A genuinely fun zombie game that's unfairly hated on because of Hideo Kojima's falling out with Konami. All the soy boys hopped on the hate train and jerked each other's hate boners for Konami, failing to give this fun and well designed game a fair chance. Dunkey was a key player in fueling the hate, hardly giving the game a chance at all, popularizing the opinion that this game is inherently terrible and frustrating. Most never got through the beginning tutorial part of the game and even more are absolutely god awful, failing to understand its mechanics and flow. As a result, everyone repeats the same opinon: "This game sucks and has nothing to do with Metal Gear!!! I can't have extra saves!!! WAHHHHH!!!".
The game is incredibly brutal but fair when you first start out and continues to be challenging and fun even when you hit endgame stats. The Fox Engine is fantastic in providing great and smooth gameplay and the movement system is far more streamlined than in MGSV. If you ♥♥♥♥ up and get hit, that's on you. Anyone complaining about the game being super hard and frustrating are just revealing their own skill issues. It's also worth noting that the exploration and environments in this game are done MUCH better than in MGSV. This game only makes it clear that Hideo Kojima doesn't know how to properly make an open world game, disappointing me with the potential MGSV could've had with mechanics similar to Survive's. Anyone ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about the dust and getting lost is another skill issue. The maps aren't very big, so having stamina and oxygen depletion to match it is necessary to balance it out. It also makes the exploratory part and combat that much more thrilling - you must prioritize which enemies to kill and where to go. Decide if you should stay on a road or if you stray off into an unknown path for extra loot. Decide whether to sneak into an area to open containers for weapons/gear. Alerting a horde could cost you oxygen needed for later fights. Cars and Walker Gears are almost a necessity to take down the hordes and you're always switching between different items and traps to come up with different ways to take on objectives. In comparison to MGSV, I would only ever change my loadout if a mission absolutely required it to take on tanks or whatever for like 3 missions. I can't recall ever equipping a loadout to suit an objective's layout and environment better. You could genuinely go through the entirety of MGSV without needing to severely change your playstyle or loadout at all. The "Fence and spear cheese" is overexaggerated as ♥♥♥♥. Upgrading your character requires much more XP after the first hour or 2 of starting to where killing every zombie in sight becomes unjustifiable. There is also a MUCH greater variety in enemy types than in MGSV, (EVEN ELEMENTAL ENEMIES AND WEAPONS!!!!) not to mention a vast selection of awesome weapons, skills, and gear each with their own perks. You'll be gaining XP through other means and extractions through backstabs. And besides that, you'll need more strategy than just fence and spear to get through the hordes the game throws at you. you'll get overwhelmed easily on defense if you don't make the most of grenades, decoys, ammo, and whatever else you may have brought along.
Another important thing to note is that many people describe Survive as a good game, but not a good Metal Gear game. I disagree. The stealth of Metal Gear fits very very well into a zombie survival game of this nature, going hand in hand with typical survival game mechanics. Yes, the game reuses assets from MGSV, but they are retouched and remade to fit the environment and story. The story itself integrates and explains the assets well and is just as insane as all the other Metal Gear games, dialogue included. Twists, turns, lies and deceit typical of the Metal Gear franchise can all be found here, creating a gripping experience that's hard to put down. Cassette tapes are also present to provide extra lore and backstory to better help you understand the environment you're in. My only complaint is that the fast forwarding and rewinding of tapes is absent, I assume to streamline and simplify the gameplay more. I wouldn't mind or mention this at all if it wasn't for the annoying AI that talks and ruins your ability to listen clearly, forcing you to listen to entire tapes over again. Also, there's a lot of fun cutscenes in this game, enough to where I felt satisfied and not like I was cheated into buying an unfinished product.
Besides the story, the extra co op missions are especially brutal and fun as hell to take on, even as a solo player. Though on paper it might sound lame, boasting only a defense and rescue mode, these modes are well designed and optimized to where every second counts. Managing your resources and ammo is essential, forcing you to put thought into everything you do - juggling side missions and base defense on top of your own well being. If you're playing co op, missions are easier given that your team communicates and knows what to do. The Fox Engine makes the gameplay work so well and I cannot express how disappointing it is that no other games were made using this engine. The closest game I could find with gameplay similar to Fox Engine Metal Gear is Hell Divers 2. Besides that, comparing to games with similar concepts, Ubisoft can only wish that their Tom Clancy recon games could have gameplay like this, it's a shame that it hasn't been replicated and further innovated.
My main gripe with the game is that it's online only. It makes sense given that all your progress is saved to Konami's servers for online play, but it's frustrating given that if your internet cuts off for a millisecond, the game automatically signs you out and reverts all your progress back to your last save. It's also insanely annoying because the game has maintenance every week on Tuesdays and you cannot play the game at all during this time. I also wish there was a easy way to get rid of unwanted crew members. It's strange that this game streamlined so much from MGSV but didn't include contracts to protect wanted members from being pushed out or a way to fire members. It's not a huge deal as your team isn't too big, but a very strange design choice given the rest of the game is so well made. Could it be because of the focus on saving lives and surviving? Why not explain "firing" as sending people back through a wormhole? Just a bit baffling.
In short - great zombie game in a great engine that compliments the franchise it's a part of fantastically. I also love the crazy amount of weapons and gear that are available, each with their own perks, stats, and elements. The earlier survival mechanics introduced in MGS3 compliment the game amazingly, even reintroducing a similar healing system that was completely absent from MGSV. It's also a cute bonus that you can unlock music from past Metal Gear games and classic Konami titles (Policenauts, Zone of the Enders, Castlevania and more!!!). As for the microtransactions, they hardly matter at all. Besides being unnecessary, they don't introduce anything completely game changing, moreso just a few cosmetics that aren't really anything special. As for extra saves, they aren't something that a casual player would care about. This isn't the type of game where you would want to start over unless it was to get a couple extra resources. If you REALLY wanted to, you could delete your current save (All your resources are saved anyways, you'd have to manually throw em out). MGSV is similar in that there are no extra saves, unless you want to completely delete your current save or do family share on an alt account. Either way, your online resources are still saved like in this game (except here you have the option of tossing them). Missions can also be replayed once you beat the game. Metal Gear Survive expands on MGSV in the best way possible and feels like a celebration of the franchise's gameplay and mechanics.
