METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN (PC)
The fierce revenge of the Big Boss after the deadly attack of XOF in the prologue Ground Zeroes culminates in an extraordinary and exemplary video game that brings out the best of Metal Gear and the best of Hideo Kojima to a level of excellence like never before seen. A superproduction of more than six years that happens to become instantly a new Masterpiece of the video game.
Snake, Big Boss . The path of heroes is never simple. On the other hand, it is usually full of setbacks, failures and defeats. Hideo Kojima in Kojima Productions as well as Big Boss with a Mother Base in flames, collapsed and full of corpses, has lived his particular Ground Zeroes with his next departure from Konami and the dismantling of the studio with which his achievements were rewarded. That sad chapter has not done more than bring a nostalgic value, farewell, a goodbye, to a job of six years that well supposes the one of a whole life. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is the Game of the Year 2015 and will break into the market as Masterpiece, culmination of a saga, and repeated consecration of Kojima himself.
The analysis process of The Phantom Pain has not been anything conventional. The measures imposed by Konami have restricted the number of hours that the press has been able to pass by testing the title to a maximum of 40. These control measures, common to those who fear exposing the defects of their product to show too much, have an opposite reading in hands of Kojima, the same that surprised presenting Silent Hills as a simple demo called PT. No journalist has completed the inaccessible mission 46 and is unaware of the effects it triggers. And that, when talking about the Japanese director, has an explanation, purpose and genius that we will soon know.
And so, Metal Gear Solid V has eliminated some past mistakes and vices and is not only the best Metal Gear in all history . It is the best videogame of a genre, that of infiltration and espionage, which has evolved so much in this release that it is capable of mixing sandbox, management, strategy, collection, episodic development of TV series and the mechanics of the series . It could also be by quantity. Unlike its predecessors, MGSV is able to easily offer 100 hours of game divided into main missions, secondary and direct Diamond Dogs. And even more, it's the best Metal Gear for freedom; the ability to attack their missions in any order and in any way. Stealthy approaches will find weapons, gadgets, tools and companions that fit like a glove in their plans for each objective. The same for those who choose brute force or intermediate terms. Everything with the ability to improvise or adapt to unforeseen events thanks to the supplies that will come from the air through iDroid . Other elements work at an extraordinary level; script, dramatic and emotional moments, characters or final bosses will be recorded again in the memory, will trigger chills and many emotions, but it would be excessive to say that they oust the current favorites of fans despite being very close.
It could also be because of well-armed characters, with human psyches and blinded by human emotions. Revenge, in the first instance as the main theme of The Phantom Pain . Precisely for this reason it is the most crude Metal , raw and sadistic with some frankly hard scenes. The portraits that are made of Big Boss initiating a journey towards the demon that will incarnate in Outer Heaven , Miller finished, mutilated, embittered and resentful, the most sane, consistent and young Ocelot , an unstable and soft Emmerich and a Quiet tormented by silence, distrustful and lethal, they manage to transmit a high degree of connection and at certain moments, even empathy. And that is largely due to the integral Motion Capture and especially the FOX Engine , which literally gives them life, as it does with overwhelming open scenarios in drawing distances, details, animal and plant life, day and night cycles. climatology
And if you had to choose the best Metal Gear at times fanservice , the countless tributes to the saga, winks, cameos, influences, returns and trolley of Kojima in this installment, would place him in that first position. As we already announced in June, the prologue in Cyprus that was presented in the VGA as part of the strategy of Joakim Mogrem - another trolleyed aka Kojimada - is an hour to see them coming, one after the other, asking us "if that will be ... "or" if that will have been ... ", is a starting point so high that it is difficult to process all the information that the well trained eye in Metal Gear can capture.
In a year with great candidates for GOTY , sentencing and declaring The Phantom Pain as the best videogame of 2015 may seem unlikely. But the scale of this epic title, the hours of fun it can generate, the emotion, inspiration and connection with a story and characters, the possibilities it brings to its reinvented formula, and the visual beauty and captivating melodies, make the one who signs these lines dare to declare it as such. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is a video game created to transcend
That Peace Walker has been a title that has dramatically marked the conception of The Phantom Pain takes on special meaning when it truly completes MGSV . Above all, this is a title that must be played and in which one must act as Big Boss himself would do; assuming the role of commander of Diamond Dogs with all their different roles. This, transferred to the player means to play with patience, with care, with eagerness to complete, perfectionism, without any haste and especially enjoying it. Trying to complete it in the shortest possible time will be counterproductive.
The Mother Base takes on a capital importance as the Diamond Dogs redoubt. Broaden and improve it with different platforms, recruit qualified personnel, assign it to the units where they develop best, tackle invasions or collect mineral, fuel or biological resources is a task that is linked indivisibly to The Phantom Pain; to play it without paying attention and attention is to deny the concept on which MGSV is based. This strategic aspect of management and collection is something that may bother more classic players of Metal Gear, but invest hours in it will reward us decisively in the future.
It also happens with secondary missions , of overwhelming quantity. They procure content for a bulky amount of hours, some better or more fresh than others, but again they are a key factor in the game. Many secondary schools have weight in the plot and we will have to choose them to follow the thread of the story. On the other hand there will be a thickness that are oriented to the Mother Base improving its attributes and statistics with the rescue of prisoners, officers and other specialist personnel - A or S-lines to incorporate into our ranks. There are also secondary schools that have difficulty - which must be played in Survival or Extreme mode - and duration equivalent to other missions in history, hard enough to beat and unlocked when the less important ones are completed. Completing them as we go through the story, in parallel and at the same pace, will help us to follow exactly the same path in which Peace Walker ended .
The final stretch of The Phantom Pain is pure Hideo Kojima; the director has reserved the last stage for an intimate and one-to-one conversation with the player, a delight for the true followers of Metal Gear Solid , for those committed. And it is in the form of delivering the ending when Kojima is more Kojima than ever ; the architect of PT is unique, brilliant and with a genius and daring that would embarrass any other videogame director. Kojima signs like this, and before abandoning what was his home for almost 30 years, his Triclimatic Opus Magnum . Konami has turned Metal Gear into a legacy, like that of the Philosophers, but whoever tackles the task of continuing it will have precisely in the inheritance its main challenge.
The FOX Engineis undoubtedly one of the great keys to understanding the success of Metal Gear Solid V. It is the engine that manages to change everything and that opens up a host of possibilities that we had not seen so far. Kojima always wanted to give his franchise something he could not because of the limitations of the machines in which he developed his previous deliveries, and it has been with the new generation and the current PCs when he has been able to show all the potential through a specially designed and designed engine for this Metal Gear Solid, multi-million dollar investment through -also profitable when using the FOX Engine in Pro Evolution Soccer-. It was announced, some details were seen in Ground Zeroes and it has been consolidated in The Phantom Pain, where it achieves one of the most solid graphic sections,
That the last installment of Kojima at the head of the saga that he himself created can be in sandbox format -different to the concept of open world that can embody GTAV- is intrinsically linked to the FOX Engine, an engine capable of moving in excellence in all sections. One of the great virtues of the technical section of the game is the ability to move scenarios of long horizons with apparent ease and ease. We leave behind more or less closed and limited spaces to make way for a world that is generated and works 360 degrees around us. Some colleagues have reported popping in the version that we have had occasion to analyze, the PlayStation 4, but it should have been minimal because in our case we have not noticed, at 1080p and 60 fps, yes, with some punctual pull in a couple of moments of stress.
For the rest, there are too many words. The modeling of characters are taken care of up to photorealism, and their animations flow in an astonishingly natural way, whether they are low enemies or big bosses. The most outstanding in this aspect are the facial expressions and what they are capable of transmitting, especially in intermediate scenes where the facial modeling and the lip synchronization and movement of the eyes cover the first planes. The tremendous personality of the main characters also plays - artistic design through - a vital role in achieving these sensations that we describe.
To all this is added a lighting system with impressive moments that knows how to adapt perfectly to the day-night cycle able to realistically transform the environments in which we move according to each moment. Great detail at the level of textures at all levels -with incidence of rain, sand storms-, meticulous recreation of various complementary elements such as animals, vegetation that goes from the Afghan desert to the Congolese jungle, and other details at the infrastructure level and good Special effects management in what explosions and other particles are concerned. Everything fits perfectly with the impressive models mentioned above in the analyzed version of PS4. Further,
As far as consoles are concerned, Xbox One shows on screen a video game almost identical to the version that we have been able to test and eviscerate on PS4. The Microsoft platform has a lower resolution (1600x900p) but it is true that the rescaling is very good and the differences end up being minimal. The Sony console is somewhat ahead in some issues, such as minor aliasing and some filters that have a better finish in certain characters, but the two proposals end up being comparable, with a similar frame rate performance and the same drawing distance and a level of detail in which no important differences are appreciated. Simply what has already been mentioned. The one that goes ahead in any case and net is the PC version.
Regarding the details of the PC version , we have been able to enjoy our games with all the features to the maximum and 1080p and 60 FPS unchangeable in all situations, regardless of explosions, shots, or any texture that had to move the Fox Engine, which already demonstrated with Ground Zeroes that it was a very solid engine and well configured for PC. We have also been able to test resolution 4K, one of the exclusive additions of the game for computers and, in this case, with an Intel i7 processor, 16 Gigabytes of RAM and an NVIDIA GTX 970 graphics card, we have been able to run the game at no less than 30 FPS, with an average of about 38 to 40, something completely logical given the large difference in workload with this new resolution.
The textures, the effects of lighting , the loads of the scenarios and all the details are really well resolved looking in the higher configurations better than in consoles and making the PC the best option at a visual level. Throughout the game we have found some small classic flaw of every game, like some weapon that went through our weapon mysteriously and some rather odd animations of D-Horse at times when galloping and there is a change on the ground level, but we have seen them on rare occasions and they do not affect, at all, the experience of the game.
As for the adaptation of the controls, the truth is that perhaps it is not entirely correct for the keyboard and the mouse, with a peculiar distribution that we will have to get used to. We also miss a greater precision when configuring the sensitivity of our mouse but, once again, are small details that do not detract from the level of The Phantom Pain in general, although if you have a command at hand, our personal recommendation is that you use it to play the last work of Kojima . Finally we want to mention, at the level of curiosity , that this version allows us to be able to add our favorite songs to the game to listen to them during the game. If you want to know how to do it simply click here to access our tutorial.
Mother Base, Something More Than a Home
Peace Walker is perhaps the most unknown chapter of the series due to the fact that it is a PSP game - although some, fortunately, were able to discover it with their appearance on the HD compilations. The title has a major importance in the history of Big Boss, but that importance goes beyond the plot. It was there that a series of new ideas were introduced, adding elements of management and personalization that gave substance to the idea of Snake as something more than a solitary hero. He had to be a leader, to shape the ideal left by The Boss of a free army without a nation, and for that he needed to build a base and recruit a mercenary army that embodied the ideal of fighting beyond ideology or flag.
Origins can be recognized, but here ambition and execution are simply on another level, possibly as a consequence of having fulfilled all the objectives around this vision. The amount of pieces that have been created around this facet, and the way in which they relate to other aspects of the game, speak of a titanic work destined to be something more than a mere entertainment outside of the missions. While other titles only make base construction a more or less interesting complement, here we find that it is a central part of the game, endowed with numerous possibilities that will allow us to define even our style and possibilities in the battlefield.
Everything begins with a simple oil installation, a maritime platform that is chosen as the right place to deploy the new Mother Base: difficult to locate and easier to defend than in a place on solid ground. This will be our home, 100% explorable on foot -recommendable to do it to find small surprises- and the backbone on which we will build with our own hands the future of Diamond Dogs. Over time, we will move from a single platform to a complex structure of several buildings on the sea, near the Seychelles, with different sections, both to train our men and to develop combat and infiltration technologies - we already talk about it in depth during our impressions in June-. But all this does not come free: We will have to spend time in the missions to locate resources, weapons and even men with whom we can develop the base. And once we get them, it will be our obligation to pay attention to them, spend time at the base, coordinate missions and even do things as basic as showering to keep our men from losing their composure. Details such as spending time with our men, greeting them, training them or practicing shooting will have an impact on their morale and discipline, which will have long-term benefits and avoid circumstances like fights between the soldiers, in addition to other advantages. coordinate missions and even do things as basic as showering to keep our men from losing their composure. Details such as spending time with our men, greeting them, training them or practicing shooting will have an impact on their morale and discipline, which will have long-term benefits and will avoid circumstances such as fights between the soldiers, as well as other advantages. coordinate missions and even do things as basic as showering to keep our men from losing their composure. Details such as spending time with our men, greeting them, training them or practicing shooting will have an impact on their morale and discipline, which will have long-term benefits and will prevent circumstances such as fights between the soldiers, as well as other advantages.
There is a really important element of management. In missions for example, any piece or individual that we steal - with the now famous Fulton balloon recovery technique - will become part of our team. As we accumulate men and resources, we can expand the base in different directions, with new sections and specialized modules. For example, we can create an R & D platform that will be dedicated to researching new weapons and accessories to use in battle. Another platform will allow us to create an independent assault group, from which we can send our soldiers to independent missions that can bring us various economic benefits if they execute well - and money is a precious asset in the war economy even more when there are so many mouths to feed. It is even possible to leave Big Boss at home and use one of these soldiers instead, which can be interesting if they have specific skills that we can take advantage of. We will also have the possibility of establishing a support team, to which we can go, for example, to obtain weapons, translations, change partners or equipment, extra ammunition, even vehicles in the middle of a mission via parachute, as well as other advantages .
Each new soldier is integrated into the most appropriate branch according to his statistics, although we can assign them to pleasure. And that will determine the level reached by each module. We can delegate their management automatically - by pressing a single button the CPU orders them according to their numbers - but the trait of a good commander is to direct his troops, and we will certainly be rewarded for the time dedicated to these tasks. On the one hand there is the satisfaction of seeing how the base is progressing and how we build a fortress for our men. One reason for this satisfaction is offered by the fact that we have a great control over it and not only will it go in the direction we want, but we will be able to customize it in detail to feel that it is something of ours and not a predefined element that evolves on the margin of our . On the other hand, the innumerable advantages, soldiers, skills, weapons and modifications or improvement of the equipment that we will obtain from our management are all a reward -one of them necessary to accomplish missions or to knock down certain enemies- that will make us always have some new toy with which expand our already considerable range of possibilities within an operation. Undoubtedly, the Mother Base will go down in history as one of the most careful and best-played bases of the game. Weapons and modifications or improvement of the equipment that we will obtain from our management are all a reward -one of them necessary to accomplish missions or to knock down certain enemies- that will make us always have some new toy with which to expand our already considerable range of possibilities inside of an operation. Undoubtedly, the Mother Base will go down in history as one of the most careful and best-played bases of the game. Weapons and modifications or improvement of the equipment that we will obtain from our management are all a reward -one of them necessary to accomplish missions or to knock down certain enemies- that will make us always have some new toy with which to expand our already considerable range of possibilities within of an operation. Undoubtedly, the Mother Base will go down in history as one of the most careful and best-played bases of the game.
We can not forget another important element of the bases, although this completely optional and unnecessary if you do not want to take into account. There is the possibility of creating advanced bases or FOBs, which are bases that occupy an online space, along with other players. This comes to mean that one player may assault another's base to steal men and resources -especially if he manages to get to the core. To avoid this we can establish defenses and bet soldiers, but that has a cost and in any case is not as effective as sending one of our soldiers to participate directly in the defense, becoming then an unequal PVP in which the attacker is at a disadvantage but he has a lot to gain. This facet is, we must insist, fully optional and can be ignored if we do not want an online element in our game. It also has a system of micropayments, which Konami says only serves as an accelerator if we wish, but is not necessary if we want to take advantage of this facet of the game. Unfortunately, the FOBs were not available to play in our game -the servers will open on launch day-, so we can not evaluate this facet at the moment, although we are left with its optionality to be sure that it does not have too much influence on the development of the campaign.
Support on the field
Another of the novelties of weight of Metal Gear Solid V is the system of companions that allows us to choose in the screen of selection of armament -where we configure suit of the Big Boss, main weapon, secondary, gadgets and other tool- previous to the unfolding, to one of the four companions of the protagonist on the battlefield. Each partner will have its own characteristics, advantages and disadvantages. The D-Horse mare is useful to move or flee at high speed, can protect us as we cross enemy zones and goes fast when we call it, in addition, it can be equipped with a combat suit, but its offensive presence is null. D-DogIt is the ideal pet for Big Boss. If at one point in the plot we rescue what is a helpless puppy and take it to MB, Ocelot will take care of it and train it until it is a faithful and very useful companion in combat: detection of enemies and prisoners, sniffing of traces , gathering resources, barking in the face of danger and even attacking in a deadly manner -screw and stabbing included-, more when he has his own combat suit with patch and machete -in a tribute to the FOXHOUND logo-. The basic bipedal wick Walker Gear gives rise to the D-Walker, which is somewhat special: able to enter a stealth mode by folding its extremities, can shoot tranquilizing darts, protect Boss with his armor or transport at full speed prisoners to drive them away of conflict zones and allow a Fulton extraction later.
But the top tier partner is without a doubt Quiet. The silent sniper based on Stephanie Joosten who has decimated the Soviet army for weeks offers us brilliant moments in the plot-in the form of a tribute to past duels-and her superhuman abilities-activated when her face darkens- dematerialization and teleporting capabilities are certainly deadly. In combat we can give you instructions on the role to be fulfilled - attack, defense or support - after which, controlled at all times by your own AI, will be dedicated to execute the orders with overwhelming effectiveness. Quiet really makes things easier: it will help us to silence an enemy that discovers us, it will cover us while we infiltrate, and even in open field combat it will always look for the highest position - teleport blow - to enjoy the best shot. It will solve more than one mission when we have already given it up for lost. In the attack mode it is common to see its green laser sight moving from side to side and eliminating the enemy soldiers in our way without our intervention being necessary. The uniform that looks and raised so much controversy can not be changed, in fact Ocelot explains to Snake why Quiet is forced to wear that wardrobe, but in the Mother Base we can produce different bikinis, silver,
In the sound section we find an extension of what we heard in Ground Zeroes, appetizer in all of this The Phantom Pain. Harry Gregson Williamshe surrounds himself with his collaborators, and again mixes a bipolar theme, with half dominated by aggressive digital samplers, and a part suddenly melancholy and serene. The use of Here's to You, the song that played in Ground Zeroes when the jeep scene, is another example that MGS V expands with songs centered on the year in which the game is supposed to take place: 1984. We will not say any title in particular, but some sure that you will know them instantly. The music, perfect in each scene, has in MSG V one of those uses to study, since it enters just when it must enter, with the exact tempo in each moment, whether intense, dramatic, violent, thunderous, melancholic or to highlight a Small instant of humor. Its brutal dynamic implementation, with a film style deployment of Tarantino, makes this set a sonorous Frankenstein in terms of mixing styles, which Kojima and his team refine and mount in an unhealthy way until achieving a gigantic cohesion. For the memory theQuiet's Theme , already the best and most beautiful of the series and sung by the actress of the character.
But we go to the section that has divided the fans, and in which there are more detractors than defenders: The dubbing. For the first time since 1998, and right at the end of the stage of its creator, the protagonist loses the voice of David Hayter to find a new one in the actor Kiefer Sutherland. Of course those who are fans of that record as characteristic as Hayter's will feel a certain dissociation when listening to him. But this Boss, this Snake, is different. His story is different, his gestures are not the same, his conversation has been reduced to gestures and broken phrases. Although it does not have its tone, its timbre, and its lines of dialogue have been drastically reduced compared to those of other Snake, the work of Kiefer is frankly good. The rest of the voices - we have played it in English - sound at the same level of quality - highlights the work of Troy BakeAs Ocelot as easily the best of the squad, and the final wink of Eli's English accent, not one is out of place, although the narrative exposition is scarce, and the long conversations via Codec - in cinematic sequences - a thing of the past .
"You hope revenge takes away your pain, Boss.
But those wounds you have will never stop hurting.
The pain never goes away. It makes us demons "."
conclusion
Metal Gear Solid V is one of those games that transcends: an exemplary production at all levels and a work that once again gives value to the game as a medium. Stand out in a franchise full of excellence like this, is very complicated and still The Phantom Pain managed to postulate as the final tribute of Hideo Kojima to what was his own saga. The game has been able to adapt to current times and rebuild itself as a sandbox -actually episodic- without losing any of its hallmarks, maintaining its virtues, polishing defects, incorporating themes seen in other titles. The charisma of the characters is still there, with the story of the fall of a hero turned into a villain with whom empathy is achieved. The epic moments, the memorable final bosses emerged from the mechanical designs of Yoji Shinkawa, and a multi-layered script that is the most intricate and surprising of all 30 years of Metal Gear. Full of surprises that nobody knows yet and that we will know when Kojima wants.
MGSV is the maximum exponent of what "A Hideo Kojima Game" printed on a cover has transmitted in several generations.
The best
- Successful approach to episodic sandbox
- Clashes with epic and very tense bosses
- Great debutantes protagonists next to those already presented in other deliveries
- Raw, bloody and with very hard decisions, the right tone to narrate the transformation of Big Boss into antagonist
- Difficult, several missions that harbor great challenges, variants and requirements with fiendish peaks
- Management and effective strategy, simple and comforting when implementing the Mother Base
- Quiet, the best option in the peer system: useful, deadly and decisive
- Authentically masterful and emotive soundtrack
- Tribute to Metal Gear and its fan, but without losing value or appeal to new audiences
- The FOX Engine at its best; powerful, solid and bright
- The economy, resources, rewards after the mission, and Fulton collection encourage us to continue playing
- The iDroid, its interface is a tremendous and useful achievement
- Gigantic amount of content, endless
- Unexpected script twists, all satisfactory
- The feeling at the end of the game of being in front of the true Masterpiece of Hideo Kojima
- MANY SURPRISES still unknown, even for the press ...
Worst
- Some repetitions of mission content
- Kiefer Shuterland fails to make David Hayter forget
- Some punctual cinematic sequence reminds us again of Kojima's excesses in this aspect
Masterpiece
A masterpiece that has dominated his genre to be placed on top of it. A colossus of his generation that will continue to be commented on and remembered in the future. The maximum note does not imply perfection, but is used to point to an absolute referent in which others can and should look at each other.
Gameplay 10
Metal Gear evolves in the right direction. Stripped of great cinematics that disconnected from the experience - although Kojima allows a couple of licenses - and embracing a system of episodic missions that feels very good next to the sandbox approach. More possibilities than ever, with strategy, management, great routines in the AI of the enemies -with advantages such as the reflex mode that can be disabled-, epic, great moments, final bosses where the hand of Yoji Shinkawa in the mechanical designs never disappoints , script changes -some predictable, others unexpected, others just get up, leave the command and applaud, and here is said to date- together a frankly historical playable section for the saga.
Graphics 10
The FOX Engine demonstrates what it was created for; by and for Metal Gear Solid V. When an engine is at the service of the game and the resources are abundant as it has been in Konami, the result can not be more than outstanding. An exhibition of the Kojima Productions engine painting the vision of Metal Gear that the Japanese director had always wanted to move and that now leaves behind the technological barrier to design his work.
Sound 10
Due to limitations of embargo, we can hardly comment on anything specific to the soundtrack and specific topics -we assume that for some license that has not yet been finalized- but the two main themes that have sounded open during the last trailers, Sins of the Father with Donna Burke in the vocals or the main theme of Quiet, sung surprisingly by the same Stefanie Joosten - the same actress on which it is based - give an idea of the level of MGSV's musical production. We return to regret the absence of the inassurable Spanish dubbing yearning Alfonso Vallés, but all the actors have great acting talent, although it is very difficult to fit Kieffer Shutterland in which was the voice of David Hayter.
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