Metal Gear Solid V

[ninjainspandex]

WOW! just picked up the game last night, only got through the prologue, but damn the production value on the game is incredible. It may just give MGS 3 a run for it's money on my favorite MGS game.

[Blu]

Curious questions, do you need to play Ground Zeroes to have any context of what goes on in MGSV? Like is there any major plot development?

I have played all the way up to MGS4, but not any of the PSP Metal Gear Solid games.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Curious questions, do you need to play Ground Zeroes to have any context of what goes on in MGSV? Like is there any major plot development?

I have played all the way up to MGS4, but not any of the PSP Metal Gear Solid games.

Ground Zeroes isn't necessary but I recommend it. It's only a 45 minute game really so its pretty easy to just find a playthrough on YouTube.

What is required though is Peace Walker - since MGSV is basically a sequel to that. Just search YouTube for MGS Peace Walker The Movie. It's (only) a few hours and gives you all the context you'll really need.

Edit: Your Ground Zeroes save does get imported to MGSV though - basically people you rescued in GZ become part of your crew in MGSV. That's worth noting too.

[BoringSupreez]

Ok, first, the good so far:

The intro is insane, as others have already stated.

They managed to make Afghanistan look so convincingly central Asian. I've never been to Afghanistan, but I've been through small, poor mountain villages in Turkey, with stone houses, no electricity except to power the loudspeaker for calls to prayer, and sheep roaming the streets. The kind of places that probably haven't seen much of a change in lifestyle since the middle ages. The villages in the Afghan portion of the game look exactly like that, to the point of being uncanny. They must have sent someone to central Asia just to research what that part of the world looks like.

Great music, smooth, convincing graphics, and solid gameplay. MGSV plays like Ground Zeroes on a much larger scale, which, in turn, felt like a bigger badder Peace Walker. It's strange how much the core gameplay of MGS has changed since 2008, but it's still great in a new way.

The Bad:

I hadn't used my PS4 recently, so when I tried to log in to PSN to redeem my Day 1 codes, they made me change my password. I hadn't used the email account associated with my PSN account recently (Hotmail, that's why), so I had to verify "suspicious activity" using my other email account. Then they made me change my Hotmail password to a longer, more complicated one. Finally, I can change my PSN password now, right? No, now I needed to verify your email account through PSN. Then I was allowed to change my PSN password. And of course, after doing so, I needed to re-verify my PSN account itself through an email sent to my Hotmail.

My woes weren't over just yet. After the intro, there's an install point before they send you to the main portion of the game. I hit it the first time, and my install never began. It just sat at 203 seconds. I restarted the game twice, and each time, had the same problem. Turned out I needed to do a hard reset of the console to fix the issue. Bleh.

I don't understand why these tech companies tighten up security on the user end, when the hacking that's gone on in the past was possible because of loose security on the company's end. PSN didn't get hacked because everyone's passwords were easy to guess, it got hacked because the hackers got a hold of a giant list of user account info.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

At this rate, this game is well on its way to becoming one of my favorite games of all time. If this does end up being Kojima's swan song, it wouldn't be a bad one.

[Pulsar_t]

I just wish he had the rights, so that Konami wouldn't drag Metal Gear's corpse through the mud with F2P and mobile shit..

[Snatch1414]

I've finished mission 6 and all side ops to that point.

-I think the stealth gameplay is exceptional and the control feels great. The heart of any game, the gameplay, is strong here. It will take a long, long time before I get tired of doing and re-doing missions.

-The visuals are awesome. When the facial capturing or whatever it's called is on full display it's amazing.

-I think the AI is a legitimate step up, although I personally find it a little inconsistent at times. Maybe it's me but I've played a ton of Ground Zeroes and quite a bit of this and I'm still not 100% sure about what will and won't trigger a guard's reaction and what that reaction will be. Still, overall it's well above par and maybe better than anything out there right now.

-The prologue is insane in a good way. I also admire how much effort they put into what's basically the game's intro sequence

-I am of two minds about the game's "format". There's virtually zero tension most of the time because you're usually just doing side missions or a main mission that someone explained to you in two sentences on the radio. There's not a lot of context for most of what I've done so far. Also, it feels almost identical to Red Dead Redemption riding a horse around the desert. It's nobody's fault but the sights and the freedom don't really impress me as much as they would had I not played RDR.

-I'm also torn on Kiefer, but not the voice itself. I think the voice is fine and I'm surprised how much I took to it in Ground Zeroes. The problem is Snake barely talks. It's obvious they could only get Kiefer and his camp to agree to a finite period of time to record his lines, and it seems like it was less than half of the time they would've liked to have him for. Starting very early in the game, there are important cut scenes where Snake just stares blankly at whoever is talking, and talking, and talking, and Snake doesn't respond. He talks a BIT more in the cassette tapes, but there's no real sense of character it just sounds like Kiefer Sutherland reading off a page, and there's a difference. I think it's painfully obvious that Kiefer wasn't all in on this project and that they had to pick and choose what dialogue they could fit into his time in the studio, and that's a shame.

-Overall great gameplay, the cut scenes (when we're graced with one) are awesome, and the semi-open world gameplay is hit and miss. Those would be my first impressions.

[Pulsar_t]

[Thierry Henry]

I'm spending way too much time in the medical center.

[ninjainspandex]

-I think the AI is a legitimate step up, although I personally find it a little inconsistent at times. Maybe it's me but I've played a ton of Ground Zeroes and quite a bit of this and I'm still not 100% sure about what will and won't trigger a guard's reaction and what that reaction will be. Still, overall it's well above par and maybe better than anything out there right now.

I was reading that this is intentional, to make things not a robotic and more realistic. Maybe the guard will check out a noise one time and another wont and will be too afraid.