Best Metal Gear poll

guys one of my soldiers is called 'spunky macaw'

God this game. Maybe not the best "Metal Gear" game -- which it doesn't need or want to be. It was missing voice actor David Hayter so it would be a contentious entry for fans for that alone. But for immersive storytelling gameplay it is incredible. I was just doing an important yet obscure sideop looking for a mission soldier from the Ground Zeroes campaign. I took along D-Dog for maximum detection and have customized him to have white fur, looking even more like GOT Dire Wolves. I was playing as an A++ black soldier named Tree Frog -- you do not have to go through the whole game as Big Boss. You can be other soldiers, male and female, complete with changed voice acting. Again with all the options. Some non-story spoilers if you haven't played these exact missions (side op 51 and a tank destroying one).

I set off down the road that cut through the area where we were supposed to look for the missing soldier and headed towards a guard post on the south end. D-Dog helped me detect all the enemies at the camp, and I pressed Y to pet him each time he barked his detection. I crawled up the side of a hill (they have fixed crawling for the most part meaning they have played through the game and fixed many areas you would think may be uncrawlable, making stealthy snakey crawly possible) and there were 8 guards right out of sight. I threw a decoy to the far end of the base and activated it. Out popped an inflatable clown punching bag in the shape of Big Boss, with a tiny speaker emitting a loop of "Kept you waiting, huh?". The guard closest to it turned around and shouted to 2 others that he found something and they all started walking towards it. I creeped up and held them up, one by one. Guard AI in this game is so well done and it puts all other open world games to shame. Anyways after interrogating and fultoning everyone I found the mission soldier was somewhere in the mountains. After slowly making my way up, I found him. His tag was red so apparently he was an enemy, and he was waiting for me, because he instantly ran up and threw me to the ground before running off across the mountain. It knocked me out so hard my eyelid was down over the screen and I had to physically toggle to get back up. After getting back up I saw he was running down the road I had been to earlier, so I started shooting him with a stun gun. It slowed up down a little but he would get up and run away again, this time back up the mountain.

I eventually caught him but it was a crazy experience, chasing this guy who had no guns but was fast and dangerous, running across the side of a mountain with a Dire Wolf trailing behind us. If I ever do this one again I will try sending D-Dog to deal with him!

After that I did some other missions and ended up infiltrating a huge base in the desert with Quiet. I had sent her there with orders to attack and cover me while I made the long journey on horseback. She was positioned on the very top of the main building, which was a huge bombed-out mansion with cracks in the walls and holes in the floor. After a long fight everyone at the base was knocked out and I was alone to explore for diamonds and stuff to help me build up Mother Base. I was making my way through the ruined mansion when I heard Hall & Oates "Maneater" coming from....somewhere. Was it around this corner? No. Or this one? No. I swing the camera around and try using stereo panning and doppler effects to locate the source of the sound. Then I hear Quiet start to hum. She hums whenever she detects and enemy, so I know that some reinforcements have shown up and I need to be more careful. I keep going up the winding staircase, checking each floor for a boombox, Quiet sniping anyone that approaches the base while I take on this all important mission.

It's amazing, all of these optional systems coming together to tell a really cool story. Playing the game feels very organic. Sometimes you can break the game but it is FLEXIBLE. TPP is rubber while all other open world games are plastic.

The more I play it the more I like it as a Metal Gear game too. It feels like an HD update of MGS3 most of all. The story and cutscene stuff is amazing imo, it's just the stuff that was 10-minute powerpoint presentations in the older games are now cassettes you can listen to whenever you feel like it or not at all.

Awesome description. Makes me want to read more accounts of the gameplay like this. Reminds me a bit of GtA in this way - you can play for a bit, have a unique experience, and tell it like a story the next day to your friends.

D-Dog is still the best though. I like sending him out wo any armor, it means he does not have a knife, and can "keep him busy" by distracting enemies for an advantageous amount of time. You can run up and thrown them on the ground or electrocute them with your robot hand.

It's one of many great gameplay additions. I have never seen a stealth or otherwise game with so many options for play.

i've never used the hand. what should i do.

I don't know I just developed the electric one and you have to charge it up so I've never tried it. If you equip the shock one I think it allows for a clothesline/sucker punch that has a larger reach than the standard melee CQC and results in an instant stun.

Afghanistan has a very strong spaghetti western feel to it at times, the more cinematic parts. I think this is part of why they went for Troy Baker to do Ocelot as a cowboy. It's also Kojima's desire to do a GTA style open world game with classic American anti-heroes.

My god I just tabbed back and ran across a tape of "Rebel Yell" just playing out of some boombox inside of a tent by the side of the road in 1984 Afghanistan while a bunch of Russian soldiers shooting at a Rambo.

I can't believe people are complaining about having to replay missions. None of this happened the first time I did these.

I had R&D develop a water gun that I had Support Team drop into the battlefield because I came upon a radio station and you can destroy electronics with squirt guns.

i need that water gun so bad, i hate having to go loud to take out electronics.

typically what i do is place c4 at all the comm gear and anti air radar and shit and when i'm on my way out of the base (having silently achieved my objective) blow it all

I have renamed diamond dogs 'CAMP BOY'. we have a pink-and-yellow winged balloon as our emblem.

i changed my team's name right before a mission where i had to extract a child soldier from the battlefield, so the poor bastard had to get off the chopper onto a hot-pink mother base emblazoned with my new 'BOY SNATCHER' logo. kinda undercut the gravity of the situation tbh

if u haven't had a shower in a while and lie down in the field, animals will come over and sniff you thinking ur dead

having showers temporarily buffs ur stats btw

http://youtu.be/SkNaUiaGRxw

been playing ground zeroes these past few days and this is totally the kind of game i've been waiting all my life for. like a splinter cell/stalker type game but slicker and better. story is a bit confusing as i don't know any of the backstory but that's no big deal.

i'm waiting for tpp to go cheaper but first i've bought the remastered for ps3 disc with:
- mgs2 sons of liberty
- mgs3 snake eater
- mgs peacewalker
and ive got revengeance for the pc.

which is best to play next? are any worth skipping?

If you've never played any of them I would go chronologically. Have you played MGS1?

TPP is really very different from the others, I would go so far as to say if you really like Ground Zeroes you may be better off going straight into it for the same tight gameplay and returning to the series later to explore the story.

the two tanks mission is fuckin hard.

i had to steal a rocket launcher truck for that one, let them get to the base and park, and then nonchalantly drive in and blow them up.

where the fuck are the showers, i can't find them on the command platform

thanks adam b, decided to go straight for TPP. just finished the prologue, about to enter the game proper. amazing so far.

adam, showers are marked on the idroid map with a shower-head icon

i've discovered that d-dog's supernatural enemy and prisoner-detection skills, teamed with the suppressed tranq rifle to take out people between you and your mission objective, makes being a sneaky bastard super-easy

started this last night, prologue was pretty weird. maybe a little too marvel comic-y. the gameplay is nice but a little underwhelming so far. just feels like more ground zeroes but i prob need to get further in.

no spoilers below... but intended to be read by people who are as far as me so they can agree w/ me

maaaaaaaaaaannnn last night I got through main mission 30 or so and was so relieved to find out that this game definitely has some weird kojima creepy gameyness baked in.

i'll admit to using the binocs on a distant radio to hear 'she blinded me with science' in its entirety

Hah yes me too I finally got through Chapter 1 yesterday. I appreciated the Robocop homage.

The game is a victim of its own hype though. I don't know if I've ever seen a game's fanbase turn so quickly against a new entry as this. Some people really hate it for the things it didn't do.

like what? sounds like it does everything.

i think from what i've read it kinda peters out towards the end, suggesting it's been released sorta unfinished? also not much in the way of trad mgs boss battles.

still having a total fucking blast every time i turn this on tho

just feels like more ground zeroes

that's why it's so good!

what has the longest lasting effect: tranq or cqc sleeper hold

adam, showers are marked on the idroid map with a shower-head icon

i see it but i can't locate the actual showers. are they on an upper level? i have spent a disturbing amount of time looking for this video game locker room

they're not in a room, they're like a port-a-potty kinda thing against a wall on the platform floor

It's basically a blue box you go inside, the size of a phonebox. It should be near the heli pad.

I think tranquing lasts longest. I've CQC'd enemies before that wake up after 2 mins. Best long term strategy is holding them up, apparently they don't get up unless there is an alert or another guard wakes them up.

what has the longest lasting effect: tranq or cqc sleeper hold

i saw a chart somewhere that showed tranq darts were in the middle of the tranq/stun duration spectrum and sleeper holds were the longest-lasting - seems to be true from my experiences playing

Funny moment is when you try tranquing guards on a tank mission, the tank immediately honks it's horn and wakes everyone up.

what are the negatives of just killing them? i hate the idea of these bastards getting up after a while so kill pretty much every bad guy in a village. am i just losing out on meaningless points, or something bigger than that?

aw i was hoping for some weird kojima shower situation

inevitably, there's a weird shower situation with quiet at one point

what are the negatives of just killing them?

if you kill them you can't fulton them back to your base and 'persuade' them to join diamond dogs. also you don't get to hear their terrified screams as they rocket from the ground towards the ionosphere

many xposts --

i definitely get why ppl think it's "missing" sthg vs the old games. I definitely think so (and i may be the resident ilx mgs rockist?). what i loved abt those games is exactly the stuff that a) everyone else hated and b) i hate when other games try to do -- that stuff that's kinda considered pretty anti-game now (hyper-authored content, cutscenes, codecs, etc) because it was all so appealing and subversive and WEIRD.

i think i probably said this upthread a few times, but MGS4 only gets BETTER with age. the opening of that game, you're WATCHING TV (which feels like a hilarious self-zing by hideo) and there's a bunch of fake tv shows and you can flip through the channels (which i don't think i knew the first time I played). there's a fucking bizarre interview with david hayter, playing david hayter but in an alternate universe where he wears an eyepatch and is a movie star or something... the entire thing is very surreal and threatening. and a creepy game show, also super threatening and surreal. that game is a series of moments that are at varying degrees of "playable" and that's kind of ok. and they all feel so LAVISH. (which is probably why the game cost so much to produce). the microwave scene. the 4-part final battle referencing the 4 games. the rex vs ray battle which must have cost SO MUCH MONEY to develop and lasts all of 5 minutes. this kind of game will NEVER BE MADE AGAIN.

i'm super happy i get to play MGSV. it's a great game in its own right. but it doesn't really "feel" like an mgs game, despite a bunch of similarities (snake, ocelot, miller, oversexualized murder-girls, exclamation points over people's heads, etc.). It feels like an mgs-themed modern game. which is fine! but yeah the mission 25ish game twist thing, while cool, doesn't exactly reach the weirdo incredible surreal heights of the previous games -- "you like castlevania, don't you?" / "check the back of the cd case for the frequency!" / FISSION MAILED / "I hear it's amazing when the famous purple stuffed worm in flap-jaw space with the tuning fork does a raw blink on Hara-kiri Rock. I need scissors! 61!" / etc. (really MGS3 took a huge step back on this front which may be why it's my least favourite in the numbered series.)

goddamn it i need to stop talking about metal gear, i just wrote 3 dumb paragraphs about crazy colonel and fake david hayter interviews

that's a great description of mgs4, gona dive into that next.

xpost, im only on the first mission so don't have the option to send people back to base yet. til then im gona carry on stabbing throats

Are you guys playing on console or Pc?

This is the first one in the series to break the Play sta exclusivity right?

Certainly makes a case to buy a ps4

playing on PS3 and it is magnificent on my 26" screen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DRe3LCCbOA

i think watching videos of this game brings me more delight than playing it ever could.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYM-vPKyxfA

carboard boxes really are the best way to travel in this game

i also enjoy running around mother base and knocking my soldiers over in my cardboard box sledge. makes me lol every time they get up and say 'thank you boss!'

Is it sacrilege to call this game a bit samey? I'm only 7% through so maybe it's gonna switch up a little soon.. I mean it is fun as hell - each 3-4 man outpost is a little stealth concerto, a set piece where no matter how many times you've sussed it out, feels a little different each time. But now that I've got the more powerful tranq gun I just zap dudes until one guy's left alone, I interrogate him and that's that. The bigger bases are awesome and challenging but there aren't enough missions like the two tanks mission, where you are like "where is this all going to lead??" 95% of the time I know exactly where it's going to lead: to a heavily guarded set of outbuildings and a prisoner who needs rescuing.

There is only one prisoner / there is only one guard.

They are your senses of fun and efficiency.

Yeah it is a bit samey. When I got to the mission where I had to destroy the tanks I couldn't wait to see what else the game was going to throw at me. Cos in Peace Walker there are lots of side missions where you are, say, charged with destroying 20 tanks in a convoy, and it was a huge and welcome break from routine. Sadly there don't seem to be any more missions like that in TPP.

I did just get to the part where you have to replay missions "Subsistence" style, which means no reflex mode, no buddies, and no weapons/equipment. Not even magazines. You have to find it all on-site, OSP, just like the first MGS. It's like playing an entirely new game. Spent an hour or two trying to complete the first such mission yesterday and it was insanely intense.