MGS fans won't be disappointed in the story stakes, as all of the classic elements and themes the series is renowned for are present and correct, albeit stretched incredibly thin across countless hours of open-world gameplay. Tactical Espionage Operations is the tagline, and that's very much The Phantom Pain's remit, as Snake tackles numerous objectives and Side Ops that include rescuing prisoners, identifying then extracting or eliminating targets, and battling bosses, all while the story gradually unfolds following a first hour or so of wall-to-wall insanity following Snake awakening from a nine-year coma. All of the requisite items and weapons are there, but you'll probably come unstuck pretty quickly. Fancy attempting to play the game like a third-person shooter? Good luck, you can try. But as a stealth sandbox, you can approach Metal Gear's hundreds of missions in any way you like, and you've an enormous toolset to delve into to support your own play-style. A sort of 'best of' comprising Metal Gear Solid's finest moments, MGS 5 has you sending captured troops and resources back to base using Peace Walker's Fulton Recovery System, while utilising camouflage a la Snake Eater will make it harder for the enemy to spot you.Īnd given how sharp enemy AI can be in The Phantom Pain, you'll quickly learn that staying low and slowly crawling among fronds of grass and foliage is the way to go. Set in the wake of the events of Ground Zeroes, Punished 'Venom' Snake is whisked away to Afghanistan where he'll strive to 'let the legend come back to life', as Ocelot puts it, commanding a huge private army stationed at Mother Base. The Phantom Pain might just be the advent of an entirely new genre: the stealth sandbox, letting you loose in a massive open world occupied by Soviet forces. In Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, this is a more viable approach than it's ever been, but you'll still be punished in kind when things go awry. It's presumably the same approach that most take, attempting to sneak for as long as humanly possible, before reverting to evasion and gunplay once the stealthy approach inevitably goes out the window.

I have a tried and tested method for stealth games that I've always fallen back on, ever since first playing Metal Gear Solid back in 1998.

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