4/5 ★ – Male_07's review of Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes.

God I really need to play Peacewalker, probably would appreciate the story even more. But even without playing it, Ground Zeroes is a fantastic prologue that effectively sets up The Phantom Pain. Skull Face’s introduction is intimidating and cinematic in a way unlike anything Kojima did before in the MGS series, and the extreme juxtaposition of Big Boss compared to his character in MGS3 is frightening (in a good way). It is shocking to see how he has changed so much, going from such a talkative and almost immature young man in Snake Eater to the depressing and corrupted man-of-few-words, demonstrating just how much the Boss’s death impacted him. And damn, as much as I am disappointed that it isn’t David Hayter behind the voice of Snake, I can’t imagine MGSV without Kiefer Sutherland’s performance; he does an excellent job at conveying Snake’s transformation, and I hope one day we may be able to see Sutherland and Hayter performance as Big Boss and Solid Snake side by side. However, as much as Ground Zeroes is great, it’s pretty much a glorified tech demo that was initially sold as a full-priced game, and if you just want to complete the base game and ignore the Side Ops, you’re looking at about an hour of playtime, its saving grace being that the gameplay is really fun. Luckily, it’s now bundled with TPP in the Definitive Experience. But that doesn’t change that this game shouldn’t be separate to TPP, especially considering how essential it is to the story of MGSV as well as concluding Peacewalker. So, due to the fact that the game is far too short and should not be a separate title, I can’t give Ground Zeroes anything above 4 stars.