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'Metal Gear?!' Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Started by brat-sampson, August 27, 2015, 10:18:01 AM

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brat-sampson



Out in just under a week for X360, XBONE, PS3, PS4 and PC, and some physical pre-orders shipping already. If you're new to the saga then tbh you might be proper fucked as regards the whole plot, but in short you play as Big Boss, leader of a rogue band of mercenaries known as the Diamond Dogs in the mid 80s. Tactical Stealth Action's the name of the game here as you proceed through a number of missions both story-based and optional alongside constructing your home-base, hiring recruits, researching tech and using everything at your disposal to tackle the various challenges.

Kojima's final entry (Konami have safely seen to that) this one's pretty much a sequel to Peace Walker, the PSP game that got an HD remake and was a much more important entry in the series than you thought. It introduced the mission structure, the base aspects and a couple of the important characters in TPP. Additionally if you played Ground Zeroes (recently included in PS+) you'll have a slimmed-down idea of what to expect from the in-mission gameplay. This is easily the best the game has ever played, with a huge range of ways to approach targets. Maybe you'll start by taking out the guy in that watch tower from a distance, maybe you'll ask him for information first, giving you the location of a secret weapon cache, maybe you can just climb into a nearby truck and have them drive you straight into the base. Think like a sort-of open world emergent Hitman. TPP ups the ante here a ton from GZ by including mission partners (a dog, the sniper, Quiet, a horse or an armed droid are among the options seen so far), a huge increase in weapons/items, and obviously just the range of settings/missions available. For scale, the area of TPP is reportedly around 200 x that of GZ, though obviously not as densely packed, that still amounts to a whole ton of sandbox to play in, including regions set in Afghanistani desert and African jungle.

There's also a Dark Souls (sorry) style multiplayer where you can develop Forward-Operating Bases (FOB) to increase the capabilities and productivity of your base, however these are at risk from attack from anonymous other players who might want to strike and try to steal resources from you. Sadly these are also tied to an in-game currency and microtransactions, the details of which have still yet to be fully unveiled but which might well mean I ignore the entire thing forever but c'est la vie.

The last true MGS game, completing the cycle, this will be the final triumphant tale of Big Boss's revenge against the world. A game featuring child soldiers, torture and the creation of a demon. A deep, rich stealth game running far longer than previous numbered entries. It's also a game where you can fire off your bionic arm and control it like a Nikita missile, while listening to A-ha on your walkman, then ride away on a horse you can make poop back to your floating ocean-platform base where you can take a shower.

Let's roll.

Prongs

Will this be that accessible to someone who hasn't played an MGS game since snake-eater? When I look on the wiki page there's been so many games in the series since then that are exclusive to PS3/gamecube/Amstrad E-mailer or whatever that I never had the chance to play, that i'm worried I'd get totally lost with the storyline at this point.

That said, I had so much fun with the first 3 games, loved the gameplay and whole Escape from New York/80's action movie aesthetic. I've also just noticed you also get MGS: Ground zeroes when you buy this on steam so I'm thinking this one might be worth picking up.

fit bird

Quote from: Prongs on August 27, 2015, 12:08:36 PM
Will this be that accessible to someone who hasn't played an MGS game since snake-eater? When I look on the wiki page there's been so many games in the series since then that are exclusive to PS3/gamecube/Amstrad E-mailer or whatever that I never had the chance to play, that i'm worried I'd get totally lost with the storyline at this point.

That said, I had so much fun with the first 3 games, loved the gameplay and whole Escape from New York/80's action movie aesthetic. I've also just noticed you also get MGS: Ground zeroes when you buy this on steam so I'm thinking this one might be worth picking up.

It's the same main character as 3, but there was a game called 'Peace Walker' that this is a sequel to. Think you can play it on the PC with an emulator, not sure how well that works.


Nothing to add except I'm fucking ridiculously excited for this, feel like a kid in a sweetshop after watching all the videos of it, never been big on video games but I make a fucking massive exception for Metal Gear.

chand

Quote from: Prongs on August 27, 2015, 12:08:36 PM
Will this be that accessible to someone who hasn't played an MGS game since snake-eater?

Not sure I'd advise anyone with concerns about accessibility to play any MGS games. I played MGS 4 following on from MGS 3 and I didn't know what in the blue fuck was going on story-wise. All I remember about the storyline of Metal Gear 4 was that there was a lot of egg-cooking going on in the cut-scenes, and there was an arms dealer who had a monkey that could smoke. I imagine it'll be like any other Metal Gear game; you should be able to get what you're doing gameplay-wise, but the finer details of the batshit mental mythology behind it all might slip by you.

brat-sampson

There's only really been two since Snake Eater, MGS4 and Peace Walker. Peace Walker's the only one of those likely to be pretty relevant (as 4 was the last chronologically and took place way after this one) but I'm sure there'll be more than enough in here to bring you up to speed. The best way to play PW is in it's HD version, which is on PS3 and I think Vita either solus or as part of the HD collection w/ MGS2 and MGS3 (which is the one with the better over-the-shoulder camera option too). You can read numerous synopses online though as it's not that bad (compared to 4 at least). Or if you've got 3 hours to spare, here's a well edited movie version of the plot including the secret/real ending showing relevant cut-scenes mixed with gameplay etc. It's pretty well made. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cy7E76mBL0

Prongs

ok thanks guys, I think it's worth spending an evening on Youtube soaking up the plot of Peace Walker and MGS:4 then before sitting down with this one, that video you posted looks great.

Thursday

The reviews have suggested it's far less cut-scene heavy than previous Metal Gear Solid's, so I wouldn't worry too much even if you are confused at times. Portable ops wasn't made by Kojima, so apparently parts of it's story are seen a canon, but other parts aren't.

The main thing you need to play is Ground Zeroes though, which is a prologue to this game. I think just going through a synopsis of Peace Walker will be enough, but going through that movie could help.

Just got an e-mail from TTheGameCollection saying this has despatched, so I'm very happy. Anyone who gets it early, shall we say keep things hidden behind spoilers until Tuesday when it's officially out.

brat-sampson

They did a movie version of GZ too, same channel. Do MGS4 if you have the time, but be aware it's pretty much a hot mess and more than twice the length of PW so don't feel you need to. PW/GZ will be *far* more beneficial.

Spoiler-wise I'd say anything story-related should be spoilered well-past tuesday, just use typical discretion. I'm not fussed about cool unlocks/strats though.

Consignia

I ordered from Zavvi; so it's been dispatched but I doubt I'll get it before release day or even get to play it before next weekend. Not that it's a problem, but my interest is gathering due to the recent buzz.

Thursday

#9
If you have got Ground Zeroes, it's apparently a good idea to extract all the prisoners as it the save will carry over

http://www.pcgamer.com/prepare-the-perfect-ground-zeroes-save-file-for-metal-gear-solid-5/

Thursday

My copy arrived, and I've done the prologue mission.

Blimey.

biggytitbo

Phantom Pain? I get that sometimes, in he back of my thigh.

brat-sampson

Mine also landed today. Best intro since Last of Us. The world's huge, the missions are tricky, sometimes pretty long, and definitely intended to be replayed (they all have sub-objectives that are hidden the first time through). Looks like you always have a healthy range of options for what to do next though, which is nice.

It's definitely the best Game MGS has ever had in terms of world-size and stealth options, but it's way too early to judge it as an overall experience. Apparently I'm only about 4% in, but so far the plot-related stuff has been... intense. Only thing that  made me sad was I can't just hold up a bunch of close guards anymore, the first alerts any others with his noise then they react aggressively rather than waiting to be held up themselves. Makes sense, but makes it a bit harder. Similarly if you Fulton someone while they're asleep they wake up and shout on the way up, alerting anyone who can hear. Even if they're silent, sometimes other guards will see the balloon go off and come take a look.

Old Nehamkin

#13


What a thriiiiiiiillllll...


I've been completely caught up in the hype train for this game, but I've got no PS4 and no money so it'll probably be a good long while before I get my hands on it. I know it's out on PS3 as well, but the idea of playing a shiny new Metal Gear Solid game on a decade old console just doesn't feel right and I fancy Bloodborne as well anyway, so I think I'll just bide my time until I'm not skint as fuck.

Incidentally, why are major releases like this still coming out on last-gen consoles nearly two years after the launch of the PS4/ Xbox One? Is it a sign that advances in game technology/ hardware are finally starting to plateau? I don't really understand much about this stuff.

brat-sampson

Generally it's just a publisher looking to maximise profits. Often this results in restrictions to the game to accommodate the older hardware but the ps4 version of this looks amazing. I think it's also more common from Japanese publishers due to a very slow uptake on new consoles over there (basically the Japanese gaming market is dominated by a massive extent by mobile gaming these days, which is a shame). Persona 5 is also coming out on ps3 but that's less of a powerhouse in the first place. For theat one the ps4 version is almost just a 'remaster' coming out on the same day. Atlas are a good bit smaller than Konami though so fair's fair. The general lack of super spiffy jrpgs is pretty much entirely down to that low uptake vs large budget deal.

I know someone planning to get it on old gen and hope for their sake it's not another Shadows of Mordor, where the older versions had the nemesis system removed entirely and basically should never have been released. My guess is here it's going to be not 1080p, not 60fps and probably longer load times but beyond that basically fine.


Consignia

Quote from: brat-sampson on August 29, 2015, 09:51:20 AM
I think it's also more common from Japanese publishers due to a very slow uptake on new consoles over there (basically the Japanese gaming market is dominated by a massive extent by mobile gaming these days, which is a shame). Persona 5 is also coming out on ps3 but that's less of a powerhouse in the first place.

Yeah, it's very common in Japan for things to be multiplatform. In fact there are several that are developed for PS3, PS4 and Vita, just to hedge bets. Although, I think we'll see a drop off of cross gen games soon, now that the latest games are being started whilst the market has been proven.

brat-sampson

Couple of spoiler-free impressions things.

The day/night cycle is really interesting, mostly because the transitions are pretty fast (like maybe a minute or two in real time) before suddenly everything's dark/light. Also it means guards swap up their patrols and basically you just lose your comfort zone immediately. Either everyone you stashed safe in a dark area is now immediately visible to anyone who might wander by, or where you thought you had a good sense of the battlefield all of a sudden it's dark and they're running around to man various watch towers and the like, turning on lights and being more exploratory. It's been a real rush every time it's come up. Also it tends to make me want to hurry up, which usually just leads to mistakes.

Probably my most memorable moment so far has been being just at the point of completing an objective, the sun came up recently so I'm in a small panic, and from across the map, through a window I watch helplessly as a guy happens to stroll over to the room I'd been using as a body dump for half the zone, open it up and get the !. Just pausing and thinking nononononono... eeeesh, that's bad. Did the mission thing which launched a cut-scene then just had to try and run out of an area on alert as fast as possible, all grace removed. This has been a common motif.

Not sure how I feel about how long base elements take to build, and do find it a bit annoying that it only tracks in-game time, rather than real-time, meaning if you set stuff up that'll take an hour then turn it off, even with the ps4 in rest you come back and there's an hour to go. Also when developing items the time it'll take could be more obvious, I keep assuming it'll be immediate then seeing it at 1%. I don't know if you can check the time remaining either. I'm really hoping the micro-transaction element doesn't have the ability to reduce these and it is restricted to the FOB stuff, but I guess we'll have to wait until servers go up on Tuesday. Same goes for Ground Zeroes transfers and trophy details.

My horse can now poop on command, but my dog can't kill yet.

Thursday

Wait how do you make your horse poop?

Isn't the best thing to do to just Fulton people if you're worried about them getting discovered. Also you do know the cigar will make things skip forward between the day/night cycle. Although I assume that wouldn't stop bodies being discovered. Actually, I've not tried using while safely hidden in a dangerous place yet, don't know if it would stop that happening.

Also my experience of my most missions is getting to discovered at the 2nd last hurdle. So it's not even a case of just running away, I end up having to kill everyone. The checkpointing is very harsh sometimes, it needs to be in a way. But story mission 6 is very long and I'm not sure how often it was saving, thankfully I didn't die until I'd got to a certain event, but if I'd died just before that it might have put me back a very long way.

brat-sampson

Buddies get extra abilities when your bond increases enough. Fultoning works pretty well so long as you're out of the way but I've decided I don't want them unless they can do something to C or higher. I guess given how you can resupply as much as you want really you could just go about removing everyone from the area but that feels a bit cheap :p The cigar skips things forward but as you say I don't know if it'd be a workable plan to try and skip straight back to day/night without enemies doing their thing or risking being spotted. Something to play with maybe.

Agree with the harsh checkpoints, it seems to be based on location rather than actually achieving anything so going from A to B it might save 3 times, but when you've rescued 3/5 people from B then get spotted and reset, you're back standing outside like nothing happened, which is a bit annoying. I've had a couple of bloodbaths but usually Getting to tha Choppah with someone on my back has been the MO. 6 was really intense, and long, and quite hard. Not really looking forward to redoing it for extra objectives/improving my C rank...

I like that the side-ops aren't ranked, so you can Rambo them if you want, but the AI does adapt to your actions and improve over time so you're hurting yourself in the long run. I'm hoping these adaptations apply retroactively as that would make a nice counterpoint to your improved abilities over time when redoing old stuff.

fit bird

For those of you playing early, how do the missions compare to Ground Zeroes?
More or less difficult?
Are the actual levels better?


Fuck me I can't wait.

brat-sampson

#21
I'd say most of the main story missions I've played are at least as long as the main Ground Zeroes mission, with some being quite a bit longer. The map's an open world, but basically it's littered with enemy encampments ranging from 3 guys standing around a tent to full-on bases/plants etc. I'm not sure I'd say any of these individually have been quite as big as Camp Omega, but they've come close, with easily 20-25 guards patrolling around multi-layered structures with hidden blueprints or caches of materials you can locate by interrogating folks. AI seems a good bit better than in GZ too with people spotting you at 60-70m if you're anything other than prone/crawling.

I never played GZ on Hard so don't know how bad it got but I'd say if you want to turn off the UI and reflex options you can make things pretty tough for yourself. The buddies do a lot to mitigate this though, with abilities like being able to sense specific enemies from large distances or go distract/take out people you would rather weren't there anymore. They do a good job of having different buddies be good for different things, with DDog making a couple of side-ops where you're trying to find things a bit of a joke whereas Quiet's good for larger-scale base infiltrations and can save you sometimes if you can't get a reflex off in time. The horse is basically just for getting from A to B in a reasonable time from what I can tell but seeing as you can freely sub buddies in and out of the battlefield, it makes for a good amount of options and lets you play situations to their strengths as they come up. Mission variety's been pretty good and there's always a fair chance in a story mission it'll get mixed up half-way through and you'll have to think on your toes.

Thursday

It's similar to Far Cry in a way. A lot of the missions (perhaps more so in side-ops where they reuse a lot of the bases) are like the enemy outposts. You scan the scene, tag enemies with your binoculars. Make your plan and then have it instantly fall apart so you just go Rambo on everyone.

One thing that makes it tricky is that enemies get wise to the fact that  you're tranquilizing everyone, even if they haven't spotted you. If it's just one soldier, it's usually okay. But after that they stop just assuming everyone's randomly falling asleep on the spot.

ArchieGemmel

I've played 20 hours so far and am really enjoying it.

The open world stuff works really well, giving you lots of angles of infiltration where you plan a really sneaky path which gets ballsed up when you get spotted by a guard you didn't notice. There's not too much busy work with the sub-missions.

The fact that you only tend to get cut-scenes at the end of each main mission is good as they're pretty short but often pretty cool.
Spoiler alert
Thinking in particular of one involving a helicopter and a jet.
[close]

i like the idea of Mother Base but some of the side tasks you have to do feel a bit under explained, or maybe I'm not paying attention.

Diamond Dog is fucking cool as well, very helpful in the field.

Bhazor

I can't play it myself as my PC is ghetto chic. But might get a PS4 for it when I get a new place. Anyone spotted any "Fuck you Konami" moments like how you could erase Kojima's games in Ground Zeroes? I've heard rumours the diamonds were added just to fuck over Konami's micro transactions.

How do you get precum out of a Dualshock 4?

Bobby Digital ticking away.

I replayed GZ today, I mustn't have watched the whole post credits cut scene when I first done it and therefore never actually unlocked the side ops. Dunce. Absolutely loved it this time round. I've watched some Let's Play stuff and listened to all the Cane and Rinse podcasts on the previous games and read loads of Wiki to get me up to speed. I'm falling in love. I've also had Here's To You on a loop, it's so perfect. Proper no man's land anthem. What a time to be alive. I also really love how much variety there is in that Camp Omega playground, there are so many things to do and interact with in different ways. I'm really happy to hear that PP is going down the gameplay heavy route rather than laying the cut scenes on thick. The variety and freedom in GZ is a revelation to me. Also, calling for the chopper when you're grabbing a prisoner and hot footing it with bullets flying around you and then you hear Flight of the Valkyries and you pop a bone through the fourth wall and your telly. Throw him on and then start spraying bullets at the miserable ants below. It's my dream night out.

brat-sampson

Can confirm: If your mark gets into a vehicle, but you manage to Fulton the vehicle before he gets it going, it counts as successful extraction.

Thursday

I've just unlocked the fulton that can do heavy vehicles, so now I might just drive around forever with D-Dog by my side and not bother with the rest of the game.

That's an interesting theory about the Diamonds, I've never found myself short on cash, perhaps in part thanks to them, but even without them I think I'd probably be alright. It's shortage of other resources that are currently slowing me down from building more. The microtransactions might also be for speeding up the construction of things. So far it's never been unreasonable, and after all there was already a similar system in place with Peace Walker, but it is an area where you could see it working a bit like the donuts in Simpsons Tapped Out.

Thursday

I wonder how quickly you could burn through this game if you were an idiot. It delights me how low my completion percentage is, but then I think Ground Zeroes and the side ops will add to that, plus I think higher rankings count towards the completion percentage too. I keep trying to put off doing story missions to prolong this as much as I can. I was almost disappointed to have unlocked Africa so soon. Even though it's so much bigger than any previous MGS.

brat-sampson

Right, so they've turned on the servers. Meaning we can talk FOBs for real, as they actually are in the release version.

First, an FOB or 'Forward Operating Base' serves only one function for anyone playing the single-player campaign, it improves the rate you receive resources. You can build one for free (or a cost of 0 Mother Base (MB) coins). It looks like an extra tab in your base construction page, where you choose to add extra platforms to your base in different departments etc and by an extra tab, I mean it's an entirely independent buildable replica of Mother Base just located somewhere else. Full base upgrades are available for it and these cost the same amount/take just as long as they did on the original. The difference is these FOBs can only be used if you play online, because they add in a whole new feature to the game, that of invading other people's FOBs. When playing online you can send a strike team out onto the internet basically to try and harvest materials from other folks' FOBs. They might be playing the game at the time, be made aware this is happening and go play at taking your force out. You can also go along yourself and play at invading other people's bases, dealing with their security forces etc. When there you can extract their staff, steal their materials and if you make it to the Command Center of the platform/area you basically get to take everyone on board. This is what those bloody locked doors are about on Mother Base. To prevent folks nicking your shit you can assign staff to a Security force, meaning they'll defend your FOB and also develop security elements, cameras, turrets, tilt-sensors (so you know if a crate's being Fulton'd etc) etc. There's a whole menu where you can manage security on FOB platforms, down to highlighting specific areas to be heavily monitored within a platform, placement of security stuff, the lot. It's pretty deep. By building up the FOB you increase it's gathering potential and also the sheer size of the thing. Mother Base is frankly, fucking huge. Multiple 10-story platforms with staircases, pipes, boxes, resources, sneaking points etc, it's been designed as a competitive playground as much as anything else, they look like pretty fun shooting gallery areas. I guess it all comes down to an age-old risk/reward type of thing where if it's bigger you get more, but it's going to be harder to defend against Sneaky Petes.

You can even get multiple FOBs, and have a number of Mother Bases under your emblem collecting resources and being built up etc. I should note this build-up takes a significant amount of time/effort even for just the one,regular base, let alone that in addition to an FOB or multiple ones... Problem is this costs money. Like actual money. Remember how the first FOB cost you 0 MB coins? Here's the menu for a second (different areas have different gathering potential for the various materials, so I guess the pricier ones give higher rewards):



And MB coins can *only* be obtained by buying them with real money. Here's the PSN page for the uk:



So it's about £8 for a 2nd/3rd/etc-th FOB. Personaly my view on this is Fuck This. Luckily I can't see any reason I'd want more than one, if I even choose to play online and use the one I have anyway.

Now when you boot up it tries to log in automatically and you have to accept a TOS. In game, the first thing I noticed was that playing online makes the iDroid more sluggish seeing as it has to access the server to show you anything with an online component. It does this on Staff Management, on combat team deployment, resource management, base management etc. Also there's now a thing called PF points which I guess you gain from successful infiltrations and can be used to outright buy A+ rank staff and bulk materials.

The good news seems to be MB coins aren't used for anything truly insidious. They can't speed up development timers, can't buy you more stuff in place of the regular currency etc. All they do is let you build an entire extra version of Mother Base to defend and collect from, which hopefully wont be necessary. I can already see the costs of some top-level platforms and tbh it's not that extortionate. The build times are becoming a real pain in the ass, (currently checking to see if playing online means those might run down in real actual time vs play-time) but nothing about the online stuff changes that.

Me out.