Metal Gear Survive

Metal Gear Survive

As you reach Metal Gear Survive’s title screen, your protagonist will glance over at what remains of Mother Base, its maze of stairs and walkways bent and broken, the Diamond Dogs insignia faded. You watch on as it struggles under its own weight, snapped struts jutting out like a shattered steel rib cage. It’s a touch conspicuous, perhaps, this metaphor, but it’s clear: Metal Gear, as we know and love it, is dead, and a new incarnation is rising (quite literally) from its iron bones.

What we know about Konami’s messy divorce with its hitherto golden child Hideo Kojima is probably nothing compared to what we don’t know (and likely never will). But while some of us shuffled nervously when starkly different spin-off survival game Survive was unveiled, many were just relieved to see the franchise was still alive. Konami birthed some of gaming’s most iconic franchises; Castlevania, Silent Hill, and – of course – Metal Gear. We were curious as to what a Kojima-less Metal Gear would look like, sure, but that doesn’t mean we wanted it to fail.

This isn’t the first Metal Gear game shaped without Kojima at the helm, though. PlatinumGames’ fantastically flamboyant Rising thrust the franchise well and truly out of its comfort zone, but MG remains renowned for its stealthy mechanics, indulgent cinematics and fantastical storylines. Reinventing it as a horror survival game was a gutsy move – it’s just so frustrating that it didn’t quite work out.