10 Amazing Video Games With Terrible Open Worlds

We aren't here to say that MGSV isn't a masterpiece - because it is. And the sandbox approach did provide a freedom to experiment with the series' famous stealth mechanics in all sorts of new ways, but that only applies to enemy bases and the areas directly around them. And between those bases is just the empty desert of Afghanistan - emphasis on "empty."

The game does have a second map somewhere in Africa (the game never specifies a country), which mercifully provides more visual diversity than Afghanistan's dirt and rocks, but still suffers from the same problem: there's just nothing there. It comes across as if nobody inhabits these countries other than interchangeable enemy soldiers.

The game is packed with side missions, but you'll mostly find yourself infiltrating the same bases over and over, liberating them from the same soldiers time and again, only for them to be re-staffed with fresh new recruits as soon as you exit the map.

What MGSV does, it does exceptionally well, but ultimately feels like it could simply have featured various large, isolated maps, like the one in MGS: Ground Zeroes, the playable prologue that served as a demo to MGSV, and been better off.