Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

[34scell]

MGS1 is just a dumbed down MG2. Kojima had to move a lot of the actual gameplay changes over to the next game because the PS1 was so shit.

 

[Trotsky]

FFS the morons complaining about MGS1's controls are the same retards that complain about the real Resident Evils and Silent Hills possessing "tank controls". The movement is entirely fine. Literal 9 year olds played these games in the 90s without the controls being an issue. Is a 9 year old from the 90s smarter than you? Apparently.

Children never played any of the games you mentioned because they catered to an older and more mature audience. That's the difference between gaming then and now genres and demographics were mostly segregated. The comparison is moot anyway because I don't recall specific control schemes being a major feature of the MGS experience. Gameplay and graphics always were and Kojima understood that hence Twin Snakes. Most of the crap associated with Twin Snakes is Kojima's fault anyway Silicon Knights wanted an updated clone of the original but Kojima insisted they add something new. My main point is that the good still far outweighs the bad making the game worthwhile.

You sound an awful lot like these game journalists we like to laugh about. Obsolete Game, enjoyable experience, only hipsters could like it because their hipsters? I have to thank you that you made it possible that I finally could say fucking newfags.

I'm defending an obscure remake more than a decade old against unwarranted charges of being shit. I'm not sure who taught you reading comprehension but you should get a refund. Games are crap today partially because they cater to the proverbial audience of one chasing dumb trends and phantom audiences. What I'm arguing is entirely different.

 

[Phage]

Children never played any of the games you mentioned because they catered to an older and more mature audience. That's the difference between gaming then and now genres and demographics were mostly segregated. The comparison is moot anyway because I don't recall specific control schemes being a major feature of the MGS experience. Gameplay and graphics always were and Kojima understood that hence Twin Snakes. Most of the crap associated with Twin Snakes is Kojima's fault anyway Silicon Knights wanted an updated clone of the original but Kojima insisted they add something new. My main point is that the good still far outweighs the bad making the game worthwhile.

The design doc for MGS2 literally says that "middle school children and independent adults" are the market segment for MGS games.

Again, I've explained over and over precisely why the MGS2 controls and engine additions dampen the experience, making it far easier on multiple levels (and it was never a particularly hard game). You've completely missed the point that was laid out like 3 times now.

 

[Drakron]

No, you are defending what was pretty much Nintendo paying a "special edition" for the GC, it was done when MGS1 was still very playable in the PS2.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Children never played any of the games you mentioned because they catered to an older and more mature audience.

Are you for real?

 

[Bigg Boss]

Metal Gear Solid isn't obsolete. Crazy talk. Twin Snakes does have the updated control scheme which can be nice, but it also breaks a few boss fights. I suppose it is a good way to play the game for people that prefer a somewhat inferior version as opposed to the best entry in the series. Honestly I can't trust a person's opinion if they even recommend that shit. A fucking retardo tag might be a good idea actually.

 

[DDZ]

 

[Trotsky]

The design doc for MGS2 literally says that "middle school children and independent adults" are the market segment for MGS games.

Again, I've explained over and over precisely why the MGS2 controls and engine additions dampen the experience, making it far easier on multiple levels (and it was never a particularly hard game). You've completely missed the point that was laid out like 3 times now.

You originally said nine year olds but now moved onto "middle school kids". Not to nitpick but I can't imagine a pimple faced 7th grader getting his first boner being interested in something with heavy political and philosophical content. Even from a gameplay standpoint stealth games are too slow paced for that crowd. I'm sure there were exceptions but I'd put the target demographic at sixteen and up.

I'm aware of your position but the added changes enhanced the experience at least for me. Sons of Liberty was panned for its story/characters NOT its gameplay and graphics. MGS Twin Snakes was fan service and a nice way to revive the original. Not sure why that generates so much hate compared to the far worse things Kojima has done to MGS.

No, you are defending what was pretty much Nintendo paying a "special edition" for the GC, it was done when MGS1 was still very playable in the PS2.

Maybe so but the leap in technology from the N64/Ps1 era to the Ps2/GC/Xbox era was pretty massive. Games from that period still look and play well nowadays. Subsequent leaps just haven't been as impressive considering 1080p and 60FPS isn't the industry norm despite being doable in the early 2000s. Things have stagnated despite the HD veneer.

 

[tripedal]

Spoiler

 

[Jick Magger]

Hookay, so due to work and personal commitments, I haven’t had much time to play this over the past two weeks, but I just finished the game tonight, and here are my impressions overall. I haven’t really caught up with the thread that much, so forgive me if I mention points that’ve been brought up before.


The Good:


Controls are great, definitely the best in the series.


The huge amount of attention paid to variety ensures that there’s a dozen different ways to tackle any mission. Really appreciate how the way ranking works and the side-ops are done encourage you to experiment with all of your options.


Lots of really powerful and well-done scenes in the game.

Spoiler

Quiet’s departure, Paz’ final diary entry, and you having to mercy kill your infected staff in particular

Was worried before release that Kojima’s brand of weird, quirky humor would clash with the dark content he intended to cover, but overall it was handled fairly well for the most part.


Soundtrack is great, as usual. The in-house OST works really well and the period music does help to set the tone.


VA is top-notch. Had a lot of apprehensions about Keifer in this, but he really pulled the whole thing off.


Lots of easter eggs and little tidbits for old fans of the series, really appreciated that.


The Bad:

Both main missions and side-ops get pretty formulaic pretty quickly, and there are a lot of both. Really feel that they could’ve experimented more with them, but save for a few exceptions, they get fairly samey fairly quickly, though as I said, you can get plenty of replay value out of them if you’re the type to experiment with how to do things.


Codec conversations have been on the decline since MGS4, so I’m not all that surprised that they’ve been removed from this game. Still sad to see them go for good.


The game moves slowly where it really shouldn’t have to. Having to manually call in a helicopter, find a helipad, get on board the chopper, and wait for its 20 or so second liftoff just to accept a mission because the game won’t let you do it from the base itself is an unnecessary chore.


The AI’s pretty wonky at times. It’s able to do the most important stuff, so it’s not completely retarded, but there are a lot of holes in it that are fairly easy to exploit.


Quiet utterly trivializes the game. Short on MB Staff? Give her the tranq rifle and watch with amazement as she clears out entire bases of A+, leaving you to just mop things up afterwards, kidnap all the stationed soldiers, and steal everything that isn’t nailed down. Need to extract a prisoner? Give her the regular rifle (or the maxed penetration rifle if you’re near end-game and facing exclusively armored enemies), and tell her to fire at will, leaving you an opening to just strut in the base and get the guy out while all the enemy sentries are focused on her.

Spoiler

Just don’t get too reliant on her if you’re wanting to clear all the end-game missions, unless you’re wearing the butterfly emblem constantly

That fucking jeep scene. Two middle aged men sitting in the back seat of a car with the idle animation of one of them making it look like he’s desperately trying to ignore the other, with inappropriately bombastic music plays in the background. 10/10, best representation of an awkward car ride with your step-dad ever.


The Ugly

The story is an utter fucking mess. Not as bad as MGS4, but it’s a real shambles. Broadly speaking, the first chapter of the game is tedious, poorly paced, lacking proper exposition (I’ll get to this again later), and with a shallow villain

Spoiler

Who’s goals and actions are only fleshed out after he’s already dead, in optional side-content

. The second chapter is basically just a series of epilogues that have great individual moments, but has no real overarching story to link any of them together, with one being left as a pretty huge dangling plot thread, so at best they just feel…random. A lot of the character-specific content of the second chapter could’ve easily been made part of the first chapter, and it would’ve left both parts of the game stronger for it. Yes, I know that the second half was supposed to be resolved and the mission for it was cut, but I can’t give kudos to Kojima for something that ultimately still isn’t in the final game. The final mission isn’t even really an ending, it’s just another plot twist that doesn’t act to tie the whole game up or anything.


I’ll admit, the codec conversations and cutscenes in the prior games were a clumsy way to handle exposition, often resulting in 10-15+ minutes made up of nothing but floating heads talking to one another about shit necessary to make the plot progress, but holy shit is it better than forcing the player to go on binge-listens through mountains of optional audio cassette tapes if they want to understand exactly what the fuck is going on.


If you hated base-building in Peace Walker, then congratulations, because you’re gonna re-live that hatred all over again here! Only real consolation is that staff morale is basically a non-issue now, so you don't have to worry about maintaining a fucking cafeteria anymore.


Basically all the new characters in the game bar Quiet are pretty boring. Skull-Face had the potential to be a proto-Solidus, but his plan is too nonsensical to really take seriously and not enough time is really given to him in the actual game

Spoiler

Re: not in cassette tapes only released after he’s already dead

that he’s really just a waste. Code-Talker’s just dull, really no other way to tell it.


The whole ‘men become demons’ thing is really a great big marketing lie. Big Boss never goes over the deep end in the game,

Spoiler

Yes, I know, I’ll talk about that later

, and with Miller

Spoiler

The worst he really does in the game is to Huey, who is later revealed to be guilty of nearly everything he was accused of and is essentially one of the most despicable, cowardly characters in the whole series, and Quiet, who is eventually revealed to have been exactly what he accused her of, and the only reason she didn’t wipe them all out is because she fell in love with Big Boss.

, other than that, he’s arguably as moral as ever, he’s just a grumpy asshole now instead. Miller has his big spiel about how they’re gonna shove their noses in bloody battlefield dirt and how they’re gonna play every dirty trick in the book and how they’re gonna become damned forever in their drive for revenge, and here’s the grand total of what they do in the game:

Spoiler

· Rescue POW’s

· Aid the Mujahedeen against the Soviets, who’re building a nuclear apocalypse machine

· Save child soldiers and try to reintegrate them into society by giving them a home and free education

· Save the environment

· Try to improve the lives of people in impoverished, third world countries.

· Save the world from a parasite that would’ve killed billions of people

· Saved the world from a nuclear apocalypse

· Murder a man who planned to kill billions and control the world via magic nanomachine shenanigans

· Spare the life of a man who was directly involved with the destruction of the original Mother Base, tried to use his two-year old son as a Guinea pig for his nuclear apocalypse machine, murdered his wife by inaction when she tried to object to this, tried to sell Big Boss out again even after they let him back in, and was directly responsible for the deaths of dozens of Mother Base staff when he tried to kill them all again.

· Try to make the perfect burger

Yeah, real turn to the dark side, there.


A majority of the missions in Chapter 2 are rehashes of the levels from the first chapter. Not DMC4 “same levels, but with different cutscenes and character”, it’s literally the same level with upgraded enemies and modifiers attached. While admittedly some of the modifiers are interesting (for instance, the SUBSISTENCE modifier, which forces you to procure all your equipment on-site), the most commonly used one is the EXTREME modifier, which just buffs the damage of all the enemies because fuck you.


It ain’t a MGS game if there isn’t some kind of retcon, and boy oh boy does this game shovel them on in the final mission.

Spoiler

I was never the fan of the ‘imposter’ theory, so I was surprised when I found out the game handled the twist a whole lot better than I expected, but it still annoyed me somewhat. On top of the stuff I mentioned earlier about Big Boss never truly going over to the dark side, now on top of that this entire adventure was somewhat pointless because it was never even Big Boss to begin with. What should have been an extremely straight-forward turning to the dark side plot is just convoluted by Kojima’s fervent desire to shove a plot-twist in for what feels like the sake of it.

Conclusion: It’s the best, most disappointing game of the year for me. Mostly solid gameplay with a lot of well-done individual moments, that’s brought down by an utter mess of an overarching plot.

 

[The Bootymancer]

Greetings.

 

[Bahamut]

Quick question for MGS1: PSX or PC version?
Last time i played this game like 15 years ago, MGSV for now costs to much potato and still i need to beat MGS3 first

 

[CptMace]

heavy political and philosophical content

Ahahahahahahah

 

[Cromwell]

I still have to play this so please spoiler, but I will still ask. Is there really a retcon or are people just retarded and whatever twist there is fits in perfectzly with the story people just didnt realize it?

 

[The Bootymancer]

I still have to play this so please spoiler, but I will still ask. Is there really a retcon or are people just retarded and whatever twist there is fits in perfectzly with the story people just didnt realize it?

It's a "soft" retcon in that it adds stuff to the story that definitely wasn't there before but it doesn't outright change anything from previous games or contradict anything in later games.

I haven't finished it yet so I've been avoiding this thread out of spoiler fear but the twist is the most telegraphed thing since KotOR 1's Revan reveal lmao

 

[Ebonsword]

FFS the morons complaining about MGS1's controls are the same retards that complain about the real Resident Evils and Silent Hills possessing "tank controls". The movement is entirely fine. Literal 9 year olds played these games in the 90s without the controls being an issue. Is a 9 year old from the 90s smarter than you? Apparently.

Not sure you quite understand the issue. I played (and beat) MGS1 when it first came out. But, going back to it 17 years later, it's obvious to me that gaming controls have moved on substantially since then.

It's like trying to drive a Model T after being used to driving a modern car. Sure, you can learn to drive it, but most people won't find the effort worth it.

 

[The Bootymancer]

Not sure you quite understand the issue. I played (and beat) MGS1 when it first came out. But, going back to it 17 years later, it's obvious to me that gaming controls have moved on substantially since then.

especially in the sense that they have been perfected in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, the best game ever made.

 

[Somberlain]

The only parts where MGS1 controls really suck are the Sniper Wolf fights.

 

[CptMace]

The only parts where MGS1 controls really suck are the Sniper Wolf fights.

 

[MrRichard999]

The design doc for MGS2 literally says that "middle school children and independent adults" are the market segment for MGS games.

Again, I've explained over and over precisely why the MGS2 controls and engine additions dampen the experience, making it far easier on multiple levels (and it was never a particularly hard game). You've completely missed the point that was laid out like 3 times now.

So is this what you are doing instead of school work

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

Just finished Missions 45 and 46. As fun as the core mechanics are, I'm pretty disappointed at the game on the whole. I found it to be the weakest MGS game among the 5 mainline titles. My main issues were as follows:

Fulton: Stealth design is undermined by the amount of fultoning a player is encouraged to do, even with volunteers. The ability to remove enemy soldiers permanently from the map should absolutely have a large penalty attached, but the game mindbogglingly does not, outside of negligible GMP costs. I held out on fultoning soldiers for as long as I could, but I fell too far behind on key items by doing so. For someone who used to replay older MGS titles to achieve the Big Boss equivalent ranks, every single fulton extraction made me feel dirty due to being conditioned to ghost as much of the previous games as possible.

Lack of Resource Management: A somewhat unique aspect to MGS 1-3 compared to many stealth games is that one's inventory persists for (almost) the entire length of the game, and there are no mission breaks to refill one's stock. For instance, during my first time through MGS1, I wasn't too careful with Chaff Grenades and Rations, and as a result, the Rex fight was like running into a brick wall. MGS4 began moving away from this design, and with TPP, this entire mechanic is thrown out of the window and the game is not adequately balanced to compensate for it; the unlimited supplies combined with the fulton and buddy system make most missions pushovers (apart from Mission 45).

I want to comment about those two things you mentioned here.

I can't get why the Fulton system should have a penalty attached to it besides the GMP that costs. The game partially based on improving the Mother base, and getting soldiers is one of the thing that the player must do if he wants to improve faster. That means that the game must encourage the fultoting if it wants the player wasting his time on fultoning. And which is that incentive? Make the infiltration easier. Its more easier to go in when you haven't to care about those bodies you are leaving sleeping or dead. I think is fine as it is planted.

About the resource management, is true that you haven't to care constantly about your gear (And that's why the subsistence missions feels so special). But the system is planted in a different way that the other MGS games. Now the difficult comes more from the situations themselves instead of the player's gear. For example, in this game you have "unlimited" ammo, and an assault rifle with a red dot sight and silencer will be more usefull that a generic assault rifle, but those things matters little when enemies with helmets and armors appears. Enemies that one shot in their protected parts will alarm the entire base. Even if you use a silencer. That said, the experience that the game wants to bring it's very different that the experience offered by the other MGS games.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

I just picked up Quiet.

Past few missions have been disappointing. Feels like the game doesn't want me to stealth any more and throws in things I have to explode my way through. I know there may be stealthy ways to blow up a tank or a helicopter but right now I can't research anything better than ye olde grenade launcher, so I have to go loud on those missions and hope for the best.

 

[Outlander]

And which is that incentive? Make the infiltration easier.

His point is that 'fultoning' is kind of like a cheat system in which you make enemy soldiers magically vanish, and that the enemies seem completely oblivious to all the balloons shooting up to the sky.

 

[Martius]

Well, its not like enemies completely ignore balloons. If they are close they can shoot them, from bigger distance it can be cause of alarm.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

His point is that 'fultoning' is kind of like a cheat system in which you make enemy soldiers magically vanish, and that the enemies seem completely oblivious to all the balloons shooting up to the sky.

Enemies will notice of the ballons if they're enough close, I lived that.

And I get his point. But simply I can't understand why the player should be penalized for fultoning when the game is, partially, about fultoning things to improve the Mother base AKA get better gear to try new infiltration types. The game should penalise the player for not fulton things, and that is what the game does. If the player doesn't fulton, the he would have to deal with the sleeping guards and the dead bodies that he's leaving through the map, like in the older MGS. Also, fultoning gives more sense to sleeping with the tranquilizer gun or by choking soldiers instead of killing them.