Friday, April 18, 2014
| 4/18/14 2:30PM |
Quick Extraction
Ground Zeroes gives Metal Gear fans a sampling of what's to come in Metal Gear Solid 5, and has been heavily criticized for it's much public completion time of two hours. Selling for $20 as a digital download on 360 and PS3, and as a retail product for current and next-gen consoles at $30, Ground Zeroes is fairly pricey for the gameplay it does contain, but if you're looking for anything to play between the wait for MGS5, Ground Zeroes is worth checking out if you can rent it or find it on sale.
With Keifer Sutherland now at the helm as the voice of Snake, Ground Zeroes shows the power of the FOX engine with a few missions that revolve around a military base called Camp Omega, and is quite fun despite the short run-time of the main gameplay component Ground Zeroes provides.
The main mission of the game has players controlling Snake as he arrives at Omega with the goal of extracting two captured child soldiers from his side. You can either go in guns-blazing, sounding the alarms across the base as you fight your way to the soldiers, or attempt to be stealthy and get them both out without being seen or heard – or a nice mixture of both ways.
Detection in past Metal Gear games usually meant certain failure, but Ground Zeroes is built as an action game with responsive third-person controls which makes it possible to fight your way out of traditionally dangerous situations for MGS titles.
My first initial play-through of the main mission took about an hour and twenty minutes, with subsequent runs taking less time. My fastest completion currently is about twenty minutes. This run-time would normally be a bummer, but with Ground Zeroes it's fine since Konami built the game as small experience, although it does pack in some great re-playability if you factor in the side ops and console exclusive content.
All of the missions in Ground Zeroes take place at Omega and contain various objectives and brief cut-scenes to introduce each one. Some are stealth based and have you collecting tapes or rescuing additional allies, and others are more action oriented with Snake beginning in a helicopter armed with unlimited ammo to take out soldiers as you attempt to rescue specific soldiers.
Visually speaking, Ground Zeroes looks great on current consoles, but from the videos of the next-gen consoles I've seen, was built for the latest systems from Microsoft and Sony. I played the game on Xbox 360, and was impressed by what Konami was able to do with the FOX engine on the nine year console. The character models look great and are accompanied by some great weather and lighting effects.
If you can get it on PS4 or Xbox One, you'll really be able to see what those consoles can do when you try out Ground Zeroes.
Recent Reviews
After playing the main mission about five times and checking out the sub missions available, I was able to get a nice feel for Ground Zeroes.
I don't think it will be a game I'll go back to until MGS5 comes out as a refresher and to re-familiarize myself with the new controls for MGS, but it's certainly worth looking for a few hours, something that it was basically designed for.
+ Amazing visuals and fun action/stealth gameplay
+ Extra missions, weapons, and collectibles to unlock
+ Re-playability factor of the available missions
- Fairly short experience for the asking price of $20-30 for each platform
Reviews on the thebuttonpresser.com are based out of a '1-5 controller' Scoring system. Purchased games by the reviewer contain no annotation, but review copies are always known to the reader via a review disclaimer.
Publishers- Konami Digital Entertainment
Release Date- March 18th, 2014
Price- $29.99 MSRP ($19.99 Download on PS3/360)
Review Platform- Xbox 360
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