It’s not the first time that Kojima hasn’t been involved with his own masterpiece series. Initially developing Metal Gear Solid: Rising (which would later be released as Metal Gear Rising: Revengence) in 2009, he let go of development to Platinum Games who would later release the game in early 2013. The reception was relatively mixed, considering that it was a Metal Gear Solid game (or, at least, a game set in the MGS universe). Many gamers felt let down by the lack of elegant swordsmanship, among other things, that was originally shown in the excellent trailer-demo at E3 2010.
So it’s not surprising to see that Metal Gear Survive, with Kojima no longer at the helm of development, hasn’t received the same positive reception as the core Metal Gear Solid games. With only just under 21000 likes and over 105000 dislikes after 3000000 views on the IGN youtube video of the trailer as of the time of this article being written, it reminds me somewhat of the same dismal reception that Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare received earlier this year. Fans of both games seem to feel that they are now nothing more than cash cows and one can only sympathise with that notion after watching the trailer.
Metal Gear Survive Official Trailer – Gamescom 2016
The first few seconds of Survive show Big Boss, which is promising since it emphasises a closer connection to the core of the series, but we are quickly sold to the standard portal-to-another-zombie-infested-realm which I contend has been done to beyond death already (excuse the pun), at least in the aforementioned Call of Duty series. Yet the premise of the gameplay itself, according to the demo shown below, is actually not as unoriginal as the trailer makes it out to be. As ‘Mother Base Soldiers’ you, with other players and objects, all have to co-operate and survive with the goal of returning to your home worlds. From the first few seconds of the demo video, the layout feels a lot more like MGSV than just blindly using stealth to kill zombies.
The mission in the demo involves placing a distress signal by a wormhole to call for help and there is certainly an element of communication between other player ‘castaways’. We are shown what being attacked by zombies is like and how they can be killed but it seems to feel more like face to face combat than stealthy espionage, which is what we were previously shown in the demo.
Official METAL GEAR SURVIVE TGS 2016 GAME PLAY DEMO
The saying ‘don’t judge a book by it’s cover’ should always be applied to media of all types and, to be fair to the demo, the trailer doesn’t seem to be an exception to the rule. However, it is difficult to deny that the departure of Hideo Kojima, the driving force behind the phenomenal series, seems to have had an impact on potential players before they have even played the game. Could this be a placebo effect? Or could it be that Kojima’s vision is irreplaceable with respect to the Metal Gear Solid franchise? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
By Alun Wrighton
