Phantom Pain at a ridiculously good price on Xbox One

I just bought it for an equivalent of 17 American dollars as a part of Deals with Gold. For Murica it is 26 bucks but other countries, like Poland, might have better conversion rate, so I wanted to give the heads up to all the warriors. This softened the fact I missed Divinity on sale when it was $15 bucks. Divinity is probably the superior game, though :(

Meh, already played the PS4 version and sold it.

Still hurts.

@freedomfreak: What hurts?

That I didn't get Divinity? Yes, somewhat.

Wait, wasn't it free GWG I dunno, seems like about six months ago I DL'ed it, played a little but never went back to it? I may be thinking of another MGS, hmmm.

@SecretPolice: The demo prelude to Phantom Pain, Ground Zeroes, was free as a GWG title some way back. This is a feature length game.

@Salt_The_Fries:

Ahhha, Yup, that it my friend. I'm happy not to spoil or rain on your parade. Nice find.

Never before has a game gone from masterpiece to trashterpiece in the span of 90 hours.

It's good, sometimes great even, but don't be surprised if by the end you hate the thing.

I played it on PC and to be honest the gaming media giving it a 10/10 was just crazy. Was an 8/10 game at most still a good game though. I kind of got bored after awhile if felt like a side mission game after a certain time.

No thanks.

I saw that I missed this literally the day after the sale ended. I was pissed.

May have to pick up The Phantom Pain. I dunno. No real rush to play it I guess.

I couldn't finish this game, it was great at the beginning but after the first part is finished it goes meh.

Retail versions for both XBox One and PS4 go for around 15 Euro on Amazon here. Bought it like 3 weeks ago. So yeah, digital is for lulz.

Maybe later down the road I'll play it, I've heard it gets boring real quick.

@Salt_The_Fries: Fantastic game, but depending on how you play it, can get a bit repetitive.

I love the fact that you can play super stealthy, or if you want, can go balls-deep full alert on every mission.

Playing on PC, I still haven't finished it yet. But I have hundreds of hours into it already. Just decided to take a break and play some other stuff for the time being.

That's a good deal, btw...assuming you like these games. Just don't expect an experience anything at all like MGS4.

Its sold at a ridiculously low price because the game runs at a ridiculously low resolution.

@Zassimick: I was literally two minutes too late.

Got that baby on PC running consistently at 60fps. Really pisses me off cos i'm playing FFXIII atm between 30 and 60 :x

I'll play it if it comes free to X1/PS4.

Wouldn't play it if it was free.

I won't even play it if it was free, feels like nineties gameplay.

@Salt_The_Fries: I keep my MGS on PS otherwise I would. I just bought the Killing Joke and We Happy Few.

still not worth it imo. incredibly utterly boring and bland game.

Just go buy Divinity even if it's a bit more than you wanted to pay. It's an amazing game, played it on PC and now playing the enhanced version again on PS4. You won't need another game for a long time so it's value for money too.

g8 b8 m8, r8 it 8 out of 8.

^

lol digital console "sales". I hate paying for console DRM and the sales are usually later than I see deals in retail sans DRM.

Plus, I wouldn't pay to play the worst running/lowest resolution version of MGSV: Phantom Pain. My Xbone is for exclusives and the occasional GWG game.

He never completed or bothered with MGS4, he never owned a Playstation console after the PSOne in the late 1990s.

@SolidTy:

MGS4's SP sucked though =(

@PSP107:

Yup.

Not expecting an experience like MGS4 is a great thing actually.

Right on! To each their own for sure (MGS4 managed hitting the rare 94/100 metascore). I personally found the gameplay of MGS4 absolutely incredible, but the Single Player Story just okay, which lead to a decent experience of the SP.

That has nothing to do with my original post though, but your opinion is duly noted.

Either way, his hypothetical expectations of MGS4 gameplay (good or in your opinion, bad) wouldn't come into play because he never bothered one way or the other.

great game for what it is, but it wasn't the best Metal Gear Solid game, Game was too repetitive at times but i liked that you could customize your own music and the game-play was pretty solid.

@Dark_man123:

MGS5 is definitely flawed but I'll take it over 3 and 4.

@SolidTy:

No I'm not saying MGS4 gameplay is bad, just they chose to give you way more story/cutscenes than gameplay. MGS4 was really a Blu Ray movie.

this.

so much potential... but it was a boring dreadful silly overly produce yet undercooked game.

All MGS5 did was reaffirm that MGS4 is the best MGS game.

I replayed MGS4 a dozen times, loved it. MGS5... i gave up on it, it was forgettable

@SolidTy: Actually, wrong, KGB. I have also owned a PlayStation 3 albeit for a short time.

What I was going to say. And yeah, I finished MGS4. To this day, I just don't understand why some people lose their damn minds over that title.

MGS4 was too convoluted for me, I have tried to beat it a few times and keep losing interest around the 70% mark of the game. I haven't started MGS5 because I feel it's going to disappoint me the same way, so it sits in my catalog unplayed. Ah wall, someday I guess.

I loved it the game wasn't the best in the series Snake Eater and the original but still a top game better than 4 which was more a movie than a game.

Yo, don't be hatin' on MGS4... I think for its time it was a fantastic game and is still a fantastic game.

Completely different kind of game really. MGSV is the antithesis to MGS4.

The first hour of MGSV is a cinematic bore fest, but after that it puts the story in the backseat for the rest of the game. MGSV focuses on gameplay, freedom, and (despite what inarticulate SW posters say) gameplay variety above all else. You can tackle any mission any way you want and it's not just some binary stealth or action type deal. The game is an infiltration sandbox that is built around providing emergent gameplay scenarios.

You still might run out of steam at the 70% mark, but for different reasons. MGSV is just too damn big for its own good. You could probably beat it in 50 hours, but it's not uncommon to hear people say it took them 100+ hours. That's where the repetitive complaints come into play. The game is no more repetitive than previous MGS games, quit the opposite actually. But it drags on for too long, especially if you try to tackle the optional side ops every time they come up.

It's really a great game, just a ton of bloat outside the main missions.

Yeah, it has some fun gameplay for the first two acts and then falls off a cliff for the rest of the game. The story is lame from the start and only gets exponentially worse as the game goes on. Problem is, almost the entire back half of the game is story lol.

People lost their minds over it because it was the first big name PS3 exclusive on a console that had been shit up to that point. That's why you only see huge praise for it in a place like this. Go to any MGS specific board and it's like Mario Sunshine, people pretend it doesn't exist.

Thanks Kotaku.

@Phazevariance: "I have tried to beat it a few times and keep losing interest around the 70% mark of the game. "

If you skip the cutscenes, you can beat the game in 2 hours.

@clone01:"I just don't understand why some people lose their damn minds over that title."

It's their favorite movie of all time.

I have hard time recommending the game even for that price. Gameplay is solid, but story is.. I don't have words how awful it was, missions were repetitive, side mission especially, there were only couple variations, basically just capture this or kill that. Act 2 was completely unfinished, forcing player to repeat old mission with some added difficulty. The ones were Boss started with no weapons or gadgets were actually fun and gave some challenge to otherwise very easy game, but to force player to play those was just stupid. And the ending.. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Side ops are stupid repetitive, yes. Main missions? No. I'm not going to post a full breakdown of every mission in the game again, but all the main missions are incredibly varied.

At no point are you forced to play those. They're optional twists on older missions. You can get the complete ending without touching any of them. (Though I would recommend playing them because they're awesome).

Act 2 was handled poorly in that it shouldn't have been called Act 2. It was post game content and nothing more, but hyping it up to be a second chapter makes it look rough. It's not incomplete, it just carries an unnecessary naming convention. It should have just been game beaten, credits roll, here's more shit for you to do if you feel like it.

Some main missions are varied, but majority of them follow the same paths as the side ops. Capture/kill this guy.

Maybe there was another way to get the final mission, but the game sure as hell didn't tell me. It just put those repeat missions on there and I did them all, only the ones with no gadgets/guns were fun. Others were easy and boring, because of how brain dead the AI is. And when I had done them all, mission 46 truth appeared which btw was a repeat mission you had to do. And it was also the worst mission in the game.

You guys know you wouldn't be paying ridiculous prices for retail copies if it wasn't for the fact that used games exist, you'd be paying the price pc gamers would be because there isn't a thing called used games in the pc market.

And the way games are sold now you couldn't play them drm-less anyways because your console connects to a server to download patches and they'll just put a patch up to make the game unplayable because they felt like removing the game. Not that its a smart business decision but really, they could totally do things like that.

not once have I seen DRM free games be anymore useful than a drm game and I don't think they ever will until these games just start dying out.

It's more about the journey, not the destination.

Yeah, a lot of the games goals revolve around you assassinating or fultoning a guy. However, the missions themselves play out completely different. Tracking and finding out where the target is located is the actual meat of the mission. That can involve tailing individuals, collecting information form files/guards/prisoners, drawing them out of hiding, exploring hidden parts of the map, etc.

At the end of the day, I don't get the argument about variety. Almost every mission in this game is completely different from the last. The side ops are repetitive bullshit, not arguing with that. However, the main missions feature some of the best game design I've seen this generation.

Yeah the end goals can be similar, but they're a whole different beast from the side ops man. Some of the main missions revolve around kill/capture/rescue/destroy/find objects. But a lot of them don't. Even the ones that do, not only are they structured differently from each other and take place in different locations from one another, but the freedom of gameplay allows for you to go about them in a ridiculous amount of different ways.

I could understand if they were sending you to the same bases over and over again to carry out the same tasks over and over again, but that's never the case.

Traveling through the mountain relay base then sneaking through the Da Smasei Fort and into the cavernous ruins to obtain the Honeybee and fight the Skulls (or escape from them) on the way out is a completely different scenario than obtaining the film canister that is protected by heavily armed guards and snipers on some wide open mountain side ruins with low cover. Technically it's the same objective "get this item", but it's a completely different play experience.

Finding the intel and rescuing Kaz from the mountain side base and ducking the skulls is a completely different scenario than rescuing Huey from deep in the munitions base and playing hide and seek with a Gundam on the way out. Which is also completely different from sneaking past (or killing) Skull snipers in the jungle on the way to rescue Code Talker from the mansion basement. Technically the same objectives, completely different experiences.

Riding all over the Afghan country side destroying armored caravans on a time limit is not at all the same as sneaking into the oilfield facility, destroying the separator tank, shutting down the switch, and ducking Walker Gears on the way out. Still a "destroy these things" goal, but played out differently from beginning to end.

Killing/abducting the arms dealer and CFA official as they meet at the airport is a completely different scenario from taking down the commander at the Windh Sakh Barracks.

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Really man, need I go on? I could list out the overview of every main mission in the game, it's like that across the board bro.

Shit man, I didn't even list the side objectives in those main missions that can greatly affect how you go about things.

Honestly, when I hear people complain about the main mission objectives being repetitive in MGSV it's almost as silly as hearing someone complain about collecting stars in a Mario game lol.

Yes, this part in bold I'll give you. It was garbage the first time and having to do it again was a slap in the face. Total dick move on Kojima, absolutely agreed on that.

So yeah, in the post game it's basically repeat challenge missions and a handful of new missions. And of course there are still side ops. Basically all you need to do to progress the game is play. Play anything, it doesn't matter. Old missions, new missions, repeat missions, side ops, any of them will progress the game. At this point you've had your victory against Skulldick and now Boss is just expanding his army. The game offers far more development content, base building, and staff recruitment than anybody could realistically obtain in a single normal play. This is where the game allows MGSV addicts to go all out with that stuff and start really competing in FOB if they so desire. Those repeat challenges aren't required to progress, but they will progress the game if you play them all the same.

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As an aside, that brain dead AI. Turns out the AI isn't bad at all, it's their retard limited vision distance that makes it seem so. Playing Ground Zeroes on hard made this clear, but of course, TPP not having proper difficulty settings (fucking sucks) rarely allows you to experience the AI in action. No excuse for it really.

HOWEVER. If you're playing this game on PC, you should check out the Infinite Heaven mod (Jango put me on to this one). It has an array of game changing parameters and QOL improvements... like imagine never doing a chopper ride again. Amazing lol. But getting to the point, one of the many options is that it allows you to change enemy sight distance to your liking. This alone is a HUGE game changer. The game becomes much more realistic and absolutely vicious if you want it to be.

I started the game one week ago, I have played for about 5 hours total. My impression so far is that the gameplay is pretty fun, going from stealth to one man army when you **** up is fun. I like how there's many weapons and tools/gadgets to approach things.

However, the story so far, is kinda non existant, but I don't really care. Other things I don't really like is that the graphics are not that good, and there's some "realistic" things left out, like shooting the ground with a rifle does not leave any bullet holes.

Also, are side op missions worth doing? Will I still be able to unlock all weapons without doing them?

@Snowywonders:

Story never really gets good. It's not insultingly stupid like MGS4 and if you're really savvy on your MGS knowledge then you'll notice it actually fixes a few inconsistencies (as well as a big mess made by MGS4), but it's easily one of the most forgettable stories in the series.

Side Ops? If you mechanically go down the checklist and do them then the game will feel repetitive and padded out. My advice would be to only do them as they come up randomly in your travels through the field. They feel more organic that way instead of being mundane tasks. There will be some side ops that are required for progression, but they'll be marked in gold so you can't miss them.

Unlocking every weapon/item in the game is a big task, but you don't need to grind out side ops to get most of them. If you want to get the highest level versions of all weapons then you'd have to grind out FOBs (you'll get to that later). Thing is, highest level weapons don't matter at all. You're already going to get overpowered as it is. Those super high level weapons are there for high level FOB players... and as a way of Konami trying to milk you for microtransactions if you get hooked on that mode. They operate the same as the base level versions of your weapons, they just have ridiculous stopping power.

In short: Don't worry about that shit. You'll be armed to the teeth with more gear than you'll ever need by just playing the game naturally. I'm sure I have over 100 weapons that I've never even equipped lol. And that's after playing for nearly 300 hours.

Unworthy to be in your possession ?

A game with porbably one of the best if not the best gameplay mechanics.