Review of Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes

The story of “Metal Gear” is so bizarre and out there that just reading every Wikipedia article on the subject wouldn’t begin to make sense to the average person. People that experience the game since the Nintendo start ( even those that started with the PlayStation 1’s “Metal Gear Solid” game ) will have a better understanding of the insane storyline and complicated plot twists but even they need cliff notes and outside aide to completely understand the characters and story that the infamous Hideo Kojima laid down years ago. One would swear that he makes this shit up as he goes along ( as bat shit crazy bananas the storyline is ) but at the end of the day, somehow those who are loyal fans of the series cannot get enough of it. Luckily, I am one of those crazy fans of the MGS series so I couldn’t resist when they released a prequel to the newest Metal Gear Solid game. Especially, when they released the game at half the price as a new game at the time.

In Ground Zeroes, you are the legendary mercenary, “Big Boss” ( also referred to as Snake ), leader of a collection of “soldiers without a nation” called Outer Heaven, and you are on a mission to rescue a child soldier, "Chico", who is a spy for Outer Heaven. Big Boss enters a “black site” crawling full of Marines working for a secret organization calling themselves Cipher. Simple as the story seems, it does get complicated quick because the game assumes you know what has been happening in the previous installments of the game. But for those that have no idea, there are audio tapes and radio commutations of relevant backstory of what is going on. Extremely useful when it comes to trying to understand how you got to this point and why it matters. The story is definitely worth getting into, considering the audio cassettes can be played while you are in the game, on the battlefield! Now, the story, as deep and complex as it is, isn’t the only selling point to this game. They have pushed the 360 and PS3 to their limits on this one. The detail to graphics, lighting and the elements work beautifully together. In the first mission, it is raining and your can see both Snake's and the Martin's ponchos glisten from the rain fall. And that isn't all! The weather has an effect how you should approach any of the missions given in this game. One of the examples of weather affecting your performance is that the wind can affects the trajectory of your bullets so try to be aware of what and how you are shooting. The enemies are no dummies either. From normal difficulties and upward, the enemies don't ignore suspicious shadows. They investigate! Some even do it in pairs! Try to take one out and there is a chance the other will notice. Luckily, Snake has an ability called "Reflex", which will slow down time if the potential of being immediately spotted is high and you can react by running for cover or taking out the threat! But it doesn't last forever so think quick and move quicker. Also, the battlefield is huge! Granted the whole game takes place at this one black site but the black site does take time to get from one end to another. Nothing like GTA's cities or Skyrim but considerably big. Enemy sentries have routes that they take but will stop and have conversations about what is going on. And these conversations has the potential of giving you intel on the mission you are on. And if you are impatient on getting intel then you can take the enemies hostage and interrogate them right there! Luckily, you being a world renowned mercenary, you are equipped with a silenced assault rifle with flashlight and a silenced tranquilizer gun. You can acquire other weapons too like pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles and even a rocket launcher! Which is good cause the silencer on the assault rifle does run out after a few clips, and the flashlight ( which I learned, later on, can be turned off and on ) gave me away more times than I would like to admit but that just pumped my blood on the realism of the game. Not only that, you can use these seemingly unlucky events to your advantage! The flashlight can actually be used to blind your enemies buying you time to escape and take down an enemy! Also, you can use empty magazine clips to distract enemies to looking in the opposite direction, making it easier to sneak by them. But a tranquilizer dart to the head would send just about every enemy straight to sleep. Also, if you want to distract the enemy, first a loud shot in one area to make sentry come to investigate which would make other areas have less guards to worry about for a while. But that is the beautiful thing about this MGS game. You can attack any situation a number of ways.You can go in, sneaking from shadows to shadows and valuing every life using distraction tactics and strategies ... or you can equip your biggest and loudest gun and cut down anyone and everyone in your path! Granted, you still get graded on each mission but I tell you this from personal experience, you realize quickly that you just want to get the job done by any means here. Speaking of missions, the entire game takes place on 1 map. And when I say entire game ... I mean, 5-7 separate missions ... on the same map. But like I said, the map is huge and I think the quickest I have just tried doing a particular mission was a little over 30 minutes but I am sure others can do it quicker. I had to admit that when I heard that this game had one level 7 times, I was like WTF but when I played it ... and played it ... and played it ... and play it ... I realized that it was satisfying. The game is fun and it is definitely worth the release price of $30 and even now I am sure you can get it $10 or even less! So if you have the chance to pick this game up, then do not hesitate and enjoy the challenge and fun of Ground Zeroes. This game is a definitely buy ... even if you are not an fan of the series.

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