You have to buy additional save slots in Metal Gear Survive

It’s fair to say that Metal Gear Survive has not been an anticipated game in some circles. Before we knew of Survive, Kojima had been divorced from the series and the company. The Metal Gear series continued without the much-loved director at its helm. Our first glimpse of the game was a spin-off zombie survival game. A mashing of several genres that were neither original nor reminiscent of any previous series canon. Even the last few months of leadup hype was mired by the slew of microtransactions present in the game.

Well now Metal Gear Survive is out and once more it has the spotlight. See, there’s one resource you can get with microtransactions that’s a bit odd: Save slots.

The first character you create is free. But a second character requires either the first character’s deletion or buying a second slot with 1,000 SV Coins the game’s currency. In terms of real cash, the closest you can buy is 1,150 coin for $15.40AUD($9.99USD). This is not a completely new idea. Older MMO’s played with this payment method. But certainly this is the only, or at least, the only well-known case in quite some time.

Other minor controversies have emerged also. Perhaps most notable for its bizarre nature, is some odd lines in the End-User License Agreement. Most of the prohibitions are standard: No encouragement of suicide or drug abuse, No seeking or posting personal information. But oddly enough, Konami has prohibited love and politics. Which I suppose is a definitive answer to the question: “Can Love Ever Truly Bloom on the Battlefield?”. The romantics are out of luck, as it is against the  EULA to “Seek a relationship with another person or act that Konami determines is made for the main purpose of causing a relationship”. Similarly, the EULA bans “[participation] in politics or other similar acts.”.

The simple fact of the matter is that overall this has been to the game’s detriment.  UK sales have shown the game has had issues, failing to meet the standards set by The Phantom Pain.  Even Metacritic shows an obvious discrepancy. Metal Gear Solid games have generally been 80 or higher, with The Phantom Pain, the last Kojima-led game accruing 91-95 (based on platform). The lowest end to this scale is Ground Zeroes its predecessor, which is likely scored low because it was a preview-length game with the price of a full game. Ground Zeroes scored a 75. Metal Gear Survive sits at 64.

I suppose the simple fact of the matter is Metal Gear has been stripped of its creative lead. Whilst the game continues to look nice, it feels like the life and fun has been stripped out of the game and replaced with microtransactions. This series seems to have drawn itself to a close. Or Rather… Metal Gear didn’t survive.