So, the other day, I had a chance to fulfill a lifelong ambition as an aviation enthusiast:
Visit the Air & Space Museum!
Fighter jets!
Biplanes!
Orbital craft!
I was more turgid than Jared Fogel at in a preschool parking lot for the preceding three
days... ...so much so that I neglected to sleep the
night before, and slep through my alarm.
And my eternally devoted friends...
went without me.
Devoid of other options, I did what everyone else does when they want to catch a glimpse
of air and space... ...turn to the PS4 Game Library!
Let's see, Teef...
Sniper Elite...
Glitcher...
A-WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?
Ah, The Phantom Pain.
Whatever else I may say in the review to follow, one fact will remain immutable: Metal Gear
Solid V: The Dream Child is, without exaggeration, the most far-reaching in ambition, the most
visionary, and mechanically-speaking, the closest to an actual stealth title yet attempted
by the celebrated series.
A game that, whatever its failings, had the heaving, basanite balls to discard the tried-and-true
walk forward/cutscene/walk forward/cutscene formula it could have printed money with well
into the next decade, in no other name... than innovation.
A point KojiPro jackhammers the fuck home...
with a turbo-linear introductory sequence that, distilled to its essence... amounts
to walk forward/cutscene/walk forward/cutscene!
Call the Guinness People!
That may be a land-speed record for quickest time from zero to fuck yourself!
In case the omnipresent J.J.
Abrams Lens Flare and Hans Zimmer french horn farts didn't tip you off, contrary to his
thoroughly undeserved repute, Hideo Kojima isn't a trend setter... he's a trend follower.
When the first MSX Metal Gear title dropped, it was - and still is - inundated by a hail
of gaming publications mistakenly appraising it as 'the first stealth game in history'...
having done so nearly a decade after Castle Wolfenstein invented the very concept!
When Metal Gear Solid's talky widescreen cutscenes were - once again - falsely appraised as the
first truly cinematic experience in gaming...
they were doing so in complete ignorance of the fact that Wing Commander pioneered the
concept eight years previously - and - unlike Metal Gear Solid - with branching story paths!
First 3D stealth game?
Fuck, it wasn't even the first in 1998!
And thanks to Thief: The Dark Project, it's not the best that year, either!
Time and again, Kojima shows up late to the party.
And, time and again, he's credited with throwing the fucker to begin with.
As such, just in time for every game from 'Until Yawn' to 'The Walking Dead' to have
already embraced the format as much as 5 years fucking previously - lo and behold - Metal
Gear Solid 5 is the first title in the series to disseminate its eponymous Phantom Plot...
in purely episodic fashion!
The problem?
Well, beyond the masturbatory opening credits that often spoil who's in in the fucking chapter,
when condensed to mercifully-brief mini-melodramas, rather than the long-form pretentiousness
parables traditionally associated with Metal Gear Solid, Hideo Kojima has unwittingly cast
some very harsh, unflattering illumination on his self-evident deficiencies as a writer:
Namely... that he fucking isn't one!
And before you shriek the word 'bias!' or point to my self-evident - and admitted - disdain
for Kojima's hamfisted histrionics, I'm far from alone in this!
Agnes Kaku - a woman with actual creative writing credentials whose thankless task it
was to translate Kojima's drivel in Metal Gear Solid 2 - has stated more or less exactly
the same thing.
Calling him a bargain-basement Tom Clancy, and arguing that he should delegate writing
responsibilities to someone with more talent and less ego.
While I'd love to link you to the article, lawyers - not from Konami - but directly from
Kojima himself called the website's host directly, pulling it from the web entirely.
Ah, if only I'd saved the interview in its entirety...
Look, when I say Kojima is a game designer, not a writer...
I'm not even referring to goofy goatfucks like cyborg ninjas, water-walking drag-queen
draculas or the dyscognizant briar of Alex Jonesian conspiratorial cuntwash that comprises
the Metal Gear franchise's grade-school political discourse!
I'm talkin' basic shit!
Beginning, middle, and fuckin' end!
When you spread this maudlin muddlefuck over the course of one protracted pretense-party
- particularly one as gallingly-linear as previous Metal Gear titles were - it's much
easier to camouflage your narrative shortcomings by constructing an elaborate artifice where
you're perpetually "Building to something huge!
Trust me!
You will RIKE it!"
Even when - as is so often the case with this series - that moment never arrives!
Godot... ain't got shit on me waiting for this plot to move the fuck along!
But when you purposefully craft each lachrymose ladling into a slovenly succession of pseudo-stories;
all of which shoulder an equal, theoretical responsibility to stand on their own two amputated
stumps...?
Well, okay, where's my exposition?
My rising action?
My falling action?
My denouement?
The closest I come to a climax is when Quiet mashes her feminist funbags so hard together
they bond on the subatomic level!
Not to mention the fact that the game just... kind of ends!
A narrative I might have been okay with outright ignoring... if only the characters had picked
up the fuckin' slack.
While the new Snake is an eminently more talented performer than the gravel-gargling car-fucking-TOON
that was David Hayter... how's about letting him open his mouth and fucking confirm it
once in a blood moon?!
What'd you write Kiefer Sutherland's script on?
A gum wrapper?
What are you being paid by-the-grunt?
Master Tatsu was more avuncular!
The Phantom Pain is less an open-world sandbox... than an open-world litterbox.
A sepia, suck-ass simulator with all the topographical variety of a fuckin' box turtle habitat, bulging
at the balls with bitch-work!
A formula that initially impresses - and given the sheer enormity, how couldn't it?
- before that sobering moment of soul-crushing inevitability, about 1/3 of the way through
the game, when the (honest) player must quietly acknowledge that the reason Hideo Kojima has
never made an open-world, free-form sandbox before... is because he is transparently fucking
incapable of it!
Games like GTA, Red Dead Redemption and Oblivion thrived in the presence of variety... and
games like Two Worlds and Assassin's Creed III utterly imploded in its absence.
So some apologist asshat is going to need to explain to me why - when 99.PI percent
of the myriad missions in Metal Gear Solid 5 are little more than a half-dozen minor
variations on 'break in, gank shit, and bounce, yo!' we're givin' out higher numbers than
a fuckin' ENRON speculator!?
And before you topspin the fuck back with the trite reply of "Well, you've just described
every stealth game ever!
They all lack variety!"
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory: Pluckin' piss-ants through paper machét walls to stop a Japanese
General from gouging out his guts.
Thief: The Dark Project: Literally descending into the mouth of HELL to drop a Demigod!
You mean to tell me - in a game that features a giant flaming death-whale mangeing on traffic-copters
- the best Kojima can come up with is 31 flavors of 'scout' ---> 'infiltrate' ---> 'grab shit'
---> 'exfiltrate'?!
And that's before even considering the game's terminal case of the Rehash Rickets!
So let me make sure I'm crystal fucking clear on this: When Tenchu Z repeatedly recycled
a 1/2 dozen negligibly-altered configurations of the exact same fucking levels?!
Paste-swilling, noxious fanfucks were petitioning FromSoft for franchise-rape counseling...
but when The Phantom Plot routinely reprocesses the same maps... with the same objectives...
often found in the same buildings...
we're coughin' up more 10s than Count Von Count at a top-shelf titty bar?!
WHAT double-standard?!?!
But hey, at least there's gameplay I'd hasten to note is all but mimiographed - badly, might
I add - from the very same eiminently superior Splinter Cell and Thief titles that Metal
Gear's frothing fantards have, in the past, made it their 9-to-5 occupation to repeatedly
disparage in favor of this subpar stealth-'em-up!
(Hey, it's called the Kult of Kojima.
Not the Kult of Consistency) I've said it before: Where gameplay is concerned,
Kojima is competent-to-outright-good at every solitary thing that isn't stealth!
If it's Air Drops, Weapon Customization, Base-Building or Collecting Pervy Posters, by Venus' VAG,
he's virtually without peer!
But a Parkinson's-afflicted cameraman I can only assume was - in fact - a jack-rabbit
with the D.T.'s... a woefully-misguided 'sticky' cover system with the reliability of an Xbox
360 under...
ideal conditions, and enemies with I.Q.
numbers they could play the fuckin' Power Ball with...?
Do not a stealth title - let alone a "perfect" one - make!
What you just witnessed...
happened within 5 minutes of my first... fucking...
playthrough!
Last year, I had the misfortune to review the abject travesty that was the 2014 reboot
of the greatest stealth, and in my opinion video game, series of all-time: THIEF!
As anyone who encountered the review in question with readily attest, I didn'tjust light into
that game...
I wore it like a fuckin' baseball glove!
A year later, Project Lead Stephane Roy is still pickin' buckshot shrapnel out of his
ass!
I impress this fact upon you so that you understand that what I have to say next... is no fucking
compliment!
Over the course of Teef, I stoof mystified as a guard passed so close during a failed
pickpocket attempt, I all but smeared NuGarrett's eyeshadow on his junk - with nary an alert
- on MASTER difficulty!
I nearly collapsed a lung in spasmodic laughter when an enemy discovered my leather-gimp-lookin'
ass and gave chase...
only to find himself physically incapable of circumnavigating a bottle at his feet!
In all 9-and-one-half-trillion hours that it took for the RMS Teeftanic to smack the
ocean floor, I never, for even one moment, witnessed anything approaching the aberrant,
chest-slapping, paste-swilling, helmet-bedecked, short-bus, early-dismissal, oo-ba-dee-oo-ba-da-Life-Goes-On,
pants-beshitting buttfucking stupidity I routinely observed from the A.I. in Metal Gear Solid
5!
"Tactical Espionage Excellence?!"
[Image of IGN review] "10/10?!"
My achin' ass!
"7/10!?"
My achin' ass!
"But RazörFist!", I hear you shriek, "It's not the semi-functional stealth that sells
Metal Gear!
It's the attention to detail!
Well, you got me, amorphous asshole on the internet.
From the smallest rat to the perviest pussy-poster, nothing can dissuade Hideo Kojima from an
unflagging, thankless commitment to the smallest detai--
[Europe - The Final Countdown playing] Oh, but the bells and whistles are polished
to a fare-thee-well!
Kojima: If you're so obviously entranced by pony-rides, playing dress-up, and building
Malibu Stacy's dream house - may I humbly siggest that the Barbie license is up for
grabs?!
Stealth games... need functional stealth!
And copping your entire playbook - right down to the grating lens flare - from the barely-ass
functional Blacklist?
Is like cheatingoff Hannah Minx's S.A.T's!
And, in both cases, you wind up distracted by undulating titties!
However hard the gale-force winds of the hype hurricane blow, I'm convinced, in the longer
term?
Metal Gear Solid's fifth entry will serve as a cautionary object lesson in the all-too-tempting
pitfalls of "kitchen sink" game design.
When you subvert the core gameplay for 9 billion unlockable outfits, goofy-ass weather balloons,
tower defense, in short: A bunch of dicking around?!
Well, you wind up with a game that's only fun to dick around with!
And that's The Phantom Plot in a nutsack: A bitchin'-ass Iron Maiden song that blows
your socks off in the first two minutes... until you realize there are 12,000 chorus
repeats.
Oh, but if the repetition and rehashes don't tickle your taint, not to worry!
As the latter third of the game is only devoted to replaying the already habitually-regurgitated
side-ops - ON HARD - to unlock the 'true' final act of the game!
FUCK you!
FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU-- FUCK YOU!
This game sucks twelve Delta Burke asses through a coffee straw!
I'm RazörFist.
FUCK you!