Even if Metal Gear Survive actually was a good game, it faced a tidal wave of pre-release negativity due to Konami producing it without the involvement of franchise creator Hideo Kojima, who acrimoniously split from the publisher following the release of Metal Gear Solid V.
But the real issue with Metal Gear Survive is that a wave-based zombie-fighting live service survival game just isn’t what most fans wanted out of the franchise – it felt like a desperate, cynical attempt to cash-in on the trends of the era rather than deliver an experience worthy of Kojima’s brand.
From the game’s always-online nature to the presence of microtransactions, its excessively recycled assets from MGSV, and its wildly generic, tedious gameplay, this was a low-effort poking of the series’ corpse that felt nothing like the titles that inspired it.
Tower defense, crafting, wormholes, and zombies just aren’t what the Metal Gear franchise has ever been about, and so it’s little surprise that Survive was a sales flop for Konami.
Within a year of the game’s release, even those who did buy it had given up – it’s been a total ghost town on Steam for the last six years.
