Best Metal Gear poll

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaqOp67gALc

Some Peace Walker 3-player co-op I played today. We got it working in PPSSPP! We had a 5 player deathmatch for a second earlier.

Metal Gear Solid V’s Story Falls Apart

How strange that Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, a 2015 standout and one of the best stealth games ever made, could still wind up on our disappointments list. But here we are: Billed as an epic final chapter in the decades-long Metal Gear saga, The Phantom Pain started strong and then took a bizarre left-turn toward nowheresville, sputtering into its final act with a collection of recycled missions and a hodgepodge of increasingly disconnected cutscenes. What a shame that such a storied saga should reach such great heights, then collapse with the summit in view.

http://kotaku.com/the-biggest-video-game-disappointments-of-2015-1748542608

Kotaku is getting on my nerves with the constant Konami and Metal Gear bashing. I don't get it, they constantly harp on about how bad the story is, but I haven't read a single in-depth critical analysis of the plot or comparison of it to that of the other games in the series. Or any attempt at a discussion of the 3 endings.

What do you guys think? I think the game was basically the ultimate Metal Gear Fan Service experience right down to literally rebooting the 8-bit series and Big Boss personally thanking you for making his legend possible. The whole "It's bad/it's unfinished" thing stands in for critique and is probably chosen for its viral and socially inflammatory qualities.

MGSV had a really weird release. It will be neat to look at it in the future, away from all this controversy, in the context of a full career and not just the latest headline story. Kotaku's 1-dimensional hate coverage plus the Video Game Awards (featuring video games like Churches and Deadmou5) throwing Kiefer Southerland and the game developers at Konami under the bus were the real video game disappointments of the year.

I wonder if these people have taken film classes, it seems like they haven't been exposed to much culture that isn't overwhelmingly linear narratives. With MGSV Kojima is reaching for the art film game of his dreams. There is metaphor, there is symbolism. You may as well criticize cubism for being distorted and confusing. Kojima is asking for people to interpret the ending their own ways. Saying "It's bad/is disconnected" is the kind of note a studio exec would send down to creative. It ignores the state of the main character, who is still playing, hours past the end credits, with the main villain long dead.

Kojima knew he wouldn't be able to do the ultimate MGSV (Ground Zeroes if anything being the writing on the wall) so he didn't compromise and thought big. He finalized the story years ago. Things were cut, but this is not new in artist and/or commercial production. I think if he was given his full budget, the game would turn out mostly the same story-wise, but the world would have received the level of polish seen in Ground Zeroes. I think that game looks TOO GOOD compared to this, to be honest, and it was probably easier to polish up that small a section of gameplay, fine-tuning the camera, lighting, NPC direction, etc. The camera work in the intro to GZ is masterful: a single-camera take that brings us across multiple, very different-seeming locations. It is very good at hiding that this is all going on in the same map, something TPP loses with its larger open world. The penultimate mission of TPP is broken compared to this: Skull Face's textures and material work is downgraded (note the rain drops on his skin in GZ) and the camera is locked to a single position. Mission 30 feels literally unfinished compared to GZ.

But I think the story is still solid. I like the character arc too, and I really like the twist. It all feels very cinematic.

great ending, but the game keeps going? weird. will chapter 2 explain the floating gas mask kid and man on fire?

But I think the story is still solid. I like the character arc too, and I really like the twist. It all feels very cinematic.

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Saturday, January 2, 2016 7:11 PM

whats the twist exactly? the plot kind of loses me at certain points even though i listen to every tape

you need to finish chapter 2 and see the other 2 endings

love the tapes tho, kiefer did a helluva job...boss

other 2 endings? whaaat?? are there different timelines like doctor who

"boss..we need you back at mother base immediately..to watch a cutscene of quiet playing in rain puddles"

lol @ the kaz miller hamburger tapes

lol pretty sneaky twist kojima. quiets ending was pretty cool but damn if i didn't die 30 times trying to finish that battle. still have all the extreme missions and side ops left but i think i might run through ground zeroes again.

Yeah i love the ending! I highly recommend re-doing Ground Zeroes. The controls take a second to get used to (mostly the diving) but it really is an essential part of Metal Gear Solid V. Character-wise it speaks volumes when placed next to the Phantom Pain. Sly old Kojima had all of this planned out years and years ago.

funny thing about the ending

*spoilers ahead*

i had forgotten the name i had given my character at the start so in the cutscene where he flips the photo over, the boss's written message was made out to "trouser snake" lol

There's a similar scene in MGS2 with a dogtag

I had forgotten I named my save file Solid Dick

I searched the internet for like 45 minutes trying to figure out if I had actually seen the words "SOLID DICK" on that dogtag

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ai1bh-D3K8

Sooooooo...I just finished Ground Zeroes and...whatthefuck? I had heard it was short but that might seriously have been the shortest game I've ever played. I was just warming up to the control scheme and looking forward to the next level only to discover that there was only one level. If that one level hadn't been badass, I might've been pissed. I had the day off today and set aside part of the day specifically to go deep with this. So, well, guess I'm moving on to Phantom Pain now.

Okay, wait, so now the credits are over and I see 'Completion Ratio 6%' and a bunch of side missions popped up so I feel potentially less ripped off now.

:)

hah. i think it is worth it to do all the side missions just cos the game plays so good. plus if you want more you can go for all the optional tasks inside every mission: extracting a guy instead of sniping him, destroying AA guns by driving trucks into them, finding hidden cassette tapes with 8-bit Metal Gear songs, etc.). you can get dozens of hours out of the game easily.

I'm more into this now and looking forward to Phantom Pain once I've sufficiently flexed my muscles in its predecessor. Playing through the 'mark all enemies' challenges, which are pretty cool stuff. My main issue is this, though: I've been playing the first MGS on and off for a while now and appreciate the little radar thing on the map that shows the field of an enemy's vision or a camera's range, and it's a little frustrating that I feel like I'm totally guessing about this stuff in Ground Zeroes. Sometimes I think I'm totally in the clear and I get spotted, other times I'm face to face with a dude who's twenty feet away and get no reaction. It's entirely possible that I'm just missing something obvious though (just last night figured out how to dash and how to mark locations on the map).

lack of HUD is one of the greatest things about this game

I guess it's just an adjustment. Although I half wish that, if they were going to ditch the HUD, they did away with the whole marking system as well. Make it tough as nails, always looking over your shoulder, never knowing when some dude was going to creep out of the shadows.

I guess no one's forcing me to use my binoculars.

the lack of hud is the reason phantom pain is the greatest hide-and-seek simulator ever

i'm still working through phantom pain after getting sidetracked by other games, and the progression of abilities really builds

you start out working completely on your wits with nothing but a tranq pistol and your horse, and you work your way into having the ability to listen in on conversations after you get a translator, more enemy marking on the map, and the ability to scan people from a distance

it's a refreshing change from "ok, now I get a bigger gun" being the progression

Nnnnnnngggggggokay, maybe I can just try Phantom Pain for a little while. I'm never gonna return to Ground Zeroes if I do, though, am I?

I've thought about playing more GZ after playing PP for a while! There are some differences in the experiences

I did have to roll my eyes a little when reopening TPP last week after a couple weeks of not playing and it wanted me to download a 2GB patch. There's an online world out there to explore, eventually.

I think once I'm done playing Persona 2a on my Vita (decent game but sooooooo goddamn lonnnnnnng), I'm finally going all-in on MGS. Play through the early games on my commute and rock PP at home.

That should give me a month or so to milk GZ, since I'm only, like, 35 hours into P2a.

Ground Zeroes is really cool and a lot of fun. The Phantom Pain (after the awkward and kinda off-putting prologue) is amazing and a whole metric ton of fun. The difficulty level is just about perfect for me inasmuch as it's definitely a constant challenge but I don't feel brutalized. It doesn't seem unfair, is what I'm saying.

And it feels to me like a mixture of Just Cause 2 and (weirdly) Skyrim, which are pretty much my two most-played 7th gen games, so I expect to become completely addicted to this thing. I've just been playing side missions for days (3% completion!) and if those are scratching the itch, I cannot even imagine what subsequent missions have in store.

it's fucking incredible. by the end i was totally burnt out on the mechanic but that's largely due to my own lack of imagination. if i had one criticism it's that the game doesn't do enough to push you out of your preferred tactics. i used the tranq pistol literally the entire game, never used the decoys, etc.

i still haven't finished it properly because i got totally burnt out by side missions and generally fucking around but yeah, this and bloodborne are the best games of the new generation of consoles for me (final judgment on dark souls iii still tbc)

I love that it's whatever kind of game you want it to be. If you want to go naibitingly no-kill (or even no contact) stealth constantly, that certainly seems possible (if difficult). Sometimes I'm feeling that, other times I feel like getting up on a cliff and sniping everyone in the enemy encampment one by one as they fire mortar shells in my general direction. Or if you just want to ride your horsie around the desert and send tranquilized sheep flying into the air at ridiculous rates of speed, go nuts.

I'm in the early stages yet and it doesn't seem to make a huge amount of difference at the moment, but will my current tactic of C-4-ing or grenading the communication dishes continue to be a sound tactic as I progress through the game? I figure, yeah, it raises the hackles of everyone around but then they're the only ones I have to deal with so NBD.

my favoured tactic was always to tranquilise as many enemies at once as i could then casually stroll around their base, rifling through their belongings before fultoning them away into indentured servitude on mother base

i don't think i ever used c4 at any point!

aw, C4 is some mega fun times. you can get pretty creative with it.

i gather not a lot of people have finished this? as cool as it is, there seems to be a burn-out point. i'm still finding myself returning every few weeks though, doing a grip of missions then dropping it for a while. i'll get there.

no wait, i did use it once to ambush some tanks while i hid on a hilltop and picked off the stragglers with a sniper rifle. it was awesome, i dunno why i didn't do that more

It's never too late to rectify an oversight.

fun to sneak to an outlying area where they have their communications satellite, get just on the edge of the C4 detonator range, and then blow that sucker and have them all run over

I'll admit to using the hell out of Quiet once she got her silenced tranq rifle. DROWSINESS FROM ABOVE

will my current tactic of C-4-ing or grenading the communication dishes continue to be a sound tactic as I progress through the game?

hell yes it will. one of my favorite side objectives was getting the blueprint from the airport mission: the blueprint is inside of the helicopter! so you have to sneak over to where it first lands to drop off target 1, let it go on patrol as target meets an arms dealer and they take a tour of the airport base, plant your C-4, go hide on the roof of a nearby building, wait for it to come back, and blow it up.

It probably would've been really cool if I had any idea it was coming, but I went on what I thought would be a quick side mission to abduct that scientist and wound up playing for unplanned several hours as the side mission transitioned into (at least) two actual missions across a huge portion of the map. I very intentionally picked a side mission, guys. Like for a quick fix, not to flush half of my Sunday down the drain. Sheesh. The walkers are pretty cool, though. And I got spotted while stuck in a small garage and had a huge base full of personnel gunning for me, and I sniped and grenaded every last one of them against all odds.

I do love the game but I just wish it was easier to peace out sometimes without feeling like I'm going to lose a whole lotta progress.

I got spotted while stuck in a small garage and had a huge base full of personnel gunning for me, and I sniped and grenaded every last one of them against all odds.

Yes!!!

What do you mean about losing progress?

sort of hate the autosave on Ground Zeroes. I get it, but on accidentally triggering an enemy attack and hightailing it out of there, I ran into the next checkpoint where I needed to extract someone, but my save is now stuck there with 100 enemies outside the door, and no way to get out :-(

You can restart the mission?

Yeah, it's the autosave I have an issue with. I've had to stop playing in the middle of missions a couple of times and, upon returning, was disappointed to see how far behind the last checkpoint was compared to where I stopped. So I'm disinclined to stop until I've actually finished something.

P.S. I've put in dozens of hours now and I'm at 10% completion.

P.P.S. I figured out both how to kill someone at Mother Base (punch or drop them off the edge of a platform) and that it's effectively a 'Game Over' to do so. Boooooo. You don't want me killing my own guys, don't make it a possibility! How am I supposed to control myself?

Goblin Donkey totally had it coming.

I just realized that I've played Phantom Pain and only Phantom Pain for the past month. I cannot remember a game that commanded the entirety of my gaming attention for that long. And I'm still mostly just doing side missions. It's that good!

nice! FOB is like hyper Metal Gear Solid 2 level design and TPP is hyper Metal Gear Solid 3 & 4 level design. TPP is the best don't forget thing Kojima could have done with the Ground Zeroes situation. his game was being chopped up already so he decided to do an HD reboot of the entire series featuring remakes of level and mission design and callbacks for all the MGS games.

Ground Zeroes itself is pretty much a perfect MGSV part one. character wise it is a very important piece of the story puzzle.

i saw a new (to me) cutscene on my birthday last week. Venom, Ocelot, Kaz, and Diamond Dogs sang me a birthday song and gave me a cigar that Quiet lit by shooting it from across the base.

still play some FOB from time to time. the game is really incredible and still looks fantastic to me. it is a solid 60fps and looks very cinematic.