Skullface leaves the compound, Big Boss makes his move- while a curiously timed UN nuclear inspection is scheduled for Mother Base.
I won't spoil the little bit of plot left once the main story mission is complete suffice to say that it leaves a lot of questions and a cliffhanger that will naturally be picked up later in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.
DEPTH – 6 As I've said multiple times already- the game is short. Of course, the game does have a large list of reasons to keep playing past the credits, but with the main story itself it's still a short title. This can, of course depend on the gamer themselves- if you find stealth games challenging to begin with, and this one can be when you don't know where to go or where the enemies are, it may still take you awhile to finish up. On harder difficulties this is, as one might expect, even more true with Big Boss going down in just a few shots and the enemies view-of-field and sense of sound be expanded drastically.
Repetition, however, will definitely win out to a point that even someone who isn't all that great at stealth games will eventually be able to finish the main mission in an hour and a half.
DIFFICULTY – 9 See Depth. Expanding on it slightly- the difficulty can also stem from the varied missions as well, which can be extremely hard on two in particular in which you have to hunt down 2 specific soldiers and execute them without alerting any guards lest the other one will be notified and start his escape and another in which you have to take out the anti air defenses before fighting your way out through heavy opposition including a tank.
OVERALL I'd say that one COULD pass the game if they wanted- but I'd highly recommend against it. The game may have been overpriced when it launched for the amount of content you got, but it has since been drastically reduced. And with the Steam version which will give both the DLC missions, it's definitely worth every dollar- especially if you want a leg up on the gameplay before The Phantom Pain releases later this year.
Graphics
10 Sound
7 Addictive
9 Depth
6 Story
7 Difficulty
9
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