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

[Consignia]

Metal Gear Online was developed by a different team, and probably comes more from a requirement for Konami to monetise after the initial sale than Kojima's vision of Metal Gear.

[Old Nehamkin]

Did a big laugh at

Spoiler alert

the "To Be Continued" at the end of mission 28. Reminded me of the bit from the Simpsons- "Chief Wiggum P.I. will return... right now!"

[close]

[Consignia]

Did a big laugh at

Spoiler alert

the "To Be Continued" at the end of mission 28. Reminded me of the bit from the Simpsons- "Chief Wiggum P.I. will return... right now!"

[close]

It does allow you to have a break between two hard missions and piss off to Fulton extract bears and zebras to your heart's content instead of proceeding. Frankly I was glad of the respite.

[kittens]

just did the one where the skulls jump out of a lorry
those cunts are so scary i hate them

[Consignia]

A pain in the arse to kill as well. The thing that irritated me most about this game, and was pretty much the reason for abandoning Peace Walker; bloody bullet sponge bosses.

[kittens]

i just run the fuck away from them, no way i'm taking them on without a honeybee

[fit bird]

Metal Gear Online seems almost impossible. Half the time it seems like sheer luck whether I'll punch somebody or whether I'll be warped back 10 feet and strangled to death by the guy I thought I was punching.

[Undercoverman]

Well, I'm all done... 'Complete' (as in, I know the truth). It's true that the first chapter is much better than the second but the story has enough inertia to keep you interested. Leaving aside anything involving our favourite mute, one mission in particular during chapter 2 was every bit as emotionally intense as anything that came before it. The capacity for the game to surprise never really lets up although the frequency of expansive, game-changing choices being made available slows down markedly. There is a period during the first third of the game where it seems like it couldn't possibly introduce any new mechanics and yet it does, over and over again in impressively inventive ways. Also, surprisingly, I found myself enjoying some of the oddly well considered little touches in the story which are delivered through the cassettes... although my patience for Code Talker's excruciatingly slow delivery all but expired by the end.

So now I'm exploring the replay value (while unashamedly wearing the butterfly) and looking at clearing out the remaining unlocks. I'm so glad I stayed away from anything relating to the story until I finally got a chance to play it myself. I don't think any game will get close to that moment of finding out what's going down at Ngumba. That'll live with me for a long time, and made the whole thing worthwhile by itself.

[Consignia]

...one mission in particular during chapter 2 was every bit as emotionally intense as anything that came before it....

Yeah, I loved that mission. I was expecting it be a

Spoiler alert

zombie survival horror section

[close]

, when it turns it's actually a

Spoiler alert

heart wrenching mission about having to take drastic action. The bit were you are shooting them while they salute you is probably one of the best sequences in the series

[close]

. I would have loved the game to have had a few more event missions like that in the game, but I suspect they just didn't have time before Kojima was ousted.

[Paul Calf]

i just run the fuck away from them, no way i'm taking them on without a honeybee

Spoiler alert

Quiet

[close]

is very good for killing Skulls.

Spoiler alert

Run away, hide, let Quiet drain their armour and pop out with a rocket launcher every now and again.

[close]

[Consignia]

Just been pissing around with this whilst I'm between games. Doing Side Ops really with different toys and stuff. It's actually quite just to piss around and raid a base for nothing more than a few extra soldiers. Putting the 80's mix tape on really adds a dimension. I think one of my favourite things was causing a great big ruckus in Afghanistan Central base and escaping via fulton on a container to the sound of "Take on me".

I really wish it had a new game plus mode, though. I'd love to go through the game with a clean slate but with the level of Development I've got now.

Spoiler alert

and having Quiet back would be nice

[close]

.

[The Boston Crab]

I suppose I'm pretty much done with this. I saved the lockable (butterfly) mission until last while I replayed most of the regular game and carried on with the management meta stuff, which I found really addictive, but I had an urge to finally see everything and I thought it was the most affecting part of the game. I loved what Mission 46 did and I enjoyed the post-endgame in that context. I think it's a great way to justify why the game can continue at all, but I wish it had been delivered more succinctly. You get me, I'm trying to avoid spoilers here. Anyway, great idea and explains a lot of the common complaints about Kiefer, even if there were also other reasons for this.

The mission before, my last, was the real kicker for me, though. Again, I found the actual gameplay less inspiring and antithetical to the way I'd tried to play, but the denouement was very moving and I really felt the key theme of the game hit me hard, especially in the hour or so which I played immediately afterwards. It's also effectively finished my interest in playing much more, due to the feelings it's given me. I don't think Kojima has totally justified his 'something unique to the medium' claims (if this is even it) but I've seldom felt so keenly the power of games and it does justify why for me it's the greatest of the mass media. I suppose the mission on the medical platform was also working in similar and powerful areas. Only stuff like Solaire and Sif/Artorias are at this level, though the latter is the greatest example of this idea, by far.

Well for all its peculiar quirks, foibles and absolute fuck ups, this has been the best game I've played this year by some distance. This has the best mechanics and feel of anything I've played outside of primo Nintendo. The game engine is extraordinary. The sense of creative excitement you feel with so many tools and options available is, for me, unrivalled in action games. The sense of attachment to NPCs was unexpectedly moving and the cassettes and Kojima humour were extra treats for the true believers. I also have to say that Midge Ure's version of The Man Who Sold The World is better than the original, and equal to Here's To You as the best use of licensed music in a game.

I should also say that MGO is cack. FOBs/online elements are pure Farmville/timelocked bullshit. Chapter 2 shouldn't have even existed, just whack the few real missions into Chapter 1 and make the replay shit NG+. There's two gaping plotholes which are only filled in the incomplete Collector's Edition DVD, which is atrocious, and the main expected plot point about BB simply does not exist anywhere! Now that Kojima has finally gone on gardening leave, will we ever see its like again?

[The Boston Crab]

Well, you can get back a particular character if you do a particular thing after the new patch. I'm cumming so hard while sprinting into the sea and eating my own ass.

[Consignia]

The latest patch has just added (Spoiler for you know what, but just in case)

Spoiler alert

Quiet back in if you replay her recruitment mission 7 times.

[close]

Just in time for no one to care now the Fallout 4 time sink has arrived.

EDIT: Fake Edit, sorry Bosto got there first, but I already typed it and I'll be damned if I'm just discarding it.

[Undercoverman]

Emblem's coming off tonight.

Have to say the requirements for some of the new gear introduced with the latest patch are ridiculous and unless you've been logging in on the right days, you won't have enough free MB coins to get there and you'll need to actually spend real money to buy another FOB in some new waters. I won't be doing that as none of the gear is really that essential, but because I'm starting to get into the FOBs now I've been eyeing it up. I'm at a point where I'm moving up the grades and beginning to experience the competitive side of things. If you stay in the minnow leagues and decide not to build nukes, chances are you'll just be left in peace.

It is very, very hard to infiltrate the higher-ranking bases until you learn the tricks, and if the challenge has expired from the single player for you then the FOBs are where it's at. The latest patch introduces new defensive measures which are going to change things up once again. My raids of derring-do on the unsuspecting PFs in my bracket are fast becoming the stuff of... annoyance. So much so, my base has been tested a few times and I've lost some good staff. There are no second chances, no checkpoints when doing a raid and it is extremely tense. If you send someone other than Snake, you run a risk of losing them permanently if you get killed but that sweet non-Snake multiplier is tempting. I've switched to custom chopper music for maximum morale boost and it will play as you're about to jump the wormhole into an opponent's base. Nervous tension ahoy!

Concerning the whole ruse cruise/chapter 3 community... I am yet to see anything that would suggest that it is anything other than chasing a phantom and it plays right into Konami's hands. Maintaining interest in a game with hints of hidden content, a game which has its longevity tied to a multiplayer model which is only going to further encourage microtransactions, is downright dastardly. Clearly there's interest in a nuclear event and the conditions regarding the hidden disarmament cutscene have now been made explicit, but Konami have changed up the FOB scene to such an extent it feels a little exploitative to further complicate efforts to get there - especially so when it encourages further spending. Kojima's a trickster but I think even he would draw the line at dropping hints for more hidden content while Konami continue to bilk customers. There are already traces of more development items to come in future patches and it seems we're a long way from the end yet.

[The Boston Crab]

I was happy to pay for a second FOB way back when to help with R&D and Intel but they've had enough from me now. I understand that they want to extend the game's lifespan but twelve days and 9m GMP or whatever for new item development is a pisstake, especially as they've patched out farming resources, basically. I've enjoyed the game more than any other this year, I enjoyed the story and characters enormously despite the incomplete elements (A.Q.E & the subsequent PP made me feel something games never have before, nor any other medium, because they can't). It's mechanically and imaginatively absolutely spectacular but Konami really can go fuck themselves now. The way they've constantly shifted the goalposts with the microtransactions and online/offline elements smacks of opportunistic deceit. I'm not actually annoyed, I'm just drawing a line there. FOBs are exciting but very limited and MGO is instant AIDS. Honk me if they release Chapter 3. X

[Bhazor]

I have to wonder about how much Kojima and team were involved in the decision to add micro transactions. I mean colour me a shill but I've never seen Kojima Studios as money grabbing.

A pain in the arse to kill as well. The thing that irritated me most about this game, and was pretty much the reason for abandoning Peace Walker; bloody bullet sponge bosses.

Funnily enough I thought the mansion Sniper fight and the Airport fight were two of the best missions in the game.

It's certainly not in the same league of bullshit as the twenty or so god damn Tank side op missions in Peacewalker. Now those were bullshit. I still like the Gear battles in Peace Walker but the tanks are just so tedious especially with the two dozen foot soldiers accompanying them.

[Paul Calf]

EDIT: Already bindun

[Bored of Canada]

Started playing this recently. Just met Quiet, then immediately modded her to have some clothes.

PERSONAL COMPUTERS ARE BRILL.

[niat]

This is currently £24.85 on the XBone and PS4 at Simply Games.

One for the game bargains thread? Shall I get it, or should I be realistic and realise that Fallout 4 is the only thing I'm going to be playing for a long time?

[The Boston Crab]

Arguably the greatest example of versatile game mechanics in the history of video games. Yeah, about two thirds through, if you've developed every weapon and so on you'll feel pretty OP but it doesn't even matter, it just means you've got loads more choices of how to approach objectives. Even better, once you start relying on particular tactics and equipment, the enemy will react to counter, e.g. If you always approach at night, they'll start carrying torches and wearing night vision. If you always snipe headshots, they'll equip them with helmets. And so on and so on and so on. It's basically the game you dreamed of as a kid and talked to your mates about. You can find a tape of a soldier who has got the shits and when being hunted down by alerted guards, you can hide in a portaloo and play the tape via your dictaphone speaker so they will leave you alone. You can probably only use this once or twice in the entire game or they'll be suspicious and open the door. You can Fulton out a donkey on a kind of balloon and house it at your animal conservation platform in your base in the Pacific Ocean. You can make your horse shit in the road so that enemy vehicles skid in the shit and the driver will go dizzy. Make your choice.

[Undercoverman]

It is an absolutely fantastic game (probably my favourite of the year) and I'm still playing it. For me, no recent game compares to the undiluted joy of exercising the choices you are given every single moment you play it. The best thing you can do is get out of your comfort zone and try different kit - you're only playing half the game if you're only using half the kit. Once you're satisfied that your base is staffed well enough, or if you don't care about getting into the late game FOB competitive scene, you stop worrying about killing that soldier who might have been an S rank and just start enjoying the game in the hundreds of different ways it offers you. The other day I found out you can stick C4 to people and it doesn't alert them - immediately I started thinking about where that might be useful and tonight I'm going to try to do 'Red Brass' by sticking some C4 to one of the commanders and blowing it once he takes it with him to the meeting place.

[Undercoverman]

Worlds collide!

http://imgur.com/RUWBDP6

[Bhazor]

Only 70% completion but I'm done. The core is fantastic, the best shooting sandbox I've played since Red Faction : Guerrilla. But there's just too much padding in there. 75% of the side ops are pathetic (all the elimination missions) and the only good thing I can say about those missions is you can complete most of them by just ordering an artillery strike. There was also none of the humour or wit you got in Peacewalker side ops or the various VR mission and extended edition packs the previous games got. The management and research part of the Mother Base was great, really added to the core game as you make a detour mid mission to nab that S rank guy you need. Then they ruined it with the online log in rewards which just dumped 200 A+ soldiers on me. Mother Base itself still felt really barren with nothing to do or any one to interact with. Even the Shining Lights mission lacked impact because it doesn't happen on the Mother Base you've been visiting and the soldiers you're meeting don't mean anything to you. Just a bit more dialog, a little procedural biography, even just a Peace Walker style quote would have made it more oomphy. The sandbox also felt a bit dead, there was nothing to differentiate the bases from each other and there were these vast deadzones between bases. The only bases that felt like they had something going on were OKB zero and Central Command. Compared to MGS1-4 it just felt a bit lifeless and lacking in ideas. Like there should be some gimmick for each base, a roaming laundry truck you can use to get around, slip sliding through oil pipes, having to move in time with a generator, guards carrying glass vials of parasites that will break open if they fall to the ground. Just anything to make the individual bases more memorable and to give the guards a bit more to differentiate these cunts over here from those cunts over there.

Its a game that clearly wasn't finished and that I think they should instead of trying to cram in everything they had they should of excised a fair chunk and then spent their time polishing what was left.

It is simultaneously one of the very best games of last year and yet also the most disappointing one.

[Hollow]

Playing this, liking it lots, one problem being the inaccurately named 'Quiet', her humming drives me insane.

Wish you could make her stop.

[AsparagusTrevor]

I've been playing on and off since release (haven't finished it yet) and had a break recently while I played through Until Dawn. I've been taking my time, completing all the Side Ops and developing as much tech as possible. I also made the weird decision very early in the game that I was not going to kill anyone, something I do regret in some of the harder missions but I've come too far as Sissy Snake to change into Psycho Snake now. It's been made easier since developing the silenced tranq sniper rifle.

Playing this, liking it lots, one problem being the inaccurately named 'Quiet', her humming drives me insane.

Wish you could make her stop.

I found the humming annoying at first, but I grew to find it soothing in the more fraught situations, as if she was letting me know she had my back. She did fuck up my no-kill policy a couple of times at first until I got her a tranq rifle.

I personally find D-Dog the most useful buddy though, detecting nearby threats, hostages and collectables on the fly. I don't generally use the Walker but it has helped me out of a couple of particularly nasty Skull encounters. Might get more useful with some development.

[popcorn]

Digging this thread up to ask for advice.

I'm about 15-20 hours into this, and I'm still finding it almost impenetrably confusing and difficult. I don't understand how anyone ever managed to make sense of it. I keep watching YouTube videos of people doing missions I'm struggling with, and they seem to have 10,000 times more amazing equipment than I do. Even when I look up guides and stuff they go into absurdly specific detail about things I don't really care about or find very fun.

I don't understand the base-building stuff. I'm currently fultoning everyone I can, indiscriminately, and then auto-assigning them with R3 in the menu. Am I supposed to be doing something else? It seems a bit boring.

I'm currently sending men on missions completely arbitrarily. Oh, the last mission has finished? OK, let's select the next one on the list, then. I don't understand it or what it's doing or where the skill or fun is. How do you do this?

Can I skip the side ops? I've done a few here and there but I'd rather just crack on with the main stuff.

I'm confused about mission objectives. Sometimes I start a mission and there's no goal point on the map. I just did a side mission where I'm supposed to rescue a prisoner, spent about an hour carefully taking out every soldier in the base, and now can't find this prisoner anywhere. I'd like to interrogate a guard but I don't have the African translation thing yet. I can't find a way of checking in the menu what the mission objective is, or even check the name of the mission to look it up online.

How do you recruit Quiet as a buddy? I've got her on my base, now what?

What the hell is going on? The whole thing feels like a massively technical exercise that can only be operated by trained professionals. I just want the most vanilla, no-stress way of playing the game that enables me to maximise my time sneaking around tranquing people and not worry about the football management sim aspect.

[Shay Chaise]

Ignore the FOB stuff and Mother Base, apart from what it tells you that you have to do. You'll get into it later but it's pretty much a standalone section of the game, besides R&D for new gear.

Play the main missions as they're available. The side stuff is for getting materials and stuff usually. Maybe some blueprints to get new gear.

Try to find every specialist or blueprint once you're aware they're an objective in a mission, that will quickly give you much more choice of gear, which is where it gets really interesting and diverse.

[colacentral]

Funny, I've just started playing this a few weeks ago too and have had some of the same issues as far as how unapologetically confusing the whole thing is. It seems a relatively recent thing (as in, a decade or so) that we live in an age where it's acceptable to throw unexplained symbols at you on the presumption that you'll just instinctively get it. Maybe ushered in by Apple? I like words. The skills of each soldier are a good example, where apart from an obvious one like a medical cross meaning medicine, they're all cryptic until you find the right thing in the right menu. I still don't think I know what all of them mean. It's a bit like playing a new version of Football Manager after a few years except I can't just hover a mouse over everything to see a description.

I find it weird that you say you've played for 15 - 20 hours but it sounds like you're so much ahead of me. I thought the same thing reading similar comments in the old posts on this thread. I have spent sometimes two - three hours on single missions, slowly crawling around for ages scoping areas out only to be discovered, shot to fuck, and forced to restart ages back.

I'm finding travel quite frustrating, especially coming off Zelda where you can just climb anything if you can't be bothered walking all the way around. There was one mission that I put off for ages because the nearest helicopter landing zone was seperated from the mission objective by a long canyon that I had to go miles out of the way to get around.

[Bazooka]

I never finished it, I will go back one day, but it was the same for me spent about an hour on a mission only for things to go south at the end and have to do it all again, in a stealth game(yes you can go full assault) it really made it a bit of a grind.