Technically the best game on the console?
It still blows my mind that Metal Gear Solid V (MGS V) was released on the PlayStation 3. I first played it on the PlayStation 4 and was somewhat aware that it was released on the PlayStation 3 but never really thought much of it. As time passed I started to realize what a monumental achievement that must have been, as the game was graphically and technically outstanding. So I became curious and picked up a copy for the PlayStation 3 and this is what I found.
As a keen video game enthusiast, I am sure you are aware that most modern big games use an off-the-shelf engine as the core part of their game. This is because most games all want to do the same type of thing. They need to take input from a controller, output sound, output video, render 3D images, implement menus etc and it makes no sense for every single video game to have to create their own way of doing all of this from scratch every time.
It is also the job of an engine to help provide consistent support across various platforms, abstracting away any specific details between PlayStation or Xbox and allow developers to focus on the game. Metal Gear Solid V eventually released on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and Windows and this was all achieved through their in-house engine the Fox Engine.
The Fox engine was developed by Kojima Productions with the support of Konami, who own the engine, and it is a triumph. It is very rare to find companies producing their own engine these days and it is even more surprising that they went through the effort to make an engine that was only used for Metal Gear Solid V, Metal Gear Survive and quite a few versions of Pro Evolution Soccer. I can’t even begin to understand what the technical cross over point between a soccer sports game and a cinematic, stealth action game is.
I assume that most of the staff who really knew how to use the Fox Engine left Konami, along with Kojima, to join the newly independent Kojima Productions after MGS V was finished, and Konami was left with a powerful engine that was no longer used and will probably never resurface again. Even the later Pro Evolution Soccer games moved on to use the much more popular and better supported Unreal engine.
So why all this talk about engines? Well Metal Gear Solid V released in 2015, 9 years after the launch of the PlayStation 3. It seems insane to me that they spent this much time and effort making the game compatible with such an old system, and as we know from previous articles, the PlayStation 3 was notoriously difficult to optimize for (It’s worth noting the Fox Engine also supported PC and Xbox 360). But MGS V would not even be the last huge title to be ported to the previous generation, it was a surprise to me when I remembered that Persona 5 was released for the PlayStation 3 in Japan in 2016 and didn’t release worldwide until 2017, 11 years after the console’s release! (Isn’t the PlayStation 3 the best console ever?)
Installing the Game
I inserted the game to start the install process, unsurprisingly it took quite a long time, around one hour, and the resulting Game Save Data file that gets put onto your console sat at 7 GB which is one of the biggest around, most of the other large games on my machine came in around the 4 GB size.
I find it very difficult to talk about the graphics in this game. I first played Metal Gear Solid V on the PlayStation 4 and played it for over 100 hours. When playing it on the PlayStation 3, I feel like my brain is able to insert extra detail that isn’t there because of my pre-existing memories. I feel like I am just playing a next-gen title with a fuzzy filter on. It’s like the game has too much quality but is being pushed through a funnel that is too small for it and pieces around the edge are shaved off.
When thinking about graphics there is always a trade off between fidelity and performance. There are plenty of 2D games on the consoles whose simpler graphics allow them to be rendered smoothly, they look beautiful and operate at a rock-solid 60 fps. This is a stylistic choice the developers can make. MGS V is totally and unequivocally at the other end of the spectrum. It is going for high fidelity because the game was designed as a next gen game. The world and characters are highly detailed and the game pushes for as much realism (In a graphical not a plot sense) as it can.
In order to achieve the high fidelity graphics, the resultant output is a bit fuzzy around the edges, also known as aliasing, and some of the detail is lost, but nevertheless the graphics are fantastic. But more than just the graphics, the sheer scale of this game is also huge. Hundreds of missions set across a wide reaching open world landscape, cinematic cutscenes and all of the mother base stuff too.
An important part of MGS V’s gameplay is scoping out a village or facility from a distance, using your binoculars to tag enemies and plan your route of entry. I can’t decide whether this is harder on the PlayStation 3 - because the fuzziness and general lack of resolution makes it harder to spot things over a distance or whether it is easier because the enemies stand out more against a less detailed environment. Perhaps both elements provide a happy balance that makes the game playable on both PlayStation 3 and 4 with slight variations on the way the player tackles a situation.
The game also struggles with performance. At its best moments it’s a perfectly acceptable 30 fps, but more often than not, you’re going to be hitting some frame rate drops, and these can be quite distracting. In still pictures, like the ones on this page, you can see a few graphical differences and they look quite minor, it’s only when you start playing it for real that these performance differences become quite apparent. During very chaotic parts of the game I’d say it’s a really rough ride.
Best Looking Game on the System?
I can’t really think of many reasons why you would choose to play MGS V on the PlayStation 3 in 2025 and beyond. It is fairly cheap to acquire on all systems and the PlayStation 4 version is a massive improvement in graphics and performance. The servers have shut down and the Platinum Trophy is no longer obtainable either. But if all you have is a PlayStation 3 and you aren’t looking to upgrade, you owe it to yourself to try this game out as it is an impressive feat in engineering for the PlayStation 3.
Is MGS V the best looking game on the console, I think I’d argue no, there are many other games with simpler graphics that look and perform better. The high fidelity of the characters is there but the fuzziness needed to achieve it can be distracting. But is it the most technically impressive feat on the PlayStation 3 - I think I’d have to say yes.