Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes is only two hours long

I’m pretty keen to try Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. Perhaps too keen, as I’m dying for even a demo of the game to be released, something which was practiced in the dark days of the industry when 90 megabyte tastes of games were seen as massive. Ground Zeroes is pretty much a demo that you’ll pay for, for that MGS slice. All two hours of it.

According to the print edition of Game Informer via Kotaku, don’t expect the prologue to be lengthy. “Judged just by the core story mission, Ground Zeroes is short. We completed it in just less than two hours,” the magazine said.

Of course, players need to take into account that this is just the prologue and doesn’t include any optional missions, as the game sets the scene for the longer Phantom Pain. A tutorial prequel, the price of this demo is around $20 for a digital download on PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360. Physical will cost ya, around $30 for our Yank pals and locally about R339.

I’m not against Konami needing to make some cash while Kojima and his crew forge on ahead with the game, but not like this. Honestly, this should have been a pre-order bonus, a gift for players who put down cash for the full game.

And for that kind of cash, I could easily pick up a full game on either Steam or in the secondhand bins at insert retailer here. Hell, for R339 I could pick up Metal Gear Solid 4 and still have  a chunk of change left over for some popcorn and drinks to go with that title.

Ground Zeroes infiltrates into marketplaces March 21. The Phantom Pain will be out much, much later.

Last Updated: February 5, 2014