Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain

[Leigh]

metal-gear-solid-v-the-phantom-pain.jpg

Most critically acclaimed game of the year. 9/10 and 10/10s across the board. Just released on Tuesday; all I can assume is the reason a thread does not yet exist on here is because we're all a bunch of hipsters? =P

Anyone playing through it as we speak? Opinions? I've only touched the surface of it as of yet. Finding it difficult to get into it, but that's probably just my current inability to be engrossed in very much at the moment in life. I'm not sure why, but I'm having difficulty in finding interest in Big Boss, whilst I found Solid Snake to be one of the most engrossing characters I've had the pleasure of controlling in a video game. Or maybe I just liked Hayter's voice, and I'm struggling to adjust to 'that guy from that 24 tv show'. Haha.

[Del Murder]

I've followed the reviews closely and am astonished that the fifth game in a series where the creator left the company prior to its release has gotten such widespread acclaim. Think about that. It's unheard of. In fact, many reviewers call this their favorite in the series.

I've definitely heard all I need to hear and will play this eventually. I'm looking forward to it a lot. I just don't have the time. I still need to beat Arkham Knight!

I'm sure this will be at the top of many GotY lists.

[Bolivar]

The opening is the most brutal and surreal sequence in a game I've ever played, and that's in a year where we've gotten Hotline Miami 2. We've already seen the whole thing though, if you saw that extended Moby Dick trailer. Kojima just gives away way too much in the trailers. It was also a little overly scripted but it gets a pass because of how much freedom the rest of the game has.

You're right that Big Boss does not steal the show the way Solid Snake does but that's kind of par for the course in the prequels. The plot is more about Big Boss and Miller trying to hold on to a world that's radically changing around them, of which they're also somehow paradoxically at the center of. The storytelling and tone is a radical departure from the series, though, no question. It really feels like Kojima gave in to his detractors and showed them what a Metal Gear would look like, if it was made with Western sensibilities.

And the results are stunning. It nails the secret sauce of open world game design, the feedback loop of engaging with the world to unlock more unique and inventive ways to engage with the world, a never-ending incentive to go off the beaten path and find out what's that over there. Essentially you 1) extract soldiers and materials to 2) expand your base and unlock weapons, items and helicopter/horse equipment that you then 3) try out in the field to unlock more content and begin the cycle anew. It's a ridiculously addictive time sink and I've spent over an hour on each of the five missions I've played so far. And while Northern Kabul probably isn't the largest seamless game space I've played in, it feels like it is, with the endless options, approaches, and escapes available to complete any given mission and its hidden side objectives. There's been quite a few notable open world games in the last year and there's going to be more this Fall, but I already doubt any of them will play anywhere near as freely or dynamically as The Phantom Pain.

At its core, it's still Metal Gear, just without segmented zones or loading screens. You can still crawl on the ground, tranquing guys in the head, although the enemy inevitably adapts to your playstyle (wearing helmets in that case), further reinforcing the need and reward to experiment, explore, and genuinely think outside the cardboard box. The story side of things might not be the same but this is definitely the game the series has been converging towards, arguably Kojima's magnum opus and unquestionably 2015's GOTY frontrunner.

[Fox]

I caved and bought it, the sneaky-sneaky looks too good for me to miss it, even given my bugbears with Ground Zeroes, the lack of David Hayter, and other things. The main thing I know is going to wind me up from what I've already seen of the game is how little Big Boss talks these days. When you have another character talking at you for five minutes, it's good for the main character to respond sometimes. MGS:3 and Peace Walker Big Boss would always talk back, always have an opinion, always have an anecdote. Looks like that side of things is going to be largely missing and I am going to miss the hell out of it.

Despite that though, everyone seems to be in love with the actual 'game' bit of that game, so I am looking forward to my copy showing up hopefully in time for the weekend. I hate the Fulton Recovery System in the way they did it in Peace Walker and here, so I'm going to play the game whilst using it as little as possible. For me, MGS is at its most satisfying when you get in and out without killing or knocking anyone unconscious, and without anyone seeing you. However good the gunplay may be these days, that's always what Metal Gear is to me.

[Wolf Kanno]

I have no real means to play it at the moment as my PS3 is dead and I'm still debating about just plunging into next gen and picking this game up for it instead. So for now, I have to avoid spoilers.

[Tyson]

I'm a huge MGS fan, played through the series multiple times and MGS3 is easily in my top 5 games of all time.

So of course I picked this up on release day, so far I'm only up to story mission 10. (Way too distracted fultoning people and building Motherbase)

My impression so far is they have NAILED the gameplay, it is arguably the best open world action game ever made (makes the Assassins Creed games look so shallow). It is completely addictive, even when I'm at work I'm thinking about what I'm going to strive for the next time I play.

I was never really a fan of the MGS series for its gameplay before this so it is a major improvement. That leads me to MGS5's biggest weakness however.

Story. The best thing about the MGS series was the cutscenes and CODEC conversations, they did such an amazing job developing the world and characters. I loved PARA MEDIC talking to you about how influential the original Godzilla movie was when it was released hahaha. It broke the tention and the back and forth between Snake and everyone in the Codec calls was amazing.

They really stripped all this away in MGS5, cutscenes are very minimal, Snake is a mute and codec calls are pretty much gone and replaced by briefings (where snake also barely says anything) I imagine this was in response to the backlash of MGS4 being basically a movie. It really hurts the game and makes the lack of Haytor even more noticable however.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a solid 9/10 from what Ive played so far.

[DMKA]

It's weird. I've heard tons of things about it I don't like the sound of. Metal Gear Solid 3 is one of my favorite games of all time. It had so many great moments, and the characters and story really made the game fantastic.

Everyone says this game is basically the opposite of that. Snake is a silent avatar, none of the characters are important, and there's little to no plot until the very end.

I'm so torn on whether to buy it or not.

[Sephex]

I actually picked this up, but I'm not very far because of lack of time and the fact that I quickly played through Ground Zeroes first since I didn't do that yet. Anyway, while I miss what other people said in this thread (lack of the usual MGS cutscene and character flair), I am very much enjoying the gameplay itself. Really reminds of me of Peace Walker on crack.

Still getting acclimated to how different it is compared to past MGS games, but I can tell that I am slowly but surely falling for this one.

[theundeadhero]

I picked it up but haven't had time to try it out yet.

[Bolivar]

I actually picked this up, but I'm not very far because of lack of time and the fact that I quickly played through Ground Zeroes first since I didn't do that yet. Anyway, while I miss what other people said in this thread (lack of the usual MGS cutscene and character flair), I am very much enjoying the gameplay itself. Really reminds of me of Peace Walker on crack.

Still getting acclimated to how different it is compared to past MGS games, but I can tell that I am slowly but surely falling for this one.

Quick tip: play the Intel Operative Rescue mission in Ground Zeroes. It's mostly a scripted action set piece so it doesn't take too long to beat. You get high level Mother Base personnel for extracting Ground Zeroes POW's and even base soldiers but you get someone for finishing that mission that you won't want to miss.

[Fox]

Agree on the story front. I loved the stealth gameplay of the previous games don't get me wrong, but I was in it for the plot. MGS4 was already very, very weak in the way it toned down the CODEC conversations, to go even further with TPP is very disappointing. I can understand not wanting to keep the player sat motionless with 20 minute conversations, but if it were me I would have just made it a live in-gameplay thing, like the audio logs in Bioshock.

It's so jarring to have Snake being so damn quiet. Snake always has an opinion on EVERYTHING.
"Snake, what're you doing?"
"I'm... in a box."
"Come again?"
"I saw this box and I suddenly had this overwhelming urge to get in. I feel like I belong here... in the box."

[Bolivar]

I can understand not wanting to keep the player sat motionless with 20 minute conversations, but if it were me I would have just made it a live in-gameplay thing, like the audio logs in Bioshock.

I think that's actually what they did - you can listen to conversation tapes of the main characters on the iDroid while managing your base, planning your next mission, or just playing the game. The same goes for music, as you can usually swipe cassettes with 80s music out of the stereos the soldiers often have playing at their outposts. You can also equip a speaker on your helicopter and have it playing David Bowie as it comes over the horizon to pick you up.

I don't know if there's anything as quirky as the Sigint box convo but I did just find a recording of a Russian soldier having diarrhea in a porta-potty.

[Mirage]

manually selecting tapes to listen to is far from the same as dialogues happening automatically while you play

[Bolivar]

manually selecting tapes to listen to is far from the same as dialogues happening automatically while you play

Sorry, I've never played Bioshock, I just assumed its audio logs were similar, given how Fox described them.

[Fox]

Yeah, the cassettes are... OK. Not as good as a proper Codec, the trouble with the tapes is they feel more like the optional 'mission briefings' in MGS1 where you saw Snake on the CCTV getting his nanomachine shot and so on. Which is OK, but a) they're not as interesting without the visuals and b) they're also not as good as the old CODEC chats because they don't feel live in the mission. Also Snake doesn't talk enough in them.

What I DO like is the 'tap L1 for intel' stuff when you're looking through the scope. That kind of live interaction with your radio as you play is great, I just wish they made more of it and got a bit of a two way conversation going in these situations. The scope in general is very cool, marking things is very intuitive and I love finding high ground to recon and observe, finding holes in the defences and then executing on that plan. Very satisfying, and while guards patrol like they always have they feel less predictable than in earlier games. So I've placed unconscious bodies in what I thought was a safe area for example, only for someone to decide 'Ah, let's trek through the grass for a bit' and stumble over him. That's cool; forces you to adapt.

The cover system is a bit weird, I haven't got a feel for it yet. I'm not sure if I prefer it to the 'Press Triangle To Stick To Wall' system of MGS4, but I keep accidentally leaving cover when I just want to peek.