Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

3 years after its long-awaited release, it's strange to say that The Phantom Pain still haunts me without any doubts for obvious reasons that could be controversial for some people.

In fact, Metal Gear Solid V's gaming experience is the most memorable and unique one I experienced since my passion for video games began. This powerful arty blockbuster offered me way more than I expected from it by immersing me into a genre-bending weird interactive adventure that intelligently associates complex hard science-fiction, dark psychological drama, disturbing war depiction, mind-blowing philosophy, terrifying surreal horror, grotesque sense of humor and good historical transcription.

But aside from its artistic madness, The Phantom Pain is also inevitably a remarkable game design achievement that knows how to mix a rich sandbox emergent gameplay system with a captivating, intense storytelling. As the hours go by, the player freely writes its own story, building its base and choosing how to approach objectives thanks to a vast, well designed open world and a whole panel of gadgets and weapons. Hopefully, that's not all as acclaimed director Hideo Kojima, in addition to these modern elements, introduces into the game's structure everything we want from a Metal Gear Solid game: challenging bosses, beautifully executed cutscenes, jaw-dropping moments, fourth wall breakings and a dense, fluid narrative that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the final twist drops.

But of course, the famous game designer isn't the only one to provide great genius, indeed, what would be Metal Gear Solid V without Kojima Productions' talent, experience and mastery of the gaming medium? Because thanks to them and surprisingly high production values, The Phantom Pain also delivers outstanding visuals, phenomenal soundtrack/sound design, perfect technical presentation, excellent controls and some incredible performances from the cast.

Everything combined logically creates an unforgettable and visceral gaming masterpiece that transcends its own medium in original ways. Brilliant, innovative, violent, funny and emotionally powerful, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is a pure art work for the ages that will clearly be remembered by History.

Positives:

• Most of the story
• Characters
• Musical score
• Graphics
• Gameplay
• Voice acting

Negatives:

• Feels incomplete (Thanks Konami...)

First things first, if you're looking for a game with a polished, well-rounded story, run away. MGSV:TPP is not that kind of game. Yes, there is a plot; but it becomes clear very early on in the game that the story of the game is not the main focus.

However, if you're looking for an extremely realistic, sophisticated, and immersive combat system, you'll find it nearly impossible to find a game with better combat than The Phantom Pain.

TPP places you in missions where you have objectives to complete. However, how you complete the objective is entirely up to you. There is not a single scripted event in most of the missions; the game leaves it entirely up to you to complete your objectives. Need to destroy communications equipment in order to cripple the enemies' defenses? Discreetly place and detonate some remote bombs on the equipment and get the heck out of there before the enemy finds you. Or you could blow everything up with a rocket launcher and call it a day. Or perhaps trucking in there with a tank and exploding anything that moves more your style.

What if you need to eliminate a dangerous arms dealer? You could snipe him from a distance and that would be perfectly acceptable. But you could also take him out with a tranquilizer gun and take him back to base to join your team.

Hey, that was the perfect segue to the next amazing thing about metal gear: the mother base system.

You'll be hard pressed to find any other game with a more in depth base building system. Starting out with a mere single platform, by completing objectives, capturing soldiers and collecting resources in the battlefield, you will quickly be able to improve and extend mother base until it becomes an unrivaled private army.

Sounds like a piece of cake? Think again. MGSV:TPP is a very difficult experience. Enemy AI is highly intelligent. Pray to God that you don't get spotted; it's never been so easy and quick to go from smoothly completing a mission without detection by the enemy to desperately searching for cover while they rain down hellfire on you. TPP, In that department, is a very unforgiving game. If you want to get the highest possible score (S rank) on a mission, you'll be forced to carefully plan out your moves and time your movement carefully, because merely being spotted is sometimes enough to obliterate any hopes you had of achieving an S rank. Does it sound fun to be sprinting out of a mission area, having executed every one of your moves perfectly after spending so much time carefully planning your plan of action, only to be spotted by a soldier and being forced to start over? That's happened to me.. I've never been so frustrated in my life.

But there is no feeling quite like that of achieving an S rank. It's so amazing bro. You'll be flying high for the rest of your day because YOU EARNED IT!

Sorry about that rant.

Once you are dropped into the game, you are treated to beautiful cinematics and mystery. Even if you have played all of the games in the series, there is a lot of mystery and confusion. The game does a great job at revealing its story, and filling the past games' plot holes and "now I know now" moments.

The game-play of The Phantom Pain is more fluent and dense than any other in the series. From the facial animations to the crouch movement, You can clearly see the amazing effort Kojima Productions and Konami had put into this game. All of the good details, graphics, and animations all look perfect in the game's cut-scenes.

In The Phantom Pain, there is no longer the "stealth or guns- blazing" decision making. It is Unexplainable of how many ways you can infiltrate, kill, travel, or anything else (So many choices!). It has the most choices of game-play of any game EVER! Even so that I just can't explain it!

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is easily the BEST stealth oriented game to date, and the most game-play choices of any game in existence! Everybody should buy this game when the chance is given!

Pros:

• Great diverse Gameplay
• Useful companions
• Great graphics, voice acting, animation
• Tons of customisation
• Interesting plot twist (that makes sense)

Cons:

• Tons of padding in campaign
• Open world is kinda lifeless
• Limited variation in missions
• Boring main villain
• Most boss fights aren't that great
• Lack of MGS quirkiness and heart
• Online is an afterthought

Verdict: Tons and tons of reviews give this a 10/10, greatest game of all time. Overrated IMO thou still an enjoyable game, but with just allot of unnecessary padding and lack of key elements that made the other MGS games great.

7.5/10