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+--- Thread: Reviews: Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes Review (/thread-57685.html)
Reviews: Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes Review - xSicKxBot - 03-19-2014
Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes Review
As Metal Gear games go, Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes is a stripped down affair. It avoids lengthy cutscenes, climactic boss fights, and the usual frayed and tangled plot strands in favour of smart, tactical gameplay. While its central campaign is indeed as short as you might’ve heard at around two hours, its multitude of options make for an engaging and tense experience that encourages replayability for hours afterward. Besides a somewhat clumsily delivered ending, this is Metal Gear for modern tastes; lean, mean, and wickedly fun.
The prologue to the upcoming full-bodied Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain (expected in 2015), Ground Zeroes takes its structural and tonal cues from Peace Walker, 2010’s largely overlooked but wonderful PSP game. Ground Zeroes’ central plot focuses on Metal Gear’s usual concerns of high concept political conspiracies and conflicted triple agents, but contrary to the norm, there is very little of it.
The plot that is here is darker in tone than what we’ve come to expect. There has been some talk of Creative Director Hideo Kojima’s desires to move Metal Gear into a grittier and more provocative territory, and the gristle and grime on display in the game's unflinching cut scenes and audio tapes certainly suggests this is the case.