Do you think love can bloom even on a battlefield? Your country, or your old mentor? The mission, or your beliefs? Your duty to your unit, or your personal feelings? What do you hope to accomplish by living? Do you want to save the game? All these questions and more have been posed to gamers by the Metal Gear series over the years, and rarely have they been answered. It's a franchise that raises questions not quite rhetorically, but more to put ideas in the player's mind for them to go away and think about when they tire of crouching under cardboard boxes and ODing on diazepam. The Metal Gear games' propensity for asking the big (and not-so-big) questions is part of their charm, part of the reason they have such a fan following. Then there's the big, bombastic characters; the all-star cast; the constant defying of expectations; the jokes, the tonal shifts, the big rambling plot lines, the singular vision of creator Hideo Kojima...as the first proper next gen instalment, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain has the finishing touches put on it, fans are expecting all of that and more. Knowing Kojima, though, The Phantom Pain will continue a lot of the less brilliant things that have haunted the series ever since the beginning. Much as these games are loved, they're far from perfect. They have a lot of heart, but they have almost as many issues. These are ten problem with the Metal Gear series nobody wants to admit.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
