In my humble opinion, 2015's Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is one of the best video games ever made.After more than a decade of testing boundaries and good taste in big budget video games, in Phantom Pain iconic game designer Hideo Kojima finally managed to create something that matched the ridiculous ambitions he always had for Metal Gear. That was in large part thanks to publisher Konami's investment in the technology that made The Phantom Pain possible, namely the Fox game engine. It enabled The Phantom Pain's sprawling, versatile open world, where sneaky hero Snake could ride horses, snap necks, and fight giant robots. Konami followed this massive investment by largely stepping back from video game development, dramatically parting ways with Kojima shortly after Phantom Pain's release, and pivoting to repurposing its beloved game franchises into slot-machine-like pachinko cabinets.When the company announced that it's making another Metal Gear game— Metal Gear Survive—without Kojima, and more worrying still, that it would use The Phantom Pain's engine to create a game in the trendy survival-zombie genre, fans of the series were understanbly worried. It seemed like an opportunistic move, an easy way to reuse the company's existing assets to make a buck. But Konami just released a new trailer for Metal Gear Survive, and with all due respect to the auteur Kojima…it looks fucking sick.Survive's latest trailer, which shows a significant amount of in-game footage, largely lives up to the initial pitch. It puts players in the same dusty war zones as Phantom Pain and controls similarly, but rather than following the cyber-espionage adventures of Snake and friends, it pits players against endless hordes of zombies. That means players can use many of the same moves from Phantom Pain and its huge arsenal of military tech toys, but also a bunch of new tools that would come in handy in a zombie apocalypse.Most of the new stuff revolves around building up a base and its defenses. Players can build a chain link fence and stab zombies in the face through it with a spear, or call in an anti-aircraft gun to mow down zombies by the dozens.It all seems dumb in the best way possible, and I realize that there's something blasphemous about Konami stomping around in Kojima's crowning achievement, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't look incredibly fun.We'll find out if it's a hot mess or not when Metal Gear Survive comes out on February 20.
Advertisement