Metal Gear Surive has its good times, but is brutally hardcore survival really what fans really want?
Version tested: PlayStation 4
Looking beyond the title, a tenuous connection to the universe created by Kojima and the use of the FOX Engine, Metal Gear Survive could also have been called “Survival Game # 965”. But if that were the case, would we have / would you have played it?
The question, therefore, is whether this title is really valid or not. The answer, like the game itself, is very complicated.
Metal Gear Survive is emotionally and mentally exhausting. It stages stiff, repetitive gameplay on top of survival systems that are relentless and relentless, making the overall experience feel like trying to get out of a choke with one arm tied behind your back. The main link of venturing into the unknown in search of resources to make one's existence a little more bearable is gratifying, but it always feels like a desperate gasp of air before fingers clench again. From time to time his disparate ideas come together for an electrifying set-piece where waves of enemies are battled as they frantically position and defend, but these only serve to highlight what Survive could have been, had it not suffocated on. himself so constantly.
It all begins… in a new world.
The game is set shortly after the attack on Mother Base in Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes. During this siege, a wormhole appears for a parallel world. This sucks in a piece of Mother Base, along with members of Snake's Militaires Sans Frontières and the attacking XOF forces. Your character is sent by a UN scientist named Goodluck through the wormhole to Dite, a barren, gray-looking parallel world. However, this world is made up of recycled environments from Metal Gear Solid V. There you are tasked with finding the cure for a parasite that has infected you and also looking for what happened to your companions.
Survive's storyline is mostly uninteresting and spreads through text and voiceovers on static screens. Similar to the iconic codec conversations of its ancestors, it loses the charm of these by far. While it tries to introduce some of the political machinations and pseudoscience the series is famous for, each narrative beat is a subtly veiled excuse to repeatedly send the player to fetch memory cards for an AI companion, rescue survivors, or activate machinery. Despite a few small hooks in Metal Gear's larger canon, the storytelling is largely forgettable and keeps away from gameplay.
A lost world.
Dite is invaded by a horrible crystalline life form that transforms dead and dying human beings into "Wanderer". It is these zombies that make up the vast majority of the game's conflict. What it lacks in individual strength it makes up for by their sheer number (and they look incredibly creepy to boot), and so defending against them, crawling past them, and getting killed by them while exploring Dite is the point of the game.
But it's not just the Wanderers that make Dite so dangerous. Much of the world is covered in a cloud of dangerous dust, creatively called “The Dust”. In these you
mpeste the visibility is significantly reduced and the resistance is exhausted much faster. Also, the oxygen meter is always running low.
Fortunately, the “Kuban” energy collected by the Wanderers and the environment can be used to recharge oxygen. This can cause some interesting puzzles, with the risk of facing groups of Wanderers lured by the precious oxygen reward.
Survive makes exploration a little easier by using the Wormhole Transporters, which act as fast travel points in and out of The Dust, as well as between them. However, turning them on for the first time attracts large groups of Wanderers to your location, at which point you must erect fortifications and fight off waves of enemies as they attempt to destroy your defenses and teleportation. These moments make Metal Gear Survive truly thrilling and, surprisingly, it is because of the limitations of the game's systems that they actually are.
A well-rounded character.
Survive pushes heavily on exploration and resource gathering as fundamental tools for health, hunger and thirst. While the first element is easily avoidable, the other two are not. Like swords of Damocles above one's head, they unfortunately diminish the gameplay possibilities that Metal Gear Survive offers.
From the moment you land in Dite, you are on a war footing. Survive wants this escape from hell to be faced by fighting and pushing against every adversity every time. Food and water, essential for staying alive, are scarce, and the act of looking for them consumes so many resources to make us think whether it's worth it or not. It is an exhausting race that offers an ephemeral pause only for gathering resources, and then starting from scratch.
And herein lies the problem: hunger and thirst wear off at such a rapid rate that their micromanaging becomes a very challenging task, particularly during the boring first hours of tutorials and story expos.
Their corrupting influence is pervasive, and since the economy of consumption versus spending is heavily burdened by you, the best course of action is often to limit engagement with the game's systems, be it exploration or combat. .
As a result, exploring Dite is a daunting task in which you languidly move back and forth between the base and an area where there may be some resource. Movement is joyless, and is compounded when venturing into The Dust.
Nothing manages to save itself too well.
Worse still, the problems are exacerbated with a frustrating bailout system. Death often goes back 20/30 minutes, as autosave doesn't work well. In addition, the same areas and missions will have to be repeated several times to get the most stars, as hunger and perfection will have to line up to complete a mission successfully.
It's a shame that the Wanderer's scouting and killing flow is interrupted so often, as Survive does a fantastic job of rewarding creative and daring solutions. The huge amount of weapons and equipment available can be used in combination with each other in so many ways that one rarely gets the impression that there is a single dominant strategy for all cases.
Sometimes, quickly mounting a fence and stabbing the enemy through it in a frontal offensive might work, but other times luring them away with a stealth move before throwing a Molotov Cocktail at the massing crowd will be more appropriate instead. Survive is easily at its best when it allows this freedom to play around with its systems and net of the rewarded resources that come with it, instead of being constantly plagued by the need for resources.
A base to cultivate.
Base building is also an important part of Metal Gear Survive's gameplay, and fun and time spend resources transforming your dilapidated base into one equipped with water tanks, areas for growing vegetables and livestock farms, stations cooking and production benches. In time, you will be able to rescue the people stuck in The Dust and bring them home, where they will wander around doing assigned tasks such as caring for crops.
Growing your base is perhaps the most rewarding part of Metal Gear Survive, but the game doesn't make it easy. It barely explains mechanics like sharing resources and creating exploration teams, and aspects like creating and building involve navigating a litany of menus. The game is based on information and does not make an effort to show you what is relevant and why. However, it can all be guessed with a little experimentation, and once that's done it's easy to fall into a comfortable routine of going home, upgrading your character, performing maintenance on the defenses, and collecting the produce. If there is any convenience in Metal Gear Survive, it is here.
Conclusions.
Survive is not the lifeless shell of the Metal Gear series, as many thought it would be with its creator to no longer follow the franchise. When it gets its space, it's truly something truly special - its history, the world, and the freedom of exploration and creativity are all remarkable. The problem is, it's hard to ignore the corporate influence that filled the void in Kojima's absence.
