Review: Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is an over-hyped, glorified demo.

Sure, it looks brilliant – from the moment Snake arrives on the rain-soaked, wind-whipped military island he’s been tasked to perform two extractions on, you’ll appreciate how the game looks. Once that wears off, you’ll see Ground Zeroes‘ is simply that: all flash and little substance.

Put your mind back to a time when you were a young lad. Half the fun of new games was simply the act of waiting for them to come out. If you were ultra-lucky, you’d get a console set up at your local store and get to experience ten or twenty minutes of something resembling the finished product. You’d play that same sequence over and over, partially because you were broke and couldn’t afford to buy a game that day, and partially because you simply adored what was in front of you. By the time you got sick of the game – or rather, the shop attendant grew tired of your antics and threw you out – you could play that bit of the game from back to front, and with your eyes closed to boot.

That’s Ground Zeroes.

You can replay the hour-long main sequence as often as you’d like, and as differently as you’d like, but it’s still two short extraction missions. You can unlock side-quests too, but they’re pretty much just variations on that main experience; blow up this and track down that. All in the same little – admittedly gorgeous – map.

The only difference between Ground Zeroes and demos of the past is that you’re paying for this experience. Once you realise that, you should have a sour taste filling your mouth.

The game drops you straight into the action after a decent-length cutscene. That is, decent in my mind, not Kojima’s; it’s actually quite short compared to other Metal Gear Solid games. Set in the 70s, a brief tutorial gets you acquainted with the game’s mechanics. ‘Brief’ is certainly the keyword there. I took about five steps while I was being briefed, and an eagle-eyed guard had already picked me out. After a short run-and-gun sequence that lead to my death (Snake? Snaaaaaaake!), I tried again. Slower, this time.

The game wants you to be stealthy, though gives you more of a fighting chance if you screw that all up. That said, Ground Zeroes stealth mechanics are quite lacking. Taking a page from Far Cry 3, vision cones on your radar are gone, replaced by a vague indicator at the top of the screen that alerts you if you’re about to be spotted.

Basically, when you see that indicator, it’s already too late. Sometimes, you’ll get lucky; the screen slows down and you’ve a chance to pick off the alerted guard with a headshot. Most times, a guard somehow sees you from across the map, and gets all of his buddies to come and take you down.

Sound design is also very well done in the game, with footsteps echoing off surfaces all around you. It’s great for when you’re trying to mark enemies, but useless when guards stand still. And they do that a lot

After an hour or so, you get used to the ins-and-outs of the mechanics – patience is key — but by then, you’re literally done the game’s main campaign. Armed with that knowledge, you can replay the sequence, but it’s not all that exhilarating; you know where your two extraction targets are, and you know a couple ways to get to each by then. It’d be fun as an unpaid demo, but is patronising when you realise Konami’s already got your cash for this one.

Some side-missions are fun to play, but don’t take long to complete. One of my favourites was an on-rails shooter from within a helicopter, but I was delighting more in how explosions and rain effects were looking more than appreciating the gameplay itself.

If you don’t want to call Ground Zeroes a flat-out demo, then think of it as a technical demonstration of what Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain will be. Hell, if Metal Gear Solid V proper is The Phantom Pain, think of Ground Zeroes as the front-and-centre pain. It’s not an ethereal concept; it’s right in your face. We’ve been presented with a shell of a game that you really shouldn’t have to lay down money for.

Australians, in this case Ground Zeroes is Snake and we’re the guards. In the face of a week’s delay, we can raise the exclamation mark, see just what the ‘game’ is and alert others to its true nature. For those of you who say that you simply must play it, hit up YouTube and save your cash; twenty minutes later, you’ll be caught up ahead of The Phantom Pain.

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes

The Good A great little taste of what to expect in The Phantom Pain.

The bad A glorified demo Too short and flashy Little substance Half-baked stealth mechanics Repetitive side-missions

Want to know more about our scoring scale?

We played Ground Zeroes on both PS4 and Xbox One to complete this review.