Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes

It doesn't matter if you see Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes as a tech demo or a regular game, it’s still a demonstration of Phantom Pain possibilities. Ground Zeroes is in many ways a great game, but as a whole it is incoherent one. And if it's not your habit to return to a game over and over again, this one may be quite short for you.

An intricately designed open-world adventure, but one that offers too little for its asking price. [May 2014, p.60]

It depends on whether you see this as a fan of the franchise or not to fully justify the price tag. In any case it's a good start for the upcoming new chapter of Hideo Kojima's series of tactical espionage.

Though its brevity's become it's biggest talking point, there's much more to Ground Zeroes than meets the eye. Beyond that it's accessible, featuring the most fluid stealth the series has shown - and delivers a promising glimpse at the future of Metal Gear Solid.

Kojima released this to tease and whet the appetites of the Metal Gear fans that were begging for more. If you fall into that camp, then you have probably already have your mind made up. For anyone who has never played a Metal Gear game however, I can’t recommend that this be your first foray down the nanomachine-filled rabbit hole.

Ground Zeroes, with just one mission, makes clear that Phantom Pain is going to be a fantastic game. The problem is that this experience is too short, with an unjustifiable price point.

Kojima's mastery of the arts is still there, but Ground Zeroes seems to have lost many of the factors that made the Metal Gear series legendary. The technical part is mesmerizing, yet the gameplay lags a bit behind, and, while still fun, we obviously expected something... more. Maybe that will come in Phantom Pain. Maybe.

The proverbial tip of the iceberg. With its finely crafted game design, it creates great expectations for what The Phantom Pain might be in the future, yet at way too high a price.

Ground Zeroes shows the enormity of potential for such an ambitious series, but also reflects the dangers of stepping into those waters. It's an intriguing taste of what might come, but this morsel is too small to satisfy in its own right.

So, I guess you have to ask yourself one question--How big of a Metal Gear fan are you? If you can wait, the price of this game will almost certainly go down quickly. But if you can’t wait and you have the extra money, you will love Ground Zeroes no matter how short it is. It gives us a glimpse of the greatness that is sure to come in The Phantom Pain, let’s us get our Metal Gear fix, and shows us the future of stealth games on next-gen consoles.

It's not an easy sell. In terms of gameplay it's two not all-too-long evenings of entertaining mission gameplay plus quite a few hours spent trying to leave a lasting impression on the numerous leaderboards. I don't regret one second I put into this, took it in with a lot of curiosity and wonder. Still, you can't shake the feeling that this would have been served better as part of The Phantom Pain. As a stand alone game, it's hardly essential.

In many ways, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is the biggest and most confident game Kojima has ever made, but you can’t escape the fact that while it’s certainly an immaculate world that has been created, it’s just a small fragment of something much larger we’ve yet to explore.

The tiniest slice of why gamers love Metal Gear Solid, but not enough to make up for the high price.

A brief but entertaining prologue that is marred by the question of value for money and an empty story that has no resolution unless you buy the next game.

Adding phenomenal, modernized improvements to the Metal Gear franchise, Ground Zeroes is effective at getting you hyped for the future of the series. Still, it feels like an expensive tease that only gives you a taste of what’s to come.

The undoubtable quality of Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes feels carved from a bigger, better game, and perhaps that makes it a better showcase for players who don't know their Snakes from their Otacons. Too good to be a cash-in, too calculated to be satisfying and too intriguing to spurn, Ground Zeroes is a fiscal test of patience.

Ground Zeroes is definitely fun while it lasts, and it offers an interesting taste of what is to come in Phantom Pain. As appetizers go, it's terrific. Just don't expect a full meal.



Even for longtime fans of the Metal Gear franchise, Ground Zeroes may not be worth playing. It spreads its strengths thin over too little space, relying on the repetition of a handful of unremarkable missions in the same area. That's the bad news. The good news is that the core stealth is fun, and the innovations on the gameplay front are promising.

There might be an interesting game in this engine, but it’s not here, not yet, and as a result Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is at best a very expensive demo that should only be approached with the lowest expectations.

Newbies will be lost, veterans not satisfied. It’s firing on all cylinders but the rounds don’t last. Nice showcase of the new engine, though. [Issue#241]

Ground Zeroes probably won’t alienate fans of the series, and in terms of giving players a taste of what to expect in the as-yet-undated Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, it delivers. But between its poor value proposition and its jarring darkness, it’s not likely to make Snake and company any new friends.

No matter how much C4 you pick up, players can't escape the confines of Camp Omega, nor from Ground Zeroes itself, the most expensive demo ever built.

No matter how you look at it, this doesn't feel like a final game. It feels like a demo, and it feels like there should be more by the end of it.

Ground Zeroes would undoubtedly make a powerful introductory mission to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, so it seems a little insidious of Konami to hold it to ransom. That being said, we really can’t fault what little we played – as far as the mechanics and design are concerned – and although the additional content does go some way towards sweetening the pot, we find it difficult to recommend this on those merits alone.

Splitting Ground Zeroes back into a separate release was always going to be contentious. Thankfully, there is a lot more gameplay and depth than the early reports of the main mission’s length suggested and it’s full of potential for exploration, fan service and Kojima’s particular brand of hackneyed allegories.

It's staggeringly short and unsatisfying, feeling more like a cash grab than an honest-to-goodness installment in a beloved franchise.

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is a demo being sold as a bargain-priced game. While the Metal Gear franchise is renowned for having exceptional game teasers, the idea of selling one of them at this price is absurd. The unsatisfying, unlockable content is painfully obvious filler. Not enough moments of gameplay or narrative consequence happen in the main mission to justify a price above $10, let alone the $20-$30 range.

Almost all the depictions of women in the Metal Gear Solid series have been awkwardly sexualised, a fact admirers have sought to explain away by citing Japanese cultural differences or emphasising that these representations barely impinge on the gameplay. I don’t buy that, personally — it seems clear to me that the director just enjoys this sort of stuff — but it will be fascinating to see his apologists attempt to explain away the scenes that show up, quite unadvertised, on the audio tapes in Ground Zeroes.