MGS: Ground Zeroes and Republic Commando

I've been dipping in and out of a few games recently, and I was going to write a bit about each of them. However, in the end I realized that I had plenty to say about the two above, but could sum up my experiences with the others in one sentence for the most part. Killing Floor 2 free weekend: fun enough but basically felt the same as the original. Won't be buying. Close Combat - Gateway to Caen: interesting, but I need to play more than a brief scenario and one campaign battle to get a feel for it. Company of Heroes 2: still excellent - the newly added British faction seems decent, but having not bought it I've only seen them in AI skirmishes so have no idea how they play. Regency Solitaire: it's a really nicely made solitaire game (actually I think I might want to write more about this one at some point). Now we go onwards to Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and Star Wars: Republic Commando.

This is as stealthy as my screenshots are gonna get.

Because of all the buzz around Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, I finally got round to trying out the paid demo thing, Ground Zeroes. I mean, I didn't pay much for it, have had two hours of gameplay out of it, and am still at only 13% completion, so I don't think it's bad value or anything like that. That 13% consists of the main mission in normal mode, and two of the side missions in normal mode. It's hard not to get caught up in the hype around something like MGS, and you hear lots of fascinating stories and see a lot of intriguing screenshots even if you don't read any reviews or anything like that. Things like building up your organization and recruiting people really draw me in... but based on Ground Zeroes I'm not 100% sure that the core stealth-action gameplay is really going to be my cup of tea.

I think it goes without saying at this point that the game is a great technical and artistic achievement. It looks great, the audio is great, it has lots of interesting little features, and the prison camp that is the setting for Ground Zeroes is an interesting and varied place to sneak around - not that I actually spent that much time sneaking. It's really a personal failing, rather than the fault of the game, but the sheer size of the level and uncertainty about how the saving system works combine to put me into a kind of fatalistic state where when I get spotted I don't care about stealth any more, I just want to finish the mission and move on. Certainly on normal mode it's easy enough to just mow down the marine patrols you run into; they're no threat to you (unless you maybe get caught in the open surrounded by three 4 man teams or something, but you'd have to be pretty dumb to end up in that situation). It helps that they leave unlocked AFVs lying around, and the crewed ones get easily confused by cover, or you can just sprint past them. Plus, the main entrance seems a little loosely protected?

See ya, suckers!

So all my missions kind of followed the same pattern of half-assed stealth for a bit, getting spotted, shooting everyone while running around to find the objective, then running out of the level through the main gate (except in the first mission, where you have to extract someone, so I had a fairly cool hot extraction calling in the helicopter to an area while still fighting off soldiers). In my most recent mission I was warned that they'd setup barricades at the main gate, so I thought there might be a bit more challenge even with the stolen AFV I was driving. In the event... not so much.

Yes, these flimsy crates and complete lack of human guards will surely stop me!

Perhaps hard mode would force me to be smarter, but on normal mode I just can't be bothered to focus properly without the ability to control my own save games. The checkpoints don't build tension for me so much as lead me to aim for the minimum effort route so that I won't have to replay lots of challenging moments to get back to the same point, and stealth is hard while shooting everyone in the face is easy (so easy). The result is a quickly rising body count. It hurts my score at the end a bit - I still managed Bs for the side missions - but I don't really care about that (another example of how I'm not really playing the game as intended - it's kind of like playing a racing game without caring what place you come, then complaining that there was no challenge). I still want to play The Phantom Pain, but I'll wait until it's on sale.

I ran round a corner straight into these four guys. I'm not entirely sure they even managed to shoot back.

In a bit of a blast from the past, I loaded up Star Wars: Republic Commando. I really enjoyed it the first time I played through, and thought it might be cool to replay. After quickly googling how to get it playing in wide-screen, I completed a few missions. It was... interesting. The first thing I noticed was that it was much harder than I remembered. I didn't fail very often on the average difficulty, but I was taking damage, my squad mates were going down, I was going down (you can call your team to revive you immediately, or let them keep fighting until they see an opening for themselves), and it was often quite tough. This was actually quite satisfying in a way, and certainly makes you feel as if you're pushing through dangerous opponents and performing a task worthy of an elite special forces team - you could contrast this to my feeling in Ground Zeroes, where the power imbalance between me and the guards kind of drained the excitement a bit. Amazingly, I had forgotten perhaps the most awesome thing.

SPLAT!

The melee attack you have is deadly enough to kill regular enemies in one hit, and will spray your visor with gore or oil depending on what you're hitting. The sound of the blade flicking out is great, it's challenging to get a hit without being unfair, and your team will complement you on a good hit. The team is probably the triumph of Republic Commando (after the melee attacks, of course). They really are NPCs - you can't switch to control them, or micromanage them as such - but they're vital to your survival as you are to theirs. You highlight positions to be occupied, and one of the team will fill them. They have specialities, but anyone can do anything, so having one team member incapacitated won't curtail your options excessively. Though their battle chatter lines do repeat, they're well acted enough and subdued enough so that they don't get annoying - no screeching or infuriatingly smug one liners here.

I'll admit I'm not sure if I'm going to continue playing the whole thing. There have been some boss battles that were okay without being amazing, and while it does a decent job of mixing things up with your tasks and the battlefields, some of the combat can feel a bit samey. I'm still glad to have revisited it though, and writing this and looking at the screenshots I took does make me want to load it up again at least once more.

Some of the visuals have aged just a little bit.