REVIEW

Metal Gear Survive Review

by Jake Stewart, March 19th, 2018

The Metal Gear Survive experience can be a little strange, as it shares the same skin and name as previous Metal Gear entries, but performs massively different. As the series’ second major departure from the standard Metal Gear formula, MGS pits your custom character against a slew of otherworldly zombies in some strange alternate dimension.

My time with MGS was full of some pretty solid hits, and some pretty major misses. The first of these hits begins with the single-player aspect. The story is much more interesting than I would’ve expected at all, being that the game is selling itself as a co-op focused title. While it may not be entirely true-to-form, seeing cutscenes rendered in the Fox Engine with the same dramatic cuts and dialogue can truly capture the vibe found within cutscenes of the past. A lack of any established Metal Gear characters makes it clear that this isn’t a standard MGS game, but Konami certainly put their best foot forward to trying to capture some of the quirky dialogue. Unfortunately, I found that most of the Metal Gear inspiration doesn’t majorly hang around aside from these cutscenes.

In true Metal Gear form, the single player is filled with twists, turns, and developments taking place over the 20+ hour storyline. But the portions in-between these sections is where MGS can fall rather flat. Clunky melee weapon controls and literally braindead zombie AI is a constant reminder that the Fox Engine isn’t being used to its full potential here. Rather than the smart and interesting AI that the engine was known for, the enemies are laughably dumb and offer very little threat when not part of a crowd.

A long portion of MGS’s start is filled with a spear as the main weapon, as ranged weapons either aren’t around or simply don’t offer enough ammo early on. Aiming this spear can almost feel like running on tank controls at times, and can be a major annoyance when trying to hunt or fight. On the same end of it, once you’re back to using ranged weaponry, it will feel as solid as it did back in MGSV. As mentioned however, these parts can be few and far between as ammo is rather scarce in the wasteland.

The single-player missions will generally consist of a short base-defense or a fetch quest where you must locate a certain item or building in order to progress the story. These types of missions are where the flaws start to pull through, and the fatigue starts to build. The “survival” aspect of the game can frequently feel overbearing and excessive, as you’ll be constantly hunting for food or water during your missions. I’ve played my fair share of survival games, so I’ve become rather accustomed to the surviving grind. However, Survive comes to point where you’re almost always having to hunt down and consume an entire animal every five minutes to stay alive. Even the most dedicated of survival game fans will find this constant loop to become exhausting as it will frequently interrupt any mission for hunting. Related to that, any sprinting will burn your hunger down even faster, despite only being able to go at a brisk pace for 10 seconds before gasping for air. With the size of the landscape, this can make traversing the world feel drawn out and slow.

As if the slowness wasn’t enough, the play area that you are given will almost always consist of grey fog and dirt. Unfortunately, there isn’t much else to look at within the wasteland. No matter the hours put into the story mode, I do not believe that the layout of the map will ultimately stick within the player’s mind. The lack of major landmarks makes this landscape feel as if it was poorly randomly generated rather than crafted.

On the cooperative side of the spectrum, these missions consist solely of the base-defense modes. This mode is certainly a step up from the aimless wandering at first, but doesn’t introduce enough new mechanics between missions to create variety. There are not very many enemy types, and the main zombie is horribly slow and stupid. A simple gate thrown up in front of you will stop the onslaught as you poke at the zombies through the holes, and not until later rounds does it become entirely necessary to build more traps or change tactics. I can Imagine that this mode would be fun with a group for a short while, but I don’t see enough content here to create longevity.

The survival aspects of this game seem as if they were created by a team that doesn’t have a grasp on the genre that this game intended to break into. While the action and story bits can be carried by the Fox Engine in order to be successful, the main portion of Metal Gear Survive continuously drags from lack of direction and variety. As a Metal Gear fan, I really hoped that this game would offer more, but ultimately feels uninspired and uninteresting. The lower price point may net you a few hours of entertainment, but I personally don’t see myself returning to the game anytime soon.

Survive tries really hard to capture the spirit of Metal Gear and gets overbearingly close. If these cutscenes were made into a movie, it would be much more enjoyable. Unfortunately, a stale opponent, boring landscape, and annoying survival mechanics hold Survival back from being anything more.