For a franchise as plot-driven as Metal Gear, that's a gargantuan loss.īut the trade-off is that The Phantom Pain is perhaps the best stealth game I've ever played, so, y'know. But the holes that The Phantom Pain leaves unattended may never be filled. Had Kojima been able to round things out and finally bridge the gaps between the series' two timelines, this would have been tolerable.
METAL GEAR SOLID V THE PHANTOM PAIN PC REVIEW SERIES
But following Kojima's departure from Konami, the entire future of this series has a massive question mark hanging over it, and even if Konami pushes Metal Gear forward, they'll be doing so without the mind that spent the last three decades crafting this story. The Phantom Pain's conclusion leaves a number of plot threads unaddressed, and make no mistake – for the game to open so many doors and then just fizzle out with no sense of falling action would be inexcusable in any scenario. Given Hideo Kojima's meta turns in previous titles, I'd almost suspect that he's being deliberately ironic.įor once, the development woes and off-screen politics can't be dismissed when judging a final product. And from a real-world perspective, Metal Gear fans everywhere are now faced with the possibility of an incomplete saga, with important pieces excised and likely never to be restored. On a broader level, The Phantom Pain deals, thematically, with the loss of many things – people, voices, innocence, elements of the psyche. In a literal sense, a couple of the game's most important characters are missing limbs. The subtitle in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain refers to a phenomenon in which people continue to feel sensations in body parts that they've lost. "Makes an absolute mockery of every genre entry that preceded it." Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (PC) review