I don’t want to detain you too long with my thoughts on Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. So many have already voiced their opinions on the game, there really isn’t much left to say about Hideo Kojima’s magnum opus. In fact, Magnum Opus really should be the name of a character in MGS V:
“Boss, that’s Magnum Opus, Cipher’s luxury-ice-cream-eating, Tom-Selleck-lookalike super-psychic. “.
To summarise, everything you’ve heard about The Phantom Pain is completely true. All of it. The good, the bad and the Forward Operating Base. Scream what you like about the cynical motives behind the FOB, but at least the war economy in Konami’s game accurately reflects the corruption and criminality of the real thing.
MGS V is ingenious, infuriating and irreverent on an epic scale. When you’re not sneaking, or shooting, your way through the main story missions, often with less than military precision, there are side ops to sidetrack you, a gigantic Mother Base to build, weapons and items to develop and a private army of soldiers to recruit. All of whom have stupid names like Asthmatic Eagle and Flatulent Fox. After a while, I half expected one of the highly skilled prisoners I rescued to turn out to be Chris sodding Packham. Or Incontinent Aardvark as he’s known to the boys in top brass.
While the 1980’s setting lends an inherently dated feel, the story of Big Boss’s rise from personal hell to Outer Heaven is a thoroughly modern infiltration into the traditional motherland of Metal Gear stealth.
Unlike past games in the franchise, this isn’t another tactical espionage opera. One where gameplay is left waiting patiently in the wings for the brief intervals when Kojima’s opulent and seemingly never ending cut-scenes finally clear the stage. Instead, in MGS V it’s the player-directed content that’s been forced out of the shadows and into the spotlight, with ample opportunity for the inventive and emergent open world action the YouTube generation feasts on.
By many measures, it’s an unmitigated success, but, for me, it’s also something of a shame. Replacing so much of the franchise’s old narrative focus makes The Phantom Pain a game with more character, but equally one almost devoid of memorable characters and jaw-slackening set-piece moments. For much of its running time your most extraordinary acquaintances here are a bio-warfare boyband called the Skulls Unit, and Quiet, a sniper from the paramilitary wing of Pole Dancers Against Nuclear Proliferation. Not great for a series that built its legacy on the likes of Liquid Snake and Psycho Mantis.
Before the release of The Phantom Pain, a plethora of different websites produced handy refresher guides on the labyrinthine Metal Gear time line. Despite being both decisive and divisive, I doubt the story here will detain those same MGS amateur historians too long. Although, they should really consider claiming America’s push to make Fultoning an Olympic sport was the real reason the Soviet Union withdrew from the ’84 games.
Metal Gear Solid V is easily the best game in the series; I’m just not sure it’s the best Metal Gear game in the series.
I remember being pretty excited about Forza 5 prior to it going on sale. The series’ debut on Xbox One promised unparalleled attention to detail, adaptive A.I. Drivatars and a new track twisting its way around the theatrical cobbles of Prague. The chance to be amongst a gaggle of carbon fibre-clad sports cars careering across the Charles Bridge like a herd of stampeding cattle sounded like automotive ecstasy.
Well, it wasn’t. Forza 5 was a game compromised by the corners it cut racing to meet the new console’s launch day.
While the cars themselves looked polished enough, the surrounding scenery had an unrefined Xbox 360 air to it and the driving experience swerved erratically back and forth between bland and brutal. The most effort, and money, seemed to have gone into the expanded Auto Vista mode, which basically involved Jeremy Clarkson breathing heavily over a selection of art house erotic films made by the blokes at Auto Trader.
Thankfully, Forza Motorsport 6 is the game its predecessor should have been. It may not readily admit it, but the scrupulous simulator has learnt some important lessons from its free-wheeling cousin Forza Horizon. A spin-off that couldn’t give two hoots for tyre compounds or telemetry models as long as the sun is shining the top is down and the road is open.
Behind the wheel things are more forgiving than in Forza 5. The handling model feels better balanced, the driver feedback improved. The main career mode’s title, Stories of Motorsport, suggests something about as stimulating as Nigel Mansell reading you a Vauxhall Vectra owner’s manual, but it’s a comprehensive and competitive journey up the racing ranks. Its constant offerings of different rewards and race options mean your progress rarely stalls and an injection of special events provide thrilling away days that allow you to play around unsupervised with everything from ballistic Indy Cars to giant bowling pins.
New wet races have you aquaplaning around puddle-strewn tracks during the kind of biblical downpours where you’d get better cornering out of an ark than an Aston Martin. They make for some erratic and unpredictable racing, as do the returning Drivatars, still recreating the behaviour of your friends with uncanny accuracy by piloting their cars with excessive, borderline psychotic, levels of aggression and the occasional flying visiting into a gravel trap for no apparent reason.
All the hardcore stuff, like car tuning and the livery creator, is still here, it’s just handled a bit more discreetly and sympathetically for those who have little interest in anything but racing. Oh, and the environments? They’re also much improved. Forza 6 easily wins this year’s coveted award for most realistic tyre walls in a game, and the trackside stands are now packed with three dimensional crowds. Although, why so many people would turn out to watch me lap Hockenheim in my mum’s hatchback is still beyond me.
Every September, with the same regularity as a Daniel Sturridge season-ending injury, the vast ranks of videogaming’s football fraternity assemble to consider the ultimate question: Which one is better this year, FIFA or PES? An annual conundrum that’s been around for so long now, it seems almost to stretch back to the sport’s beginnings when, on a fateful day in 1066, a Norman side lead by William the Conqueror controversially defeated an Anglo-Saxon team captained by a young Teddy Sheringham.
This season, the contest between FIFA 16 and Pro Evolution Soccer 2016 is closer than ever, although that isn’t to say the games are particularly similar.
The FIFA series continues to be the more well-known of the pair. Bankrolled by Electronic Arts’ Abramovich-sized wallet, it boasts a litany of officially licensed players and clubs and animations as smooth as Frank Lampard’s freshly waxed chest. By contrast, PES is developed by a squad at Konami operating under much tighter financial constraints who deliver a game with workmanlike visuals and matches between teams with knock-off names like London F.C. and Merseyside Blue. They’re small differences but ones that quickly remind you that in football a large financial advantage often buys you a small but frequently critical edge.
The interesting thing this time around, is the way in which both series have delivered titles with fundamentally different interpretations of football, each of which encapsulates the personality of its creator.
FIFA 16 is a product that lays back and luxuriates in the richer trappings and finer points of the beautiful game. It’s slower, more precise, more technically gifted than a PES 2016 title which is livelier, more physical and spontaneous; an energetic underdog with an admirable grit and determination that stands its ground against FIFA’s aesthetically pleasing sheen.
It all leads to two games that feel decidedly different. At the stadiums in FIFA, for example, you imagine that half time hospitality would come in the form of a prawn sandwich and glass of Champagne, while at the grounds in PES you’d probably get a meat pie and a head butt. And, if handed the job of reassigning the 2022 World Cup, while the FIFA developers would likely award the honours to Germany, Pro Evo would probably stage the tournament in Barnsley. Or South Yorkshire Tykes as it would be called in the game.
All of which is a rather long-winded way of say that FIFA gives you Premiership football and PES offers a Championship game. It’s not a case of which one’s better. It only matters which one you prefer.
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Konami – PS4, Xbox One, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Forza Motorsport 6, Turn 10 Studios – Xbox One
FIFA 16, EA Canada – PS4, Xbox One, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Pro Evolution Soccer 2016, PES Productions – Xbox One, PS4, PC, Xbox 360, PS3
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