I adore a lot about GROUND ZEROES. I know when it initially came out, there was a huge controversy (and rightly so) about the pricing for the game, £34.99/$40 for what looked to be a few hours of story at best, basically a demo for 2015's THE PHANTOM PAIN. I mean, Kojima's released demos for his games before, mainly during the PS2 era and seeing a small chunk of TPP sold for an insane price like that definitely raised some eyebrows. Now that we're here, nine years after the fact and you can get a copy on Steam for £1/$1.50, I think it's easier to meet GROUND ZEROES on its own level and if I'm being honest, there's part of me that gets more enjoyment out of playing this than TPP, sometimes anyway.

The game comes with one mission, the titular Ground Zeroes which can take you anywhere from 10 minutes to two hours long, depending on how good you are at stealth games. For me, I've played this countless times on Xbox One, PS4 and now PC (via Steam) so I can beat the level within about 15 or so minutes. I really love the story on display here, although it's no stranger to controversy (more controversy with this game? Wow!) due to its depiction of certain events, mainly discovered through the cassette tapes you can unlock throughout the main mission and the additional Side Ops. I've never played through PEACE WALKER, so I was a little lost at first although after a quick Google, I got myself up to date on everything and to say the tone changed from PEACE WALKER to GROUND ZEROES is an understatement. What was initially a T rated game with goofy mechs gets followed up with an M rated game following side characters going through inhumane acts of violence and torture, whilst also being commentary on real world issues such as the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, amongst many other things that my small brain is unable to fully comprehend. If you just play through the main mission and nothing else, you might be left feeling incomplete, unsure on what certain cutscenes and dialogue actually mean so it's pretty essential to check out those cassette tapes when you unlock all seven. Content warning, as there's depictions of SA, abuse, assault and many, many other grotesque things but in terms of being a bleak, disturbing self-contained story in the MGS universe, I think it's pulled off fairly well.

In terms of the gameplay, all these years later, it still feels so good to play and is honestly one of the best feeling stealth games to ever do it. Also, even if the "open world" isn't big, it feels so real and I've memorised this map like the back of my hand, similar to the Tanker prologue in METAL GEAR SOLID 2: SONS OF LIBERTY. Kojima and his teams know how to craft a well-realised sandbox for players to experiment in, I've always admired that about their work.

I genuinely love this game and even though it's light on content for people who just want to play through it once, I 100%'d the game on Steam, getting every achievement and that took me over 15 hours to do, which I'd say is more than enough content for the price you can get it at nowadays. It's really got me in the mood to play through THE PHANTOM PAIN to completion, finally (yes, I still haven't finished it) so maybe you'll get a review of that from me in the future. I'd absolutely recommend GROUND ZEROES for an engrossing story, as long as you can handle some pretty tough subject matter in those cassette tapes.