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Post by Imperial Khador on Jan 26, 2016 8:25:52 GMT
So, posting this in the main forum, since it is a multi-platform release. Finished the Phantom Pain the other day, and I've had a few days to digest it. A lot of my feelings are actually covered pretty well in this episode of The Final Bosman: youtu.be/mN4pB9eDEqwI enjoyed a lot about the game's mechanics, and I found it scaled well. Even though a lot of the missions and side ops are very similar, new equipment is unlocked at a pretty consistent pace, and new methods of solving the same problems help keep things. That said, I spent almost 150 hours on this game, which is longer than it took to replay through the entire series up to this point in the last several months, however there was not substantially more story content here than with previous Metal Gear titles, so it was just doled out much less frequently. I get the impression that this game was made because Kojima had a desire to make an open world game, and doing it within the context of Metal Gear made the most financial sense. I think overall I prefer my Metal Gear as 10-15 hour games. This is entirely anecdotal, but I do find it interesting that among people I know who have played this game, the most positive reactions were from people who had never played the series previously.
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Dan E. Kool
Walking Trash Can Robot
Now With Extra Pulp!
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Post by Dan E. Kool on Jan 26, 2016 13:17:22 GMT
Which platform did you play it on? Is it worth getting for last-gen or should I just wait til I get current gen?
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Post by Imperial Khador on Jan 26, 2016 14:03:14 GMT
I played it on the PS4. Not sure how well it runs on last gen. I did have a friend play through Ground Zeroes on the PS3 and it still looked pretty nice.
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leaon79s
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Dishonorable Miscreant
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Post by leaon79s on Jan 26, 2016 18:50:35 GMT
Forgive me if I haven't got much to say about it, as I haven't quite gone through it myself. Trying to avoid any spoilers. Taking a break from it cause it's just so... complicated...
Playing Galak-Z in the interim. Much easier to get into for a simple minded fewl like me - I just like flying planes and shooting stuff...
I imagine fsfsxii, possibly Cervantes, or maybe even Scipio Africanus will have much more to say about it than me...
Although, I'll most likely dig this thread up again once I have finished it. But being the procrastinator I am that could be anywhere between a few months to a whole year from now... (lol)
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fsfsxii
Space Striker
What to believe...
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Post by fsfsxii on Jan 26, 2016 19:43:27 GMT
It took everything awful about open world and put into my metal gear. Only metal gear i couldn't finish, that and MG2
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Cervantes
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Post by Cervantes on Jan 30, 2016 22:20:12 GMT
fsfsxii - But MG2 is awesome! Seriously, I played it for the first time last year, and I loved it - actually, it felt like playing a 2d version of MGS, as a lot of scenes are shared by both games. And it plays really well. As for MGS V: TPP, I finished all its story content yesterday, so I'm still gathering my thoughts around it. But I'll give a summary of what I think: The story is good, but it's too sparse. In the previous games, every single objective is something to advance the main plot, so you're seeing a great story unfold - this is true even for Peace Walker, which initiated the "mission menu" style seen here in V. But in V, you do a lot of missions that are unrelated to the plot - they're just "new contracts" given to you by Miller/Ocelot. It's not too bad until the end of the first chapter (Mission 31). But then, after that, it becomes a mess: it's clear they started rushing the game at some point, so, after Mission 31, almost all the other missions are literal repeats of previous ones (with the dificulty amped up) or missions that have no relation to any main plot - because, basically, after that point, the main plot is over and what you have is a few side-stories to solve (Huey, Quiet, Eli and a substory involving the old photos). At that point, the story just felt too loose and advanced at random moments. I think it would've been better if, like in the previous MG games, the side-quests were solved before the main story was over and were more related to it. So, as I see it, everything is ok until the end of Chapter 1, but a bit of a mess after it. I really like the story arcs; the problem, really, is only their lack of relation with the gameplay - I would randomly get a new cutscene after doing some totally unrelated mission. About the twist, I said it right after the game begun, it was just too obvious... But then, I kinda expected that from Kojima. I... like it! It finally gives some sense to the first 2 Metal Gears, as I never understood what happened to Big Boss between those games and how he built the Zanzibar base in so little time. So, while the twist didn't surprise me in the slightest, I think it was a good way to wrap the story. Quiet was a great character, and I liked everything about her story, especially the ending. But what really surprised me was the way the story handled Huey: that was the story that convinced me Big Boss/Miller/Ocelot had crossed the moral line. Each new scene with Huey and visiting him in the R&D platform to see how he was obviously being forced to work (the way he said "Snake!" and waived was kind of depressing) convinced me that I was seeing a dictartorship being quickly installed in the base. Now, the gameplay was just awesome. My hint is: use everything; the game gives you too many ways to distract/kill/immobilize enemies and complete the missions. If you are playing as a pacifist in the main missions, I recommend that you forget the pacifism in the Side-Ops, as they don't rank you at all, so they are the chance to experiment. Also, another hint: don't do one Side-Ops, then go back to the helicopter, then do another... No: you are meant to land in Afghanistan/Africa and just do as many missions as you can in a roll, just calling the chopper to drop more supplies. Going back to the helicopter consumes too much time and is unnecessary - just remember to bring a car to the missions; if not, you can also switch your buddy for the horse at any point. My only complaint about the gameplay is how repetitive the missions are, both the Side-Ops and the Main missions. Just look at all the variety we had in Peace Walker: taking photos of ghosts, shooting down ballons, hunting prehistorical beasts, going on a date with Paz/Miller... In V, it's always "destroy a tank" or "capture a guard/prisoner/animal". A few main missions are creative and varied enough (I especially like the one with the kids), but the Side-Ops are almost all dreadful. So, basically, I love the game (more than 100 hours just through this month), but it has clear signs of being rushed (the unorganized second chapter and the fact that the Eli story's conclusion was cut and feel incomplete) and having a lot of padding (repetitive missions - literal repeated main mission, even - and the long time it takes just looking at Snake while the helicopter lands, with no way of skipping the scene). leaon79s - Yep, it seems I had a lot to talk about it!
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Post by Imperial Khador on Jan 30, 2016 22:54:08 GMT
Great review, Cervantes, and it matches a lot of my own thoughts. One thing that may save you some time:
If you're not actively in a mission (say you just completed a side op), you can pause the game and choose 'Return to ACC' to immediately return to the helicopter without having to spend the time or expense in waiting for it. It says you'll lose any progress since the last checkpoint, but this only seems to apply to active missions and side ops (eg. if you've just grabbed some medicinal plants or extracted a few troops, it will still give you a rundown of what has returned to mother base before showing you in the ACC again). I think actually summoning the helicopter is more intended for extractions from combat, but this isn't made very clear.
That said, it definitely is still fun to drive and run around Africa and Afghanistan doing various side ops.
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Cervantes
Off-Brand Transformable Robot
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Post by Cervantes on Jan 30, 2016 23:01:49 GMT
@imperial Khador - Yep. At first, I was doing the side-ops as soon as they were available, one at a time; after some time, I understood that it was best to just let them accumulate a bit and then do all of them in a roll. The game flowed much better this way.
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scipioafricanus
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Post by scipioafricanus on Jan 30, 2016 23:28:53 GMT
Huey deserves all he gets and more.
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Cervantes
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Post by Cervantes on Jan 31, 2016 8:03:09 GMT
scipioafricanus - I actually would have preferred if Huey was really innocent and they never got anything out of his torture; this way, we would have seen them torturing an innocent guy and blaming every problem of the base on him. I actually thought this would be the case when they started complaining that the truth serum wasn't working, and instead of admiting that maybe he was telling the truth, they just looked for other ways to torture the guy . There would not be a better way to frame all the main characters as villains after that. But I still liked how his story was handled.
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Post by Imperial Khador on Jan 31, 2016 10:01:18 GMT
One of the interesting things about Phantom Pain was just how unlikable several characters from Peace Walker had become. Just some spoilery thoughts now. Huey In Peace Walker, I wasn't terribly fond of Huey. I think he veered to close to Otacon, and it wasn't necessary for everything later in the timeline to tie back to Big Boss that way. Much as I like Christopher Randolph, I don't think Huey needed to be there. One of the things I liked a lot in MGS2 looking back on it is that the members of Dead Cell didn't really have any past with Big Boss or Snake. Things should be able to happen in that universe without tying back to that family.
Huey in Phantom Pain...well, I don't feel bad about his later committing suicide anymore. I think we all know people who lie to themselves in small ways until it becomes truth. Huey just takes that to the extreme to justify his actions. It is kind of pitiful, but it is consistent. All the way back to Peace Walker, he was building terrible machines for terrible people, and then selling out his employers/captors. I think this is basically his survival method. He knows his employers need his skills, so will keep him alive long enough to finish his work. He knows once it is complete, they'll probably kill him, so he's already in the process of betraying him to his next employer. Coldman to Snake, Snake to Skullface, Skullface back to Snake, etc...
Miller Miller's transformation into a bitter, revenge obsessed man is pretty straight forward. He may have been working with Cipher on the side before, but all the things that happened to him while the Boss was in a coma, and his arm was taken, etc. The audios with the Hamburgers were about the only moment of levity in his story, and really one of the few times that the game felt like it had some of those bizarre humorous moments for which Metal Gear and Kojima are known.
Big Boss/The Twist Yeah, as Cervantes says, the twist was kind of an obvious one at the beginning. That said, I do think they did enough at the beginning to make Ishmael seem like he was a figment of Ahab's imagination. But fans had puzzled out that the medic in Ground Zeroes was voiced by Keifer Sutherland early on, so this was also a pretty common fan theory. I don't think they went far enough with morphing Big Boss (either of them) into a villain by the end of the Phantom Pain. As Cervantes says, we got some of that when the Phantom was forced to kill his own men, but then later the whole thing ended up being Huey's fault. In the ending/reveal when the Phantom smashes the mirror and grins, I think we're finally seeing it there, but it doesn't seem earned. For the original Big Boss, he seems pretty complicit in the audios we hear of him at the end. Going into hiding, condoning his old comrade being brainwashed into being his mental shadow, etc. It doesn't feel like the same man we saw at the end of Peace Walker or Ground Zeroes. That said, severe head trauma and a coma can certainly be responsible for some shifts in personality, and who's to say Ocelot didn't give Big Boss some mental conditioning as well. The Medical Platform Ultimately, with the reveal that the Phantom wasn't Big Boss at all, the whole subplot with his memories of Paz feels very cheap. It makes me wonder if they'd decided on the Big Boss/Phantom twist fairly late in the project after this part of the story line was fleshed out.
Eli This felt pretty much dead on. Eli felt exactly as Liquid should have as an adolescent.
Mantis I didn't actually like Mantis here. His powers seem to exponentially dwarf those of the man Snake met and killed on Shadow Moses island. I'm not terribly fond of him meeting Liquid or Ocelet this early on either, and given how bizarre he seems here, his later career in the KGB and FBI make even less sense. Mantis in particular feels like fan service that didn't quite work.
Quiet I really like Quiet's story. I'm not crazy about her overall design, but I thought she was a great addition to the world of Metal Gear.
Ocelot Ocelot continues to tie the story together. His previous self-hypnosis storyline in MGS2 and 4 helps make the origin of Big Boss' Phantom make sense...at least in the context of the Metal Gear universe. The Parasites As long as I live, I hope to never hear code talker say 'The Vocal Cord Parasites' or 'The Wolbachia' again. The same way that many powers and situations in the modern-era were explained away in MGS4 as nanomachines, most unusual abilities in the Big Boss era of Metal Gear are now explained as being caused by parasites. How did at least 3 of the Cobras get them? We'll probably never know.
Much like the nanomachines, I think the parasites were used to hand-wave things. Ultimately the Skulls unit can summon guns out of thin air because Kojima thought it looked cool. Parasites are there to hand-wave the plot elements that don't quite make sense.
Voice Acting I really missed David Hayter, and it is a shame that they didn't bring him back for the last Kojima-helmed entry in the series, particularly since Akio Otsuka continued to voice him in Japanese. Moreover, I think it was kind of a waste to bring Kiefer Sutherland on, and then have him barely speak. I don't mind the idea of his voice changing as he gets older, but this might have been a good opportunity to bring in Richard Doyle, who voiced him in MGS4, or even John Cygan who voiced Solidus. Similarly, it would have been nice to have either of Ocelot's previous voice actors back, though I don't mind Troy Baker. Robin Atkin-Downes continues to do great job as Miller. I think he does a great job being the person that Cam Clarke-as-Liquid was impersonating in the original MGS. Also, this may amuse you if you haven't seen it yet. This is fake commercial from Parks and Rec with voiceover done by him. Pretty amusing in the light of Miller's Hamburgers: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie61euFnwvQThe Audio Tapes This is something I wasn't particularly fond of in Peace Walker either. I get that this was a way to get away from the lengthy cut scenes the series is known for, but I find putting large portions of the plot in optional audio logs that one must listen to in blocks is much more tedious. I get that the option i there to complete them while you're doing missions, etc, but radio chatter will play over the tapes audio, without stopping it, which I found very irritating.
Mother Base Felt very empty with very little to do for such a huge location.
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Cervantes
Off-Brand Transformable Robot
A former Incompetent Evil Commander (XP: 2423)
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Post by Cervantes on Jan 31, 2016 11:01:30 GMT
Ah, I forgot to talk about the audio tapes: they're a step back from the (already constrained but acceptable) Codec. At first, I wasn't even sure of who was talking, as Miller and Ocelot can sound a bit similar sometimes. But in general, the problem is that it's just boring to not even see their faces. I also missed David Hayter. And there was a way in which the game could have benefited of his presence: they could have announced that, although Hayter wasn't voicing the Big Boss anymore, they brought him for a quick cameo as a side character, Ishmael, just as an homage to Hayter. Then, by the end, we would learn that Hayter was the Big Boss after all. I think that would've hidden the twist a bit better (I immediatelly discovered it because it made no sense to see Sutherland voicing both characters) and still pleased the fans. Of course, the problem would then be Ground Zeroes...
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Post by Imperial Khador on Jan 31, 2016 11:33:15 GMT
Re: David Hayter Yeah, if they'd had him voicing Snake for Ground Zeroes, and then Ishmael, that would have made sense. They could have even had characters talk about how Big Boss sounded different 10 years later and out of a coma. As I think about it, even Huey and Miller don't recognize the Phantom as Big Boss initially.
Alternately, would have been neat to get some shots of young David/Solid Snake, even if not connected to the main plot. Would have been a nice way to get him to provide a voice without having to wreck his throat doing the Snake growl.
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scipioafricanus
Cartoon Pony Wrangler
Sega Does What Nintendon't... except the 32X
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Post by scipioafricanus on Jan 31, 2016 20:43:02 GMT
So this is supposed to be the game that explains why Big Boss is the villain in the next games. The problem with that is (in the retconned world of Metal Gear) he isn't a "villain" but an enemy of the Patriots/Cipher. As Snake in the next games, you are told that Big Boss is doing this and that to destroy/control the world by your superiors (ie the Patriots). Snake realizes this in MGS4 when he says to Meryl that "I am not a hero, just an assassin hired to do some wet work." So those that thought Big Boss was going to go mad and kill kids (from the trailers) were mislead by Kojima. Wouldn't be the first time.
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Post by Falcula18 on Jun 3, 2016 4:41:12 GMT
I love it, it is one of the best games I have
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