Metal Gear Survive is something on an enigma - a spin-off from its illustrious predecessor, that pushes the franchise into a whole new direction. A look at the credits reveals a mixture of Konami developers old and new, some who worked on the brilliant Metal Gear Solid 5, others who are working on the series for the first time. It's a team that seemingly doesn't have the same level of talent in working with the publisher's iconic Fox Engine - and it's clear to see that what we have here is a technical downgrade from MGS5.

It's strange because at the nuts and bolts level, Survive has much in common with MGS5: the open world design and core assets look very, very similar, there's the same 60 frames per second target and the Fox Engine's distinctive ID is almost completely unchanged. The one key difference is the inclusion of the new area - The Dust - a stormy cloud system that players can only survive in with the use of an air tank. It's a distinctive visual effect built on performance-sapping alpha textures. There's nothing like it in MGS5 and it is, possibly, why the developers have chosen to alter Metal Gear's visual make-up.

Metal Gear Solid 3 items are being added to Metal Gear Survive on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Apr 6, 2018 5:02am Metal Gear Survive Is Already Available For Less Than $20. METAL GEAR SURVIVE is a survival action game in an alternative universe. In a struggle to survive and understand this new environment, players engage in both single player and connected co-op. In the battle for survival scavenged materials must be wrought into usable items, gear and weapons if you are to have any hope of making it home.

The straight, native 1080p of Metal Gear Solid 5 on PlayStation 4 is replaced with a horizontally upscaled 1600x1080, a 16.7 per cent reduction in pixel count. Owing to the post-process heavy nature of the game, the drop passes by mostly without notice and performance is good - not quite as locked as MGS5, but clearly a notable improvement over the 50-60fps we noted in the beta period. In terms of performance at least, it's a solid enough read-out.

PlayStation 4 Pro has similarly smooth frame-rates in its 4K output mode, but there is something odd about its output we didn't notice in the beta phase. Its core pixel count seems to be 1088x1440, using a reconstruction technique to give a final resolve in the 2134x1440 range. It works out fine for the most part, but there is a clear dithering artefact left in its wake - something we don't see on the other systems, none of which use this effect.

However, switching your Pro to 1080p output matches the base machine's native 1600x1080, ironing out any remaining kinks in frame-rate and eliminating those reconstruction artefacts. There's no way to choose which mode you get, short of adjusting the front-end option setting. However, the upcoming firmware 5.5 will allows 1080p users to access the higher resolution mode. Whether they want to is another thing though. After all, we will be looking at a 1600x1080 image constructed to double horizontal resolution, upscaled to 4K, then downscaled to 1080p. Expect improved temporal stability at the expense of blur.

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There's definitely the sense that PlayStation is the focus for Konami's Metal Gear team, though. PS4 Pro users have a native 1440p version of MGS5, while Xbox One X users miss out. For Survive, the final retail version of the base Xbox One version retains the same disappointing 720p as the beta - a massive downgrade over MGS5's 900p and doubly impacted by poor performance.

We could only hit 60 frames per second by looking at the ground, otherwise we're in a 40-60fps No Man's Land. There's a lot of controversy at the moment about Metal Gear Survive's radical, conceptual shift but at least the PlayStation versions retain the signature performance level established by MG5. We just can't recommend the base Xbox One version at all - it's by some chalk the ugliest and jerkiest edition of them all. Bizarrely, not even the HUD elements are rendered at 1080p.

Meanwhile, matters improve significantly on Xbox One X, where users get the highest resolution output of the bunch - a native 2560x1440, with no reconstruction shenanigans. Performance also hands in a vast upgrade over the standard Xbox version, but once we enter 'The Dust', frame-rates start to suffer in a way that we just don't see on the PlayStation platforms. Bearing in mind the X's hardware spec boosts compared to Pro, the upgrade is clearly sub-par, but it does seem to be another example where a poor base version of a game translates into a mediocre X release.

If we're talking about platform recommendations, PlayStation gets the nod on the standard machines - the base PS4 looks much, much better and runs a lot more smoothly. We really can't stress just how disappointing the basic Xbox One version is, bearing in mind the strides Konami made with the platform in the jump from Ground Zeroes to The Phantom Pain. Meanwhile, on the enhanced consoles, Xbox One X features more stable, higher clarity image quality, and performs fairly closely to the Pro's 4K mode. However, unlike the Pro version, there's no way to select a 1080p output. The fact that the X can only match PS4 Pro's native 1440p pixel output on Metal Gear Solid 5 is also strange. Is the inclusion of The Dust really that taxing on system resources? Enough that the development team had to regress the Fox Engine implementation?

Quite apart from performance analysis and pixel-counts, there's a more important issue to consider with Survive - specifically, the ways in which the engine is used. MGS5 was a bright, vibrant game, with the art team leveraging the Fox Engine's feature set to produce some stunningly realistic effects. It's all about the lighting, really. Kojima's final MGS used their technology brilliantly, recognising how light and materials interacted, then integrating it all into a solid, cohesive post-process pipeline that beautifully flattered the level design. The big difference with Metal Gear Survive is simply the extent to which everything has become rather dull. The intro cutscenes show some promise here, but once you're teleported to Survive's parallel dimension, the subdued hues and dull lighting do little to attract you to the game.

The Dust is different and distinctive perhaps, but it's not enough to justify the surrounding, rather unattractive gameplay - the first few hours of which concentrate heavily on setting up fences and poking zombies with sticks. And there's a real sense of a profound lack of imagination here: by transporting the characters into a new dimension, Konami was effectively given a blank slate, to create a brand new open world that could push the Fox Engine into producing results we've never seen before. What we get instead isn't a bad game as such - and as the Eurogamer review explains, some may well get a good deal of enjoyment out of Survive. But from our perspective, it's a step in the wrong direction both conceptually and technologically - and despite the reduced price-point, we had hoped for more.

Everyone wants to hate Metal Gear Survive. After Kojima is Cinderella cast out into the cold (Sony’s carte blanche million dollar publishing deal) and Konami’s the evil step-mother staring down from the castle as a crowd of torch-waving internet comments beat at the gate. Whatever the game actually is, some people are never going to like it.Which is a shame, as this is an enjoyable and rewarding survival game. There’s a satisfying grind to its demands - get food, gather the wood, iron, rags and so on you need to make weapons, fences and other gear. It’s basically a more grown up version of Don’t Starve, right down to accidentally setting things on fire. If you think of games like Rust, Ark or DayZ, only with a single player focus, then you get the idea.

The gimmick here being that you’ve fallen through a wormhole into an alternate dimension called Dite (pronounced ‘Dee-tay’) and are trying to get home.It’s no MGS6 obviously, but then it was never meant to be. It’s a un-numbered spin off side project revolving around the series’ previous ideas of base building and team management. Had Kojima still been a Konami person I suspect it would have got average out of ten as a bit of filler between the main instalments.In the early stages of the game the survival and exploration is well meted out via small and specific missions to introduce what you need to worry about - food gathering is important upfront as health and stamina is linked to hunger and thirst, the former decreasing as the latter rise. Animals like sheep and goats are marked on the map as side missions to get you started, and you can always grab the odd gerbil along the way.

The shame of stabbing tiny rodents with a six foot pipe sharpened to a point lasts literally seconds, once you see your hunger decrease. These early objectives work well to reinforce priorities and rules. There are areas full of toxic dust, for example, that you can’t enter without oxygen. This introduces a strict focus on time management, prioritisation and resource awareness.

You can ‘buy’ more air but the cost increases each time, so you really have to manage what you have. Spend too long getting distracted or waylaid and you’ll find yourself quickly fighting against the clock, trying not to suffocate or starve.It can be frustrating to get too far into one of these zones and realise you’ve not got enough air or gerbil steaks to get back alive, but it’s rarely not your fault.

It can be tough, but never unfair. Entered a toxic dust cloud and ran out of oxygen?

What did you think would happen? The save system backs up the challenge as you can only manually save when you exit the game. There are in-game saves when you leave your base or complete a significant objective but there’s risk every time you set out - of losing what you’ve gathered, or what you’ve achieved.

It’s worth pointing out here that the headlines screaming about how Survive makes you 'pay for additional save slots' are missing the point of how the game is structured. A single save is kind of the point and, in fact, you’re actually paying for additional characters in exactly the same way you did in the original Metal Gear Online.As you progress you set out on longer and longer forays into the world to seek out animals to kill, energy to power a return home, survivors to staff your base and memory boards to find (a plot device that has you upgrading an AI to unlock stuff).

The further out you get, the more important using wormhole teleporters becomes. Using these you can jump to specific points once they’ve been reactivated. This introduces a horde mechanic with the Wanderer enemies; feral zombies with crystalline neck stumps for a head (although, helpfully, with just enough of a mouth to still bite).

As a rule they mainly stagger around the plains to avoid or attack as you see fit. However, doing certain things, like activating wormhole teleporters and diggers (that harvest energy), calls them in swarms far too large to take on toe-to-toe.Dealing with these larger numbers is where one of the game’s biggest features comes in: building fences and managing a defence line to hold back waves of enemies.

These use all the items you can craft back at your base; things like chain link fences and barricades, as well as claymore mines and molotov cocktails. In single player that means a test of resource and strategy management as you run about placing obstructions and stabbing things through chainlinks, while in multiplayer it’s much the same, except there are three other people to shout at when things go wrong.Because you essentially teleport in the items you build, you can drop fences in an instant - dealing with perimeter breaches and holding off one problem while you manage another in a very instant and reactive way. It’s an extremely active crisis management where you’re thinking on your feet and dropping barricades as much as you are smashing in neck stumps with a crowbar.It’s worth mentioning that the Wanderers are really dumb, herding around a single fence in an otherwise open field for example, but it’s an exploitable dumb. The kind of stupid that’s consistent and easy to plan around.

Like O2 management, failure here (while annoying) can usually be traced back to a poor decision more than anything else. There’s also a hint of COD Zombies to it all where you get too involved in one area and miss the other crowd of monsters gathering elsewhere.Like in most survival games the zombie managing and base building ramps up constantly and it’ll be your limit for the demands this makes of you, against the increasing work it requires, to decide when you’ve had enough.

Once the game settles into its pace you’ll be growing potatoes and keeping goats, collecting rainwater and managing medical supplies for a whole team of people; all while heading out on more and more unforgiving runs into toxic, dust-infused wastelands. As the missions, demands and responsibilities get harder it all depends on how much you want to push through that barrier. The gameplay and mechanics are sound, introducing new things just as you’re starting to settle into a routine, but there's maybe not quite enough variation to the ‘day to day’ grind.

It’s worth noting that the multiplayer’s ‘easy’ missions start with level 20 enemies to give you some idea of where this pitches its overall challenge. While the very existence of this will likely offend the hardcore MGS fan, it’s a decent enough take on a survival craft-em-up with enough personality and freedom in its options to please anyone who likes tackling a challenge on their own terms.