It’s been simply over 9 years for the reason that launch of Metallic Gear Stable 5: The Phantom Ache, the final sport within the venerable stealth motion franchise to be directed by its creator, Hideo Kojima. Loads’s occurred in that point for Kojima: He based his personal unbiased studio, launched 2019’s Demise Stranding, watched a ton of flicks, and virtually went on to do no matter he pleases, to say nothing of all of the celebrities he’s befriended and digitally scanned into his fictional worlds alongside the way in which.
However there’s nonetheless one thing Kojima hasn’t fairly but gotten round to but: making an precise horror sport. His upcoming sport OD, introduced final 12 months, appears to be simply that: a psychological horror sport starring Hunter Schafer, with writing contributions from Hollywood horror auteur Jordan Peele, no much less! Nevertheless, it doesn’t appear to be we’ll be seeing a lot of that sport within the close to future, or at the very least, not earlier than Demise Stranding 2: On the Seashore is launched someday subsequent 12 months. Within the meantime, although, in case you’ve ever puzzled what it will be like if Kojima actually utilized his sensibilities as a sport designer to the horror style, I’d extremely advocate you replay the opening mission of The Phantom Ache, “Prologue: Awakening.”
Picture: Konami
When you’re studying this, you’re probably already accustomed to the opening moments of Metallic Gear Stable 5: The Phantom Ache. It’s additionally probably that, given the aforementioned time for the reason that sport was launched, you haven’t performed it shortly. So right here’s just a little background for the premise of the extent earlier than I get into the explanation why I believe it’s best to play it.
The Phantom Ache takes place after the occasions of 2014’s Metallic Gear Stable 5: Floor Zeroes. Gamers assume the position of Snake, a former CIA operative turned mercenary for rent, who wakes up in a hospital mattress in Cyprus 9 years after surviving a near-fatal helicopter crash. He’s misplaced his left arm and his physique is riddled with fragments of human bone and shrapnel, so he’s understandably just a little worse for put on, to say nothing of the actual fact he’s affected by a minor case of amnesia and his muscle tissues have deteriorated after virtually a decade of involuntary bedrest.
Issues shortly go from dangerous to worse when the hospital is attacked by a military of troopers who proceed to indiscriminately mow down employees and civilian sufferers alike, presumably as a part of a mission to exterminate their precise supposed goal: you. After being rescued from the brink of loss of life by Ishmael, a mysterious affected person with a closely bandaged face, the 2 of you might be pressured to work collectively to discover a solution to escape the hospital alive.
Picture: Konami
When you’re a hardcore Metallic Gear fan, you’ll know that there’s really method extra behind this complete state of affairs than what meets the attention. As fascinating — and albeit, baffling — as all these particulars are and the way they match into the bigger Metallic Gear universe as complete, they’re totally irrelevant of why I believe it’s best to play this explicit mission of The Phantom Ache this Halloween. And that cause, pure and easy, is as a result of it’s a fucking terrifying expertise that blurs the road between implicitly psychological and outright supernatural horror.
For starters, you start the mission extraordinarily restricted in your mobility, crawling in your stomach and dragging your limp proper arm behind you as you prop your self in opposition to partitions and objects, slipping off of surfaces and crashing in opposition to the ground as your physique betrays you. It’s a irritating and demoralizing expertise, one intentionally designed to put the participant within the position of a person virtually preventing in opposition to the inertia of his personal physique to outlive. This isn’t the legendary soldier followers of the sequence have come to know and love over time. Or at the very least, not but.
Because the mission progresses, Snake step by step regains management of his motor expertise. In consequence, the participant slowly learns the fundamental mechanics of strolling, working, crouching, and covertly sneaking previous roving squads of closely armed wetworkers. As if that weren’t sufficient, you’re additionally being stalked by what seems to be a red-haired psychic baby sporting a straight jacket and a fuel masks, in addition to a terrifying man on hearth hell-bent on discovering and killing you, à la Resident Evil 3’s Nemesis.
Picture: Konami
When performed for the primary time, it feels unattainable to make sense of what’s actual and what’s not on this state of affairs. Did Snake actually survive that helicopter crash, or is that this hell? Is Ishmael actually serving to you escape, or is he only a fabrication conjured out of Snake’s fractured psyche? Then there’s the climactic horseback sequence of Snake and a mustached cowboy named Ocelot being chased by the Man on Fireplace atop a flaming horse. This may not be hell, however it certain as hell feels prefer it.
Oh, and did I point out the scene the place an assault helicopter is swallowed by a whale thrown by that psychic baby? Once more, it’s finest to not concern your self an excessive amount of with what all of this implies inside the broader scope of the Metallic Gear universe. Simply benefit from the expertise for what it’s: a bewildering, terrifying, and exhilarating struggle for survival in a world that’s each fantastical and macabre.
Picture: Konami
Even having described what happens within the sport’s opening mission, I nonetheless wholeheartedly advocate that you simply play it for your self firsthand, if solely to expertise what I really feel to at the present time remains to be one of the crucial memorable and horrifying ranges Hideo Kojima has crafted in a sport to this point. As somebody who loves the Metallic Gear franchise, who loves survival horror video games, and who loves Metallic Gear Stable 5: The Phantom Ache, I want that there have been extra moments in The Phantom Ache that resembled the tense survival horror vibe of its opening mission.
It’s vital to say that in 2014, partway by The Phantom Ache’s manufacturing, Kojima introduced that his then-next mission was speculated to be a Silent Hill sport, Silent Hills, with Norman Reedus as the sport’s protagonist and Kojima’s buddy, director Guillermo del Toro, set to co-direct alongside him. As a part of that sport, Kojima Productions launched a broadly well-received “Playable Teaser” sport, aptly named P.T., which was delisted virtually instantly alongside Silent Hills’ cancellation within the wake of Kojima’s bitter, year-long departure from Konami following the discharge of The Phantom Ache.
Picture: Konami
Revisiting the primary mission of Metallic Gear Stable 5: The Phantom Ache in 2024 virtually looks like peering into an alternate dimension, one by which Kojima’s profession went in a wholly totally different course and Demise Stranding by no means occurred. Would Bloober Staff’s Silent Hill 2 remake nonetheless have existed in a world the place Kojima had the possibility to strive his hand on the sequence? Would Kojima nonetheless have completed even a fraction of what he’s gone on to do for the reason that launch of The Phantom Ache if he hadn’t left Konami? The reply is, in fact, who is aware of? Silent Hills by no means occurred, and consequently, the course of the Silent Hill franchise and Kojima’s profession diverged into totally totally different instructions.
The opening moments of The Phantom Ache really feel like Kojima was testing out concepts he may’ve later honed in a horror sport like Silent Hills, had he had the chance to see that sport by to fruition. As bittersweet as which may sound, the actual fact stays that Metallic Gear Stable 5: The Phantom Ache, specifically its first mission, is an everlasting testomony to what Kojima can accomplish when he actually places his thoughts and skills to the problem of crafting an interactive expertise that prioritizes psychological stress and horror over mere motion spectacle. For all these causes and extra, I believe it’s the right kind of sport to play throughout this 12 months’s spookiest season.