Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain – Diving back in

One of the games on my pile of shame is Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.  Released for free in Microsoft’s Games with Gold lineup last month, it popped it back into the forefront of my mind.  Better still, I’m hankering for some stealth and to get back into a game that I’ve already thoroughly enjoyed.

Sleeping Dogs is finished, I’m casually playing Monster Hunter, so now is the perfect time to get back into Metal Gear Solid.

Diving back in

I thought I’d done quite a bit of this game, I’ve certainly played it for quite a while in the past, and actually already re-visited it after a year of not playing.  Again, I got distracted with something else, and left Metal Gear Solid V unattended.

Now is the time to get back to it and see if I can get it finished.

The first things I noticed, though was that my total game completion was at 5%, which is frankly embarrassing.  I’ve invested plenty of time into it over the past couple of years, but clearly no way near enough.

To give perspective, I’m currently on mission 7.  I have to capture or kill 3 enemy commanders at a meeting in a small town.  Cool. Remembered that, and remembered that I’d be loading up straight into that mission.

I tried…..I really tried.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember the controls, and when trying to go prone on the top of a building, I actually ended up throwing myself onto the floor, but this mean diving off the roof and into the middle of a load of bad guys. I am not a smart man.

It did make me laugh though, and I decided to take myself back to Mother Base and re-acquaint myself with the game.

Metal Gear Solid

My history with Metal Gear games is pretty erm…….solid…….  I finished the first two, in fact, I completed the second one several times, and did it in one go on one occasion.

I own, but never played the third, but I did buy and play through Metal Gear Solid 4, and got Ground Zeroes, which was a lot of fun, too.

Nobody could say I was a mega-fan, but I’m familiar with the franchise, the quirks of Hideo Kojima games and the sometimes absolute nonsense.

Straight off the bat, my impression of Metal Gear Solid V is that the whole game is pretty much a master work of open-world stealth design, providing this next level (at the time) of emergent/dynamic gameplay. Every action has a reaction, and you need to constantly manage everything that’s going on.

The attention to detail and the level of polish here is bloody wonderful.

Coming up

I know that there’s a lot to do.  This is a huge game, with missions that could take hours if I tread super-carefully (I do tend to).

So, I’m re-learning controls, finishing up some missions, working out upgrades and all the Mother Base stuff and just taking a deep-dive in to see if I can finish it.  With so many side-missions and multiple endings, I don’t know that I’ll ever hit 100%.

If I can work out how to make D-Horse poo on the road and spin a car out, surprise guards with my cardboard box and let D-Dog grow up from the pup I found, I’ll consider it a win at this stage.

Metal Gear games are great, and in my mind, this is possibly the pinnacle, in terms of game play.  Let’s see if that rings true a few more hours in!