Thrik

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain

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It's $20 on PSN for PS3. It probably should be $15, but I'm a Metal Gear apologist.

As for performance, I never noticed any problems but, like I said before, I'm calibrated for Dark Souls right now.

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It's an interesting thing that despite the criticism of Ground Zeroes' price (which I agree is too expensive), many games — often indie — have come out during the past several years at similar prices and with comparatively no more gameplay. Just what is a game worth? WHAT IS GAME?

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If you're pickin' up what GZ's puttin' down and 100% it, there's probably 10 hours of content.

This isn't the MGS2 tanker demo.

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Honestly, fuck this game. It kind of makes me feel major regret that I have invested a bunch of time in the Metal Gear Solid series.

 

Why? Not because it's a prologue released as a separate game for way too much money. It's because of what I've heard of certain story spoilers involving some fucking nasty audio logs.  No, I haven't played it so I haven't heard them and how they are executed, but I was alerted by someone in the comments on the Polygon article and it was jarring enough just to know the subject matter.

 

Major spoilers:

So let's see how fucked up towards women Kojima has gotten. Forget all the awkward and overt sexism in MGS4 and the controversy with The Quiet, Paz's treatment has taken the cake. I mean she already had some awkward see through moment during a cutscene Peacewalker plus I guess she had to do the final fight in her underwear, but that wasn't enough.

 

First, Paz is gang raped by a bunch of soldiers and you get to hear it in all it's full glory.

 

Second, another audio log plays where Chico (a 13 year old boy) is forced to rape Paz in front of a bunch of people. But no, that bomb was not enough to portray deviant behavior, the villian unstead has to be show as an extreme shock value type villian by shoving a secret second bomb up her vagina. Apparently there's an audio log of this as well with some nice squishy sound effects. The game ends with an explosion of surprise vagina bomb!

 

Fucking hell. I've read a lot of fanboys defending this shit by saying that this adequetely portrays the villian as evil and gives Big Boss full motivation for his revenge in Phantom Pain, but that's just lazy writing. There's been a lot of complaints in the past few years about female characters being raped or mutilated as a driving force for the male main character and this is just a more derivative idea of that but just turned up to full blast. I guess I don't expect much from Metal Gear in terms of writing, but Ground Zeroes seems to have gone to a very dark place and I hear the humor is all but lost. This is heavy handedness in all the wrong direction and not why I have enjoyed Metal Gear. Now I'm stuck following a series where the creator becomes increasingly insane and apparently really fucking hates women.

 

And out of all of those atrocities above, what would have done the trick is just the bomb implanted in to the guts. That's all that had to play out to show how extreme the villian is. Simple. I like the idea as it's different enough, and the scene where Paz being cut open caught my interest in the trailer. I guess she still needed to die, but that can be easily written another way even with said stomach bomb removed.

 

At this rate I guess Phantom Pain will probably be a festival of depravity. The defense I hear is that this is all normal of war crimes so it should be finally be a part of the series. Just like a ridiculous skull faced villian is typical of realistic war atrociiest. Maybe they'll throw some bestiality in there? I mean that happens sometimes in real life, so why not portray everything? Kojima has really needed someone to tell him no for over a decade now.

 

Ugh, my rant done. Maybe I'll play this piece of shit in 5 years.

 

And I don't care that I spoiled this nasty subject matter for myself, it would be like revealing what happens in the Tanker or the Virtuous Mission. It's all stuff that happens before the opening titles.

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Eesh.

I didn't dig into the audio logs so I didn't come across any of that. Paz is definitely treated badly. The surgery scene was brutal and there was one log that I thought could be interpreted as a rape (hence my warning above) but nothing as graphic as you described. I'll see if it is actually there.

Not saying it isn't there, just that I didn't see it, and I'm certainly not defending it.

I like Metal Gear when it's silly and dumb.

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I could be very wrong and I actually hope I am or at the very least that some of this stuff is done with some sort of tact. The B&B Corp and their awkward portrayal is what really brought down 4 for me.

 

 I'm just pretty sad about this I suppose. ;(

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The B&B Corp. was gross. As bad as what I saw in GZ was, none of it was sexualized.

Not that that's a whole lot better.

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It's an interesting thing that despite the criticism of Ground Zeroes' price (which I agree is too expensive), many games — often indie — have come out during the past several years at similar prices and with comparatively no more gameplay. Just what is a game worth? WHAT IS GAME?

These aren't analogous except from a cost-to-time ratio. This smacks of Konami wanting to recoup some of the money they've sunk into MGS 5, which has most likely been in development in one form or another since 2008. I get the impression that there were a bunch of big, nebulous ideas and some great tech in place but no real game to speak of. Ground Zeroes is a tech demo that they are selling you for $30.

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So I've gone through all the logs and I can't find anything like you described synth. Unless it's hidden in secret unlocks or something, I think the intertnet might be mistaken.

Very bad things are implied to have happen to Paz, but they don't go into details.

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Well that's good to hear, maybe it's not so overt then I can rest a bit more easy (Fucked up stuff still happens though?).

 

I read about the "sound effect" and other stuff on NeoGAF from these posts:

http://67.227.255.239/forum/showpost.php?p=105031136&postcount=1481

http://67.227.255.239/forum/showpost.php?p=105372539&postcount=1931

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I guess you do need to go looking for it...

Come on Kojima, you're killing me here :(

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I've been looking forward to this, as I'm also a huge MG fan and apologist, but this stuff is turning my stomach. 

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I've only caught snippets of what's meant to be in Ground Zeroes, but I can't say that I feel like it's appropriate to immediately condemn the developers for it. While the Metal Gear Solid series has always featured some pretty awkward stuff, it's also always tried to shine the spotlight on genuine issues. In a way, I feel that the series tries to draw people in using the bombast and craziness, and then hammers home some serious subject matter. With MGS1 it was nuclear proliferation, with MGS2 it was information control, with MGS3 it was the nature of war, and with MGS4 it was PMCs. And those weren't even the main themes.

 

I was coincidentally watching a documentary the other day about the barbaric treatment of women by soldiers in the Congo as recently as this past few years, and the way that on a huge scale women over there are still gang raped, children and parents are forced to rape their families, women have scolding pieces of iron inserted into their genitals for days at a time, and countless other acts of insanely horrific violence. I think many people are also aware of bombs being inserted into people in the Middle East during recent years. Despite that, I think that awareness and especially action to try and aid what goes on over there is still relatively limited in the Western world.

 

I can't say that I've become too familiar with the kind of issues Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain are tackling, but from the sounds of it they're attempting to bring home some of the horrors happening over there. And you know what? I'm completely OK with such stuff being depicted in fiction. If it causes people to feel some kind of emotion or empathy, perhaps it'll cause them to think twice about just brushing it aside when they next hear about yet more systematic abuse and torture of women in parts of the world where the stuff these audio logs allude to actually happens.

 

I've seen people make jokes about some of the above, as if it's just a humorous fact of life that rape is a widespread thing there. I guess that for a lot of people, it's been background noise in the news for so long that it actually kind of is just an incidental quirk of the world. Could a game like MGS change those peoples' views by exposing them to graphic depictions of what such atrocities are like when they're not just text in a news article? Probably not, but at least it's trying. That's why I'm also totally fine with films and such that depict graphic rape, because despite its fictional nature it does make it more real for those who are used to just reading about it.

 

The knee-jerk reaction seems to be assuming that Kojima and his crew just hate women and enjoy depicting them in such ways, almost like it's some kind of fantasy — but I don't think that's the case. Even if it's a little misguided or 'off', I think that a sincere effort is being made to highlight some of the horrors that exist in our world. The same applies to the B&B unit from MGS4, which definitely missed the mark but I could see what was being attempted. If even one person is affected by these games in a way that compels them to feel more strongly about such issues that's a win in my book.

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The knee-jerk reaction seems to be assuming that Kojima and his crew just hate women and enjoy depicting them in such ways, almost like it's some kind of fantasy — but I don't think that's the case. Even if it's a little misguided or 'off', I think that a sincere effort is being made to highlight some of the horrors that exist in our world. The same applies to the B&B unit from MGS4, which definitely missed the mark but I could see what was being attempted. If even one person is affected by these games in a way that compels them to feel more strongly about such issues that's a win in my book.

 

Philosophically, I agree with you.  But I don't feel like games get an automatic benefit of the doubt anymore that they are going to handle with care sensitive subjects, and not just exploit something traumatic or terrible.  Not even MGS.  There are too many examples of games doing it wrong, and very, very few examples of games doing it right. 

 

But yeah, I'll get around to it and form my opinion on the actual game eventually.

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Graphics comparisons galore:

 

http://kotaku.com/metal-gear-solid-v-ground-zeroes-ps4-vs-xbox-one-vs-1550365253

 

PS4 seems to be considered the best-looking of the versions. The new-gen versions in general have some serious pros, including but not limited to 60 FPS rather than 30 FPS (Big deal!), higher resolution, much more detailed textures, and various environment effects that are properly snazzy. This is another reason for me to just wait until next year when I finally get a new-gen console and (hopefully) The Phantom Pain is out.

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I'm a little mystified as to why this isn't on PC as well, given that Kojima said he would like to see TPP on PC and since it was developed for the PS4/X1, there shouldn't be as much work to port versus what the PS3/360 took. 

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Okay, so I hate the Metal Gear Solid series because, quite frankly, its story is puerile shite.

 

However, after reading the changes that were made to the mechanics (the mini-map, you can tag enemies and then follow their patterns) made it sound like some really cool parts of Splinter Cell mixed in with the lost, good bits of Hitman Blood Money and some of the ideas that I appreciated about Absolution.

 

So it saddens me that no one seems to be talking about the only thing that even had me mildly interested - how the game plays.

 

Will some one who will skip all the cut scenes and ignore all the collectible bollocks be able to enjoy the actual game parts? Has it shifted away from the previous installments in terms of game play that I might be interested?

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I love the gameplay. It flows incredibly well and is super slick. Ask me anything about the gameplay.

You can't skip the cut scenes but they book end the mission so feel free to get a cup o tea after you hit start for the first time.

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You can't skip the cut scenes but they book end the mission so feel free to get a cup o tea after you hit start for the first time.

 

Fuck, really? Can you skip it the second time you play it?

 

In regards to the gameplay, is it as diverse as they are making out? In terms of being able to go 'weapons hot' does this feel like a viable tactic and have they cleaned up the awful shooting mechanics from the previous games?

 

Is the HUD as pared down as the Eurogamer review implies?

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You cannot skip them ever. It's pretty annoying since the game is clearly designed for multiple play throughs.

Going weapons hot is pretty cool. The enemy soldiers actually have a lot of steps between healthy and dead. In fact, a majority of guys you down in a running battle will just be wounded and eventually recover or get dragged out by their mates or scramble behind cover or continue to fire at you from the ground or radio in for help. It actually makes the violence less glamorous and action movie like.

I have noticed some cracks in their AI behavior, and the fact that you can go from raging gun battle to situation normal in about 2 minutes is very gamey.

I've never personally had a big problem with MGS controls but they have added various schemes including some labeled "shooter" (I found the default to be fine).

The UI is extremely minimalist, with a majority of it being contextual (enemy suspicion, contextual actions etc).

The camera acts like you're watching Snake through a lense, which means lense flair from light sources, accompanied by buzzing when a particularly bright light is on you. This is actually a good thing as this is what acts like a "stealth meter", and communicates the info perfectly. It does the jam on screen thing when you're hurt so meh.

A lot of the in game UI is supposed to be representative of Snake's situational awareness (primarily guys you've tagged by looking at them for a few seconds through your binoculars or gun sites), and it will fade when things get really hectic. It will only return when you have a moment of rest.

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Hmmm, apart from the cut-scene skipping part (which is kind of a deal breaker) that all sounds really interesting.

 

I might see if I can borrow it from somewhere so that I can get a feel for whether I want to bother with the game.

 

I have no problem with the jam effect and I am all for using aesthetics to convey things (when everything went black and white in Splinter Cell: Conviction was a good example), be it by using cinematic style that we associate with that kind of thing or even just coming up with your own (ie: Splinter Cell: Conviction).

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The cutscenes are actually well done (subject matter notwithstanding) and not too too long, maybe 5 minutes. I am of the opinion that Kojima can direct a good action scene if the characters keep their gobs shut.

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