Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (2014)

I am on a journey to beat 360 random Xbox 360 games. Here's my next adventure

Game number 67 was Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes. This is an action stealth game where the player is tasked with extracting two prisoners from a war camp in Cuba. You play as a character named Snake (Big Boss) and sneak around a military base, gaining information on the prisoners (Chico and Paz), and finally help them escape their imprisonment.

Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way at the start here. This is not a fully Metal Gear Solid game. It was released prior to the actual Metal Gear Solid 5 (Phantom Pain) as a small introduction and tech demo. There is only 1 story mission and it will probably take most people 1-2 hours to beat. If the player wants to get a little extra mileage from the game then they can play the 5 side missions; however, they also do not have a ton to offer. This is not a whole game and I will take that into account in my rating… but what is here is amazing!

Wow, I really do not want to say much about the story other than what I said in the intro. We are Solid Snake in the year 1975. Two of his fellow soldiers have been captured by a man named Skull Face and are tortured in his Cuban prison camp. This mission sets off a chain of events that leads into Phantom Pain and it is honestly a perfect introduction. The story is truly riveting.

The gameplay is also stellar! Snake has an arsenal of weapons, moves, and tools to take down enemies. Hiding in the shadows and sneaking around guards is a gameplay loop that will never get old. A major part of this mission is also sneaking into melee range of the guards, taking them down, and interrogating them. This can lead to a ton of useful information for the quest. They can tell you about the quest objectives, weapons caches, and guards that you may not have found yet.

The gunplay is also good. This is a third person shooter, but something has gone wrong if Snake is in major gunfights. He has very low health and can die pretty easily. Not to mention that any of the people you are escorting will die essentially instantly once the bullets start flying.

My biggest complaint, other than the game’s length, is that it was clearly not meant to be played on the 360. The graphics were horribly optimized and there was slowdown at multiple points. The game also looks grainy. I don’t think there was too much of a problem because it was only an hour long; but I am not looking forward to playing Phantom Pain on the 360. MGS 5 was made for the “next-gen” consoles of the time and it should have stayed there.

Overall, Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes is a fantastic introduction. In the year 2025, I can happily think of it as a great appetizer for the masterpiece entree of Phantom Pain. Snake is so fun to control and the mission is absolutely stellar. The cutscenes are captivating and the story will grip any player. The biggest limitation is that it just isn’t a whole game. I would recommend this to any fan of stealth action or 3rd person shooters in general. Just play it on the PS4 or Xbox One. The quality of what was here is 5 stars… but I just cannot give the content here (especially on the 360) more than 3. (6/10)

I spent 1 hour, 22 minutes, and 44 seconds playing Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes.

I have spent a total of 841 hours and 51 minutes on the Road To 360 challenge so far.

Next Game: NBA Live 06

This game is a polished and cinematic prologue to MGS The Phantom Pain, showcasing a refined stealth system, fluid controls, and a detailed open-ended mission area in Camp Omega. The game allows for multiple approaches, encouraging replay through its sandbox design and side missions. The PC version enhances the experience with impressive graphical fidelity, including sharper textures, better lighting, and smoother performance for those with capable hardware.

However, the main story mission can be completed in under half an hour, and even with side content, total playtime rarely exceeds a few hours. This brevity, combined with its initial pricing, led many to view it as an extended demo rather than a full game. While its mechanics and presentation are excellent, the limited content left some people feeling that Ground Zeroes served more as a paid teaser for the larger experience to come than a complete standalone title.

When it comes to the narrative, it delivers one of the darkest and most focused stories in the MGS series, setting a grim tone that directly feeds into The Phantom Pain. Its restrained storytelling, environmental details, and unsettling themes create a sense of tension and urgency that lingers long after the mission ends. Even though it is very very brief, the plot is impactful, using its limited runtime to emphasize atmosphere and emotional weight rather than lengthy exposition.

Ultimately, this title works best when viewed as a high-quality prologue rather than a traditional standalone release. It offers a tightly crafted slice of Kojima’s vision, giving you a taste of the mechanical depth and tonal direction of the main game. For fans of the series and stealth enthusiasts, it remains a memorable experience, even if its value is more evident in hindsight than it was at launch.

STEALTH-ACTION - Big Boss infiltrates a Cuban prison in order to rescue Chico and Paz.

PROS:

++ Good introduction to MGSV. Whet my appetite for MGSV, specifically in terms of gameplay. Combat, stealth, enemy AI, and movement all felt great.

++ Exceptional visuals.

++ Great level design. It is easily replayable since there are so many ways to approach the objectives.

++ Provides a brief plot summary of MGS. Summarized the events of MGS3 and Peace Walker for those who may have not played those games.

CONS:

-- It's a glorified demo. This "game" only comes with one mission that takes about 1-2 hours to do on your first playthrough. There are also 5 additional side-ops to do, but that doesn't add that much play time either.

Demos have been critical to the career of Hideo Kojima. The demo for Metal Gear Solid was everywhere when prior to the game’s release, and the demo for Metal Gear Solid 2 was the primary reason most people bought Zone of the Enders. Not to mention that P.T. might be the greatest game that never actually came out, thanks to its legendary demo. It’s very possible that Death Stranding won’t sell nearly as well as the games in the Metal Gear Solid series, simply because there wasn’t a demo to explain to audiences what the hell that game is about.

But for Kojima, the demo is essential because you never know what the guy is going to be doing in his next game. I’d argue that the reason the demos for Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 were so huge is because the gamer almost needed to be told what to expect before spending their hard-earned money on these games. MGS was a stealth game the likes of which video games had never seen before, and MGS2’s demo felt like an essential tutorial of trial-and-error, considering how many options the demo alone gave the audience. I would say it’s entirely possible that people have spent more time playing the demos of Kojima games than actually playing Kojima’s games themselves.

Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes will likely be the last major Kojima demo. If anyone could release a demo of a game as a physical release, it makes sense that it would come from a Kojima game. Ground Zeroes works in the way that the demo for Metal Gear Solid 2 did, in that Metal Gear Solid V is such a huge jump from where we last saw this series, it helps to have a primer as to all the possibilities the game gives the player.

Ground Zeroes reminded me quite a bit of both Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3. The connections to Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater are obvious: the player takes control of Big Boss, and the more open-ended world reminds of the open spaces of the third game. But I’m also reminded of MGS2 simply in the amount of choices. I haven’t played a MGS game since Metal Gear Solid 4 came out and I had forgotten how massive this game can feel, even when it’s just taking place in a relatively small military base.

Most of my criticisms of Ground Zeroes comes from that Snake Eater DNA. I’m one of the few people who didn’t love Snake Eater, as I didn’t care much for how open the world was. I like the idea of entering a random warehouse, watching the layout of how the soldiers walk, and handling each new area like a puzzle piece. This is still an option in Snake Eater and Ground Zeroes, but doing so is far more overwhelming. I miss the radar system, having my health present and being able to interact with my environment by destroying lights and other forms of misdirection.

I imagine this all just takes a bit of getting used to, and I’m sure as I dig into The Phantom Pain, all these slight irritations I have will wash away. But in Ground Zeros, I found myself getting confused as to where I was supposed to go while using the radar, even though I only had a two-part mission. I found the radar hard to decipher in terms of where I needed to go and what certain symbols on the radar meant. In the end, I found the second character I was looking for almost by accident.

But had I played Ground Zeroes when it come out, as I waited for The Phantom Pain’s release, I’m sure I would have obsessively replayed this demo, digging over what my options were, playing around with the mechanics, and tried to find all the hidden items scattered throughout. For a demo, this thing is packed. There’s all sorts of extra missions, collectibles, and ephemera that builds on the story that is to come. There’s a lot here, so much so that a person could’ve easily become a master of this game before The Phantom Pain even came out.

Ground Zeroes isn’t exactly what I want in a Metal Gear Solid game, but it certainly makes me intrigued to see what Kojima has up his sleeve, which is essentially the point to any demo. I forgot how much I missed this world, and I’m fascinated to see how Kojima combines this franchise I love with completely new mechanics and ideas once more to create another masterpiece.

It's hard to talk about this game without talking about it price tag but I'll try to separate the two and babble about the price point at the end.

In short the game is a third person stealth action combat kind of a game. You play as a Snake or as he is referred later on Big Boss - the whole Metal Gear Solid time line is quite confusing but that's something for die hard to keep a track of.

The game consists of a single story mission and a number of side mission's called side ops. The side ops can be treated as a full flagged missions but with just a different objectives and a lot less story following them. They all take place on a single fairly big map. While the atmospheric conditions change and vary a lot - whether it's a day or night with rain and without it you must understand that the map does not change. Though having a sandbox kind of aspect for all missions lets you learn and appreciate it's design a lot more if after a single mission you'd leave to another area. I'm still on the fence if that's good or not. On one hand I really did enjoy playing the same map but discovering new areas and ways of approach - on the other hand the engine seems just too powerful to have a single map.

The "main game" is short. It took me around 70 minutes on the first try to finish the main mission - and that's including time spent learning what I'm allowed to do and what I'm not. You can probably finish it in half of that and that's not rushing. The additional side ops extended the time spent in game to around 8 hours which is fairly decent for such a short game - and I did not replay any of the mission on hard mode - so that's that. Though in order to unlock two bonus missions had to raplay the main one.

The story is interesting though if you're not paying attention it sometimes does not make a lot of sense. The big thing to note is that Ground Zeros is mostly free of the Metal Gear Solid strangeness. This feels like a more traditional war game rather than metal gear title which comes with quite a bit of supernatural and a few metal gears.

The game engine is a beast. It runs smooth, looks amazing and offers a lot of choices of approach and interactions. You can be stealthy, you can go gun blazing, drive a armoured vehicle - it's up to you. The number of things you can do is really high.

There are sometimes games that have extremely memorable moments. Those can be scripted but this one (and this goes for the MGS5: Phantom Pain as well) is a unscripted moment maker. During a rainy mission I climbed on top a small building and started sniping people down - no suppressor - and due to rain/storm they just couldn't work out where the shots were coming. That was so amazing seeing them just run and talk that there's a shooter somewhere but can't make out where.

The little touches like suppressors lasting only for a certain number of shots, luring enemies with clips, even the sentries calling other guards to investigate something make this game a real joy to play.

The controls are a bit finicky - I struggled between mouse/keyboard and controller. For sneaking and moving around the controller is a much more natural fit. For shooting it's pretty bad. Ended up switching between the two when things got hot. Would have liked if the keyboard controls were a bit more thought through.

Finally the price - this feels more as a DLC rather than a full title. Or even more like a demo. In my personal case that would have worked. If this was free and I'd played that - no doubt I would pre-order the Phantom Pain - full price, no questions asked. As it stands I've stayed away from both until I saw them on at least 50% sale - and the only reason I've picked up Ground Zeros is that they've been bundled. At anything more than 3$ this is definitely not worth picking up. Instead you should just buy the Phantom Pain. There is enough content for this game to not matter entirely.

So in summary. Worth a buy for cheap. Fun game but does nothing that would suggest buying this over Phantom Pain which is definitely a money well spent.