Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes
Ground Zeroes is effectively an early access to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, due for release in 2015. However, its protracted development has led to creator Hideo Kojima releasing this prologue as a sort of goodwill gesture for fans waiting patiently since 2008’s Guns of the Patriots. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the griping some self-entitled gamers exude when a campaign lasts less than 65 hours, Ground Zeroes’ thrifty completion time has been a source of contention ever since leaked ‘two-hour playthrough’ reports surfaced on the Internet several weeks ago.
To be clear, Ground Zeroes is certainly brief, effectively playing out as a first, fairly sizeable level in other comparable games. Meanwhile its average £25 ‘budget’ price tag has hardly been enough to exonerate its relatively meagre offerings for many onlookers. Which is all a huge shame, as this entry into the canon is perhaps the most radical and forward thinking since 1998’s seminal Metal Gear Solid, something being lost amongst the rabble-rousing din of protests from myopic gamers who judge a games' worth on its play-time over the experience itself.
Hideo Kojima’s first stamp of authority is putting the reigns on his prediliction for in-game cut-scenes. It’s a bold move for any game of this ilk, let alone one that more or less pioneered their use. However, when the movie style productions do kick in, such as the swooping, single-cut, opening scene, they are quite breathtaking; an adroit lesson that less is more. Then there’s the new open-world that protaganist Snake now inhabits, leaving little of the heavy signposting often associated with such stealth games, allowing players to tackle objectives as they see fit and without a nasty squawking in their codec.
Whilst the campaign itself may seem a little staid on the surface (infiltrate a military prison camp in the dead of a rainny night and rescue two high profile hostages) there’s a lot more going on once you clamber those barbed wire fences. Sub-missions, extra weaponry and other points of interest are triggered by overheard conversations through your military snooping device, or from the non-lethal takedown of some rather savvy guards. Exploration reaps rewards and there’s far more going on inside Camp Omega than a similar sized piece of Los Santos.
There is then, plenty for fans to get their teeth into after the final credits have rolled (our four hour playthrough only scored a 10% completion score) but as a narrative-driven game, Ground Zeroes will be seen as a little underwhelming. The future of gaming certainly hints that this piecemeal appraoch will become the norm, letting the storm around this entry eventually subside into the ether. In that respect, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes could well be an important title, but for now, it’s a surprisingly novel appetiser that has nicely whet our appetite for the main course.