Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

First things first, if you're looking for a game with a polished, well-rounded story, run away. MGSV:TPP is not that kind of game. Yes, there is a plot; but it becomes clear very early on in the game that the story of the game is not the main focus.

However, if you're looking for an extremely realistic, sophisticated, and immersive combat system, you'll find it nearly impossible to find a game with better combat than The Phantom Pain.

TPP places you in missions where you have objectives to complete. However, how you complete the objective is entirely up to you. There is not a single scripted event in most of the missions; the game leaves it entirely up to you to complete your objectives. Need to destroy communications equipment in order to cripple the enemies' defenses? Discreetly place and detonate some remote bombs on the equipment and get the heck out of there before the enemy finds you. Or you could blow everything up with a rocket launcher and call it a day. Or perhaps trucking in there with a tank and exploding anything that moves more your style.

What if you need to eliminate a dangerous arms dealer? You could snipe him from a distance and that would be perfectly acceptable. But you could also take him out with a tranquilizer gun and take him back to base to join your team.

Hey, that was the perfect segue to the next amazing thing about metal gear: the mother base system.

You'll be hard pressed to find any other game with a more in depth base building system. Starting out with a mere single platform, by completing objectives, capturing soldiers and collecting resources in the battlefield, you will quickly be able to improve and extend mother base until it becomes an unrivaled private army.

Sounds like a piece of cake? Think again. MGSV:TPP is a very difficult experience. Enemy AI is highly intelligent. Pray to God that you don't get spotted; it's never been so easy and quick to go from smoothly completing a mission without detection by the enemy to desperately searching for cover while they rain down hellfire on you. TPP, In that department, is a very unforgiving game. If you want to get the highest possible score (S rank) on a mission, you'll be forced to carefully plan out your moves and time your movement carefully, because merely being spotted is sometimes enough to obliterate any hopes you had of achieving an S rank. Does it sound fun to be sprinting out of a mission area, having executed every one of your moves perfectly after spending so much time carefully planning your plan of action, only to be spotted by a soldier and being forced to start over? That's happened to me.. I've never been so frustrated in my life.

But there is no feeling quite like that of achieving an S rank. It's so amazing bro. You'll be flying high for the rest of your day because YOU EARNED IT!

Sorry about that rant.

After 7 years, clearing it again, it is without a doubt that this open-world stealth game represents the highest level in the genre. Even today, the graphics quality enhanced by the Fox Engine never goes out of style. While one can still count the polygons when looking at circular objects such as tires, the overall feel of sneaking and combat is excellent, surpassing even that of Ghost Recon: Wildlands. The Mother Base and fulton system create a perfect positive feedback loop. Kojima's selection of 80s classic songs, along with his reflections on war and language, provide new insights and discoveries upon revisiting the game.

Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain is the penultimate journey in Hideo Kojima's classic saga; even though it's a prequel there is a good deal of surprises to be found in the story. The gameplay is nothing short of phenomenal and there's so much attention to detail graphically and narratively speaking.

The Phantom Pain is a gaming experience to be remembered for generations to come. Its immersion for the players is unsurpassed, its atmosphere phenomenal, its story a bit sparse yet massive in scope and ambition. Hideo Kojima has made the 2001: A Space Odyssey of video games right here. There's endless subtexts throughout, visually and script-based, and that's excluding the ridiculously tense and terrifying start of the game, where you're at a hospital in Cyprus, trying to escape certain death.

If you haven't played the game yet, please do so, and play the 'Day One Edition' on the PS4: the definitive version of this modern masterpiece.

Greetings from Lithuania.

"Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain" (2015) is truly an amazing experience. Hands down this is one of the most addictive games i have played in a very long while. It has tons of action, sneaking, hiding, crouching and etc. Controls are amazing, it is not even boring to run trough the open world maps on your foot. Graphics are gorgeous, game play is amazing. Story was good, but since the only Metal Gear game i have played before was 1st part (back in 1998), i didn't understood lots of characters, but that is not a problem, there are plenty of greatly voiced tapes which you can listen even during missions which are informative. I liked the extraction thing - genius. Mother base was also very cool thing, but i have 1 complaint. After collecting lots of stuff to mother base like gun turrets, emplacement, tanks guns and so on, it kinda don't have any real payoff at mother base except that security unit gets more points. but that is it, it kinda useless to bring whole stuff up there - or maybe i'm wrong but at this point i'm completed 64% of game - i finished main story and i'm at about 82% of side missions but still there was no effect of bringing all stuff to mother base except soldiers. Anyway that is a minor complain. because everything else in this game rocks.

Overall, whether you have played just one Metal Gear Solid game before or none, The Phantom Pain" is a must play to everyone, because everyone will find here something he will love. Great game, not the best ever, but great one.

Once you are dropped into the game, you are treated to beautiful cinematics and mystery. Even if you have played all of the games in the series, there is a lot of mystery and confusion. The game does a great job at revealing its story, and filling the past games' plot holes and "now I know now" moments.

The game-play of The Phantom Pain is more fluent and dense than any other in the series. From the facial animations to the crouch movement, You can clearly see the amazing effort Kojima Productions and Konami had put into this game. All of the good details, graphics, and animations all look perfect in the game's cut-scenes.

In The Phantom Pain, there is no longer the "stealth or guns- blazing" decision making. It is Unexplainable of how many ways you can infiltrate, kill, travel, or anything else (So many choices!). It has the most choices of game-play of any game EVER! Even so that I just can't explain it!

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is easily the BEST stealth oriented game to date, and the most game-play choices of any game in existence! Everybody should buy this game when the chance is given!