Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is a short but dense open-world stealth prologue built on the FOX Engine. It drops players into a single large Cuban military base where they must rescue hostages using any combination of sneaking, distractions, or direct action, with every choice affecting mission scoring and alerts. Most players treat it as a replay-focused sandbox, running the main mission and Side-Ops repeatedly to hunt every cassette tape, complete optional objectives, and chase perfect S-ranks. Each run emphasizes precise movement, long-distance observation, and quick reactions to guard patterns, making input responsiveness feel direct and immediate. For general play at typical PC settings, the engine's visual effects are the main source of load. High-resolution shadows, SSAO, screen-space filtering, and various post-processing passes create the moody lighting and detailed environments that make the base feel alive across day-night cycles. These effects can cause texture swapping stutter on GPUs with limited VRAM and occasional frame-pacing issues on older hardware during map traversal. The game is well optimized overall, scales nicely with multi-core CPUs, and runs acceptably on modest DirectX 11 hardware, but it rewards a setup that keeps frame rates stable so sneaking and aiming never feel delayed. Common pain points include assuming the title needs a flagship GPU when even mid-range cards can deliver excellent results if paired with enough VRAM. Many first-time builders also overlook that the 60 FPS cap makes ultra-high frame rates unnecessary, shifting priority toward visual quality and stutter-free traversal instead. Before choosing parts, understand that this scenario benefits most from a balanced system that avoids overspending on raw CPU power while ensuring the GPU can comfortably manage the rendering demands of repeated high-detail playthroughs.