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Serving as a prologue to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes provides an introduction to the new open world experience that the Metal Gear series is now keen to explore, allowing gamers to adjust themselves to a new kind of Metal Gear Solid and get to grips with the new controls and capabilities of the newly introduced FOX engine.

Set within a Cuban prison camp, the game allows you to explore the camp as you wish, setting about a rescue mission as you look to locate your targets and extract them safely from the camp. Completing the main Ground Zeroes rescue mission unlocks five Side-Ops, and although the main mission can be completed within a couple of hours of gameplay on first run through, the side missions provide further story and hours of gameplay that help make Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes feel like a more complete experience.

With the ability to run, duck and dive, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes introduces a new style of gameplay to the series that feels incredibly fluid. Tactical awareness is absolutely key to success within the game and you have to be constantly on your toes and aware of your surroundings; the map is fairly small, it’s still large enough that it’s possible to lose track of exactly where each guard is, however, and if you’re not careful then it’s easy to tip one off and have them alerted of your location. Sprinting can be a good way of getting around the map more quickly and speedily taking down a guard from behind, it’s also a lot easier to make a mistake and be spotted when you’re sprinting though so this is something that you always need to keep in mind when running around the camp. Interrogating guards is great fun and you’re always curious to find out what information they’re willing to relay to you, and every element of the gameplay seems well considered in order to make the gameplay experience as satisfying and enjoyable as possible.

Graphically, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is an incredibly impressive game to look at. Although the game runs at 720p on Xbox One as opposed to the 1080p that it runs at on PS4 (60 frames per second on both systems), the game still looks fantastic on the Xbox One and regardless of what platform you play the game on you would no doubt be highly impressed with the way that the game looks. A lot of work has clearly been put into this game to make it look as polished as possible, with both Snake and the camp itself looking absolutely phenomenal, and the cut scenes always incredibly well executed also. There’s fantastic attention to detail throughout the map and although it’s not huge it does feel a pleasure to progress through with each run through on the various mission options available.

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes at times touches upon some incredibly dark and actually quite shocking elements of storyline. The game feels extremely serious and has a suitably gritty aesthetic style to match the dark components of the storyline, particularly in the main mission with its miserable rainy evening backdrop. The decision to set the main mission on a stormy night certainly works from a stealth perspective, but it also fits the mood of the game perfectly and helps mould the overall gameplay experience and make Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes the hugely enjoyable title that it is. Stylistically it is very difficult to find any reason to criticise this game, there’s so much to admire about how the game looks and feels and Hideo Kojima should certainly be praised for what he has been able to achieve here.

Despite its relatively short length, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is still a game that is easy to recommend for its aesthetic beauty and fantastic quality of gameplay. It’s a great teaser title for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, introducing new gameplay features and preparing gamers for the next full game in the Metal Gear Solid franchise. If you enjoy stealth titles then there is certainly much to admire about Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, and although it may be true that the game could be longer, there’s still a reasonable amount of content to the title once you factor in the five Side-Ops, and the game definitely warrants a good few playthroughs as you look to better your score each time with the ultimate goal of achieving an S-Rank.