Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain

GOOD ISN'T IT. Christ.

I love that I'm perfectly happy to spend 40 minutes to an hour replaying one of the very first missions, before I've even got 5 or 6 missions under my belt. I've replayed that Spetsnaz Commander mission and the blowing up comms missions twice, simply because I don't take kindly to getting a C ranking.

It's been said in reviews, but this really does feel so alive. There's nothing sterile about the gameplay - everything's moving, interacting, building the tension, subtly telling you something or contributing to the experience.

You know you're going to love a stealth game when you can't get enough of the animation for dropping from a run into a crawl. Or shooting someone in the face while lying on your back in the long grass.
 
guys if you want to make some fan shirts for yourself at a local store of yours, i made some HQ png's for it

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i suggest the second one with a black shirt, i just deleted the black bacground
 
romagnoli said:
GOOD ISN'T IT. Christ.

I love that I'm perfectly happy to spend 40 minutes to an hour replaying one of the very first missions, before I've even got 5 or 6 missions under my belt. I've replayed that Spetsnaz Commander mission and the blowing up comms missions twice, simply because I don't take kindly to getting a C ranking.

It's been said in reviews, but this really does feel so alive. There's nothing sterile about the gameplay - everything's moving, interacting, building the tension, subtly telling you something or contributing to the experience.

You know you're going to love a stealth game when you can't get enough of the animation for dropping from a run into a crawl. Or shooting someone in the face while lying on your back in the long grass.
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Spot on post.

I spent 5 solid hours on it tonight, and only just started Ep. 5 - taking ages because you can spend 30 mins scoping out and taking down a tiny guardpost with 4 guards in it. And the best bit? Those 30 mins don't ever feel like a waste.
 
i cant get past first afghanistan mission , games just not for me






edit..... discovered the chicken head all is good with the world
 
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dont know if any of you guys have noticed, all of the guys you have fulton back to the base, if you go into the menu and look into there personalities theres quite a few varieties, this game is amazing
 
Best Metal Gear ever without a doubt. I took over 2 hours on a straight forward mission last night only to be awarded an E rating at the end of it - I wasn't impressed!
 
Has Ground Zeroes the same Gameplay like Phantom Pain?

I want to test MGS on PS4 first, to see if I still like it, so I wonder if I can use Ground Zeroes as some kind of Reference?!?
 
we7god said:
Has Ground Zeroes the same Gameplay like Phantom Pain?

I want to test MGS on PS4 first, to see if I still like it, so I wonder if I can use Ground Zeroes as some kind of Reference?!?
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Yes, Ground Zeroes is the first part, Phantom Pain is the second part.

GZ is a great albeit short experience.
 
I would point out that PP has a lot more variety and room for experimentation than GZ, which I felt didn't give you quite enough ways to flummox the enemy.
 
GZ is just one mission, played only once, wasnt really impressed tbh and i really hate open world games since all the games now ow and they just ..flat, i couldnt even really start the last two GTAs because i got bored early so i had fear trying out PP but man, its just addictive, deep, has lot of variety, detailed, has rpg elements and i can not wait for online now. i think the prologue is a bit too long but its a good 1 hour where you get used to the basics. so use GZ just to see the gameplay mechanics and graphics, it doesnt have the real flavour of PP
 
The environments in PP are far more interesting than GZ. But the mechanics are more or less the same i.e. control system etc.

But yes, Phantom Pain is a far more interesting and engrossing experience. GZ is just a taster.
 
With the Witcher the 'gamer' is playing a triple A masterpiece with a great open world so detailed so beautiful so expansive it pulls you in subtly because after all it is high fantasy so there is some natural immersion breaking that is normal.

The perfection that the good men and women of Team Hideo/Konami developers has pulled off with Phantom Pain is just mind blowingly stupidly fuggin awesome MY GOSH!!!!

I feel like I am the Big Boss/Rambo/ Every 80's stereotypical cinema action hero.

Escapism at its finest!!!

And to think Hideo wanted another year of refinement???


What else can be done I just cant stop playing this game.

I go to sleep thinking about my F.O.B
 
I think the game is very good. But that's it. It's far from being a masterwork!

For once, the open world doesn't make much sense. There are some towns and guardposts here and there, but the rest is totally empty and lacking any reason to explore. When having to go from one base to another, you simply spend 10 boring minutes going from A to B and nothing to do in between. When you reach the second big area, there's no big differences, it's just more of the same with small tweaks. It's all a flat experience when you're not infiltrating.

There are tons of things they could have added to make the world richer and give more purpose to have an open world, but I honestly think they rushed it towards the end of the production cycle.

Having clocked +20 hours, I start to feel things get repetitive. There seems to be 4 or 5 templates of missions and that's it. Compared to The Witcher, the world of MGV pales in comparison.

The feeling of repetition is even worse due to the game constantly making you go to the same towns to do similar errants. Once I cleared a whole Base to end a mission, and the next mission took place in the same Base, again, only five minutes later, but the base was populated as if nothing had happened. Awkward.

The gameplay itself is very good, you can accomplish missions in many different ways and that's great, but the AI of the soldiers is not up to the level. Once you get how they all react always the same ways, it kills a bit the joy of infiltration.

On the other side, there are brilliant aspects of the gameplay there, definitely, the core mechanics are very well done and technically is a brilliant work. It's infiltration at its best and the buddies are a great discovery. Other elements like sandstorms are very good ideas that add a lot to the experience.

Finally, the narrative is awakward. 1 hour of intro promising a dense story arch, and then hours without any advance in the storyline. And for what I'm told by a friend who finished the main story, it's by far the worse in the series. It left me a bit worried, don't know what will happend, but it doesn't seem to deliver after the theatrical start of the game.

Let's see if the following hours of gameplay prove those impressions wrong...
 
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It's funny, because I've not played as much of either title but ultimately I'm enjoying the gameplay a hell of a lot more than the Witcher 3. I found TW3 to be slightly above standard RPG fare but nothing more, with pretty clumsy fighting considering we're in the age of the Souls titles. That said, I'm probably only 10, 15 hours into TW3 and find getting back into it a chore. Maybe I'm getting old but I don't miss mucking about with an inventory full of leaves, rusty swords and bits of string. Aspects of the story are great, but let's not forget how much of the gameplay involves going somewhere, getting something and coming back for a reward. Oh, your husband's gone into the woods and not come back? HE'S DEAD YOU FOOL.

Of course there's a certain amount of repetition with the AI - you find that in absolutely any game, and it's essential for stealth gameplay that you know how to manipulate the AI to create openings. But so far, about 10 hours in, it feels to me like the AI is as interesting as I've ever seen in a stealth game. Plus the tension makes it all the more electric to play than something like Arkham Knight.

The story doesn't seem to have advanced a lot, that's certainly true. What does your friend think of the other MGS titles' stories though? Personally I'm finding the lack of story is a blessed relief. A game with absolutely zero story is already better than a title with MGS4's story, for example.


Swings and roundabouts then. It would be good if there was a bit more to do, or if there were some civilians amongst it all in MGS. But I can't get enough of sneaking around the same locations, looking for good soldiers to pick up for my base.
 
Yeah I agree about the AI being incredibly clever in this game; I infiltrated an enemy camp and stupidly triggered an alarm while in a building. The door was open so I waited behind it and when two guards came rushing in I used the throw command and slammed them both into the walls. The following guards halted their approach, raising their hand in the air as if to say stop, and slowly inched forward before going onto one knee and instead of coming in to the building themselves, one of them closed the door which I was standing behind. I could then see the infra outline of their bodies on the outside of the building so could see what they were doing, and one of the guards signalled to the other to climb in through the window to try and catch me out. It was bloody clever mechanics. Obviously he got his head shot off, but I was impressed all the same.
 
romagnoli said:
It's funny, because I've not played as much of either title but ultimately I'm enjoying the gameplay a hell of a lot more than the Witcher 3. I found TW3 to be slightly above standard RPG fare but nothing more, with pretty clumsy fighting considering we're in the age of the Souls titles. That said, I'm probably only 10, 15 hours into TW3 and find getting back into it a chore. Maybe I'm getting old but I don't miss mucking about with an inventory full of leaves, rusty swords and bits of string. Aspects of the story are great, but let's not forget how much of the gameplay involves going somewhere, getting something and coming back for a reward. Oh, your husband's gone into the woods and not come back? HE'S DEAD YOU FOOL.
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Yes, I understand that perfectly. I haven't finished The witcher, yet, and it has its shares of annoyances. But I was refering mostly to the world and the story. In The Witcher 3 you move around and things happen all the time. In MGV it's just acres of desert with nothing to do. Why is there?

romagnoli said:
Of course there's a certain amount of repetition with the AI - you find that in absolutely any game, and it's essential for stealth gameplay that you know how to manipulate the AI to create openings. But so far, about 10 hours in, it feels to me like the AI is as interesting as I've ever seen in a stealth game. Plus the tension makes it all the more electric to play than something like Arkham Knight.
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I agree with that, but I disagree with the AI being amongst the best I've seen. There are some stupid patterns and behaviors that make no sense at all, mixed with brilliant touches. Compared to MG3 there's not a big difference. Maybe it's just that I found the ways to get around them easily, who knows!

romagnoli said:
The story doesn't seem to have advanced a lot, that's certainly true. What does your friend think of the other MGS titles' stories though? Personally I'm finding the lack of story is a blessed relief. A game with absolutely zero story is already better than a title with MGS4's story, for example.
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Me and my friend hated the story of MG4 and find Snake Eater was probably the best in the saga.

Scutch said:
Yeah I agree about the AI being incredibly clever in this game; I infiltrated an enemy camp and stupidly triggered an alarm while in a building. The door was open so I waited behind it and when two guards came rushing in I used the throw command and slammed them both into the walls. The following guards halted their approach, raising their hand in the air as if to say stop, and slowly inched forward before going onto one knee and instead of coming in to the building themselves, one of them closed the door which I was standing behind. I could then see the infra outline of their bodies on the outside of the building so could see what they were doing, and one of the guards signalled to the other to climb in through the window to try and catch me out. It was bloody clever mechanics. Obviously he got his head shot off, but I was impressed all the same.
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I've had one or two instances of brilliance like that one, but most of the time soldiers are mostly unaware of what's happening around, you can decimate an entire base one by one and nobody cares. There are hardly smart patrols, when they hear a sound or even catch a glimpse of you, their behavior is rather silly, just going there, using the lantern and going back.

I had one mission where I was inside a house with only a door, and 8 soldiers came one by one to be stunned, one at a time, as if they couldn't understand that the previous 5 that went in never went out again.

There are hardly any orders or hierarchy between them, only occasionally. They don't use the environment correctly. Many times they won't even get behind cover and very rarely try to flank you!

Maybe I'm doing something wrong??? Or probably I'm doing things too well??
 
Had an odd moment with the AI. I was heading from one base to another (one the mission where they move the prisoner you're after), and there was a mini checkpoint in between. I decided I didn't have time to stealth it, so just took out all the guards.

I shot one in the head, and it took nearly 5 seconds for the guy he was speaking to to react, by which time, he was eating a bullet too.
 
Just incase anyone missed this (I had)

After you first rescue a 'wandering soldier' as a side op mission. Go to your medical platform at mother base. Leave the chopper, run forwards and left a little towards the building, go to the stairs and up 3 levels, go around the right side of the walkway and run into a door that looks like a dead end.

(Or ignore me and watch a YouTube how to)



Though it helps if you played a finished the Ground Zeros game main mission.
 
How did you

defeat the Cobra Unit guys? I was just riding around with my horse and used the sniper rifle and my machine gun, slowly taking them one by one after 2-3 supply drop. was there any particular way to do it by the way? :D
 
I think drekkard summed it up perfectly. I'm at the point now where its just repeating the same variations over and over.

The gameplay is fun which is what keeps me coming back. But its not something ill look back on in a few months time and think "that was amazing". It feels unfinished
 
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