Metal Gear Solid Ground Zeroes

[Josef K]

It's that time again:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=L5IVOs5Pxh8

When the music kicked in gave me shivers.

Colour me excited.

[Thursday]

It's so nice to see a trailer that leaves you wondering "what the hell was that about?" I've missed games with the attention to detail that Kojima provides. MGS4 feels like a lifetime ago now.

[Thursday]

Longer version of the video here, with a few minutes of gameplay on the end.

[QDRPHNC]

Damn. I didn't give Snake Eater a fair shake, but I loved Sons of Liberty.

Very excited by this. Looks like the opening scene of the best action movie never made.

[DJ Solid Snail]

That gizmo Big Boss whipped out was a tad anachronistic, no? This is a sequel to Peace Walker, then, which I've not played. Is it any good? Who's the Mason Verger lookalike? [Edit - Oh, and was that meant to be Raiden in the cage?]

I can't say as I'm dripping with excitement - every new MGS game looks nice, certainly, and the teasing of a story seems very cool initially (Kojima's very good with trailers) but MGS4 was an overindulgent mess and I'm quite bored with the gameplay at this point. Kojima's been saying "this is my last MGS game" since 2 and I really wish he'd keep his word eventually and put his mind to something else - something standalone, like Snatcher or Policenauts, two of his best games. This oversaturation of the MGS series is getting to be something quite ridiculous.

[Old Nehamkin]

I somehow missed that this is coming out. IT LOOK GOOD! I really hope they try to work on integrating the story into the gameplay a lot more this time though. I'm playing through 4 at the moment and the gameplay is so entertaining and immersive but it's tempered by the dread every time I get through an area that I'm about to trigger a 20 minute cut-scene where I have some overwrought backstory explained to me in a ponderous manner (Yeah, I know you can skip them but it just doesn't feel right).

It really messes with the flow of the game. I just want to be sent on a mission and left on my own to stealth my way through a big fuck off base for hours, meeting the odd larger-than-life boss along the way. I don't want to feel like I'm being allowed to participate in some interactive segues between scenes from a po-faced cgi film, which is how it feels at its worst.

Don't get me wrong, some of the cutscene sequences are spectacular, and I know lengthy cutscenes have always been part of the series, but I really hope they step it down a bit and focus on what they're best at-

TACTICAL ESPIONAGE ACTION!

[Capt.Midnight]

This completely crept up on me too.  Ace! Hopefully with it being a series of large, open world environments there'll be more gameplay to compensate for the cut-scenes.  My only real concern is the vehicles... It'll be interesting to see how they are implemented and how restricted you are with using them.

[Thursday]

I'd be very surprised if this was anywhere near as long-winded as MGS4, that was wrapping up the stories from every minor character in MGS lore. This is just going to be an interesting prequel that'll tell a self-contained story with some references to other games in the series. And who know's maybe in the years off, even Kojima will have learnt he can tell his stories in other ways.

Unless this is all a diversion to hide the fact that it's actually set after MGS4 and they suddenly found an anti-ageing medicine for Snake.

[brat-sampson]

I can't help but wish they'd just move on to something else. Even as someone who loved all the main 4 previous games, for the most part, it's always harder to get excited for something that comes out after you've been told the previous one wraps everything up 'once and for all.' This might be because they're almost always prequels and they're almost always inferior.

Note this sentiment counts double for movies.

[Obel]

This game is pretty much their insurance policy for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (aka the worst named game in the world).

I'm not a massive MGS nerd, I played MGS Twin Snakes last year and loved it (having not played the series since MGS on PS1), I started playing MGS 2 on Xbox but got distracted.. I want to get back to the games so I'll get the HD collection soon to start working my way through them. I've heard Peace Walker is the best game in the series pretty much, in terms of actual gameplay so I'm quite keen to get on that one.

Only problem is playing MGS4... I don't have a PS3.

[Viero_Berlotti]

MGS 4 is a bit of a flawed masterpiece. If you can tolerate the indecipherable plot and interminable cut scenes there is one of the best console games of this generation underneath.

I'm more than looking forward to Ground Zeroes mainly because there is been a dearth of decent stealth games in the past few years and the forthcoming Splinter Cell reboot is looking more like a third person action shooter rather than a pure stealth game.

Less lengthy cut scenes would be better this time though please.

[Bored of Canada]

This is on PC now. Just picked it up for like, 14 bucks. Really impressed so far. The stealth feels really good, the controls feel slick, which it never has in the past for me. I like 2 and 3 but I like them because of the quirky gameplay ideas thrown into it and not the stealthing generally. This just feels like a big sandbox to approach however you like.

It also looks really really really good. I'm more interested in this than the Phantom Pain. This looks more basic and less story stuff, and I don't really give a shit about the story at all. I've not played very long. Just gave it a quick 10 minute little potter about. Looks really cool.

[Bored of Canada]

Just finished it. Took me an hour and ten minutes to get through it but, to be fair, it was an incredibly rough and sloppy attempt.
Definitely the kind of game to be replayed and replayed. I tried ghosting it and fucked up so fast. Want to take my time and get through without any alarms.

It's incredibly difficult, but feels very logical in all elements of the difficulty. People call in their positions, there's security cameras in places where you would have security cameras, some overlapping so you just can't get past without being seen, and if guards don't call in on their radios, or you shoot out a camera and the feed goes down, then Secutiyu will put people on alert and send marines to check them out. The extraction system is also great.

You're breaking into Guantanomo Bay to extract two children, and you can extract other prisoners if you so choose, and there's a number of extraction points dotted all over where you can call your helicopter in. It takes a couple minutes for the helicopter to reach there and there's all kinds of military and anti air placements near certain ones, which will try and shoot it down. Even if you're going to a secluded area, it seems like people will call it in, because it's a big bloody chopper at night, and is loud and got lights on the bloody thing.

I feel like the guards flock to areas afterwards where you've come through, after the alarm dies out. Places proven to be blindspots in their security, which they've now plugged, which feels logical. I burst into one place in a tank, killing loads of people and then legged it.

When I came back through that way, they had brought in their own tank, which I realised only after blundering out a door into its line of fire, already being chased by guards from inside the area, carrying the prisoner over my shoulder. We were both promptly shot.

It's the simplest most restrained Kojima plot too. It still has slightly campy moments and doesn't need as much exposition as it gets, but it's a lot more quiet and restrained. It feels focused, and there's a genuine anger in it. It's also incredibly disturbing to be honest, which is good in certain ways, because the bad guys are the US Government and you're in Guantanamo Bay, and the stuff you're seeing is just horrific stuff, and we should be horrified. The US government should be vilified for such fucking monstrous inhumane shit, but that skirts into exploitational and unpleasantness at the end in the execution, framing, and just certain elements of the tone.

It is odd. It feels like Kojima's always trying to deal with these themes of Private Military Corporations, war as industry and all these ideas that are dark and have horrible implications in the real world, but they've never been this focused, and delivered with this kind of serious and solemn tone.
It's always very camp and big, and this is most certainly over the top, but it's the most minimalistic Metal Gear game I've ever played. Definitely my favourite.

I have issues with the exploitation movie vibe at the end, because it feels so out of place, and quite tasteless and absolutely tone-deaf, but overall, I'm remarkably impressed with this. It's just a great stealth game, and there's a lot there to actually play around with if you're going in to explore it.

The use of the Ennio Morricone track is also ace. 

[Thursday]

I did find it difficult getting used to how big the enemies field of vision is, it seems like it's almost as good as yours now, enemies spotting me that I can't see is more realistic and challenging but it takes away some of the fun of being able to fuck with them so easily. It might just be that I'm shit though.

[Bored of Canada]

I'm playing through it on hard, trying for no-kills and no alarms. Don't think I'm capable of ghosting it yet.
Got to the cages and choked out the three guards and thought I was being clever and tried to lock them inside the cages.

THE IRONY WOULD BE DELICIOUS.

But Kojima hadn't thought of that so the man himself didn't add in a button to lock the cage doors.

YOU DON'T DESERVE MULTIPLE ON-SCREEN CREDITS IF YOU DON'T ALLOW ME TO LOCK PEOPLE IN CAGES.

NAUGHT OUT OF ONE-NAUGHT.