Games of the Decade: Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes and the art of restraint

To mark the end of the 2010s, we're celebrating 30 games that defined the last 10 years. You can find all the articles as they're published in the Games of the Decade archive, and read about the thinking behind it in an editor's blog.

Making triple-A games, it turns out, is expensive, and the past decade has often been about big publishers coming up with new ways to make the numbers add up. Some have been more palatable than others, and a few too many have been downright detestable, but one novel approach did something we've all been screaming for for years: it put the reins on Hideo Kojima, finally giving him limitations in which to exercise his beautiful nonsense.

Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes was a curious release, essentially a paid-for demo for the full-fat Metal Gear Solid 5 - which, for those who could remember as far back as when you used to get a free Zone of the Enders game bundled in with your Metal Gear Solid demo, didn't go down too well. It promised a peek at perhaps the biggest change the series had seen since it gained the Solid suffix, though, transposing Kojima's stealth action to an open world.

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