Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes Review - A complete waste of time.

By Sam Coles:

Probably one of worst blunders of the 8^th generation so far was 2014 with buggy and unfinished games and probably one of the biggest rip offs and waste of times I’ve played and that comes in the form of Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes a glorified paid demo. I don’t know why Konami thought it was acceptable to chop the first level out of the Phantom Pain and sell for full price (in the UK) and people defended it and that also was perplexing to me.

Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes takes place in 1975 one year after the events of Peace Walker, the supposedly dead Paz is found by a Brazilian fisherman and she is then taken to Camp Omega which is just Guantanamo Bay. Snake and Kaz want to rescue her not because they like her but she has important information about Zero’s secret organisation. The tone of this demo is very different compared to The Phantom Pain as it is very dark with subject matters from implied rape to keeping prisoners against their will and I think this was Kojima’s original vision.

Gameplay is exactly the same as The Phantom Pain obviously with a few exceptions such as the silencer on your tranquilizer gun does not wear over time which completely trivialises the situation. Snake controls fluidly as has my favourite move in the game where you can make him fling himself to the floor which looks like it should break his ribs every time he does it. The demo takes place on Camp Omega a pretty big and sprawling map however changing the time of day and weather is only going get you so far before it gets a bit samey. You can finish the main story part in 30 minutes, there are side missions but these aren’t very interesting and probably pad out the limited gameplay for another hour or so.

One thing you cannot have a go at about the demo are the visuals they are a just a sight to behold it runs on the FOX Engine and it’s absolutely beautiful with the added plus it runs at 60 frames per second on PS4 and Xbox One anyway. There is some truly excellent lighting coupled with realistic water textures as it bounces off Boss’s shoulders and runs down his face.

Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes is everything wrong with the industry where publishers exploit the consumer’s excitement by squeezing every penny out of them. I don’t understand why they released this back in the day and also don’t understand why people defended it when it was a demo that you paid for. Don’t bother with this as it is a complete waste of time, if you’re really curious about it and haven’t played the Phantom Pain then get the definitive experience of MGS V as it is bundled with it.