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Gaming / The Phantom Pain, or How I Learned to Look Past Shortcomings to Enjoy a Game
« on: February 16, 2017, 05:56:48 PM »
Let me get this out of the way right off the bat. I was very disappointed with Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. As a big fan of the series, I, like most people was extremely excited when the game was first announced, eager to jump right back into the battle-worn boots of Big Boss once again and embark on many more stealthy adventures. It had been two years since the release of Peace Walker when we first got an early look of the next installment of the series. ‘When will it be released? Will it be good? When can I play this game?’ Questions began stirring around in our heads, theories whizzing around the internet like a swarm of inquisitive hornets.
When E3 rolled around and we got our look at that 9-minute trailer, my mind exploded. HOLY. SHIT. THIS LOOKS AMAZING. Open world stealth? Vehicles, amazing graphics and returning characters? Again, words cannot do justice to how mind-blowing it looked. There was something about Big Boss becoming a demon, that was interesting I thought. Peace Walker had already somewhat explored that by showing Big Boss as becoming more of a warlord in charge of his own army, but portrayed in an almost entirely heroic and justified light. Was The Phantom Pain going to portray him in a more villainous role? We’d have to wait for the game to find out.
The promise of a massive open world with endless possibilities for stealthy excursions was a tantalizing idea. Would the game deliver? Would the story truly deliver and provide a satisfying final chapter in the story of Big Boss? Would this prove to be a worthy entry in the Metal Gear series that has always been praised for its high quality and attention to detail?
I could almost feel my Metal Gear Rising. Damn, I am killing it with these puns.
Time passed, and we got to play the game’s ‘prologue’, called Ground Zeroes. The entire act of releasing the short section on disc as a retail released game was questionable, but personally I didn’t care. I was hungry for Metal Gear. Konami was offering me a Metal Gear Buffet and I played right into their hands and ate it right up. Sure there wasn’t that much in Ground Zeroes, but what was on offer was almost perfection. The graphics were incredible, sneaking through a rain-soaked prison camp illuminated by floodlights and the individual flashlights of the patrolling guards. The wet floor made realistic splashing noises beneath Snake’s feet and the guards’ casual conversations could be overheard if you paid close attention. There was an incredible attention to detail in this short experience that was almost assuredly just a small bite of the incredible feast that was to come.
Those wet effects, though. I honestly don’t think I’d ever seen wet effects look so good in a videogame before.
A few months later, another trailer was released accompanied by the Mike Oldfield song Nuclear. Again, my excitement levels were rising to critical levels. It looked absolutely breathtaking. I was ready to join Big Boss, Kaz and the Diamond Dogs in their quest for revenge against XOF and Cipher. Mother Base and the fallen comrades that perished alongside it would be avenged and it would be oh so sweet. In the words of the internet, I was aboard the hype train, with the brakes turned off on a crash course to gaming heaven. Nope. Not even going to make a Metal Gear pun there.
Pictured above: How I felt after watching the trailer.
The Elegia trailer then arrived. Any notion of realistic expectations and cautious thinking promptly took a running leap and flew out the window.
‘This is going to be the best game ever made. I don’t care what anyone thinks, there’s NO way this can be a letdown.’
Holy shit. That shot of a bloodstained Diamond Dogs logo surrounded by bullets, the chilling speeches from the various characters. Big Boss walking down that hallway. The exciting set pieces. It was all so amazing. The hype train had reached terminal velocity at this point and was showing no sign of derailing.
We waited with baited breath until the game’s release. The excitement for the game was overwhelming. I even bought a Play Arts Kai figure of Snake. There was no way this game would be a disappointment, right? The stage was set for a truly epic game, a masterclass in innovation, gameplay and presentation.
One would almost think that I had my expectations set way too high for the game.
The game was released to overwhelmingly positive reviews and near-universal critical acclaim. From the highly polished visuals, excellent gameplay and controls to the open ended sandbox the game was a massive hit. The game was finally in my hands and I was ecstatic. I absolutely loved it, it was perfection. Pure gaming bliss. For the first few hours it was, anyway.
After I had played a chunk of the game, the cracks started to show and I became less and less enamored with it. While the gameplay was awesome and allowed for a lot of fun customization and options, the storyline that I had become so invested in after spending hours upon hours playing the series seemed to take a bit of a back seat, with a few cutscenes sprinkled here and there, with most of the stories being relegated to mere tape recordings for you to listen to at your own leisure.
They WERE nice cutscenes though, mind you.
I get it, Kojima was responding to the criticism that the series had been plagued with for years; the cutscenes. If there is one thing MGS is infamous for, it’s the overabundance of lengthy cutscenes. I will admit that MGS2 and 4 went a bit overboard with the cutscenes and the team trimming away some of the fat to make a more polished and streamlined game wasn’t a terrible idea, but I feel they may have gone a bit too far in the opposite direction. The story did have some interesting twists with likable (and despicable) characters and callbacks (and call forwards) to other events in the series, but overall as an MGS game it felt a bit... empty. None of the villains really felt as memorable or whacky as like the likes of the ridiculously hammy Liquid or the over the top Bond-like baddie Volgin. Skullface was serviceable, but didn’t leave much of an impression me. That feeling of emptiness goes well with the gameplay side of things too because there were times when traversing the open world environment felt rather tedious with not much to do. Infiltrating the larger outposts was always a joy (particularly the airport and oilfield) but always passing the smaller outposts manned by around 4 soldiers began to wear thin on my enjoyment.
One of the most exciting infiltration missions in the whole game, in my opinion.
As time went by I actively began to hate the game. Other minds on the internet were evidently following the same train of thought as I was and the hate cloud began to spread to every corner, and I was doing my part to spread it. I joined in with MGSV complaint threads and belittled whose who genuinely liked the game. Any of the game’s possible positive features were lost on me as I spewed nothing but hatred and negativity towards the game’s supporters. I even went so far as to erase my save data from my PS4, a drastic act that I took because I believed that was a way of confirming my own feelings to myself. The game had utterly failed to deliver on my overly high expectations and my enjoyment towards it had suffered because of that. I had already become a demon.
Months passed and the game still continued to thrive, with new content being added as it was released. News began to spread about cut content, including a closing chapter for the game that ultimately got canned and that just deepened my disappointment and hatred towards the game. You’d think MGSV had committed some heinous crime like killing my family or assaulting me, judging by the way I thought and discussed it, but in reality it was my own expectations for the game that had caused it to sink so low in my opinion. My opinions in the game shifted from seething anger to mild indifference. I didn’t really care anymore. I realized that I had expected too much from the game and had been utterly let down, but I still remained ignorant towards The Phantom Pain. I didn’t care anymore. If people wanted to enjoy it, I let them. I still talked about the game in a negative light during discussions, but I tried to be more critical about it and explain why I was disappointed rather than just spewing insults and a torrent of abuse.
After sitting down and reading some forum posts, I began to really reconsider my feelings about the game. My negativity towards the game felt more and more like a knee jerk reaction, a bad first impression. Of course I still felt bitter towards the game and its lack of a good story that fit comfortably alongside the ones that came before it, but was it actually a good game? People still enjoyed it and spoke highly of the fun they had while playing it, posting exciting clips and humorous screenshots- all of which contributed to me beginning to think I should give the game another shot, to be honest with myself and really play the game again and think about it. A few days ago I popped the disc in and started fresh, knowing what to expect, with no outrageously high expectations to be torn right back down. I would look at the game with a more critical eye and try to find some positives with it.
You can’t really go wrong when there’s a dog involved.
I am pleased to say that after spending a few days in the game and only getting about a quarter of the way through the story, I am enjoying it. The open-world can admittedly get a bit tedious to traverse sometimes (honestly, why can’t I just get Pequod to drop me off somewhere else in Afghanistan without having to go back to base first?) but when it works, it really works. Being able to approach an outpost in a multitude of different ways really opens up the toybox, and it’s up to you how you want to play. Do you sneak in under the cover of night, silently choking the patrolling guards and interrogating them for information? Do you go in as a lethal Rambo-Commando, gunning everyone in your path down? Do you perch upon a nearby rock and neutralize enemies from afar with a sniper rifle? It’s up to you. I appreciate the choice I’m given. While the previous MGS games in the series have been great in their own right, the stealth often felt limited with what you were given. Here, you are given more freedom than even before to play how you want and I both applaud and appreciate Kojima and his team for giving me so many options to mess around and experiment with.
On the story front, I am still disappointed with the way it turned out and the knowledge of the cut content still hurts deeply. The cassette tapes feel like a medicore substitute for the epic cinematics and long drawn out cutscenes of the previous games. MGSV’s few cutscenes are very, very pretty however, there’s no denying that they are actually rather enjoyable. One irritating thing about the tapes, though is the fact that Kaz and Ocelot like to talk a lot. As in, they will chirp in on your radio and comment on everything you do. Every single soldier you extract is going to illicit some response from Kaz. This can get extremely irritating if you happen to be listening to a tape at the time because it will be drowned out by Kaz repeating the words ‘You’re going to extract him?’
Yes Kaz, of course I’m extracting him. The same way I’ve extracted the last 500 soldiers. You can stop asking.
This is no review by any means, there’s a lot more of the game I could go into detail about but I just wanted to get my thoughts across. MGSV is certainly a very competently made game and I’d even go as far as to say it’s an amazing game in it’s own right and a worthy entry in a series that has always prided itself on an intense attention to detail, amazing presentation and fun gameplay. The Phantom Pain delivers on most of these fronts and for that reason, I believe it’s worth playing and praising. Kojima productions really put a lot of effort into crafting this game and it’s a damn shame that they had a massive falling out with Konami during and after the game’s development and release. Despite the game’s shortcomings, I feel there is a very good game here and it’s a shame that I was so caught up in the internet hate machine and the backlash of my own hype that I was unable to see what the game had to offer. Hype is a dangerous thing and I think we will always need to exercise caution when getting excited for something. Since Metal Gear Solid V was released, I have been careful to not get overly excited for any new release and I feel I’ve enjoyed myself more because of it.
