metal gear survive is pretty…cool

when the whole kojima and konami implosion occurred in the mid to late 2010s it was a pretty vitriolic affair. you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing a “fuck konami” post every 5 minutes. and don’t worry this article won’t be an attempt to rewrite my part in that history because i was very much of the crowd back then. if the internet was splayed out onto the street i would be holding up the “fuck konami” sign proudly. but amidst all this chaos was a little video game called metal gear survive.

metal gear survive released at possibly the worst time for a survival game where you craft your bow and your arrows and your base and farm food find water recruit people to your camp etc etc etc. survival games are still a pretty fatigue-laden genre for many and it’s why i don’t play them generally. they all kinda feel like the same game when you boil it down which is obviously reductive but that’s what people do when they have a point about something they’re not a fan of and they can’t be bothered to put the hours in to research it heavily. it’s a hand wave argument and me explaining that is also hand-wavey but. i. digress.

hatred for konami is at an all time high in 2018. fears for the future of the metal gear franchise were felt in some communities while others were actually pretty ok with how things had ended with mgsv: tpp. but even with all of these feelings in various sub-communities, metal gear survive had this unified sense of push back aimed squarely in its direction.

now, this isn’t a re-framing of how people felt back then nor is it an attempt to say we were wrong for feeling the way we felt. i think being upsetti spaghetti at how everything went down at konami was warranted as metal gear means a lot to plenty of people. and at this point konami was already well known for mishandling silent hill and churning out a bunch of sequels after team silent’s era that certainly damaged the faith people had in the series. not to mention silent hills and the playable teaser fiasco that has fed video essayists for nearly a decade now with no sign of stopping anytime soon.

the point is that we were angry at metal gear survive. how dare konami take something as special as metal gear and pump its corpse up with the nutrient paste that is the survival genre. how fucking dare konami pretend that everything was fine at home while hideo kojima and norman reedus and guillermo del toro held hands running giddly into the sun to create one of the most special games i’ve ever played.

suffice it to say, i never gave metal gear survive a fair shot until a couple years ago. it was cheap on steam one day and it was the one metal gear game that nagged at the back of my mind for some reason. something pulled me to playing it in february 2023. and…i dropped it pretty quickly. not for any reason in particular i just think i fancied playing shin megami tensei: nocturne more at the time.

but over the last couple of days i’ve gone back to metal gear survive once again because i needed a game that’s exactly what survive is. something i can mindlessly play while i watch youtube, twitch, or whatever i do to occupy the soundscape. something i can just shut my brain off to. and man, metal gear survive is kind of fucking great when you do that.

yeah this isn’t a post about metal gear survive being a hidden gem or a post that nudges the idea that games were so much better 10 years ago or whatever. this is a post that states that sometimes mid or bad games can be incredibly fun when you simply give less of a shit. and that’s also not an argument for wanting more mid-tier games. it’s more so about finding the good in things that people don’t think are very good. think of it as a challenge!

MG: S

metal gear survive is arguably only as good and interesting as it is because it’s just mgsv: tpp with zombies. like that is so very simplistic to say but…yeah that’s basically it. and the concept worked very well with red dead redemption so fuck it. it works!

i don’t think people talk often enough about how well mgsv: tpp’s gameplay meshes with the concept of a survival game. where resources like food and water play into your health and stamina levels. crawling on the ground burns stamina, crouch walking burns stamina, sprinting burns stamina. all of these actions mean so much when there’s a material cost to using them, and it makes every move in the fog-laden landscape so much more interesting. and because simple things like simply moving around feel so good to do in the bones of this video game, it adds a pleasurable texture to the whole thing.

we can absolutely make fun of some of the stuff that’s here though. poking a spear through a chain link fence to get the zombies is one of them. however, as a mechanic itself? it’s actually pretty interesting as a means of outsmarting the zombies and keeping yourself safe. and when people point this out as a criticism of the game, they seem to forget that there are new zombie types in the second half of the story that aren’t so easy to kill since they can fly over your precious fences or just straight up blow them to bits.

what really gets me in my core with metal gear survive though is the vibe. when you’re out exploring the world and looking for items and resources, there’s a palpable sense of tension in the air. a tension that is so much more valid in the second area where we have zombie scorpions that embed themselves into the ground and wait for you to come close. or zombie bugs that scan the environment looking for you to alert the other enemies nearby. i wouldn’t call this scary or metal gear survive a horror game per se, but i would say that it’s tense. and tension is exactly what a game like metal gear survive needs to be effective at all.

the fog is also such an interesting choice for so many reasons. obviously it’s there to disguise the scale of the maps because they’re deceptively small when you’ve reached their map limits. and as we all know, fog helps small things look big. at least in video games. fog also makes it a tiny bit less obvious that the afghanistan and africa maps are just re-used assets from mgsv: tpp. all of this doesn’t discount how well it’s used here to keep you on your toes. not necessarily in regards to the dangers that enemies pose, but more so because of the lights that guide you to teleport stations and loot crates (not sponsored). you need these lights to guide you because when you leave the road, your map marker disappears and you’re left with just your compass and your sense of direction. and then you look up and see the sky reflecting back at you as if you’re underwater and man it looks so so cool.

supplies also feel suitably ‘scarce’. i say ‘scarce’ like that because…they aren’t really if you know where to look. but in the first handful of hours you really do feel strapped for certain supplies. and it isn’t until you can make a reliable amount of arrows and a bow that you can really start taking down hordes with ease. and you can forget using things like guns very often since crafting them is expensive. so expensive that it’s the first time in my life i’ve said no to using a shotgun at various points and DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD THAT IS FOR ME TO DO?

the story here isn’t that interesting though. neither are most of the characters that don’t really provide much apart from context for why the video game makes you do video game things. the stuff i like here is really so divorced from all of the things that the game tries to use to make you care about what’s going on. i don’t! and that’s ok!

in playing metal gear survive recently i also learned a little bit about what i like from open world games. and it mostly just stems from making them feel right. i don’t need a bunch of shit to do in a world space nor do i need to have side quests and activities to make me feel like i’m doing things. just give me a world and let me root around and find stuff that i can use to do cool things. let the environmental design breathe and make every step i take feel meaningful because it’s what i decide to do. you don’t need to make a big massive world full of boring side missions for that world to feel effective. sometimes you just need to get the visuals right and make the bones of the experience feel good to play. and i’d say that metal gear survive actually accomplishes most of the things i’d want from a game like this. when you put all these ideas together with the mgsv: tpp aesthetic that you’re accustomed to (if you played that game); the futuristic not-so-80’s tech mixed with the scrappy knifes duct taped to poles and the combination of cool mecha shits with sci-fi horror, there’s a lot to like here surprisingly.

this article isn’t me saying you should run out and play metal gear survive right now either. this is more of a meditation of finding the fun in things that aren’t known for being very good or interesting. because, depending on your mood, this might be just the thing to whet your appetite.