Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: e3, E3 2017, Konami, Metal Gear, metal gear survive

Can Metal Gear Survive Save Konami?

Published Sun, 18 Jun 2017 21:45:26 -0500

Last updated Sun, 18 Jun 2017 21:52:02 -0500

In an attempt to keep Metal Gear's success going after Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Konami is attempting to bring us a survival horror game set in an alternate version of the MGS universe. I got my hands on Metal Gear Survive back at E3. For Survive, Konami took the combat engine of Metal Gear Solid V and dropped in some survival mechanics and crafting. There will be a single player campaign, but what Konami had for us at E3 was a multiplayer PVE stage featuring three waves of zombie-like enemies. Between each wave were optional side missions that would get you mech suits to pilot, and extra ammo. As part of the PVE setup, you have to defend a rift generator from enemies, and at the end, you are granted loot from that generator based on your performance.

Before dropping in to the PVE mission, you get to hang out in a lobby and practice your skills, figure out a team strategy possibly. But mostly we all just used it to shoot each other like the wonderful, mature humans we games press are.

The online coop missions were decently difficult, but heavily skewed toward ranged fighters. One of the changes in Survive is your ability to create your own character with your own custom skills. There are no classes, allowing you to build your character in any direction. For the ease of the demo, we had two playable builds, ranged and melee, of both genders. While the melee fighters had a lance they could use to attack enemies through fences, their true effectiveness was down to their shotgun. Sadly, the shotgun only had 10 shots and thus, you were stuck with your lance or machete as a primary weapon.

Despite the limitations of my chosen build, my team was able to beat all three waves of PVE while recovering the mech suits and ammo as side missions. So the demo was successful at showing us what Metal Gear Survive had to offer, at least for online coop. The campaign was shrouded in mystery, all I know about it is that you build a base, defend it, gather resources, and craft. But how you manage to progress through a game with that, I have no idea.

Konami is shooting for an M or Pegi 18 rating for Metal Gear Survive, so there should be some interesting content in that single player campaign.

The biggest hurdle that this game will have won't be the gameplay. No, it's going to be all the Kojima fans who will refuse to pick up a Metal Gear game that didn't have Kojima in charge of development. Coupled with Konami's increasingly strange decisions regarding Pro Evolution Soccer 2018, it's going to be an interesting few years for the company.