Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Hands down my favorite game. I feel if I skim on this review, I'll be doing the game an injustice. So this one will be lengthy.

This game is a stealth game, but hey woah, wait!! - It's not forcing you to go stealth all the time. Instead, this game rewards you regardless of how you play. You can go loud or you can really take your time and play slow and stealthily or even fast and stealthy. You get rewarded regardless of your specific play style. Some missions require you to go loud and destroy vehicles and others are focused more on stealth. You get rewarded regardless of your playstyle with a matching animal codename which you receive at the end of each mission. Stealth yields the highest scores, however, once you learn the missions/maps and the entry points and develop the gear that helps accompany your play style, that just builds on the existing gameplay and feel of the game. Completing the side ops (there's 157 of them) yields not only benefits like soldiers for your home base, but also extra features like customization to your weapons, equipment loadouts and extra translations for different languages. All in the effort to make you go for better gear.

This story is amazing, however, you can feel the point in where Kojima and Konami had differences and Kojima was kicked. Around mission 46 onwards some of the missions were repeated but the difficulty is cranked all the way up to 11. Most of my difficulties when going for 100% were these missions. Total Stealth (being spotted is mission over), Extreme anything is massive damage received and some of the battles were rough. Once you complete a number of missions and you do go out to do them (you get a bunch of neat extra features) and all the while you upgrade your home base with soldiers extracted via missions or free roam. Fulton extraction, which is amazing in it's own right, is something that is hilarious if you extract a donkey, sheep or dazed soldiers. Their yells just make it hilarious to say the least as they are pulled up into the sky. The story in this game is amazing and has an insane amount of detail to it. True, it doesn't make sense in the beginning, but if you go through a bunch of missions and and you start realizing what's going on and the puzzle pieces start to fit together, it makes for a solid and gripping story which has a number of plot twists and heart-wrenching moments. From amazing highs to complete and utter surprises as rescuing Kojima himself from an enemy base, it really is something that I cannot stress enough.

Doing anything in this game, will eventually yield you resources and once you have enough resources, you'll be able to research new gear via the development option. This is, unfortunately but I feel intentional, real-time development time that you'll have to wait for your gear to be done developing and you can deploy with it into missions/side missions. The reason I feel it's intentional is because it then forces you to either go and look for new soldiers, try your hand at different approaches in missions or go for new skills or blueprints in certain areas of the map. This honestly makes for a very decent change of pace instead of rushing through equipment development in order to cheese the game. The higher the missions, the more you are nudged into developing more powerful weapons and gear to keep up with the increasing difficulty of the enemy forces.

Once you have a number of soldiers under your command, you've got the option of sending them on deployment missions and they will then come back with either a bunch of goodies and a few injuries or they'll return with KIA's (Killed In Action) and/or a failed mission. These missions also have the option to disrupt the flow of weapons and gear for the enemies inside missions (it took me too long to figure this out and I think I rushed over a tutorial mentioning this). This includes:

• directional mines - can catch you off-guard and alert nearby enemies if set off
  
• riot suits - massive pain if you play non-lethal
  
• gas masks - nullifies sleeping gas grenade effects
  
• shields - makes frontal assaults difficult
  
• armor - makes body shots with tranquilizers ineffective, arms or legs still work well
  
• helmets - prevents headshots with poor penetrative power weapons and tranquilizer rounds to the face
  
• flashlights - enemies have trouble spotting you when you play evening missions
  
• shotguns - gun goes *BOOM shuck BOOM* "Snake? Snake...? SNAKE?!"
  
• machineguns - this is emplacement weapons which I think also entails mortars, but I may be wrong
  
• decoys - inflatable enemies that really do, and I can't believe I'm saying this, surprise you and you whip out your weapon only to realize you got duped son!
  
• surveillance cameras - they're more turrets equipped with a camera to spot you.

When recovering wildlife, which also happens to be an achievement on its own, you will receive GMP (Gross Military Product and the game's currency) and you will receive Heroic points. These points are in direct relation to the shrapnel in your head. Killing enemy soldiers, being spotted and being killed will net you demon points. Extracting child soldiers and wildlife will net you heroic points. Higher Hero points will make your "horn" in your head smaller, whilst demon points will make it longer. This spreads rumours of a "demon" killing and wiping out checkpoints. Speaking of checkpoints, that's also a way of increasing your heroic points and you also receive codenames.

Going for 100% is a massive task. But that doesn't mean the journey isn't a memorable one. This game honestly had me in tears in a bunch of different missions. Brutality of war, the controversial matters of child soldiers in Africa and then of course, the meddling of country leaders in civil wars and gun trading. This game honestly had the biggest plot twists I've ever seen anything having a story in a game and I've only ever played MGS 3 Snake Eater on PlayStation 2 more than a couple of years ago. That was also an amazing game. The freedom this game gives you for doing whatever you want to do and how you do it really makes it amazing. The way to execute your missions the way you want to, it just does it so seamlessly. This game shouldn't deter you from trying it because it is focused on Stealth, rather you should really be trying this game because it does give you so much freedom. Give it a shot, you really won't regret it.

This game's graphix is a solid 10 in my opinion, however, it doesn't support 144Hz. Bummer, but, it's so smooth that you won't feel the 60Hz and fps lock. The devil is in the details and I gotta say, there be a lot of devils here. Example of just what I mean: You have communication equipment that run on battery or some form of electricity (- Captain America) and you have a water pistol. Whatchugonnado? You gonna shoot that bad boy and watch the equipment fry like a chicken drumstick at KFC. What other game has this type of attention to details? You don't have a rocket launcher for a helicopter or tank? Crawl along the ground and make use of the terrain. Infiltrate at night. Wear appropriate clothing for the terrain and infiltration time. You don't have a decoy to stop a convoy? Have your buddy stand in the road and block the path. Enemies are transporting a prisoner you need to extract? Have your buddy D-Horse defecate on the road and make the vehicle spin out of control knocking everyone unconscious. The lists are endless and the game focuses a lot on these mechanics.

Get this game. Don't think, just do it and once you have it - Play it. You won't regret it.