Gadgetory

the Metal Gear Solid franchise has been one of the most consistently critically acclaimed game series out there and for damn good reason and with Kojima leading Konami at the end of this year it looks as though Medicare solved five the phantom pain may be the last one were ever gonna see and as a result a lot of hype has been built up for this game the question is can the game live up to this hype and is it the final note that fans have been wanting the series to go out on which is actually a really interesting question because phantom Bane has a lot less to do with the style of gameplay we saw in the other corner maracle titles in the series and is instead much more like an expansion of what we saw introduced in peace Walker which does share a lot of the same core elements but it takes them in a little bit different of a direction see a lot of the older Metal Gear games were very linear in nature while there might be some backtracking hair there the main point is to push the story onward constantly there might be some side constant here and there but ultimately you're always doing the same things in the same order peace walker and phantom pain on the other hand phantom pain in particular is much more nonlinear in nature while there are main missions some of which you have to do an order and some of which you can sometimes gain in Mass and just do them whenever order you like there's also two wide free open areas that you can explore on your own time you can just screw around in these areas if you like but you can also take your time completing side ops and more importantly collecting resources and personnel to fill out your army at mother base which is really the biggest mechanic in this game aside from playing the core story basically whenever you find soldiers that have high skills or you find useful resources that you can use develop your base you can collect those and put those into developing different aspects you can do things like make new weapons that you can equip find new technologies you can make use of in your missions you can upgrade different passive effects like your Intel how often you find out when the weather changes or how many enemies are in the upcoming area how quickly can get supply drops so on so forth and what's really nice is that these two aspects going through the main story missions and building at mother base are really intertwined very quite well because there's gonna be a lot of main missions where you can't do them until you develop some sort of technology for mother base which is gonna require you to build it up to a certain point and this goes on for a good bit of the game it doesn't last the entire main story there is definitely a certain point where you can just boost forward now if you want to but you may take time growing up mother base which i think is nice because it also helps the pacing of the gameplay a lot because it allows you to take your time learning all the different mechanics trying out new weapons trying out new pieces of technology that you unlock and gadgets you can use and this links into what I really think is the Phantom Pain's biggest strength its core gameplay which is by far the most refined stealth experience in the series just because it gives you so many options of hey one tackle each mission if you want to do things the traditional route and just stick to quite stealth and use a tranq pistol you can do that if you want to utilize an ally or a helicopter to create a distraction while you do your business you can do that if you just want to go into guns blazing while support helicopter flies above you glaring rebel yell as loud as possible you can do that there are just so many additions in this game that give you the ability to tackle missions just the way you want to to begin with the move to an open world does make it to where you can just approach mission from any angle you'd like there are multiple ways to infiltrate fortresses and objectives don't always need to be completed in the same order second off there's now the ability to call supply drops so in the middle of a mission if you realize you brought the wrong equipment or you just need to refresh what you have you can call on a drop and get new stuff third up is the ability to interrogate enemies so if you're able to get up close and subdue them you can find out useful information like where more guards are posted or where there are useful items you can have or where your objective is and last but not least is the buddy system where over the course the game will gain for different allies that you can use that offer very different benefits to different playstyles there's your horse which provides a form of fast travel that can also be a little stealthier compared to a vehicle since you can hide on the side of it there's your pet wolf which can automatically detect things like enemies landmines of additional items and can even quietly dispatch enemies once you've upgraded him a little bit there's my personal favorite the sniper quiet who can scout out enemy bases as well as provide cover fire to keep enemies distracted away from you and last there is the D Walker a personal customizable mech which can be given a couple different loadouts it's really useful full frontal assault you can also use it in a stealth mode though personally I feel like being on foot is just better for that and on top of that there's just so many different items to choose from to bring along on missions you can not only unlock a lot of different weapons to choose from the tons of usable gadgets as well like different kinds of grenades decoys and of course the series additional cardboard box with so many ways to handle every mission the game gives you it's just part of not to fall in love with this core gameplay now while I think the core mechanics are excellent I do feel a little more iffy about the story aspects of the game for a couple different reasons now to be clear I think the overall story is actually really quite good it's just that there's some problems with how it's delivered first off there's the pacing of the game by moving it to open-world there's so much time you can spend between major missions that it just really messes up the flow of the storytelling especially in the later half the game where a lot of the main missions aren't actually new story missions they're just repeatable admissions with new added layers of difficulty so even though there are 50 main missions it's really more like there's only 37 or 38 that are actually important to the plot second off is the fact that the game relies a bit too heavily on cassette tapes to give a lot of the game's exposition in Prior games you'd spend a lot of time in audio transmissions learning more and more about the plot but in order to cut a lot of that fat out and focus more on the pure gameplay now you're just given cassette tapes to listen to at your own leisure which is cool until you get too focused on the gameplay and start not really realizing what the full story going on is because you haven't taken time to listen to every tape and the last and really biggest reason I have a problem is the cut content in this game see if you get the collector's edition of the phantom pain you get this little bonus disc that has a lot of behind-the-scenes content like interviews and trailers but more importantly it has an overview of a cut final mission the thing is this cut mission is basically a second full ending of the game and in my opinion it's a much better ending than the one we already have it connected a lot more to the rest of the series and so I thought it gave the game a much better point to end on because it just reflected the whole series again rather than just having its own isolated plot now with all that being said I still think what story we have here is really good it's just that it could have been even better with that cut ending and could have been a little cleaner with better delivery aside from the game plains storyline everything else in the game is really really solid as well the graphics look great great level design good sounds music is a little hard to judge because there is no normal soundtrack running with the game instead you can use your cassette tape to either listen to the phantom pain original soundtrack or listening to a collection of eighties hits which make for very different but both equally amazing experiences now the last thing we need to talk about is the multiplayer mode now this is not the same thing as Metal Gear Online which was introduced in Metal Gear Solid 4 that is going to be added to the phantom pain currently planned for October 6th but for now there's instead this invasion mode focused on your bases see alongside with billing at mother base you also have the option to build what are called fo B's forward operating bases and these are basically cheaper more efficient ways to grow your overall base without having to build some kind of super version of mother base the problem is these fo B's are vulnerable to other player attacks which can lead to not only having resources stolen but even useful personnel as part of your arms so the whole mode revolves around the idea of assaulting other players to take their resources while defending your own it's a very indirect method of multiplayer it is possible to actually go head-to-head with a player but most of it really comes down to just going to a base while the players away and just doing the same infiltration mission over and over again the specifics can vary because you can make your defenses bigger and better so you might kind of one player that hasn't really invested much yet just has a couple guards with nothing else or you might run into a guy that has an army of soldiers armed with the best equipment along with security cameras pressure sensors all kinds of crazy crap so the specifics can vary but you're still going to the same mission area over and over again which just got really repetitive for me thankfully this mode is not required at all to get further in the game it can speed up the process of which you build up mother base but it's completely a hundred percent not required to play the storyline so if screwing with other players to steal the resources is something that sounds fun to you then this could be a fun side option but if not you just want to focus on the main story it's not gonna interfere with that whatsoever so overall Metal Gear Solid 5 the phantom pain is an amazing game well I do have some complaints regarding how the storyline was handled and how the plot was delivered and I'm not the hugest fan of the multiplayer aspect they added none of that really detracts from just how freakin awesome the core gameplay element is and the fact that the overall story is still really quite good with so many different options of how you can approach every mission and just so many ways you can just screw around in free roam if you want it's really easy to lose a lot of time into this game if you're a fan of the medic you're stalled serious and you haven't picked this game up yet it's worth grabbing just for filling in all the little bits of plot and expiry what is in my opinion by far the best stealth gameplay experience the series has to offer and if you're not a fan of the series it might be worth reading some synopses of path games or in my recommendations playing through them because they're all great games just so you can play through this one because the core gameplay is that fun well that was my review of Medicare Solid 5 the phantom pain if you're interested in grabbing the game I do have it linked down below as always you can enjoy the video hit that thumbs up button to let me know as well subscribe and follow me on Twitter I'll be seeing you guys soon with more content but until then I'm Kevin Henson and I'll see you guys later