Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain

Originally posted by BackFire
Been playing this game for the past few days. About on mission 15 right now.

Very good game, but very very repetitive. You are literally doing the same exact thing, every single mission, often in the same places. Still manages to be fun because of the emergent gameplay and the variety of ways you can tackle a mission, still would have liked a bit more variety in the mission objectives themselves.

Also surprised at how sparse the story is, it's very un-Metal Gear in that respect. Too early to tell if I'll like it, but I hear the story is one of the weaker parts of the game, which is disappointing to hear. And keep hearing how the game feels rushed. I can't imagine how that's possible since Kojima presumably has been working on it since he finished Peacewalker, maybe even before.

But yeah, it's fun and addicting. Shamefully bad auto save system, which sadly seems to be pretty common these days. Such a simple thing so often overlooked.

Agreed. This is a good/great game that just happens to be a shitty Metal Gear lol.

Originally posted by BackFire
Been playing this game for the past few days. About on mission 15 right now.

Very good game, but very very repetitive. You are literally doing the same exact thing, every single mission, often in the same places. Still manages to be fun because of the emergent gameplay and the variety of ways you can tackle a mission, still would have liked a bit more variety in the mission objectives themselves.

Also surprised at how sparse the story is, it's very un-Metal Gear in that respect. Too early to tell if I'll like it, but I hear the story is one of the weaker parts of the game, which is disappointing to hear. And keep hearing how the game feels rushed. I can't imagine how that's possible since Kojima presumably has been working on it since he finished Peacewalker, maybe even before.

But yeah, it's fun and addicting. Shamefully bad auto save system, which sadly seems to be pretty common these days. Such a simple thing so often overlooked.

Oh yeah, the save system is ****ing broke. In some cases, it saves a 3 times in a span of 5 minutes but others, it autosaves every hour. It makes no sense to save while you are running to an objective when there is literally nothing in between that will kill you.

But the really important part where you spend 30 minutes sneaking around, **** you no save.

As for not being a Metal Gear? Meh, I guess so but I don't see it as a bad thing. It needed a change. I agree that story missions should be more cinematic but I still find them mostly fun and a couple of them do surprise me. I just feel that the game used it all up for that awesome prologue. I also think the pace of the game is off. It's a bombastic prologue but then spends 5-10 hours in missions without any sort of story element to it. I do believe they should of taken some of those missions and turned them into side ops.

I don't think the game feels rushed. Hell, half the shit in the game is unneeded.

Apparently there was a secret cutscene found where

Spoiler:
Venom Snake has disarmed all the worlds nukes.

Looks like it was reuploaded though. Probably legit?

Spoiler:
"Here lies proof of the virtue of a mother as validated by her children."

It's legit. Seems to be from FOB's when you disarm enough nukes.

It's amazingly ironic considering what Big Boss does in MG2.

Originally posted by Smasandian
Oh yeah, the save system is ****ing broke. In some cases, it saves a 3 times in a span of 5 minutes but others, it autosaves every hour. It makes no sense to save while you are running to an objective when there is literally nothing in between that will kill you.

But the really important part where you spend 30 minutes sneaking around, **** you no save.

As for not being a Metal Gear? Meh, I guess so but I don't see it as a bad thing. It needed a change. I agree that story missions should be more cinematic but I still find them mostly fun and a couple of them do surprise me. I just feel that the game used it all up for that awesome prologue. I also think the pace of the game is off. It's a bombastic prologue but then spends 5-10 hours in missions without any sort of story element to it. I do believe they should of taken some of those missions and turned them into side ops.

I don't think the game feels rushed. Hell, half the shit in the game is unneeded.

Apparently there are large aspects of the story that were cut prior to release, presumably because they just weren't done. That's what I meant when I say rushed.

To be honest I don't think much needed to change with the MGS formula. I liked the older way of delivering story. MGS has always been convoluted as all hell but that never bothered me, nor really did the extreme amount of cut scenes. I preferred the old way to relegating so much story to the audio tapes.

What you say about pacing is spot on. There's a lot of filler missions that serve no real purpose. Seems to be a legit story missions every 10 missions or so.

Hmm, I didn't know that. No wonder Konami wasn't very happy considering it's roughly 80 million dollars and years of development yet large parts of the game wasn't finished yet.

I agree about the story part of the game but I rather have this type of gameplay instead of what was released in previous games. But it's not like they had to completely remove that part of it away. Rockstar has been doing cinematic storyline for years without feeling repetitive within their open world. Just look at the heist missions you perform in GTAV. Phantom Pain hasn't done it so far. If they added a mission that takes place in area where you can't reach when free roaming, I think that would of eliminated a lot of the repetitiveness.

Probably my biggest gripe with the game is that they got some s**** cover of "The Man Who Sold the World" rather than the original. 😛

Originally posted by Smasandian
Hmm, I didn't know that. No wonder Konami wasn't very happy considering it's roughly 80 million dollars and years of development yet large parts of the game wasn't finished yet.

I agree about the story part of the game but I rather have this type of gameplay instead of what was released in previous games. But it's not like they had to completely remove that part of it away. Rockstar has been doing cinematic storyline for years without feeling repetitive within their open world. Just look at the heist missions you perform in GTAV. Phantom Pain hasn't done it so far. If they added a mission that takes place in area where you can't reach when free roaming, I think that would of eliminated a lot of the repetitiveness.

Yeah, I guess the excuse is that in that 5 year development cycle they also had to build a whole new engine from the ground up for new consoles, and apparently a lot of resources went to that, which makes a certain amount of sense since the engine is incredibly well optimized and gorgeous. The fact that it renders such large distances while maintaining 60fps and looking beautiful is very impressive.

Yeah, it's a pretty sweet looking game. It is impressive and if that's the case then I would agree that it would take that long.

But the caveat is that the addition of Mother Base could of been easily reduced to a UI element (and you spend most of the time doing that as well) and those resources could of been put towards an excellent 3rd act.

I think 99% of the players would want Mother Base removed if it meant they could have a much better story. In fact, as for as upgrades go, this game has the most extensive upgrades system ever. The devs built and designed many bases, added the FOB system in place, created gameplay systems for it and etc and etc... for something that could of easily been done through a screen. At first, I was extremely excited about the idea behind Mother Base but I rarely ever go there and if I do, it take a shower, punch a guy and then call in the helicopter. The whole idea is kind of ****ing pointless. So much of the game is designed around the idea behind Mother Base but there is no point to it. I would rather have an upgrade system based on something simple. Keep the idea of taking people off the field using the fulton system (I do like how it used as a tactic) but instead of having a rating system, you only need to get the specialists.

This helps in:

a. creating a better connection with guys you pick up
b. still have an upgrade sytsem based on personal instead of xp.
c. would create much more intriguing side missions.

For instance, the gunsmith missions are fantastic. I want that all the time instead of the confusing and annoying idea that I need better rated people. I sometimes feel that my missions are taking over by the need to pick people up. If they just need specialists, you would look at the weapon, see that you need a sound engineer to make a better suppressor and while doing a mission, you find a guy so you make a concerted effort to get him but in the game, you just tranq everybody and fulton them. It's not really fun.

I finished it yesterday. I think in a lot of ways it's the best Metal Gear Solid game. The minute to minute gameplay is by far the best the series has ever had, and the story, while fairly skimpy and incomplete, was compelling and had some great moments. Quiet, despite her controversial appearance, is one of the best characters they've done. Her arc was probably the most powerful of any I've seen in the series, it was tragic and beautiful.

And while the mission design itself is pretty repetitive, the freedom and the gameplay always kept the game fun and fresh.

Downside was that there weren't any great boss battles, which is what the series is known for, and the checkpoint system was poorly done.

It really is a shame that Kojima was unable to finish this game, if he had been able to fully complete it then it may have been the best MGS game of all time in every way, as it is, it still might be, but not as clear cut as it would have been.

I would agree on most things.

Once I bought Forza, I took a break from the game but I really haven't felt the need to go back. It's probably a good thing that there isn't any substantial SP experiences coming out until end of Oct. Thank ****ing god this game didnt come out near Fallout 4.

So I came back and got totally into it again. I went through about 5 side ops and ****ing loved it.

I do like how they game changes up a bit for them. For instance, I had to eliminate a tank group. They added a heli to it to make more difficult. It was great. I didn't have a rocket launcher but I stole one from one of the dudes. It was fantastic. A Ubisoft game wouldn't of done that, or at least they would added as a separate activity instead of just changing it up.

In most cases when I leave a game for a week or so, I rarely ever come back to it and enjoy it very similar to when I first booted it up. But I guess Phantom Pain is such a good minute to minute game that I don't have a problem with it.

Man, I just got the unlock for FOB and did all the stuff.

I didn't realize FOB is not option but forced and you lose guys even if you are playing offline or not even playing at all....total bullshit. And what makes it worst? Those guys get you upgrades. Absolute dog shit.

I think you can avoid that if you go into offline mode, no?

Nope!

According to a lot of players, even if you go offline, you can get invaded. Even worse, aside from the people you lose during the invasion on the FOB, if the invader gets to the core and wins, you can actually lose up to 10 guys from your Mother Base.

For instance, if you don't play for a month or so, you can get invaded repeatedly. That's why they give that "direct control" option. Absolute crap.

Wow, I didn't know that. I played it offline mode most of the time so I never got the "you're being invaded" notifications. I don't know if anyone invaded me in that time as I wasn't really paying attention to the mother base staff notifications.

That's crappy though, really crappy.

Yeah, the devs said they will add a feature where you can be online but not invaded.

I continued reading that if you don't invade anybody, you might not get invaded.....I don't know, the information is out of whack.

I remember Watch Dogs having a similar mechanic. Somebody could come in and start hacking access points and you had a certain amount of time to catch him. If you win, or defended well, you unlock some skills I think. It was actually pretty good and intense. Eventually, I got bored with the rest of the game so I turned it off so I can push through to the ending.

I'm on the fence about buying this game, the complains about the pacing and repetitiveness are really turning me off. 😬