Keeping a game franchise that’s over 25 years old feeling fresh and still interesting to today’s audience is a tremendous achievement. The Metal Gear games have accomplished such a feat, with each entry in the stealth action-adventure saga capturing the intrigue of veterans and newcomers alike. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is no different as it takes the series to new heights with impressive visuals and open-world gameplay. Based on what I saw of the game last week at E3, here are the gameplay features that make me excited to feel the Phantom Pain.
Sneak your way, night or day
More than any other Metal Gear, The Phantom Pain gives the player a variety of approaches when tackling its missions. Take for example, the military compound Snake must infiltrate to gather intel on Kaz Miller’s whereabouts. You can enter from just about any side and weave your way through the area as you like, while taking out enemies in whichever order works for you. That’s to say, if you’re eager for a challenge, you can forego knocking out or eliminating your foes and sneak past them undetected like a ghost.
Another choice given to the player is whether to tackle a mission while the sun’s out or under the light of the moon. Logically, each time of day has its share of pros and cons. Daytime may prove easier for you to find items to collect and to find all the enemies, yet at the risk of them spotting you quicker. Likewise, nighttime makes it more difficult to mark all the guards and see where you’re headed. While time does pass in real-time, you can let Snake smoke his e-cigar, which triggers a time lapse you can stop whenever you desire.
A more useful and realistic fulton recovery system
While playing the prologue Ground Zeroes, I wished to have Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker’s fulton recovery system back when I had difficulty concealing the bodies of killed or unconscious enemies. My wish is a reality in The Phantom Pain and more than people can be extracted, such as sheep. Fancy the armored tank or jeep on an enemy’s military base? You can use fulton recovery to air mail it back to Mother Base to use them for later missions. If you suspect a cargo container may be filled with resources you can turn into GMP in-game currency, zip it up to the sky.
How the fulton recovery system works is more realistic in The Phantom Pain too. In real-life, fulton recovery would cost fuel to fly a plane so each extraction costs 300 GMP. Granted, the amount isn’t a lot but is still is a consideration to take into account while handling the budget of Snake’s Diamond Dogs army. Additionally, a fulton recovery is not guaranteed to be 100% successful either. When given the option to fulton an object, the probability of success will appear as a percentage. Severe weather or wind can cause a failed recovery so there are times when it isn’t worth it. Unlike in Peace Walker, Snake cannot magically fulton recover something indoors through the roof and must instead carry it outside before sending it up.
Continued overleaf
@page
Mother Base is back with all her support
Peace Walker’s Mother Base returns to provide mission support and metagame activities in The Phantom Pain. Everything successfully extracted via fulton recovery lands at Mother Base. Soldiers can be sorted into the different departments that keep your army running. One such department, Research and Development, is where Snake can order new military weapons and equipment and add upgrades to existing items in his arsenal. While this same function was featured in Peace Walker, you will be able to request such tasks to be done while on a mission this time around, instead of being limited to between missions. If an upgrade or new weapon finished while you’re away on mission, Mother Base can send it to your location, along with any other supplies. And if you get caught in really hot water, you can request an airstrike to provide covering fire as you escape from gunfire.
Rather than a mere set of menus like in Peace Walker, The Phantom Pain’s Mother Base is a real locale Snake can visit. Everything extracted using fulton recovery, from soldiers to vehicles, are visibly there on your Mother Base. You can see and interact with major ally characters like Ocelot and your troops. Between missions, Snake can train on the shooting range or practice CQC with his soldiers here. Each player will be able to customize his or her Mother Base and outfit it with defense mechanisms such as the UAVs similar to the ones in Metal Gear Solid 2. These will prove important since the base can come under attack, depending on which enemies you made during the main missions. I’m curious to see how these play out – whether it will be a more interactive combat sequence or a passive, automatic fight like Peace Walker’s Outer Ops. All in all, I’m excited to have Mother Base back and spend dozens of hours building her up to develop all the various weapons, supplies, and upgrades, as well as managing my army.
Old favorites return, but improved
Metal Gear’s signature piece of stealth equipment, the cardboard box, makes its triumphant return in The Phantom Pain with some slick new improvements that make it an even more versatile tool. Snake can quickly take out an enemy by popping out of the cardboard box, take a shot with his gun, then promptly duck back in – all without un-equipping and re-equipping the box, an annoyance I despised in previous entries. In a situation where Snake is detected, he can dive through the side of the cardboard box and sneak away. At that point, the box becomes a decoy and Snake is able to flank the distracted enemies.
Knocking to coerce an enemy to move towards a location to investigate is also back. In past Metal Gear games, you had to position Snake against a wall in order to provide a surface for him to knock on. Thanks to Punished Snake’s new prosthetic arm, he’s able to twist its wrist around to produce a knocking sound that be triggered anywhere.
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain looks to be bringing both a bigger world and more tools and techniques to the franchise. What was shown at E3 certainly felt like the tip of the iceberg to me and I cannot wait to play out the fall of Big Boss. A number of features that I liked in Peace Walker come back more functional than ever. Thus far, it certainly looks to be the natural evolution of Metal Gear.
Let us know what about The Phantom Pain excites you and keep checking back to PSU for everything Metal Gear.