Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain

[Griddlelol]

I just did all the tasks for the subsistence mission. It was crazy tense! I knew I couldn't kill armoured guys with weapons, so I had to be super sneaky, in shitty gear. The guards wouldn't give up the location of the prisoners I was looking for, which was frustrating, D-Dog would have had those guys located in seconds.

 

At one perfect moment, I distracted 3 of them into a court yard, then bombarded them with mortar fire from a nearby emplacement. Felt good! 

[Griddlelol]

I just 100%ed MGSV. It's not something I usually do, but it's such an incredible game, I wanted to do everything it offered me.

[Bjorn]

I know I'm like a year and a half late on this, but MGSV is a very good game y'all.  Like, holy shit, one of my favs of all time I think.

 

I had bounced on playing Ground Zeroes, so lost interest in TPP, but after getting it very cheap, I'm just hooked.

[SuperBiasedMan]

It's very good. Have you picked a custom helicopter theme?

[Bjorn]

3 minutes ago, SuperBiasedMan said:

It's very good. Have you picked a custom helicopter theme?

 

I just remembered to do that last night, and I swooped into a hot LZ, minigun mowing stuff down while blaring Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer and it was very good. 

 

Now it's playing a traditional bag pipe song when I land.

 

This also got me to listening to the in game soundtrack (the pop music tracks you pick up), which pair obnoxiously good with the gameplay.  It's so good to have like 80s pop going while sniping, feels like some cheesy assassin movie.

[twmac]

It is great and then the second half is terrible. Be warned, after the first 'ending' that game gets real bad, real quick.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I enjoyed right to the end personally in spite of the repetitive missions. I played through almost every mission and side op because it became my prime podcast game.

[Twig]

Redoing those missions with new challenges was a whole fuckload of fun for me.

[Bjorn]

I'm really enjoying going back and knocking off optional objectives and S-Ranking old missions already, I can see me continuing to enjoy doing that.  It's always possible that I'll burn out, it happens with lots of games, but mechanically it's so strong right now that it's just a joy to figure out how to get through each area.

 

Or, if I do get frustrated, then I can steal a tank and go gonzo on a base instead to break things up!

 

I did have an incredibly frustrating crash to desktop last night though.  I had just finished Episode 12 (rescue Dr. Emmerich), saw the cut-scene from that, saw all my rewards and was reviewing the stats of the 65 people I had ballooned out of the mission, and the game crashed.  The previous checkpoint was after rescuing Emmerich and I had to run through the final bit of the mission again. 

[Atlantic]

I played MGSV for over 200 hours (and Ground Zeroes for probably 40 hours before that). I enjoyed almost every second of it. It's an impossibly good game.

[Bjorn]

Does money start flowing in eventually?  Because as it stands now (finished Ep 12), I feel like I barely have enough to research the upgrades for stuff I use, let alone pay for all the things I might like to try and play around with. 

 

I was thinking about letting it run in the background while I work and farm the soldier dispatch missions, but didn't know if that was somethign to worry about messing with if money's just going to flood in past a certain point like a lot of games.

 

 

[Atlantic]

Eventually missions start offering loads of money for completion, plus bonuses for doing well. Also, you unlock the online FOB thing around mission 22, which can boost your economy a bit. Side missions can also have a good deal of cash, if you drop into the free roam mode and sweep across the map. I know they patched it a bunch of times in the first six months and changed stuff about the cash flow and added additional items, which may have also changed the balance of things. 

[Bjorn]

Yeah, I knew the FOB thingie existed and hadn't got it yet, and I know I'm still unlocking or gaining access to other stuff (like I just randomly got the ability to climb cracks in walls, which makes going back to S-rank some missions way easier).  It's one reason I've held off on doing every optional thing so far, because the tools to make some things more manageable are still rolling in. 

 

I might still farm some missions just to build up some cash though, because I feel bad that I'm basically taking the same weapons/items in on every mission when I know there's a whole toy box of stuff to play with that I just don't have.

 

Also, I made my emblem look like a Dairy Queen sign, so my own head cannon on this is that it's all taking place in an alternate reality where DQ expanded into private mercenary groups to diversity its investment.  I have a whole bunch of other stuff to make emblems with now. 

[syntheticgerbil]

I'm also just starting this now, but I'm not going to say anything about my likes or dislikes until I'm finished, but I also have this problem. There's a lot of grinding, but I also haven't unlocked FOB shit yet, I'm on mission 21. I'm also ignoring most assault rifle and shotgun and handgun upgrades because I'm imagining this will follow the flow of Peacewalker where the only thing worth developing that is lethal is just rocket launchers. So far I've been right.

 

But try fultoning lots of mortars, vehicles, and gun emplacements, Bjorn. I have so many of these things and I just sell a little here and there when I need cash. I think this may screw me a bit with FOBs but from what I'm reading almost no one invades bases anymore. I also tend to jump out of my car to grab plants as tedious as that is, but I have about 5,000 of most plants and those can also be sold for a good amount in bulk. I don't think (or I hope) selling plants too much will screw me over because it only seems like some of those egregiously expensive online only weapons will take a lot of plants. Then you need guns and mortars for FOB but I keep maybe 25 or so at all times of each type for FOB whenever I get there, but I might be playing it too safe and could maybe sell more. Don't sell elements or materials. You need vehicles for some dispatch missions but I would gather you only need a couple of each, and even then there's like 10 different tanks with tons of opportunities to keep fultoning. Plus those pointlessly slow big trucks are good to sell, I don't even think those are needed in dispatch missions ever.

 

I could be totally wrong though. I'm on mission 20 and 140 hours in. I'm kind of addicted to the gameplay loop, but I'm also a crazy person who has to S Rank and do all the mission tasks the second I beat the mission plus make sure to finish each new side op that unlocks until I move on. I imagine even if you aren't an insane person, you will still need to spend a lot of time reraiding the same outposts many times to be super stronk before the end of the game.

[twmac]

20 hours ago, Twig said:

Redoing those missions with new challenges was a whole fuckload of fun for me.

 

That's when I stopped playing.

 

MGSV went from this cool, free-form stealth game in an open-world, to an annoying rehash of the original missions with limitations that meant that you were restricted in what you could do. This undermined the point of the game to me and it went from Far Cry 2 Solid, to Metal Gear Solid very quickly and I hate MGS games.

 

This was the exact same experience for my two other friends who don't like MGS but love Far Cry 2.

 

So, there is that.

[Twig]

My favorite where the ones where it spawns you in with nothing, and you have to find what you need on-site. 

 

SO FUCKING GOOD.

[Bjorn]

4 hours ago, Twig said:

My favorite where the ones where it spawns you in with nothing, and you have to find what you need on-site. 

 

SO FUCKING GOOD.

 

Oh god, I didn't know that was a thing.   That sounds really fucking good. 

 

 

 

So I found the weird optional cutscene with Paz on Motherbase last night, and one thing I really didn't need out of this game was to rehash the grossest, most off putting thing from Ground Zeroes (or damn near any video game), including a soldier jamming his hand up Paz's vagina to fish a bomb out while Snake holds her down. 

[Twig]

Yeah pretty much...

[Atlantic]

welcome to kojima

[SuperBiasedMan]

So... is it possible to play the game without Paz appearing? She comes up a lot but I swear she wasn't in my game at all.

[Twig]

Yes. The cutscene is optional and I don't remember what it takes to find it? Something to do with tapes maybe? Or going back to a certain room over and over?

 

yep nevermind i have no idea completely forgot

[Korax]

Yeah, you have to go to a specific room at Mother Base to find her, and she's the only reason to go there. Avoid the room, never see her again.

[Bjorn]

I looked up what the conditions were.  She appears after the second original Mother Base soldier is reclaimed.  I looked that up, but I didn't look up what happened when you talked with her, which I suppose I should have.  I had a glimmer of hope that after how the character was handled in GZ, that TPP would be a chance to do it over and better.  Hahahahahahaha.  Nope. 

 

 

 

I really like the missions where you end up having to chase down a truck or tank, they kind of end up stupid fun because even when things go to hell, it's not necessarily in the middle of a compound, just enough people for you to handle. 

 

After having my horse shewed off the road though, I thought I'd be clever and tranq him, then they couldn't shew him, cause he'd just lie there!  I am smart and clever. Turns out that enemies will stop for a standing horse, but just run over what looks like a dead horse laying in the road.  I felt pretty bad for good old D-Horse, shot in the face with a dart by his master, then run over by a jeep.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Oh that'd explain it, I never really returned to Mother Base that often.

[Twig]

I hope you at least returned for the D Dog stuff. D: