Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
Playstation 4, Xbox One
Hideo Kojima has made every Metal Gear Solid game as if it would be his last. The franchise, spanning over 28 years of development, has been both his greatest burden and his bravest accomplishment. Following the recent revelations of his turbulent experiences with publisher Konami – which included demotion from an executive a contractor role and having all traces of his name removed during the marketing campaign – it seems that Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is Kojima’s true last hurrah.
Kojima’s ambition to of presenting games as cinematic experiences, while revolutionary in the Playstation era, often forsook core gameplay, leading the player-controlled segments of his games to feel like their function was to simply link cutscenes (of which his games have been famously bloated with). It is because of this that MGSV is a surprising revelation: It is such a game.
This is the best Metal Gear has ever felt. The strictly narrative-driven and linear format of earlier games in the franchise is replaced in MGSV with a superbly realised open world structure where base building and weapon/item development take on primary roles. Gameplay consists of main missions and optional side-ops that require the player to sneak or shoot their way through well patrolled bases and outposts in two areas: the dusty mountains of Afghanistan and the murky swamps of Angola.
Although the cinematic cutscenes and memorable characters that define the franchise are still present (albeit in sparser quantities), MGSV’s main flaw is the non-development of its antagonists and, subsequently, its flat narrative arc. While previous games in the series were foregrounded by their over-the-top villains, MGSV’s cast of baddies – Skullface, The Man on Fire, and the (familiar) Third Boy – feel a little damp in comparison to ‘dude-made-out-of-bees’ and ‘my-evil-clone-twin’. In typically Metal Gear fashion, the representation of women is troubled, with the main female characters functioning almost purely as scantily clad and sexualised narrative mechanisms.
Despite the game’s shortcomings, it is impossible to deny the sheer ambition of the project. With a rumoured budget of $80 million, it is a sprawling bizarre cultural object. It is fascinating to see something with such a large scope concisely achieve synthesis of its fun and emergent systems. It’s a wonder. –AW
Mysterium
Designed by Oleksandr Nevskiy and Oleg Sidorenko
Haunted houses can be stressful places. Creaky floorboards, wailing cellars, and spooky visions – it’s a lot for even the most diligent ghost to juggle. Don’t get me wrong, it can be rough on the corporeal inhabitants, too, but the late nights and constant pressure to perform are enough to make an entity scream louder than their victims.
For those of a more, well, mortal persuasion, Mysterium is a game that gives you a taste of the horrors behind the horror. One player takes the role of the someone murdered years ago in a Scottish manor, while up to six other players are mediums, trying to discover the identity of the killer, thus giving the spirit a sense of peace. Think Ghost, only if Patrick Swayze kept giving Whoopi Goldberg cards with weird, cryptic pictures on them. This is the ghost’s ‘vision deck’, which is used to give clues to the psychics about the guilty party, the location of the murder, and the weapon used.
The terrible stress for the ghost player stems from the extremely tenuous connections that must be drawn between their seven-card hand of visions and the array of suspects and potential murder weapons laid before the psychics. As a clairvoyant, it can be a little irritating when you’re handed a card that depicts a porcupine-like creature wearing a hockey mask while sitting on a giant mushroom. Now, does this mean the nun, the baker or the tailor was the murderer? Pity the poor spirit, though, who has to scream silently to themselves, ‘The tailor, dammit! Porcupine → needles → tailor! So obvious!’ Ghosts are used to being feared, even reviled. But spare a thought this Halloween for those that just endlessly harried. –LD
Like a Boss
Kaizo Mario World
After 30 years of dispensing its own genius designs, Nintendo has just recently opened up the creation of Mario levels to everyone with the release of Super Mario Maker. But many enterprising hackers and tinkerers haven’t been waiting around.
Kaizo, popularly called ‘Asshole Mario’, is a reworking of 1990s Super Mario World that’s known as the apotheosis of difficult platform games. It’s also known to draw rants of incredible profanity from its players – probably not what Nintendo’s hoping for its own toolset. –LD
Words: Aidan Wall & Leo Devlin
