Review

When UibSoft release Splinter Cell: Blacklist last year they replaced Michael Ironside as the voice of Sam Fisher, and in the process they made the game a lot harder to like. Konami have done the same thing with Metal Gear Solid V, replacing series regular David Hayter with the more recognisable voice of Kiefer Sutherland. He’s undoubtedly a talented actor but the change in voice is jarring, making it not seem like Snake anymore.

Ground Zeroes is part one of Metal Gear Solid V and acts as a prologue to the main story, in much the same way as the opening tanker mission from Sons of Liberty. At the time, that was given away as a demo to anyone who purchased Zone of the Enders and I remember playing it over and over for hours and exploring every corner of the location. For Ground Zeroes Konami are asking us to pay £25 (£30 on next gen consoles) for a mission of similar length, which is hard to justify, given that I finished the story mission in just over an hour on my first play.

The gameplay itself is classic Metal Gear but it seems Kojima Productions have made a conscious effort to strip back all the excess of Guns of the Patriots - a game which I got bored of in around 3 hours. This means that the few conversations on the codec now happen in-game and don’t break the flow of the action. Best of all, the cut-scenes are kept to a minimum rather than popping you out of the game every five minutes but when they do arrive they are of the usual high standard you’d expect from the series.

The biggest and best change of all is that the onscreen map has been removed. Any guards or items of interest that you spot while looking through your binoculars will be marked on the screen or map as you play. You bring up the map by pressing the Start button but this doesn’t pause the action so you’ll need to be in a safe place before you do. By making you rely only on what you can see they have made the game much more enjoyable to play.

Upon completion of the Ground Zeroes mission you will unlock a few additional side missions that will allow for further exploration of the Camp and this being Metal Gear you can attempt these in a variety of different ways. You’ll have just as much fun playing these more than once but these have clearly only been included to try and increase the amount of content.

Generally, I avoid talking about the price of a game in reviews but in this case it is unavoidable as I feel like Konami have approached this release all wrong. When Capcom released their prologue for Dead Rising 2 they did it as a downloadable title at a low price and if this had been an XBLA or PSN title it would be easy to recommend. As a retail release, even a budget one, I simply cannot recommend that you buy it as you’re all but guaranteed to be able to find it second-hand in less than a week.

By all means, pick it up, play it and enjoy it when the price inevitably drops as the quality on show more than warrants it. Just don’t buy it at full price.

About the Review

Platform

Microsoft Xbox 360

Developer

Kojima Productions

Publisher

Konami

Released

21st March 2014