Metal Gear Solid is one of my favourite franchises, if not my favourite, and what this game represents in that context is a kind of offensive that can’t be reached by just being a dogshit terrible video game. And make no mistake, with or without the context of the Metal Gear name this is a dogshit terrible video game.

The story is nonsensical, it’s structured in a way that makes it far more incomprehensible than it already is. All it has to do with Metal Gear is they occasionally dangle memorabilia in your face. The world is completely barren, the fog makes recognizable landmarks impossible to distinguish, so you never get that familiarity you get playing most other open world games for a certain amount of time. Your resources drain way too fast. It’s made right clear from the opening, which tries to do this fast paced chase scene, but it’s constantly put on hold by you having to wait for your stamina to recover so you can vault over shit. Resources are a pain in the ass to farm for and craft, and you’ll rarely have enough to keep your health and stamina limits above half constantly, so you’ll almost always have to bear this infuriating screen blur that appears when you’re low. The gameplay loop is incredibly restrictive, text lines will encourage stealth among other strategies, but the mechanics are so unreliable and half baked and the zombies kill you in two hits, so it pretty much constricts you to the safe option of putting down a fence and stabbing away. Think all the reviews shitting on this game are exaggerating B-roll footage? They’re sugar coating it, you can lay a fence down in a wide open field and the AI doesn’t even have the common sense to just go around, it’s fucking brainless. There do exist other enemy types that can shoot you or blow through it, these enemies are either cheap as fuck if you’re using melee weapons or piss easy if you have any guns on hand (another reason why the fence and spear is almost mandatory against the basic types is because you need to save your ammo for everything else). Like there’s a bomber type, which can one shot you if your health isn’t high enough so fighting it with a melee weapon has you awkwardly trying to kite it and chip away at it’s spongey health bar, but when you shoot it, it chain reacts and takes all the others out with it, and a type that lifts it’s arm to shield itself, but it spends a ludicrus amount of time frozen in that position, so you can just walk like two steps to the side for a piss easy headshot. Mind you, you can just leave a fence down to keep the regular types at bay while you take care of them. What’s more, the game keeps bombarding you with texts that patronize you with the kind of things that anyone who’s ever touched a video game would know anyway, shit like “When your life runs out, you die” or my favourite, “The Situation Report informs you of the situation,” not to mention Virgil who always yells at you to when your resources are getting low, which they always are. Even separating this game from the Metal Gear name, judging it on it’s own terms, this game is a boring, janky, tedious mess that struggles with providing even the bare minimum and it’s a joke compared to even the most basic of zombie survival games, and this is all before we even bring up the game’s fucking egregious cash shop.

Sad thing is, I don’t think the departure of Kojima necessarily had to mean doom for this franchise on it’s own. Look at Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, a major departure from the series that Kojima had little involvement in, and it’s hailed as a series high point. And it’s baffling to me that they didn’t use the foundation laid in place by The Phantom Pain. Giving such an open-ended world like that the RDR: Undead Nightmare treatment sounds like a fun idea, even in the oversaturated zombie market. Hell, the series as a whole is driven by these sorts of crazy ideas, by outlandish creativity. But that’s the thing, this game isn’t about creative ideas, it’s about cashing in on a recognizable property and popular trends, and about higher-ups wanting another stream of microtransaction revenue (fucking $13 for a save slot), all with zero regard for artistic integrity. It made clear where Konami’s priorities were, it felt like it was made out of spite for Kojima and everyone who loved his work. It was cathartic as hell to see the fandom, and even some of the game’s own devs, respond to that with a giant “fuck you” of their own, buried this game the fuck alive like it deserved. The low number of plays here on Backloggd is far more gratifying to me than the 1.4 average.

I hate this game more than any other piece of media. It’s fully deserving of all the backlash it’s received and then some. This is easily, easily, EASILY the most soulless, inept, cynical, creatively bankrupt piece of media I’ve ever suffered through. I’ll end this with a few words from this game’s own devs:
BASTARD YOTA
CUNNING YUJI
KJP FOREVER

I probably have more hours in this game than I do any other aside from maybe Monster Hunter World. For how archaic and janky it is by today’s standards, I’ll always have a soft spot for it. I’ll always remember that cozy Pokke Village theme, I’ll always remember Tigrex invading my hunt for popo tongues, I’ll always remember those ethereal cutscenes introducing each of the elder dragons, I’ll always remember persevering in the face of this game’s ruthless difficulty and smashing through the many walls it put in my path, and I’ll never not get a heavy shot of nostalgia seeing that Nargacuga longsword on my back.