Best Metal Gear poll

i've only used them twice but i don't think so! individual dudes will yell "FREEZE" and walk up on them and stab them so they deflate, but it doesn't raise an entire base to search for you iirc

i unlocked decoys, rocket launcher and d-dizzle. the one after the tanks was a nice breather, just run around and blow stuff up. i surrounded a guy at mother base with decoys and found they will knock guys out if you inflate it when theyre on top of it

https://vine.co/v/e3DBOJaIXI0

ha, i have that feeling all the damn time
finally on mission 17 i think? still dicking around and freeroam ganking whole outclassed battalions
i REALLY should turn off the slowmo thing

there are plenty of missions coming up where it's turned off for you, savor reflex mode now while you've still got it imo

i now have quiet with the silenced tranq rifle and dawwwwwg....... as long as i keep the helmet supply in check only the biggest installations stand a chance

oh reeeeeeeeeeally okay

i love d-dog spotter extraordinaire but he doesn't stay put after commanding him to "stay"? stop blowing my cover or ill fulton your ass out. i never use the horse either, just sprint everywhere

It kind of seems like sprinting/horse/enemy trucks are all about the same speed

Yeah Quiet's drawback is that she doesn't actually spot everybody and she doesn't spot mines. D-Dog's so good that when not using him I find myself getting all huffy about being surprised by a non-spotted enemy - "someone should have told me about this!!"

anyone playing with reflex off? are there any other settings that can be tweaked to make the game a bit more... interesting?

well you could make your standard load-out something like.. nothing except decoys and stealth camo

but i have to say i take immense pleasure in sonning entire camps of doofus baddies from long range, fuck those guys, this game takes months of my life as it is, i'm not making it easier for them

the joy in this game is just breaking open the toybox and trying items you don't usually use. it doesn't make it "harder" per se but it adds a lot of variation. like, my usual loadout is a sleeper pistol, a tricked-out assault rifle and a sleeper sniper rifle, but sometimes i use the water pistol, a bazooka and a different kind of gun (haven't really messed w/ the shotguns yet tho) just to make myself play differently. or not bringing the dog. or bringing a tank. or heavy cardboard box use. there are so many things!

also if you guys haven't fucked with the hand of jehuty... do it. so much fun. (really worth getting it to level 2, btw)

and the rocket arm! geez. so many toys.

anyone playing with reflex off? are there any other settings that can be tweaked to make the game a bit more... interesting?

you can turn off markers as well. I've tried reflex a bit but am too lazy to really play wo. i like the slow motion.

im not nearly hardcore enough to play w no markers at all.

Quiet can't really mark guys who are indoors, which has made for some entertaining think-fast CQC moments.

reflex mode is great when you're within the right distance and you just spam r2 knowing as soon as the slo-mo ends that dude is getting choke-slammed

also like d-dogs basic bite attack. pull guys out one by one, sic d-dog on em, knock em out, pile em up behind a wall, call in d-horse to take a dump on em, etc

not rly feeling africa so far. does it get better

yes. first time i arrived it was cloudy and didn't look very good. there is some cool stuff, lots of cool bases and different areas of the maps. the terrain is much flatter making for a less interesting open world than afganistahn. u should take this opportunity to start using jeeps and (when u get it) D-Walker to traverse the savanna. it can get boring running across those open fields.

the 2nd half is where u can tell konami stepped in and cut off the budget.

did u make it to the oil fields? i like that map a lot.

Love the mansion too.

anyone managed to get the "no traces" bonus on any missions?

i greatly prefer africa to afghanistan for some reason.

I have never once deployed with the walker. I am so boring! They just seem super unstealth.

although i am considering it in the EXTREME version of 'over the fence' goddamn this place is just crawling with dudes in helmets FFFFUUUUUHHHH

also considering calling in fire support just to distract them

lol after more than an hour of banging my head against the wall on this last night i tried it again and A-ranked it first time.

this was the first time i actually took advantage of the changeover of guard duty from night to day. it did actually leave a hole. which i exploited with extreme prejudice. because this was the time i was the flawless badass, rather than the 5000 earlier tries where i was the bumbling cretin. there was one moment of contact i couldn't avoid - the two guys guarding the cell. i tossed a magazine down the corridor, they both swiveled to look, and i rushed them with two CQC throws. i somehow alerted someone (usually CQC doesn't seem to alert anyone, even two feet away? but this time it did?) and they start calling it in. fuck. never has the lock-picking animation felt so long. i make it into the cell but now i've got a guy heading straight for me. he sees the two guys knocked out and now he's really spooked, so he calls THAT in and WAKES THEM UP. should i have gone for a stun grenade right then, when they were all in a group? i was scared of making too much noise so i stayed put and prayed they didn't come into the cell. if i had even once attempted the 'CQC a group of dudes in time with the prompts' mechanic that purportedly exists maybe i would have tried that. i left a sleeping mine just behind the door but they would have seen me before conking out anyway. i pressed up against the wall and waited. eventually they headed off! i shouldered my guy and hot-footed out of there. approx 6 dudes saw something out of the corner of their eye as i was leaving out the back but i managed to get away quickly enough that none of them were able to confirm they weren't 'seeing things'.

probably the biggest rush i've had in this game yet tbh. it's so rare that you need to maneuver indoors that when you do it is squeaky bum time x100000. when it's instant fail on combat alert there is no firepower that will save you.

all of which is a long way of saying yes it IS more fun without reflex mode but goddamn it would take me 3 years to finish that way.

nice! did u go out up the stairs or take the front entrance?

i think CQC can be heard. sound is very important in this game. they can hear you sprinting and running at different distances, and CQC at a certain distance as well. i am not sure if you can be heard simply diving onto the ground but it seems one of the stealthier ways to travel. i have seen some people crawl-drive hop their way across bases.

I went out the back way (which was the way I'd come in - past the very high yet unstaffed gun aerie up there)

front entrance was pretty much impenetrable (as i'd discovered the night before. my eureka moment was looking at the title of the mission again: 'over the fence'. hmm, i hadn't gone over any fences. let me try going over the big-ass corrugated wall that surrounds this place, rather than through the front door.)

then immediately got sonned bigstyle by Quiet in the ruins, all over again

LOL at the criticism of ground zeroes being too short.. this is honestly the longest game i've ever played, maybe even including RPGs, including GTAV, including Red Dead. And strangely, though it's far more repetitive than any of those, it's proven more engrossing

Yes otm! I have over 300 hours and am still a ways away from 100% Completion. I do tend to take my time...

well I assume 100% means like... grabbing every poster or some shit

And presumably once you run out of story there is the whole world of online FOB action to keep you going as long as you want.

Still quite hazy on what I should be doing with my FOB. I keep developing it and raising my preparedness level, but I'm not really sure why.

It's completing every mission w S rank plus all side objectives plus things like capturing all the animals and yes maybe poster. Though the posters might actually not be a requirement.

FOB is a lot of fun, I have just started playing that in the past week. It's crazy the range of difficulty it offers -- everything from brand new bases w entry-level helmetless guards to fortresses w camera and UAVs everywhere. I have just started being able to sneak across a 4/4 base but I always get at least one alert. Unless it is a nonlethal base in which case I'll probably be tranq'd and fulton'd out before I know what hit me.

One important thing to remember is anything u steal u get to keep, even if u die. This means in the rare event anyone does crash your party it is really easy to retaliate and get your missing stuff back, or the equivalent amount.

If I level up my FOB but don't actually participate in that aspect of the game, will my dudes be like, doing stuff in the background? Defending it? Launching attacks? Making some money? Am I investing for a REASON in other words, if I don't play FOB missions myself? (Sorry I realise this question has probably been asked and answered in countless forums a million times)

ANd I think this answer is..... yes, at least I like to think I'm investing in drones etc. because they're going off and kicking ass while I'm doing the more interesting stuff

I think I've kind of subconsciously set the moment when I consider buying the terrotorial waters for a second FOB as the moment I should probably stop playing

Just having an FOB increases stuff in the background. Each one adds more soldiers to your overall limit, and you can send out more Combat Deployments. Before an FOB you can send out 2 at a time, with an FOB you can send out 4. I have two FOBs (bought one w MB Coins given as free rewards) so I can send out 6 teams at a time. I'm rally late game though. The size of your mother base dictates the quality of soldiers you find in the field and as volunteers. So FOB helps you find better soldiers. It also helps speed up all the background tasks like mining, processing resources, etc. When you are upgrading a platform the menu should tell you what it helps everything from the speed of supply drops to fulton success rate.

If you don't invade other people you will probably not be invaded. It took me 200+ hours before I was invaded.

Love the increased combat deployments - it's all about staying one step ahead of those helmet shipments. Quashing that shit ASAP stimulates some OCD part of my brain in a deeply gratifying way

Have this weird feeling that I'm bulking up my bases in preparation for something huge just as the game proper is winding down

this game has a looooong wind down. i wonder what you will think of the ending! its been pretty controversial.

It's been hours and hours since the most awkward jeep ride in history with Skullface, which I thought was the end

oh yeah... i meant the final ending. there's three endings in the game.

Lol yeah, I was like surely this is it and then it gives me like a... trailer? For something it called "Part 2" and I was like fffffuuuuuu whoa ok

hah. this is where the seems kind of come off. have u played mgs2?

chapter 2 is about compulsion and the lust for completion. its really kind of a new game+. u can play the same missions again but in harder modes. unlocking the actual endings is not simply a matter of continuing the story missions. its more about diamond dogs and the rot within, the phantoms left over from the first ending, the idea that without an external enemy that they can see, they start attacking themselves. mission 43 is probably the best in the game, and is a kind of bizarro or inverted version of the prologue.

the final ending is very cool. without spoiling things (its the very first shot of the game) it literally leads right into the first Metal Gear. but its done in a very film school way and i think it is going over a lot of peoples heads. i found it very touching and an inventive use of a character by an author to speak directly to the audience.