Nappi

I just checked out their website and my first thought was that someone should make a free-to-play multiplayer game where Cliffy B's Boss Key and J Allard's 529 Garage battle it out capture-the-flag style, only instead of flags they fight over bikes. What is wrong with me?

Nice! Also, sea tractors. I first saw one in the movie adaptation of Christie's Evil Under the Sun, and thought it was bizarre as hell.

I was wondering if I should re-play GZ before starting Phantom Pain as well. Decided not to and it did not come back to haunt me. It's not worth it for the base staff at least.

Wow, that is fantastic!

Skulls mission spoiler:

Shame to hear you leave Danielle. I'm really excited about the new podcast, though. So, goodbye Danielle! Welcome Danielle!

Yeah, I love my tranq sniper rifle. When I finally realized that not hitting the guards in the head can sometimes be a better idea than head shots, I have been very efficient in clearing out smaller outposts: Say, you have three soldiers that can see each other all the time. You just shoot each one on the torso in quick succession and wait for the tranqualizer to kick in. When the first one falls, the others will become suspicious but they will fall to sleep before they can do anything.

I finally started reading James Ellroy's The Big Nowhere (which has been sitting on my bookself for ages) because it was mentioned in the True Detective Weekly. There are indeed a startling amount of similarities between the two stories. Anyway, I am breezing through the book, so I guess I'm sort of enjoying it, but damn this a brutal read. Not just in terms of depictions of sadistic violence, but in terms of all-pervading racism, homophobia and misogyny as well. I'd like to try out some more of Ellroy's books, but preferably something not quite this extreme. How do his other books/series compare to The Big Nowhere? Underworld USA trilogy for example?

Umm... I did a bit of searching and it sounds like the game forces you into the FOB stuff, unless you do some very specific things to avoid it (e.g. never accept the terms of service, or cut the internet connection when the game tries to force you into the FOB tutorial)? Is this really the case? I wouldn't mind if I could keep my FOB understaffed and just accept whatever small losses I might encounter, but it also sounds like you can lose mother base personnel during FOB invasion. Is this true? If this is the case, then that is some fucked up design.

I think I am about to reach the point where I can build an FOB, and I still don't know how the system works. I have no interest in attacking other players or defending my base. Should I still opt for an FOB? That is, is it better to continue investing in the relatively expensive main base platforms, or expand by constructing the cheaper (?) FOB platforms, even if it means that I might get looted from time to time? If someone attacks me and manages to deal with all my security will I lose all my FOB staff and resources? Are my main base resources always safe? What happens if I go offline? Will I lose all my FOB benefits?

Mission 20:

Jesus. And here I was thinking that I was already two-thirds of the way through the game...

Is it possible to reveal how the end-game works without story spoilers? Minor structure spoilers below in case you don't want anything to be revealed:

How long incapacitated people stay down depends on how you dealt with them in the first place. I think the effects of tranq gun last quite long, while stunned enemies can wake up relatively fast. Apparently, there is a difference between choking and CQCing an enemy as well. Anyway, this becomes less of an issue, when you get the ability to fulton extract unconscious enemies. You can order more ammo and supressors for you tranqualizer gun as a supply drop (I don't remember when this was unlocked). Still, you should always be careful about wasting ammo and supressors. In many cases, it is best just to leave the guards alone if you can avoid them. By the way, don't worry about your stealth performance. I fumbled a lot in the second mission, but once I learned the basics and expanded my arsenal, I was able to do a lot better.

Mission 16: Fucking hated it, but after a couple attempts, I found a way to deal with it very quickly: Got S rank (not that I would have minded a worse performance), but obviously missed most of the side objectives. My most hilarious attempt: I really really despise the skulls. I can see how some may see these more action packed sequences as good ways to balance out all the slow sneaking. I am clearly not one of them. I absolutely hate those parts. As for buddies, I mostly use D-Dog in main story missions, because he is so good at scanning the surroundings. However, I can also see how Quiet could be useful if only her sniper rifle was silenced (and preferably equipped with tranqualizer darts). To increase our bond level (a key requirement for upgrading her gear), I often take her with me when I am doing side missions or clearing out enemy bases. I also stare at her breasts a lot in the helicopter because I assume that this is how Kojima assumes you bond with women. Anyway, I am pretty close to unlocking the silenced sniper rifle for her at this point. I already unlocked a new clothes option for her. I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed, though not least bit surprised, when the difference turned out to be that her equally scantily clad body is now covered in fake blood all over. Sexy as fuck obviously.... My emblem:

Just to be clear, I did not care about the rating at all. I was forced to replay the entire mission because of a stupid invisible wall.

I replayed the mission immediately after this bullshit (having rage quitted first, of course), because I feared that otherwise I would not pick up the game tomorrow, knowing what was waiting for me. I failed a couple of times, but it wasn't that bad. Still fucking mad about this kind of stupid shit in an otherwise exceptionally well crafted game.

I got through the entire Hellbound mission without alerts on my first try. It was stressful and took a long time and some luck, and I was super glad when I jumped on the truck and escaped the enemy. I drove away from the base and was about to call in the chopper when I hit an invisible wall exiting the mission area. Mission aborted and I have to do the whole mission again. I actually feel sick now.

I was not in the mood to shoot her with my regular sniper (even though it wouldn't have mattered when it comes to acquiring her as a buddy), and dealing with her using the tranq pistol felt way too laborious, so [cheap trick for Quiet encounter]: I might replay that mission at some point.

So.. um, have you guys studied the medical platform of the mother base? One upper floor door marked with blue light in particular.

The design and the technical side of this game continues to amaze me like no other game I can think of. In Dishonored, I was able to do well, but I feel that was in large part due to the relatively "overpowered" toolset at my disposal. In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the areas felt very carefully designed to create paths for sneaking through the level (though, it has been a long time since I played that game, so I might be misremembering). The sneaking in Phantom Pain feels much more "organic" than in any game I have played before. I find myself actually adapting to changing situations instead of simply reloading every time a guard gets suspicous and comes to investigate a disturbance (I still tend to reload if I cause a full on alarm during a mission, though). Moreover, you don't have to be a professional press conference demo player to successfully adapt to these new situations. The indicators that tell you when a guard sees you or is suspicious and about to investigate, and the reflect mode that is triggered when you do get spotted are all very clever design choices. The controls are simply fantastic, and I have never felt that they are to blame when I fail. The movement feels very precise and firm (if that makes sense). And you are not automatically sticking to covers all the time, thank God. The quality of design shines in other areas as well. I enjoy scouting out the base and tagging enemies, but I don't necessary want to do that again when I restart a checkpoint. And I don't have to. I also enjoy gathering resources and fultoning enemies to expand my base, but after a certain point that started to feel like a bit of a chore. Shortly after, I got the combat deployment ability that helps me gather resources. And so on. I got the D-Dog yesterday and he is fucking awesome. I looted an enemy base with his help, and once I was satisfied with the haul, I ran to the hill close to the base and started practicing my sniping skills just for fun. When I left the scope view and rotated the camera, I noticed that the dog was laying next to me, perfectly calm, like a spotter or something. DOTY. The biggest source of frustration for me is still the checkpoint system. I understand the reasoning behind that though, and should probably just change my thinking regarding alerts and stuff. I also dislike boss battles in general. I don't care that much of the story, especially the extremely bleak and brutal direction they seem to be going for. Still, I'm glad that this is a Metal Gear game and not, say, Battlefield or Tom Clancy game. At least it has a lot of character. Oh and speaking of characters, Ocelot is super cool in this one.

One of the mission checkpoints was next to a bear, and so every time I restarted from the checkpoint, I had to tranq the bear again. It was ok, though, because I got to watch the ridiculous bear fultoning animation again and again. Apparently yes, eventually.

I'm really enjoying this game so far. The controls are easy to get used to, the mechanics are satisfying, the graphics are pretty as hell, and the game runs very smoothly on my PC. It seems that I need to reconsider my playstyle, though. I repeated the Spetsnaz soldier extraction mission who knows how many times, because I wanted to do a "perfect" run, i.e. extract the target alive and not cause any alerts. That would have been easy enough, if I hadn't also been so concerned with examining the site thoroughly and maximizing the number of soldiers I fulton recovered. It was only after I felt satisfied enough with my performance and left the mission area that I realized that I could just return to the site after the mission and explore the area without a danger of losing too much progress. Does anyone know if there is any difference between exploring the sites during the mission and between missions? For example, can all the items (apart from mission specific intelligence, etc.) be found after the mission as well? I hope I get used to the rating system. I already dislike the idea of continuing my mission in games like these once I trigger an alarm, and knowing that alerts will affect my rating and mission rewards, I vastly prefer to restart a checkpoint instead of dealing with the situation. However, seeing that the checkpoints are few and far between in this game, I think this might get very frustrating very fast. Maybe I just shouldn't care about the rewards...

I haven't bought physical copies of PC games in a while, but I reserved a copy of this game simply because the boxed copy was much cheaper than the (unsuspicious) digital versions. I think it also comes with a map but that is not a big deal for me. I was wondering just this morning how many DVDs they will have to include to fit the game data because they can't expect PC gamers to have bluray drives. How are physical copies of large scale PC games typically handled these days?

Damn, I totally missed the microbrewery lambic phase.