I sincerely feel like Metal Gear Survive got a huge amount of undeserved hate on it's release. I'm not going to sit here and tell you it's the best Metal Gear game (far from it of course)and I'm not even going to tell you it's the best survival game either. However, I do want to say that if you can get past the Metal Gear name being tied to it, it's a genuinely enjoyable survival horror title with some unique elements, enjoyable progression, and a pretty wild story. Now that the game is on Game Pass, most people have the ability to freely access this game for the cost of nothing, making this the perfect time to check out this strange game.
I understand that the early game can give off a very poor impression. Not only are you getting a hackneyed story of "wormhole randomly appears in the Metal Gear world for no reason other than making it so this game can exist", but the early game is filled with a lot of tedious elements (which arguably most survival games are). People really hammered down on the idea of poking zombies through a fence with a stick, which is a fair judgement of the early game because that is what you'll be doing combat wise for awhile until you get more of an armament to use against the hordes. (Though I'd also argue, the "stick poking" actually feels really good when you get consecutive headshots and get to see the bodies piling up).
However, the game has a really nice feeling of progression. You can slowly amass more weaponry, upgrade your character with skills, get more time out in The Dust with better equipment, make a really solid home base that generates enough food and water to not have you worrying about it anymore, and find vehicles that let you venture further and further out into the unknown. Once you get to a point in the game that lets you have different gun and melee types, lay down unique traps, and have some decent traversal options without worry of resources, the game really comes into it's own and is genuinely fun since it's just built right off the Metal Gear 5 engine making it feel great to play.
Metal Gear Survive also has a really cool mix of the anime-military style Metal Gear is known for and some cosmic horror sensibilities of something like the film "The Mist". The Lord of Dust is an awesome behemoth of an encounter that is terrifying to run into, or even just hear in the distance every time you venture out into The Dust.
The creature designer for Silent Hill was on the project, and it shows, you have these fleshy monster versions of Metal Gears, eerie floating drone-like Jellyfish monsters. Outside the "boring" human zombie-like enemies that many people complained about there are a decent number of really creepy creatures that really get your anxiety going when you run into them.
The story is also something wild. If you can get past the disbelief of something as "out there" as alternate universes existing in the Metal Gear universe (which lets be real, it's always been a universe that really stretches the idea of any remotely credible logic), then there is a pretty unique and interesting "what if" story behind the scenes that manages to actually tie itself back into the actual Metal Gear canon in a clever and meaningful way without changing anything immensely about what you already have come to know about Metal Gear. It's one of the strongest side stories the franchise has, and I even enjoyed it more than Peace Walker, which is a canonical mainline story title.
I'm sure many people have made up their minds on this game, it came out at a time where everyone was sour at Konami for ruining everyone's favorite franchises (and still are, rightfully so), Kojima praise was at an all time high, and saturation of survival games was hitting it's peak. But after a decent amount of time to let all of that simmer down, and the game having an easily accessible way of playing it with Game Pass, I implore anyone who is even remotely interested to at least try it out and see how they feel.
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