Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Spins the Most Sprawling Snake Tale Yet

You’ve got to hand it to Hideo Kojima; the man has a penchant for the peculiar. The “Metal Gear” series’ legendary director made another splash with last week’s unique E3 trailer and gameplay presentation for the upcoming “Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain,” and while we never quite know what to make of these things (even when we actually play the final games, in some cases), this latest promotional spectacle for Konami’s famed stealth-action saga was definitely attention-grabbing.

For the uninitiated, these games spin quite the involved, intricate story. You don’t need to have played previous “Metal Gear” games to enjoy “The Phantom Pain,” but it doesn’t hurt. If you feel like catching up, grab “Metal Gear Solid 2 & 3 HD Edition,” “Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker HD Edition,” and last March’s “Phantom Pain” prequel “Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes.” Special note: For anyone who ever thought “Peace Walker” was a fanciful side-story and not a mainline-series game… boy, were you wrong. Make sure you spend some quality time catching up on this excellent bit of “Metal Gear” gaming!

With that out of the way, here’s the gist of it in layman’s terms. Recent events left series protagonist and stealth operative Snake (otherwise known as “Big Boss” in some circles) in a decade-long coma. “The Phantom Pain” finds him on the road to recovery circa 1984, and hot on the trail of his abducted majordomo, Kazuhira Miller. Not everyone has taken kindly to the Diamond Dogs – the pair’s nation-agnostic PMC – and now, in the wake of Miller’s kidnapping, Snake heads to Afghanistan to make his house whole once again.


If you played “Ground Zeroes,” you generally know what you’re in for here, mechanics-wise. Snake has the run of a vast and open world, and enjoys the ability to mark enemy locations, once he surveys the area with his binoculars. This enemy-flagging system effectively supplants previous games’ persistent radar, and makes for a much more heads-up, eyes-open method of identifying, evading, and engaging threats. Snake’s usual bag of tricks returns; he can hug walls, crawl along the ground, hide in the brush, and neutralize foes with whatever mix of gunplay, tranquilizers, and close-quarters combat you find appropriate. This is, of course, a stealth-action game – which means that an out-and-out firefight usually doubles as a fast ticket to the game over screen.

Konami’s gameplay presentation put the metallic-prosthetic-arm-rocking Snake in the eye of an Afghan sandstorm, with his in-house interrogation specialist (and future series mega-antagonist) Revolver Ocelot providing radio support. En route to his objective, a horse-riding Snake hung to his steed’s side in order to avoid detection, utilized the aforementioned sandstorm for added cover, and capitalized on a cardboard box (“Metal Gear’s” trademark portable hiding spot) in a variety of new ways. For one, Snake can now pop out of the box, fire a few rounds (or tranqs) into an unsuspecting soldier, and resume his hiding position. Or, under pressure, Snake can dive …read more