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Now I get why it was mentioned that the latest patch included "an extra ending". Either it includes the cut content, or they'll sell it separately as DLC.
I'm 9 hours in and only just finished the Honey Bee mission. Was pretty entertaining, tried as a ghost at first, but then I just called in air support.
2. The AI
It's pretty bad.
- The combat AI is atrocious when it should be punishing, as this is still a sort of stealth game. It does not even execute basic pin and flank techniques, where one or two soldiers will fire at your location while others rotate around or behind you. Enemies will stand out in the open waiting for you to pick them off one by one, like in my shitty popamole games. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that you have 1) regenerating health and 2) the ability to soak damage. You can engage enemies, take hits, run away and hide behind some rocks where you're practically invincible, rise and repeat. The deadly combination of large spaces in which to operate, shitty AI, weak damage, no reinforcements, and regenerating health completely destroys the combat and makes enemies nonthreatening and boring to fight against.
- The stealth AI is standard shit. It can't be unfair or it would be too frustrating for the average retard. But it goes further. Sometimes enemies will be literally 10m away from you shining a flashlight at you and they won't be able to see you. In general, it is passable. The problem more has to do with level design and the relative lack of enemies rather than any sort of inherent flaws with how the AI operates without alert levels. However, I will say that is is far too easy to fulton enemy soldiers. Tranquilizing guards should be a temporary solution. They are out for a little while, but they are still alive and will start alerting their friends that something is up. With the fulton, you can tranq someone and remove them from the game, removing any need to hide their body or act while they're asleep.
After all I watched on the game today I felt in the duty to respond this. I will post a couple of examples that I experienced.
I was playing a mission. A Enemy sniper spotted me. Raised the alarm. People start to shoot me. They start to attack me with a mortar. Then and enemy chopper appeared. I called Pequod. Then he got demolished in less than 20 seconds. I continued firing and advancing thanks to the support of Quiet. I fight against enemies until the radio guy said there is no more reinforcements available. Then I found a couple of enemies taking cover behind behind things and throwing me grenades. I killed them thanks to Quiet. I was near to die a lot of times in that moment. Other example: A random Camp in the Angola map. I'm surrounded by enemies. They're shooting me from the front and guys with shotguns coming from my back and my sides to kill me. And killed me.
The enemies can be a lot punishers when they want. And about their "camp of vision", there is a lot of things that I noted that affects: The camouflage that I'm using, the hour of the day, the distance and if I'm in grass or not. Sometimes they spot me from a lot of distance, sometimes they're looking at me with a flashlight and they decide no check at me.
The game's AI is not perfect: There's one example in a video above of me and I experienced a strange momentum. I was attacking a camp with my sniper rifle and a silencer, the enemies realized that their companions were dying and they decided to crouch and stay inmovile instead of take cover as the all the situations I watched before. Lel. But for the most of the game I think it is very decent.
-----------------
Finally, I got THREE females soldiers. One of them is better in combat that Venom snake. Does anyone know if they skill in combat matters when you are using that soldier in a mission as the character?
One of the best open world games for me lately. Generally love the MGS series, so the stuff with going back to the same area/base over and over to do different things doesn't bother me one bit(at least it's fun strangling and sicking your dog on enemies here, as opposed to all the shit-exploring in W3, which was otherwise a great game for me, where you look for formulas and do studpily easy Witcher Contracts), hell, I even grinded every trophy for every MGS-game-remake for the PS3 + when they were released for MGS4.
I do, however, worry that my perception of what makes a great open world game has been skewed due to the fact that lately only complete shit-games have been made in that category. This includes, but are not limited to, every AC game, every Far Cry game, Shadows of Mordor, all Batman games but Arkham Asylum. Shit, shit, shit and more shit. Witcher 3 was good though, and AC4 was ok but would've been better not being part of the AC franchise.
I've tried the game today and the first impression is ... meh.
The graphics are good but this is not the best looking game out there when compared to Dying Light, Witcher 3 or Mad Max.
The menus don't have mouse support and I constantly have to fight with the toggling of actions: press E to enter truck, hold E for 1 second and it will try to fulton the truck.
I'm in a mission to destroy 3 com antennas and I've research the C4 explosive which then I proceed to stick to the said antennas. Unfortunately some soldier saw me from far away and all hell broke loose. I decided to load checkpoint. Now I can no longer access the C4 - the research option is not there and there is no way to get a supply with it. Wtf is this shit?
The ultimate problem with the game bubbles down to the fact that it has good mechanics and presentation and bad everything else. The constant fultoning, the mediocre AI, the lifeless open world, the lack of indoor areas, the lack of any adequately paced narrative, Kaz not shutting the fuck up, the filler missions, no difficulty levels: it is like Kojima/Konami tried as hard as they could to pile on shit that ultimately just made the game extremely repetitive and dull.
I just think about how much fun this game would have been if there were 20 to 25 unique and isolated areas like Camp Omega or some of the bigger camps. You could have way more varied locations, real boss fights, the problems with the AI would not have been nearly as bad due to the enclosed nature of the camps, and the game could have delivered its narrative in a paced manner.
The thing people say to defend MGSV is "Man, you just have to make things harder for your self! There are so many ways to do things differently!" Okay, that's true. But using the tools the game gives you, you have 15 different ways to do a boring, repetitive task (that you can only start after a minute of unskippable helicopter loading screens) isn't fun either. Sure, I could bring NO items in every mission and restart every time I got caught, but then why make me play the stupid fucking Mother Base mini-game? A sandbox is only fun to play in if you can actually build something out of the sand. You need a baseline level of challenge in order to have fun breaking it.
I have no problem with the casual plebs who eat up this, because at least they won't completely ignore this game's flaws while picking apart Fallout 4 to up their ~internet cred~. They'll enjoy both wholeheartedly, like the tasteless morons they are. What's worse is the Kojima Kultists. "Surely, Kojima-sama can do no wrong! I-I-It must have been big bad Konami! Yeah! That's it! $80 million and 5 years just wasn't enough time!" No, it was Kojima who decided to imitate GTA. It was Kojima who, by plastering his name all over the game, takes credit for the completed project and all of its flaws. I'm not trying to defend Konami here, but I am sick and tired of Kojima dicksuckers excusing this man at every turn. They excused him after the cutscene-ridden self-indulgent bullshit that was MGS4, and they are excusing him for making a giant piece of shit that the retards in the gaming media will eat up because they love the taste of Kojima's taint and spent a week in a Konami gulag.
I played a mission that introduced some walking droid enemies. I told a friend in Steam chat about them, and said that they might make the game interesting. Turns out, these things are Metal Gear. I figured it was some kind of big WMD, but it's just drones.
At the end of the same mission, I skipped what I expected to be the ending cutscene, and then I reappeared with a giant Metal Gear staring me down. I ran toward the landing zone to exit the mission, and like all enemies in this game, it just didn't give chase. It shot at me for a bit, but then I moved five meters away, and it lost me behind a couple of boulders and just stood around. After I got on the helicopter, there was a boss battle, but it lasted all of twenty seconds. It launched some sort of exploding targets at me, and I killed them all. Then I shot at its face, and I think it died.
I must have spent 30 minutes on that mission because the metal gear relentlessly chased me down. Even had to switch landing zones for escape helicopter
Game is gud. I just finished mission 43. Now I need to go through the extra difficulty missions to unlock the ending. I'm aware that a huge chunk of the game was cut, which is a tremendous shame - especially since this was Hideo's chance to truly make the game he wanted, and he got cucked again due to his ambitions, lol.
Here is the objective truth so you tardos can git learnt:
Please note - I still haven't finished Mission 46, which has DA TWIST, so some of these thoughts may change. Also my opinion on games tends to change a bit after being separated from them for a few weeks.
The God-Tier:
Attention to detail - I don't think you sperg burglers can comprehend how many random little things are going on - all of the tiny touches like tranquilized guards drowning in water, playing the guard pooping tape while in the porta-potties to get search teams to go away, extracting a guy with a helmet, and then the helmet falling on an investigating soldier - knocking him out, certain versions of the posters for your cardboard box affecting different guards (some will respond to the sexy girl, others respond to the anime girl, etc)... There's hundreds of great little touches, and we could probably create an entire thread just trying to list every cool thing we discovered.
Freedom of approach - Yeah, you can simply tranq almost everyone from a distance with a suppressed tranq-sniper, at least for the first ~30 missions or so, but you only have yourself to blame if that becomes boring (similar to the plebs who just tranq everyone in MGS2/3 and then complain that it's too samey) -as with the past few MGS games, you have a tremendous number of tools at your disposal. Use them. Experiment, and have... fun! (what a concept!)
Some of the key missions - infiltrating the XOF base for example was by far one of the most tense and finely crafted stealth experiences ever. Some of the later "extreme" difficulty missions are similarly great.
THERE'S A GIANT PETTING ZOO ON BASE FOR ALL OF THE ANIMALS YOU CATCH!!!
The scene where:
you sit across from Skullface in his jeep while Sins of the Father plays through its entirety. I couldn't stop laughing. Basically the MGS3 Ladder Climb of this game.
The Great:
Sheer amount of content - If someone is autistic enough to get a true 100% completion (which requires S-ranking all missions and doing all side objectives) they're in for a 100+ hour ride most likely.
Some of the side ops - Capturing the legendary brown bear for example, was fantastic and a humorous change of pace.
The Good AND Bad:
The story - Don't be a sheep and entirely discount the story. Certain elements are pretty shitty, yeah, like
Third Son being a deus ex to let cuhrayzee things happen
but the ideas about
linguistic warfare
are extremely cool. Realistic? No, of course not - but like all of the other MGS titles, it's Kojima examining a concept he finds interesting through his sci-fi lens.
On top of this, some of the scenes like
killing all of your infected dudes, and then spreading their ashes
are extremely strong, on par with Debriefing from MGS3.
Quiet is also ultimately a pretty interesting and likable character - as is Code Talker in his tapes.
That said, other characters, like
Skullface
are pretty disappointing.
Like every MGS game, there will be a lot of things that only become commonly accepted after people discuss and analyze the full picture over the coming months. For example, I personally love how Kaz
is, metaphorically, the real Ahab of the story. He's the one who is truly obsessed with revenge, while Venom Snake is mostly going through the motions.
The Bosses - The sniper duel with Quiet was great, and had a lot of creative ways to solve it. Not on par with The End of course, but a good introduction for her regardless. I also actually had a lot of fun with the second
Sealahanthropus fight, even if it was fairly popamole. It just had a great scale and atmosphere to it.
. But yeah, most of the 'bosses' are extremely disappointing when you consider that MGS1-3 have, objectively, some of the all-time greatest boss fights in the history of this entire medium.
The O K:
Base management - it gets a little tedious at times, but there are some mechanics (like capturing specific soldiers) that end up strengthening the game.
The Bleh:
The open world itself outside of missions - there really is no impetus to spend time in it outside of the side ops and missions themselves
FOB Stuff - Between laggy servers, and the actual invasions not being nearly as fun as anticipated, this was a let down.
The Fun:
Literary references - I'll never forget the early line of "AHAB, THIS IS PEQUOD COMING IN FOR PICKUP". Or
getting the conch shell from Eli
What's great about these kinds of references is that if you're familiar with the source material, you'll smile and nod; but if you aren't, there's nothing really lost.
The Bad:
A lot of the side-ops feel fairly lazy, just revisiting bases you were at before.
The Awful:
There are certain quality of life options/setting the game is missing that would improve it significantly. For instance, an option to have the tape audio override other audio. It's terrible to try to get caught up with them during side ops only to have Kaz scream something, forcing you to rewind.
Not enough variations of some spoken lines. I've heard Kaz say "He's coming too?" and "You're going to extract him?" faaaaaar too many times. Considering you'll be fultoning like ~1000 guys if you want a big beefy base for endgame, they should've recorded like ~10 different lines; preferably with some differences depending on what level of soldier you extract.
The fact that the game is unfinished is also awful, of course. Even I won't defend that. (Though, I am stupid enough to buy the last act as DLC if they were to get Kojipro to finish it before final disbandment)
Volgin being in the game like that, lol
The Hilarious:
Tardos like sexbad buying a $60 game when they vehemently hated the prologue-game to it, and vehemently hate the entire series based off of watching some youtube videos alone; then being surprised when they don't like the game. What a shocker!!! Wow!!! Poor fellow.
In short, the game isn't quite as good as MGS2 (only sub-90 IQ mongoloids can't appreciate how it was the pinnacle of linear pac-stealth, all while providing a hilarious and insightful post-modern story that used the medium's strengths) - but it's still extremely good. Far better than the other schlock released this year (actually Bloodborne was gud, but codex doesn't discuss console games). Pretty much no chance of anything surpassing it in 2015 unless Torment 2 somehow delivers.
If your conquer an area in Far Cry 3 or Assassin's Creed 2 you get access to new missions, a safe area for you to travel through, a better look at the map and so on.
In MGSV... well, not so much. To be honest, I'm not even sure what happens if you clear an area. Do enemies no longer show up there? Does conquering nearby bases become easier? You don't get to see everything that's on the map, and enemies tend to respawn if you clear a base.
Oh, and can you find a silenced tranquilizer sniper rifle? I can almost unlock one without silencer, is that it?
If your conquer an area in Far Cry 3 or Assassin's Creed 2 you get access to new missions, a safe area for you to travel through, a better look at the map and so on.
In MGSV... well, not so much. To be honest, I'm not even sure what happens if you clear an area. Do enemies no longer show up there? Does conquering nearby bases become easier? You don't get to see everything that's on the map, and enemies tend to respawn if you clear a base.
Oh, and can you find a silenced tranquilizer sniper rifle? I can almost unlock one without silencer, is that it?
The reason the bases respawn is to let you farm soldiers/materials, and for side ops to function. It's a shitty reason, I agree; as I said, the open world itself is fairly disappointing when outside of the missions.
To get a Silenced Tranq Sniper Rifle you either need R+D level 38 I think, or, to get it far sooner, complete the side ops pertaining to the legendary gunsmith. After completing the third legendary gunsmith side op, you can customize your weapons in the customize menu - one of the options is to throw on a suppressor.
The ultimate problem with the game bubbles down to the fact that it has good mechanics and presentation and bad everything else. The constant fultoning, the mediocre AI, the lifeless open world, the lack of indoor areas, the lack of any adequately paced narrative, Kaz not shutting the fuck up, the filler missions, no difficulty levels: it is like Kojima/Konami tried as hard as they could to pile on shit that ultimately just made the game extremely repetitive and dull.
I just think about how much fun this game would have been if there were 20 to 25 unique and isolated areas like Camp Omega or some of the bigger camps. You could have way more varied locations, real boss fights, the problems with the AI would not have been nearly as bad due to the enclosed nature of the camps, and the game could have delivered its narrative in a paced manner.
The thing people say to defend MGSV is "Man, you just have to make things harder for your self! There are so many ways to do things differently!" Okay, that's true. But using the tools the game gives you, you have 15 different ways to do a boring, repetitive task (that you can only start after a minute of unskippable helicopter loading screens) isn't fun either. Sure, I could bring NO items in every mission and restart every time I got caught, but then why make me play the stupid fucking Mother Base mini-game? A sandbox is only fun to play in if you can actually build something out of the sand. You need a baseline level of challenge in order to have fun breaking it.
I have no problem with the casual plebs who eat up this, because at least they won't completely ignore this game's flaws while picking apart Fallout 4 to up their ~internet cred~. They'll enjoy both wholeheartedly, like the tasteless morons they are. What's worse is the Kojima Kultists. "Surely, Kojima-sama can do no wrong! I-I-It must have been big bad Konami! Yeah! That's it! $80 million and 5 years just wasn't enough time!" No, it was Kojima who decided to imitate GTA. It was Kojima who, by plastering his name all over the game, takes credit for the completed project and all of its flaws. I'm not trying to defend Konami here, but I am sick and tired of Kojima dicksuckers excusing this man at every turn. They excused him after the cutscene-ridden self-indulgent bullshit that was MGS4, and they are excusing him for making a giant piece of shit that the retards in the gaming media will eat up because they love the taste of Kojima's taint and spent a week in a Konami gulag.
Or maybe you could just calm the fuck down and take a more measured approach to how you examine games instead of this binary all or nothing bullshit while simultaneously shitting on people who do the same thing in the other direction.
Believe me, I whole-heartedly agree with your sentiment that if the game was 20 Camp Omegas it would probably actually be the greatest title in existence. I also agree that there needs to be a greater number of preferences, such as the option to make Kaz speak less. The "mother base minigame" is trivial; you can literally just have it auto select the roles, and it does so efficiently. The only time you need to get involved is if you specifically want a certain item faster, and during one particular story moment (and even during that story moment you don't need to get involved) On the same page, for people who enjoy that kind of stuff (shocking: people like different things!) it's there, while simultaneously being effortless to avoid. I see the development aspect itself as perfectly fine, as it allows you to slowly accumulate a huge number of tools. As you've said yourself, with enough skill you don't really need the fancy gear (aside from a couple of missions that require a rocket launcher, and one that requires an upgraded fulton) so that too, is actually mostly optional. On the flip side, if someone really is mentally retarded, they can grind out side ops and upgrade to extremely powerful gear.
You also do not need to constantly Fulton. You can selectively Fulton exceptionally skilled soldiers if you like, but as mentioned above, the base development stuff is mainly optional. Later on in the game, between dispatch missions and volunteers, your MB will be stocked completely full just from those alone - granted you'll have a bunch of ~C soldiers, but it'll be enough to unlock the 2 star weapons.
AI is an interesting thing to criticize. I agree that it's not particularly bright, but I have to wonder how it could be realistically changed without breaking the game. Ultimately, stealth games require the AI to be predictable, otherwise it'd be nearly impossible to consistently pull off a route. What specific changes would you personally make to the AI without breaking the systems in place? I am genuinely curious, and open to hearing your suggestions. Personally, I would have the guards pursue much further than they do.
In terms of the main missions, they are almost all at least good. Not every single one pertains to the story, but even those that don't often have interesting gameplay scenarios. The side-ops are where things become blatant filler, and those can be skipped. Only a few side ops actually pertain to the story and they're clearly highlighted.
As for difficulty, you can turn off reflex mode. If the game is still too easy for you with reflex off, then you should consider yourself exceptionally skilled; and should be proud of your ability, instead of presuming the game is too easy. For every person with those abilities, there are a dozen more playing with the chicken hat. That said, I personally haven't had too much difficulty at any point (granted, I've left reflex on) and have earned a few S-ranks along the way, though a few missions have been tough. On the other hand, some of these Extreme / Subsistence / CFW / No - Alert missions at the very end are actually really difficult. Presuming you are actually playing the game and not just blowing smoke out your ass - I encourage you to skip through the main missions ASAP and get to those, since they are legit challenging. If they are still too easy for you, then pat yourself on the back.
But yes, the game has some blatant flaws - I've listed the ones I find egregious in my write-up above. It's not perfect by any means, and there will be a certain phantom pain of what the game could've been. (damn I'm clever) All that said, the game is a pleasure to experience. There is very little here for Kojima to be ashamed of - other than not prioritizing making the fucking final act of the game (which is not something I'm going to excuse or even immediately blame Konami - it's blatant bullshit and mismanagement)
That's pretty hilarious about the poop cassete being useable while in the shitter
But, yeah, most people who play MGS don't know just how fucking many little autistic details there are in these games because they are very easy to miss if you are just playing the game to progress and not just screwing around with the game and exploring it. I once watched a video of all the little funny optional stuff in MGS3 and was blown away by how much stuff there was that I would've never ever found out by myself.
Too bad this is the last proper Metal Gear game. I think some of these ideas deserved to be carried forward one more time, into a more 'traditional' MG experience, meaning infiltrating a large base, or several large bases. The Tanker, Shadow Moses, and Omega camp are the best areas post the 2D games. I like desert settings and all, but I want Ground Zeroes x10.
And major props need to be given to Yoji Shinkawa. His work on this series has been an aesthetic triumph. Not all of the designs work, but no other series has been as visually cool since the release of MGS1. A perfect partnership of theme and artist. It's like he distilled everything about cyberpunk and military themed anime that wasn't shit and put it into these games. You see how everyone who makes futuristic combat/stealth video games copies this guy, from Human Revolution to Advanced Warfare. He needs to form new studio with Kojima and make proper Ghost in the Shell game
, because i guess i blew the main mission stuff during the free roam.
