METAL GEAR SURVIVE REVIEW:
Wednesday November 28th 2018 by WALLEYE
METAL GEAR SURVIVE faced an uphill battle from its announcement. As the first high profile METAL GEAR title since series creator Hideo Kojima's storied depature from Konami, fans were eager to see what Konami had been working on. To say that absolutely no one was expecting a zombie shooter with survival gameplay elements and co-op functionality set in a world where wormholes opened up in the sky and sucked everything in the immediate aftermath of METAL GEAR SOLID V: GROUND ZEROES into an alternate dimension is just about as big of an understatement as you could possibly make. And yet, that's exactly what we got.
Immediately alienating a very vocal majority of the fanbase it was directly aimed at, SURVIVE was always likely to have a hard time winning people over. Admittedly, I was one of the sceptics that found the decision to make such a game at the very least puzzling. However, I was willing to give the game a chance to impress me and the following are my thoughts and impressions after having played through it.
For this review, the game was played across multiple sessions spanning three days, running the PlayStation 4 version of the game, updated to patch 1.02. Since I do not own PlayStation Plus, I was unable to take part in any of the co-op salvage missions on offer so only played through the story mode.
GRAPHICS & VISUALS
If you've played METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN, then you're already very familiar with METAL GEAR SURVIVE. It's running on the same engine as THE PHANTOM PAIN while also reusing the vast majority of it's assets; not only weapons, items and buildings, but entire sections of the map are lifted directly from THE PHANTOM PAIN with very little, if any, changes made in most cases.
Where SURVIVE really shines in terms of visuals is inside the area known as "the dust". The dust covers the majority of the map and, as the name suggests, is blanketed in a very thick fog. Visibility is limited and the fog is so dense that light has a hard time getting through. This leads to some very atmospheric lighting effects and can create some very tense gameplay moments as you try and find your way around, only to be ambushed by a group of wanderers.
MUSIC, VOICE ACTING AND DIALOGUE
Outside of co-op, your character is mute which is very strange for a game with METAL GEAR in the title. While every other character has a fair amount to say, my player character said a grand total of three words throughout the story. That may vary depending on which gender and voice you choose, but whatever options you go with you'll spend most of the game saying absolutely nothing. A decision probably made by recycling the character creation and voice options directly from METAL GEAR ONLINE 3 and not getting most of those voice actors back to record additional dialogue.
Everything else on the voice acting front is more or less as you'd expect. Everyone puts in pretty solid, believable performances and there's nothing really all that negative to say... until you meet a character called Dan later into the game. I won't go into it here, but you'll know what I mean when you encounter him.
"My player character said a grand total of three words throughout the story"
The game's music does well to fit the game. Nothing stands out as jarring or out of place but by the same token, none of it is particularly memorable. The one track from the game that I can really recall is the one track you'll be hearing most often because it's constantly playing in the background every time you're at base camp. It's memorable only for being taken directly from METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN as the song that plays when you return to Mother Base via helicopter.
The only other track of any real note is the song that plays during the end credits, which features the original METAL GEAR SOLID theme which hasn't been heard in the series since METAL GEAR SOLID 3: SNAKE EATER.
GAMEPLAY
SURVIVE's gameplay is pretty much identical to that of THE PHANTOM PAIN, with one very curious difference. For whatever reason, many of the controls have been remapped in a way that seems very unecessary. There was nothing wrong with THE PHANTOM PAIN's control scheme. Everything worked as intended and weapons and items were easy enough to access in a pinch. SURVIVE decided to change things up, which poses no obvious advantages and simply serves to confuse players who are very familiar with the controls of THE PHANTOM PAIN. The new controls are not all that difficult to get used to, but you will find yourself still trying to use the old controls which is completely understandable given how very similar the two games are.
Survival elements that hark back to METAL GEAR SOLID 3: SNAKE EATER are present in METAL GEAR SURVIVE. While exploring the world of Dite, you'll have to keep a close eye on your hunger and thirst levels and search for food and drink to keep yourself alive. Initially, these mechanics feel like an artificial difficulty barrier that detract from any fun you're having exploring the world in search of supplies. You get hungry and dehydrated pretty fast and animals are surprisingly rare throughout the world. You'll only find them in pockets of Dite not shrouded by the dust and early on in the game you'll find it hard to locate any when you really need them. Once you get a handle on how everything works, you'll find that keeping yourself fed and hydrated becomes almost like second nature and you'll frequently be returning to base camp to cook up some of the weirdest meals you can think of.
Another new addition to SURVIVE is melee weapons, which is what you will be using for the majority of the combat. Although firearms are available, ammo is scarce and you can only carry so much of it on you at any one time. You'll find yourself quickly eating through your supply and won't be able to get more until you return to base camp and craft it, which makes melee weapons the more preferrable option. Unlike a firearm, which is completely useless once it runs out of ammo, the melee weapons can be used indefinitely - even when their durability reaches 0%. At that point, they'll only do a fraction of the damage they are capable of, but you can continue to use it all the same until you can return to base camp and repair it.
METAL GEAR is primarily a stealth franchise and while SURVIVE does maintain the solid stealth mechanics from THE PHANTOM PAIN, there is no real point to making any use of them. While it is entirely possible to sneak around enemies, it is far easier to simply run past them. Even without sprinting, you are faster than almost every type of creature you'll encounter and jogging has zero negative effects on your character. To the contrary, trying to play the game stealthily by crouching and crawling to lower both your visibility and the amount of noise you make will drain your stamina, leaving you unable to move for a short time and vulnerable to attack.
EXPLORATION
Exploration is a key part of METAL GEAR SURVIVE. You need to explore the world to track down key resources, food, drink, weapons, items, intel and search for survivors and you'll be doing most of your exploring inside the dust. You'll require an airtank to be able to operate there without almost immediately dying, but therein lies the conflict between what you can do and what the game is asking you to do.
While running around inside the dust, you have to keep an eye on how much oxygen you have left in your tank, while also focusing on your hunger and thirst. Oxygen doesn't last very long and the best, though not the only, way of topping it up is to return to base camp. This means you can't go exploring too far or you'll run out of oxygen. In order to make effective exploration within the dust possible, you need to locate and activate wormhole transporters that will enable you to travel between explored areas and base camp.
"To say that absolutely no one was expecting a zombie shooter with survival gameplay elements and co-op functionality is just about as big of an understatement as you could possibly make"
To give you an idea of where you're going within the dust to locate these transporters, you'll want to make good use of the markers on the map screen. It's much the same system as it was in METAL GEAR SOLID V where you open the map, highlight an area you want to go to and put down a marker that you can see even when you're not staring at the map. Never have these markers been more important than when you're exploring the dust. With visibility so low and no notable landmarks to aid you, it's so easy to get lost that these markers are essential to get anywhere. The only problem is that, because you're in the dust, they keep fading in and out of existence. So if you're out exploring and you get attacked by a group of wanderers, you'll quickly find yourself getting disorientated. With no idea where you are or where you're going, you'll likely end up travelling in the opposite direction to where you were headed and then have to try and figure out a route back to the nearest transporter when you start running out of oxygen.
STORY & LIFESPAN
[THIS SECTION WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR METAL GEAR SOLID V: GROUND ZEROES]
METAL GEAR SURVIVE begins where METAL GEAR SOLID V: GROUND ZEROES ends. Upon returning to Mother Base from a mission on the Cuban coast, Big Boss finds his men engaged in a battle with XOF that ultimately sees Mother Base destroyed. Big Boss and Kazuhira Miller board a helicopter for a hasty retreat and go off to resume their story in METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN. In SURVIVE, you play as a customisable Mother Base soldier that was left behind in the wreckage of Mother Base.
From here, wormholes open up in the sky and begin sucking wreckage, corpses and some of the remaining survivors into an alternate dimension - the world known as Dite. You are then tasked with rescuing survivors and recovering key intel left behind by members of the Charon Corps.
Quite early into the game you'll be dispatched to rescue your first survivor out in the wilds of Dite. It's around this point that you'll build up an idea of roughly where the story is headed and, save for a few staple plot twists of no real consequence, your idea is most likely exactly where the story is headed. While the story itself isn't inherently bad, it's nothing if not a little predictable.
Overall, the game has more to offer than GROUND ZEROES, but is nowhere near as substantial in content as THE PHANTOM PAIN. Upon completion, my play time clocked in at 25 hours, 30 minutes in which I'd unlocked 42% of the game's available trophies, though there were a couple of hours near the end when the story ground to a complete halt when I needed to find specific resources to craft mandatory upgrades and was unable to locate what was needed. With the story complete, the game then offers you a seemingly never ending selection of new side ops and chances to battle new boss creatures that didn't feature in the story, for whatever reason.
One thing worth noting is that if you enjoyed playing through the game and want to do it all over again with a new character, the only way to do so is to use "SV coins", the game's microtransaction currency, to buy an additional character slot. These are priced at 1000 SV coins and would require a payment of £7.99/$9.99 to buy enough credits from the store. Alternatively, you can log in to the game every day in the hope that the random daily log in bonuses will hand out some free SV coins. A little bit ridiculous for what is essentially a second (or third, or fourth) save file, something that most games just give you for free straight off the bat.
SUMMARY
METAL GEAR SURVIVE is a curious game. While it doesn't offer anything new or ground-breaking, it doesn't really do anything wrong, either. If you're willing to give it a chance, there is fun to be had. It is, however, a METAL GEAR title in name only. Outside of your character's origins as a member of Big Boss' private army, there is very little else that ties SURVIVE to the rest of the franchise. It would have been very easy to remove all ties to METAL GEAR and create SURVIVE as a brand new IP which, I believe, may have been to the game's benefit.
METAL GEAR SURVIVE
| Genre : | Survival Action |
| Publisher : | Konami |
| Developer : | Konami |
| Platform : | PlayStation 4 XBOX One PC |
RELEASE DATES:
| US : | February 20th 2018 |
| JP : | February 21st 2018 |
| EU : | February 22nd 2018 |