I always find it jarring when I can't gel with a game that is universally acclaimed. Is it me? Is there something wrong with me? Perhaps it's just a case of the wrong game at the wrong time. I don't have a lot of free time right now and MGS5 is a fairly slow paced game, I know it's a stealth game and sneaking and taking your time make sense. But I've never felt an MGS title feel this slow.
I love MGS4, it's probably the best entry in the series in my opinion. I liked the octo-camo suit, it made stealth feel really fun and also ticked that all important box for me when it comes to a stealth game and that is, it makes you feel powerful. You have a severe edge over your enemies, your suit blends in to any surface.
The other thing I liked about MGS4, is if you were spotted and the proverbial feces hit the fan; you were a one man army. Armed with multiple guns, rations for health restoration. Snake could do a fair bit of damage all of his own.
MGS5 really clamps down on these two points I like. Whilst the environs are open, wide and there are lots of places to hide. Your access to camouflage options isn't amazing and so enemies can still spot you from a fair distance. The spotted indicator is vague, and I often found it hard to tell where I had been spotted from or how close the enemy was.
When things to go wrong, initially the game is forgiving. Surprised enemies make time slow and you can line up headshots with ease. Later on though, when the gauge empties or enemies are generally aware of your presence, this "focus" no longer procs.
Venom Snake, is not very durable. He seems to endure an initial burst very well but after one round of health restoration, which as a side note, I dislike in MGS5. Why can't we just have rations again? Having to find a place to lay prone and hold a button to initiate health restoration is tiresome and, as usual, this free health regen system means to balance it out you should go to minimum health in the blink of eye. No need for health pack conservation, you can do it as much as you want. And you will. Over and over every other bullet.
Other nerfs to Snake's abilities is silencers with durability. I don't find such things tactical or interesting, I find them trivial and irritating.
Tranquiliser ammo is very weak unless landing a headshot (hard with the odd iron sights on the guns and heavily restricted access to custom sights) and you get so little of it compared to regular ammo. I know you can call in supply drops for more ammo but again - tedious! A purposefully to make sneaking around harder.
Limited weaponry; unlike previous titles, Snake can't be a one man army. He is allowed two primary weapons (which can be the same type, so no two assault rifles, but an assault rifle and rocket launcher combo is OK) and two secondary. You have many slots for items and equipment but after completing ten missions I only obtained three new items.
Most items in the game are crafted, the enemies pretty much use the same stuff and I never found any exceptionally different weapons in the missions areas. Speaking of the crafting; the mother base management aspect I didn't care for. It was high restrictive, like I said, ten of thirty or so missions done and I couldn't even craft a rocket launcher, which made a mission where you have two disable two tanks very frustrating. I hadn't even unlocked any weapon mods like custom sights or more durably silencers. Some people may like all that stuff but it just made the game more convoluted and took the fun out of the game by limiting weapon variety so harshly in the early game.
This has been a fairly negative post, and I don't like to be brutal but these are the primary elements that turned me off from MGS5. I never played Peace Walker and it seems MGS5 has many similarities to that entry. I wanted another MGS4, sadly that's not what I got.
It's a shame because that bonkers flair for story telling that Kojima has is here and it's very much in your face. The Man on Fire and The Skulls to name a couple, are so out of place from the rest of the game world but work so well in spicing up the situation and adding mystery into a story that is generally speaking, more covert than Snake in a lot of ways.
I'm still looking forward to Kojima's next title; Death Stranding. I've seen that it has a large open world, stealth elements and the like, but I'm hoping it's more story driven that MGS5 which plays more like a sand box (no pun intended!) stealth game than a narrative driven story.
Bring on October!
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