Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

September 1, 2015ShooterESRB M

Available on

PlayStation 4 PC Xbox One

Genres

Shooter Strategy Adventure Action

Overview

About Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is the sequel to Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and a prequel to the original Metal Gear. The game has a complex story with long cut-scene sequences, but there are fewer and they are shorter compared to earlier Metal Gear Solid titles. Most of the gameplay mechanics introduced in Ground Zeroes are carried over: it is still an action game and stealth oriented but replaces the linear corridor design from most earlier titles with large open world environments that offer the player unrestricted freedom for the approach. The world has now a real-time day and night cycle and various weather effects that influence enemy behaviour, visibility and sound. Sabotaging or destroying certain structures can also influence other parts of the map.

Story setup

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan has brought a new edge to the Cold War, and in 1984, a one-eyed man with a prosthetic arm appears in the country. Those who know him call him Snake; the legendary mercenary who was once swept from the stage of history and left in a coma by American private intelligence network Cipher. Snake is accompanied by Ocelot, an old friend who saved him from attack when he finally awoke. Now, Snake’s former partner Kazuhira Miller is being held by the Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Snake must undertake a solo mission to rescue Miller and prove to the world that the legendary mercenary is not dead and gone. That first step will lead to a path of vengeance against the very Cipher that slaughtered so many of Snake’s men, and to a battle that will embroil the whole world... What started in Ground Zeroes... must finish with "V."

Reference

At a glance

Released: September 1, 2015
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PC, Xbox One
Genres: Shooter, Strategy, Adventure, Action
Play modes: Single Player, Multiplayer
Age rating: ESRB M
Time to beat: ~101 hours
Multiplayer: By platform

Media

Screenshots

Click any screenshot to view it full size.

Playtime

How long to beat

Player-reported completion times for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

Rushed: 49hoursMain story only
Typical: 101hoursStory plus some extras

Estimated from 6 player reports — a small sample, so treat these as approximate.

Playing together

Multiplayer by platform

How Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain supports playing with other people, broken down per platform.

Multiplayer capabilities for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain by platform. Capabilities with no published information are marked "not documented".
Platform	Local	Online	LAN	Split-screen	Co-op campaign	Drop-in/out
Xbox One	No	Yes, up to 16 players	No	No	No	No

Supported (a number is the player cap)
Not supported
Not documented for this platform

Content

Age ratings

How rating boards around the world have classified Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Open a board for its content descriptors.

ACBR 18+

High impact themes and violence, online interactivity

CEROD

Crime
Violence

CLASS_IND18

Violência (Violence)

ESRBM

Blood and Gore
Intense Violence
Sexual Themes
Strong Language

GRAC19+

Language
Violence
Fear, Horror, Threatening
Alcohol, Tobacco, Drug

PEGI18

Bad Language
Online Gameplay
Violence
In-Game Purchases

In the aftermath of the events of Ground Zeroes and the destruction of Militaires Sans Frontièrs (commonly abbreviated as MSF), Snake falls into a coma. Nine years later, he awakes and helps lead a new mercenary group, the Diamond Dogs. Now under the guise of the codename "Venom Snake", he ventures into Afghanistan during the Soviet war to track down the men responsible for MSF's destruction. Along the way, he becomes reacquainted with his former rival Ocelot and encounters a unit of warriors robbed of their past, present and future. While he and Kazuhira ‘Kaz’ Miller are initially driven to exact revenge, Snake soon unearths a plot by the Cipher organization to develop a weapon with the potential to surpass even the Metal Gear system.

USK18

Also in our guides

Often listed alongside Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Titles that appear in the same guides on this site. Grouped by where they show up, not by recommendation.

Coverage

Featured in our articles

This game appears in 1 article on this site.

Best Open World Games for Low-End PCs and Laptops

#12

The Phantom Pain gives you more ways to approach a military outpost than most games give you to approach an entire campaign. Balloon extraction, fulton recovery, buddy AI, weather patterns, time of day. Every system talks to every other system. I played it on a modest setup and the FOX Engine held up better than I expected. What keeps it off the main list is the structure. This is a mission-based stealth sandbox, not a wandering open world. You fly to an objective, execute it, return to base. The world exists as a stage rather than a place to explore. Outstanding if that design suits you. Worth flagging if you came here for GTA-style freedom.

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Game data and imagery provided by IGDB.com