With the release of Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain (PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PC), mastermind Hideo Kojima says goodbye to a series he’s steered since 1987’s Metal Gear. But while he’s going out on a high note — as you can see from my review of the game — I couldn’t help but think his departure might actually be a good thing. Here’s why.
With a wide open world full of story-driven missions, random encounters, and even plants to collect, the third-person stealth-action game Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain (PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PC) plays like a sneaky version of The Witcher III: Wild Hunt if you swapped magic for machine guns. But while that might sound like a big departure to fans on this long-running series, what this really does is adapt the classic Metal Gear Solid formula to a engaging new setting, one that helps make this one of the most compelling games of the year.
At a recent event held, in part, to announce the opening of their new Los Angeles studio, Konami and Kojima Productions revealed new details about the upcoming stealth action game Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes.
Set in the studio’s theater, the event consisted of a previously seen trailer, a live demo — which was running on a PC and is representative of how the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game will look — and a Q&A session with director Hideo Kojima and art director Yoji Shinkawa that we were not allowed to record.