Metal Gear Survive – Review

Konami basically shat in their own oatmeal by firing Kojima. So you sack an established writer to your largest franchise, doesn’t mean the whole franchise is doomed per say. It is if your developer is no longer interested in the gaming business and wants to milk out the franchise in favor of pachinko machines. So move over EA with your lootboxes in your multiplayer games and Warner Brothers Interactive with lootboxes in your singleplayer games, because Konami just upped the ante by releasing Metal Gear Survive in the way they did, basically beating the franchise dead. The internet predicted the hypetrain’s trajectory correctly by knowing it was going to do little else than crash and burn without the series main writer behind the steering wheel. Always remember, it could be worse, although they did a bang up job almost going the whole nine yards to make sure the series is shot behind the shed somewhere like a rabid dog. Almost like they wanted to make a statement to Kojima. ‘That’s a nice piece of work you’ve got there, it would be a shame…’

Story

Metal Gear Survive starts off where Metal Gear V: Ground Zeroes left off. The base is under attack and the Big Boss gets away and all of a sudden giant wormholes appear -which are tunnels into other dimensions- and most of the crew and debris gets swept up in them. You, the nameless protagonist, just hold on by the skin of your teeth and plummet back to earth, as good as dead. Your superiors won’t do something so bold as defiling your body. After all you sacrificed it in the line of duty. No they’ll just make plans to send your soul into ‘Dite’ a dimension beyond our own overrun by a strange parasite creating zombie-like creatures that only have one thing in mind and that’s attacking anything that isn’t a zombie yet. They are called Wanderers in a way to make the writing seem more original.

One thing needs to be clear about the writing of the Metal Gear games in the franchise. Every story and plotline is explained in a convoluted way that could be summarised in a couple of words and don’t need cutscenes that take up several hours combined. To stray from that formula would really alienate fans, as that’s the staple holding the franchise together, a bit like Dark Souls being nominated as a ‘hard but fair game’. However the plot of this game is so contrived and the motivation of the characters ring so hollow it’s unbearable to listen to them spout their lines. ‘Oh no, those ‘Wanderers’ are just misunderstood, if we reason with them hard enough they’ll see the errors in their way’. Yea good luck talking to something that’s basically a jaw with a traffic cone on top of it. Being the most logical thing to do after hearing that they are mindless killing machines and the safest place is your base is run off into the wilderness which is overrun by ‘Wanderers’ because the game needs padding and you really need to feel the plight of the nurse. There are no personal story arcs like in the other Metal Gears where characters react to news in a believable manner and act accordingly.

Where the other games in the franchise strike home because of the impact of what’s happening in the game, this game just want the player to really drink in that ‘angsty’ feeling of being stuck in another dimension. Here it’s all up to you to bring everyone home safe. Thus creating a pressure on the player character who doesn’t ever react to any of the events, because he’s not given a voice and thus no sense of agency. So the main reason to root for cause is completely nullified from the get go. He’s just a cog in the wheel because there’s no story attached to him/her. He/she just does whatever the plotline throws at him/her. Like a computer program completely configured out of 1’s and 0’s. There are other games that do this and wouldn’t get so much flack for it, but that’s because they aren’t known for their writing in such a way.

Graphics

Metal Gear Survive runs on the Fox Engine. It’s a great engine, that in the right hands could really shine. As it stands the largest part of Metal Gear Survive is a bit like the games in the early PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 time, where everything was basically a different shade of brown/grey. What’s quite clear is that Metal Gear Survive doesn’t try to do anything new with the engine, just being a reskin of a previous game in the series. Konami isn’t a small inexperienced developer that can get away with it. Metal Gear Survive is basically the Afghanistan map of Metal Gear V: The Phantom Pain, all the time with random debris cluttering the scenery. The more dangerous parts of the map are covered in a grey mist where you’ll need an oxygen tank to survive. Basic atmosphere creator 101: How to create an oppressive scene, just add a grey filter over the image.

A minimap is usually a help when you play survival games. As this helps when you have to look for resources to continue playing. If you are in those ‘Grey zones’ then the minimap will no longer show your position, but even worse, it chucks the waypoint under the bus and forces you to wander around, walking from light to light in the hopes of stumbling unto the objective. Have either the player icon dissappear on the minimap or the waymarker flicker in and out, but not both, wandering around wasting valuable resources you’ll need upon reaching the objective is not something that makes player enthusiastic to boot up the software.

Sound

Metal Gear Survive -soundwise- passes the bar exam. It uses the sound cues the previous games are known for. When it comes to the voice acting it doesn’t offend or show a lack of dedication on the sound engineers part. The sound of the ‘Wanderers’ when they attack is primal and feral, just like they behave, and hearing pieces of them break off as you lay into them is satisfying.

Attacking them with bat sounds like the most exerting action under the sun. If you were to swing a sledgehammer, it’s understandable, but a metal bat, doesn’t take that much effort and shouldn’t sound like you’ve just swung an elephant on a stick at the ‘Wanderers’.

Music wise, the game is completely forgettable and doesn’t at all stand out. Again something that the previous entry did way better.

Gameplay

Metal Gear Survive is an action/adventure survival game. At least it’s a barebones one, but by definition it’s a game. It isn’t however a good game. It’s functional, but where Konami could have really regained the fans favor and shown off that the ‘Metal Gear’ franchise doesn’t need Kojima to really shine. Though, zombie games and survival games have been done to death, building a game in a genre with some creative gameplay options pays off. In the early game you’ll be running around looking for food and water, so you can keep your hunger and thirst levels up as they impact your stamina and health, while also scavenging for items so you can craft weapons and armour and tools. The hunger and thirst meters drain way too fast so you’ll be constantly notified and it becomes grating to more you hear it. Stamina draining while running is logical, having it drain as you crouch isn’t. When you are about to fall over from running too much, the game notifies you again, so if you are doing a lot of it, you’ll be pestered about it… a ton.

Crafting isn’t the only part of the game. The biggest part of the game is taking down ‘Wanderers’. As it stands now, it’s comes down to plonking down fences and poking them with sticks or shoot them with arrows. If these ‘Wanderers’ were to have an A.I. that really challenges the player then the game might even appeal to players who really like difficult survival games. That’s not the case. If you put down a fence and the ‘Wanderers’ walk into them, they won’t even bother walking around it. They have no eyes so they can’t see, sure, but even that’s thrown out as they can clearly see you when you get too close. So not even that excuse can be used. The sad part of the game is that you’ll be standing around poking fences as a timer ticks down most of the time. Be it unlocking a teleporter, or defending a location, it comes down to a tower defense game.

The reason why Konami goes beyond EA or Warner Bros Interactive developers levels of cash grabbing, is because they are locking away whole parts of the game behind a paywall, You only have one save file, you can unlock more by buying SV coins. Want more loadout slots? Pay some SV coins. Want more than one crew to send out into the field and gather materials? Pay up. These are basic game mechanics which are included for free in basically any other game. It’s not so bad, you might think, but to unlock just the gameplay ‘extras’, you’ll be playing up to twice the price of the game to unlock everything and fully ‘enjoy’ the experience of stabbing ‘Wanderers’ through fences.

When the Xbox One was revealed, every gamer rallied against Microsoft because the console had an always online feature. ‘No internet? No gaming for you.’ Everyone was outraged, rightly so. Konami however didn’t pay heed to this event. Metal Gear Survive is always on. ‘So no internet? You don’t get to play. What do you mean, the offline singleplayer option? Did we stutter, no internet, no game for you. Oh, and by the way, we’ll be doing regular server maintenance, in which case you’ll be locked out of the game completely.’ So not only are you seeing your player-base as a piggy-bank, you’re also actively locking the players out of the game. That’s really something you’re looking for when paying for a game. Knowing that if the servers go down permanently, which they will in time, the game will be completely unplayable, so if you’ve cashed out on every option, then you’re shit out of luck and out of quite a chunk of money.

Conclusion

Metal Gear Survive wasn’t welcomed by fans when the news struck, and after release, the nay-sayers were correct. The game is a blatant middle finger to both fans and newcomers. Don’t buy this game if you want something you’ll be able to play whenever you want. In fact your better off not buying the game at all, not even at a discount. Metal Gear has officially been mauled and nothing is bringing it back. So far for Konami wanting to rekindle the faith of gamers and fans in their game development prowess. There are better survival games that won’t hoover the money right out of your wallet and leave you with an unplayable file years down the line.

Q

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First game ever was Crash Bandicoot 3 Warped, ever since then, gaming has been something that I've gravitated to. Reading's fun but not as interactive. Always up for a bout of online multiplayer. If that multiplayer is co-op. So if you are up for a friendly co-op session, hit me up. Rahenik's the name to search on PSN.

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