Metal Gear Survive is only the latest entry in the storied Metal Gear series, but it's the first after Hideo Kojima's controversial departure. Notably, this PC game does not advance or affect the main Metal Gear Solid storyline, so you won't miss anything important if you decide to skip it. As a complete newcomer to the series, I went into this review with an open mind. Still, I came away disappointed with its convoluted mechanics, repetitive gameplay, and bland overall aesthetic. In fact, I only made it about 10 hours into the single-player campaign before giving up on it. That said, the co-op gameplay is a bright spot and some missions spur enjoyable moments, but those don't do enough to save the experience.
Save Yourself
In Metal Gear Survive, you take on the identity of Captain, a character whom you can fully customize. The game is set sometime between the events of Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes and Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain, after the enemy military unit XOF destroyed Mother Base towards the end of Ground Zeroes.
Your commander tasks you with traveling through a wormhole to another dimension and carrying out a rescue mission in a hostile land referred to as Dite (pronounced dee-tay ). This world is unfortunately inhabited by zombie-like creatures (Wanderers) infected by a mysterious and unknown lifeform that turns the hosts into deadly threats, complete with glowing red crystalline structures in place of their heads. Your character is also infected by this lifeform, which adds some urgency to your mission.
Your main goal is to recover data on the Kuban Energy from the Charon Corps, the original military outfit sent into Dite, all of whose members are presumed dead. Kuban Energy, a powerful resource, exists in abundance on Dite and is the reason for the initial Charon Corps mission. You must rescue any survivors and scavenge for resources to have any chance to activate a digger and create a wormhole back home. The game also references the vague and impending threat that the Wanderers may escape Dite and start infecting people in the game's primary universe. Clearly, that's not ideal. Still, it doesn't have to be all doom and gloom; follow these Metal Gear Survive tips to ensure you have the best possible experience.
The in-game cinematics and interactions with characters drive the story along, though neither is very compelling. Take Reeve, for example, a solider you meet within the first hour of gameplay. After establishing that he is injured and unable to accompany you on missions, his only purpose seems to be to contend with the Virgil AT-9's dueling AI personalities and the other characters. Virgil AT-9 is an interfacing machine stationed at your Base Camp, which provides mission information and processes data packets you find, among other tasks. Sometimes the AIs offer helpful information, but both of their voices are irritating. They are a far cry from the unforgettable GLaDOS and Wheatley duo from Portal 2.
Character dialogue and interactions are mostly handled via a chat-log type interface, but occasionally the NPCs say something if you walk by them. One minor complaint is that every time you try to skip a cutscene, the game asks you to confirm (again) that you want to skip it. I can't imagine anyone being that indecisive.
Tedious Gameplay
In short, Metal Gear Survive's gameplay is frustrating. Missions mostly revolve around collecting data packets from various locations and returning to the Base Camp to view their contents, though sometimes your task includes rescuing a survivor or defending a wormhole transporter from waves of oncoming Wanderers. These missions mostly take place in the Dust (a mysterious foggy substance that surrounds the Base Camp). You need to craft an oxygen mask before you can venture out into this abyss.
It's hard to know what a mission requires and what resources will be useful to you each time you depart, which is more annoying than challenging, given that you likely will need to repeat missions often. Other times, even after you successfully complete a mission, the game requires you to go back to the same location to retrieve or defend something else. Wormhole teleporters do help you traverse the environment, but you still need to travel on foot to the mission location.
If you fail a mission, you die, and you have to go all the way back to your Base Camp (without any food or resources you may have gathered on the way out). There's no way to retry a mission from a last major checkpoint. A checkpoint system would mitigate some of the game's repetitiveness and cut down on the extra time (sometimes up to 10 minutes) it takes to trek back out to mission locations. If Metal Gear Survive was solely a survival game, checkpoints would not make sense, but since Konami tacked on a story with required missions, this changes the dynamic.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for challenging enemies and novel combat concepts. I did experience some entertaining and rewarding moments, but these instances were far too infrequent. Metal Gear Survive seems conflicted between being a zombie-fighting action game and a hardcore survival simulator, and this indecision ultimately harms the experience.
Survival and Wanderers
Metal Gear Survive requires you to maintain a couple of different basic health meters, including hunger, thirst, and oxygen (for when you venture into the Dust). These levels also affect your stamina and health. If all of these levels run out, you die. Even if just one level starts to drop, it can have serious effects on your ability to evade and fight off Wanderers or even get back to the Base Camp before you collapse.
To maintain the hunger and thirst levels, you hunt animals and collect water from nearby sources. You can't consume these right away though, you have to cook or purify them first back at the Base Camp. Side missions often point you towards hunting locations. As for avoiding life-threatening injuries, the best way to do so is simply not to let the Wanderers attack you. That's easier said than done, of course. If you do happen to get injured, you can craft antidotes and medicines, as long as you have the right materials.
Keep a close eye on these levels, as they tend to deplete quickly. For times when you just want to keep going with the missions or even join a co-op game, this mechanic can become frustrating. Even if you do have some food or clean water bottles stored, it takes several of each to regenerate these meters to sustainable levels. Further, your stamina meter also prevents you from sprinting for more than about 10 or 15 seconds, which is aggravating at times when you are trying to escape from an angry crowd of Wanderers. Your stamina notably depletes even more rapidly in the Dust.
Speaking of Wanderers, you should avoid them if you can. Wanderers are not easily fooled though; they can see and hear your movements. If you encounter a lone Wanderer, it's best to sneak up behind it and take it down with a knife. Be sure to do so quickly and quietly, since any noise will attract the attention of others nearby. Unfortunately, the movement controls and combat are a bit clunky, so even if you are careful, you could easily end up dead. I died multiple times when a Wanderer grabbed ahold of me despite my swinging a weapon just prior to its attack. Other times, my character inadvertently ran directly into a Wanderer's open arms in tight quarters. These inaccurate combat mechanics are disappointing for a game that punishes you heavily for any damage.
On top of all that, Wanderers become more difficult to defeat as you advance into the campaign. Bombers are one enemy type. These Wanderers feature massively inflated heads and explode when their health depletes. Although this damages your health, it also takes out any nearby Wanderers as well. This is particularly useful in the co-op modes (more on that later) when you want to clear out a large group.
For an alternate combination of zombie combat and open-world exploration, check out the older Dead Island series. We reviewed both Dead Island and Dead Rising 2: Off the Record at the time of their release.
Collecting, Crafting, and Constructing
In-game mechanics should strike a balance between accessibility and depth, but Metal Gear Survive misses that mark by a wide margin. Its crafting and construction system is convoluted. To start off, your Base Camp includes six different crafting tables: a campfire, construction terminal, gadgets workbench, gear workbench, medical workstation, and weapons workbench. All of these areas have a specific purpose and dedicated submenus. While the benches you start off with at the beginning of the game let you craft basic provisions, you need to construct advanced versions of some workstations for other more sophisticated items, which just adds to the confusion. I often had to sift and revisit each workbench just to determine which one I needed to use.
Eventually, you need to construct other facilities and barriers to protect the base and your fellow survivors from inevitable Wanderer attacks. In addition to all the benches, you have a storehouse, the Virgil At-9 system, a skill trainer, and a wormhole teleporter stationed on the base. All of these elements just add artificial depth.
Collecting resources is certainly easy enough: You just break apart boxes and containers and raid any sheds or structures you see. The difficult part is knowing exactly what resources you need to collect. The sheer number of collectible materials is overwhelming, and while you come across common ones like wood, nails, and iron, other crafting items are not readily available (nor does the game give you a general idea of where to look for them). I stopped and scavenged for materials consistently while out on missions, but still didn't come up with everything I needed to craft some advanced items, especially workbenches or weapons.
Spend to Survive
Many developers, including EA with its Need for Speed Payback and the infamous Star Wars BattleFront II, continue to build game-altering microtransactions into their AAA titles. Konami's implementation isn't quite as egregious, but it's still annoying to see them in the game. The game lets you buy packs of Survival Coins (ranging from 100 to 6,000 coins) for prices anywhere from $4.99 to $49.99. While you can use these coins for non-gameplay related items like emotes or clothing accessories, players can also purchase Boost packs and additional character slots. Boost Packs include perks such as "Kuban Energy acquisition booster, shared resource production booster, and Battle Point acquisition booster." The extra save slot for another character and campaign costs the equivalent of about $10 in real money, but there's no way to purchase exactly that many coins based on the current pricing structure.
I don't care how unlikely it is that people will use an extra save slot or how many hours a boost pack will save you in the long run. The fact that these mechanics exist at all speaks volumes about the developer's intentions. Don't support this behavior with your hard-earned cash. Further, the Boost Packs essentially communicate that playing Metal Gear Survive as intended is not worth your time.
Co-op Mode
In one of Metal Gear Survive's co-op modes, you must defend a wormhole digger against hordes of incoming Wanderers coming from all directions. Additionally, Metal Gear Survive has daily, weekly, and monthly Orders you can complete for special rewards and resources. However, you don't have to face these threats alone, since the game teams you up with three other players. It's worth noting that I had to wait about five minutes on the matchmaking screen before the game found other players, which is somewhat concerning for a brand new game. However, I do appreciate the multiplayer staging area. In this pre-match lobby, you can craft barriers, heal yourself, or even practice your combat skills in a field of test targets.
Once you drop into the match, the game gives you time to explore the map, set up defenses around the wormhole digger, and collect resources (I couldn't find any food or water). Once the digger starts, the Wanderers begin to approach. Matches are divided into three different waves of attacks, so it's best not to use all your resources in the early rounds. Also, I recommend against jumping into a multiplayer mode if any of your character's stamina levels are low or you are injured in some way. If you die in the multiplayer mode, a teammate has 60 seconds to revive you. If that time expires, you return to the original spawn point and need to make your way back to the defense point. If you don't have a potent weapon or a lot of fences to block off attackers (even in easy mode), you will likely face death often, so make sure you have everything you need beforehand.
I had more fun in the co-op mode (even though I died and placed dead last in each of my first couple of matches), mostly because this mode cuts down on the tedium of the single-player campaign and puts exciting combat at the forefront. You also know generally what to expect with each round and what resources you need to bring with you. Sometimes in the main campaign, I trekked all the way out to a mission location only to realize I was ill-prepared to fend off Wanderers or did not have enough water to survive long enough to make it back to Base Camp.
Graphics and Performance
Metal Gear Survive looks dull overall, and that's not just because of the desert landscape. Textures of rocks and buildings are sharp, but not particularly detailed. Even PlayerUnkown's Battlegrounds, with its object pop-in and sometimes glitchy renders, has a more pleasing overall aesthetic, thanks in part to an impressive skybox and varied terrain. Characters and wildlife look fine, but it's clear that realism was not a top priority. That said, the random wormholes that spawn in the middle of the Dust and the Wanderer's glowing red skull structures are standout visual effects. I also consider the menu system a part of the equation when discussing graphics and visuals. In short, Metal Gear Survive's layered menus are confusing and its separation of features across several consoles make it difficult to keep track of everything.
The recommended PC specs for Metal Gear Survive include a quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, an Nvidia GTX 960, and 20GB of disk space. The game is capped at 60 FPS, so anything at or above that level should have no trouble running it smoothly. I installed the game on my Windows 10 test machine, a Dell Inspiron 5675, with an AMD RX 580 and Ryzen 1700x CPU. I monitored the game's performance using FRAPS and found that I was able to maintain a consistent 60 frames per second at 1080p resolution over a Wi-Fi connection. Performance for your system may differ of course, but anything within this range should be fine.
Metal Gear Survive requires a constant internet connection since it syncs progress between the single-player and multiplayer modes. I'm not a fan of the always-online requirement due to all of the potential problems it creates. For example, if Konami's servers go down for some reason or your internet connection drops out, the game becomes unplayable.
Safe to Skip
Going into this review, I had no fond memories of past Metal Gear games, nor did I have any pre-determined hatred for this latest entry. Nevertheless, I came away discontented. Metal Gear Survive's main issue is that it tries to accomplish way too much. It mashes together survival, crafting, and zombie elements, but doesn't succeed at any of them. Some genuinely enjoyable moments relieve its tedium, but those are unfortunately the exception. If you give Metal Gear Survive a try and enjoy the experience, by all means, continue to play it. However, if you are like me, and are put off by overly persistent survival mechanics, tiresome resource collecting, and iffy controls and combat, then you are better off never visiting Dite.
