TwolittleGamers Plays... Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

So Metal Gear Solid V is finally here and it goes without saying that it is a pretty special game. It seems fitting that Hideo Kojima's final Metal Gear game is the greatest realisation of the tag "Tactical Espionage Operations". MGS V is hands down the greatest stealth game ever made, it may even be one of the greatest games ever made.

There was concern from the die-hard fans of the Metal Gear series that Kojima's choice to take the series Open-World was a big mistake. In fact it turns out it was the best decision for the Metal Gear franchise. MGS V gives players several huge open-world enviroments to play in and by play, I literally mean it. The freedom given to you to perform missions is entirely down to the player. With hardly any hand holding or large map pointers, objective lists. The Phantom Pain treats you like the character you are meant to be, a legendary soldier. You are given an ultimate objective to achieve and dropped into the world with the weapons you have selected and thats it. How you achieve is them up to you.




For example, the first proper mission of the game has you being taken to Afghanistan to rescue an old friend who is being held captive by the occupying Soviet forces (Its 1984 BTW!). First you need to find out where he is being held, so a quick raid of nearby occupied village nets you the intel documents that lead you the hillside fortress where he is being held. This moment is your first big choice. How do you get him out from there, where there is large enemy presence and patrols everywhere. You could chose to go in hard and take out each patrol as you stumble across them or sneak in and out hoping not bump into a random troop and triggering an alarm. Personally, I hid on the hillside opposite and scoped out every troop patrol and postion and then waited unitl nightfall. At this point, the patrol level dropped and the other soldiers were forced to man spotlight towers with a limted field fo viesw. Thats when I spotted the gap in their focus on the far right of the camp. It meant I was able to sneak in quickly, Tranq dart a guard on  guard tower and sneak through an open window, rescue the target and was gone before the guards even knew their comrade was asleep.

The sense of satisfaction when a plan comes off without a hitch is only equalled by the surviving the chaos of a plan that went horribly wrong.I am sure the players will be sharing their war stories for quite some time to come. Along with all the secrets that you can uncover. I found out just today that you can cancel an base alarm by playing a cassette tape of a Soviet soldier saying "Target Eliminated" into your in-game radio. Which then opens up the question... what do I do with the tape of guy on the toilet or the one of goats bleating?



I dont want to go into much now, as there is a ton of stuff I could explain. I will save that for another time. Maybe a review? I have been able to stream some hours of game play onto YouTube and thought that I would drop these videos here. Be warned though there may be spoilers for those not wanting to be spoiled?

Lots more streams coming up over at my YouTube Gaming channel in the coming days. More Metal Gear and probably a look at the new Destiny expansion, The Taken King.