Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes review

Reviews

March 23, 2014

When I bought my PlayStation 2 back in the early-2000’s I was not what you would describe as a rich man. I was a typical high-school student living off Christmas and birthday gift money.

This lack of fiscal prosperity left me with two choices once I had the console box under my arm: buy the Sony 8MB memory card and try borrow games, or forsake saving my progress and purchase a game I would not mind starting afresh each day.

After 10 seconds of internal debate, I picked up my shiny new copy of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and headed home. It was one of the best decisions I have made to this day.

When our media copy of Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes arrived on 20 March, I thought back to my youth and the countless hours I spent replaying the tanker section of Sons of Liberty over and over again. Like every gamer I had read about how Ground Zeroes was pitifully short and was not worth even the reduced retail price. I hoped they were wrong, I hoped Ground Zeroes would be my modern day tanker episode. It wasn’t.

Metal Gear Solid 5 Ground Zeroes

From first taking control of Snake, restarting at different checkpoints after being spotted by guards, trying out the AA guns, and taking the armoured personal carrier for a ride, the game took 89 minutes to complete.

Yes, it is short, but we knew that.

I also knew that Kiefer Sutherland would be voicing Snake, but it still made me sad not to hear David Hayter’s deep rumblings when Snake speaks. I am sure Sutherland is a wonderful guy, but I don’t like him voicing Snake.

Besides the 89 minute length and Sutherland’s voice, the game was quite enjoyable. Visually, it is superb. The detailing in cut scenes and during gameplay impressed me, and Hideo Kojima cannot be accused of skimping on the detail.

The rain running off Snake’s back, the glare of searchlights as you hide behind detailed sandbags and concrete barriers, the face of a guard as you stab him in the throat – it all looks great.

Metal Gear Solid 5 Ground Zeroes

The gameplay itself was smooth and very easy to get into, and players will feel comfortable taking control of the world’s greatest mercenary from the get go. I also found myself wanting to complete the game as stealthily as possible, which saw me restarting several times at various checkpoints until I got it right. If a game can take you in like that, it is doing something right.

That being said, on normal difficulty it is far to easy to shoot yourself out of a situation if you are discovered – especially if you are near an AA gun – and I would recommend playing on hard from the beginning.

At the time of writing this review I had not played any of the side missions unlocked after completing the game – which might redeem it somewhat – but my initial foray into Ground Zeroes left me wanting a bit more.

Ground Zeroes is definitely a Metal Gear Solid game, but it lacks the grittiness and emotion that made me fall in love with MGS and MGS 2. Maybe The Phantom Pain – which is advertised in a cut scene at the end of Ground Zeroes – will provide that, and maybe I have a romantic memory of MGS that can’t be matched in 89 minutes, but as it stands, I felt a little let down by Ground Zeroes.