Metal Gear Solid. The Phantom pain.

Tek81 · 22 Jun 2018 at 19:26

Deke Boddy said:
Awesome game, I'm still playing it now but I bet it would be epic on the PC....

https://gamers.media/metal-gear-solid-v?_ga=2.268912497.1602022381.1528014761-1217103055.1526695350

Took me a good few goes to complete that level. If memory serves, I ended up using a tank to blast it from a distance.

Marky · 22 Jun 2018 at 19:30

Borsch said:
It's the last (ever?) Snake vs Metal Gear, it's supposed to be hard

Haha

That’s fair

FoxEye · 22 Jun 2018 at 21:35

Borsch said:
MGS5 is meant to be played without markers and "seeing through the walls" imho

It kind of isn't, tho.

For me there were several indications that the markers are supposed to be left ON.

1. D-Dog actually makes your situation worse when he spots for you, if markers are off. Hence D-Dog becomes the most useless companion.
2. The parasite soldiers health bars - and critical information contained therein - are removed entirely if markers are off. That fight is confusing as hell with the markers off, because you don't know what is going on. All the "explanation" is done by way of their health bars, and with markers off that info is entirely missing.

My first (and only) playthrough was done with markers off btw - I think it was a mistake personally.

I know first-hand how frustrating it is to play with markers off - and I fully expect 99% of people to play with markers on - it's how the game was designed to be played.

All the YouTube playthroughs have markers on. They aren't really optional in this game. Unless you want to be continually frustrated as I was

P.S. I also played with reflex OFF for maximum pain. And restarted if I was spotted

Borsch · 23 Jun 2018 at 14:20

FoxEye said:
1. D-Dog actually makes your situation worse when he spots for you, if markers are off. Hence D-Dog becomes the most useless companion.

he becomes a normal dog, growling when enemies are nearby and also distracting and attacking them on command

FoxEye said:
2. The parasite soldiers health bars - and critical information contained therein - are removed entirely if markers are off. That fight is confusing as hell with the markers off, because you don't know what is going on. All the "explanation" is done by way of their health bars, and with markers off that info is entirely missing.

Don't you just shoot/cqb them until they die? Its been a while...

FoxEye said:
I know first-hand how frustrating it is to play with markers off - and I fully expect 99% of people to play with markers on - it's how the game was designed to be played.

All the YouTube playthroughs have markers on. They aren't really optional in this game. Unless you want to be continually frustrated as I was P.S. I also played with reflex OFF for maximum pain. And restarted if I was spotted

Wow

I'm sure that most people do play with markers on, but who cares about the masses

FoxEye · 23 Jun 2018 at 14:36

Borsch said:
he becomes a normal dog, growling when enemies are nearby and also distracting and attacking them on command

Not quite. When you haven't spotted an enemy you get a red "danger" blob on the map in the rough location of the enemy. When you spot with markers on, that rough red blob is replaced by a precise enemy marker.

When marking is off and D-Dog spots them, the red danger marker disappears and you lose all information about that enemy/group. The game expects that you have markers on, so the situation where you lose awareness of the enemy was not planned for.

Hence D-Dog + markers off = awful.

Don't you just shoot/cqb them until they die? Its been a while...

They have two separate health bars, one if which regenerates, the other doesn't. Certain attacks of yours diminish one health bar, other attacks must break through their "shield" bar before hurting them.

Without markers on you can't see either of the health bars, and you have no idea what's going on.

Wow I'm sure that most people do play with markers on, but who cares about the masses

I didn't enjoy playing with the markers on, but I can't really say I enjoyed the game too much the way I played either (restarting when spotted, no reflex, etc). Pretty soon for me it became a chore; a slog.

Borsch · 24 Jun 2018 at 13:52

I disagree

Thoroughly enjoyed the game (no markers, reflex on), to me it is definitely the greatest MGS and Kojima went out with a bang. MGS3 was awesome too, but it had this silly top down perspective where you could not see more than 10 meters ahead, plus gameplay was too on the rails. Ground Zero and Pahntom Pain are masterpieces, such a shame Konami pulled the plug and we will not see more

Gee · 25 Jun 2018 at 15:08

I got 100% on this when it came out including all maxed out FOBs, haven't played it since. Not a scratch on 1, 2, 3 & 4 imo.

Mark A · 25 Jun 2018 at 23:18

Gee said:
I got 100% on this when it came out including all maxed out FOBs, haven't played it since. Not a scratch on 1, 2, 3 & 4 imo.

I'm not surprised. You must have had to do hundreds of hours of grinding to max the fobs and get all the weapons etc.

Gee · 26 Jun 2018 at 10:15

Mark A said:
I'm not surprised. You must have had to do hundreds of hours of grinding to max the fobs and get all the weapons etc.

I think it was something like 200 hours. I'd leave the game running overnight whilst I was prone in the truck that goes between a checkpoint and the house where you save Code Talker. That was the only way to process enough resources.

Found the trick on Reddit!

Gee said:
The grind is real, man. I think my Heroism is at 800k or something like that.

Motherbase for me is all 4/4.
FOB 1 - mostly 3/4
FOB 2 - mostly 2/4

Processing time is the main issue for me too at the moment, at A Rank, it takes 12 minutes to process 2500 un-processed materials, which you HAVE to be moving around to trigger, you can't idle in MB or ACC for example.

I've been using this trick - https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgears...tomatic_materials_processing_how_you_can_akf/

Usher · 26 Jun 2018 at 20:57

Awesome game,I finally triggered the Easter egg where quiet pulls her tattered leggings off and rolls all over the ground and dances in the pouring rain whilst snake stands watching

Mark A · 27 Jun 2018 at 01:20

The cutscene that triggers on your birthday is pretty cool as well. Especially if you didn't know about it and wern't expecting it. I thought some **** was going down on the fob at first.

Borsch · 27 Jun 2018 at 13:34

Gee said:
Not a scratch on 1, 2, 3 & 4 imo.

They were great for their time, but compared to MGSV they were all too linear, like walking down a narrow corridor. Also Snake was much more limited it his abilities.

People complain about audio tapes in MGSV, but what about 40minute "codec conversions" in old MGSs? At least you can listen to the tapes while actually playing

Absence of David Hayter's voiceover is the only massive flaw in MGSV for me - character design, atmosphere, cinematic cut scenes, crazy attention to detail- all are as good as they ever were. (Especially if one treats Chapter 2 as a freebie bonus, the 20 missions+sidequests of Ch.1 are what the game is meant to be judged on.)AND MGSV has much better gameplay to boot.

Usher · 27 Jun 2018 at 13:44

Borsch said:
.
People complain about audio tapes in MGSV, but what about 40minute "codec conversions" in old MGSs? At least you can listen to the tapes while actually playing

Does whether you listen to all the tapes affect the gameplay in any way? I only ask because I'm rather deaf and although the tapes play with subtitles I've bothered with hardly any of them, as far as I can tell it's not prevented any new missions from appearing so far based on the list of missions given on IGN

TheVoice · 27 Jun 2018 at 14:43

Borsch said:
They were great for their time, but compared to MGSV they were all too linear, like walking down a narrow corridor.

For a lot of people, that's exactly what made the previous games great and this one a massive disappointment. Linearity is not an immediate downside, it means that the gameplay is more tightly controlled and the narrative can play out the way it's intended. The story in MGS5 suffered immensely from the open world setting and the abundance of choice in the game on how (or even if) you do things.

The long cutscenes in previous games were a sticking point for many but at least you got to see interaction between characters, rather than them just talking over you while you ride a horse through miles of uninhabited desert.

Rusko187 · 27 Jun 2018 at 15:31

It wasn't my favourite MGS but that doesn't make it a bad game, it's just too different a change from the rest of the series which is what I grew up with.

Personally I found it repetitive and dull, just hoping Death Stranding isn't cooking up to be something similar.

Amatsubu · 27 Jun 2018 at 15:47

Frankly, I'm a massive MGS 3 fan but I can still see this game's merits. The gameplay is on another level and I really liked the animations and all the little stuff you could do, quirks, secrets etc. I even took time to listen to the tapes and found it to be a nice touch. It's obviously a completely different type of storytelling than previous games and the story is worse but still. Then again, MGS 4 was a bit too ridiculous at times so maybe it was for the best

Even though it was repetitive I kinda liked the gameplay loop. The world was empty (as expected, to be fair) and the game was too long but still kept coming back to it.

Nothing will beat Snake Eater for me, though.

Borsch · 27 Jun 2018 at 16:50

Usher said:
Does whether you listen to all the tapes affect the gameplay in any way? I only ask because I'm rather deaf and although the tapes play with subtitles I've bothered with hardly any of them, as far as I can tell it's not prevented any new missions from appearing so far based on the list of missions given on IGN

I do not think they affect the gameplay, no. Mostly it's just fleshing out plot twists and some Kojima humour (3 tapes on what makes the perfect burger?

)

strumpusplunket · 27 Jan 2020 at 16:55

I'm trying to get into this game because I feel like I should really like it. I think I'm just not getting some of the mechanics.

I'm playing with mouse and keyboard and I keep seeing controller input hints. This is a bit confusing. I'm having to use Autohotkey to bind some of my keys too, which probably doesn't help.

But, I'm not getting what I'm supposed to do in terms of silent takedowns. I sneak up behind a guard, but I don't see any prompts even if I'm crouched right behind them. I try a few buttons until the see me and then there's some close-quarter combat until I knock them out. But they wake up in a couple of minutes. Don't I have a knife or something for stealth kills?

I thought maybe I could just use silent headshots, but aiming my weapon (even whilst crouching) gives me a huge target reticule, much bigger than my target's head even at close range. So I can't land a reliable headshot and it takes me more shots than my suppressor can last to take down one guard.

I think I messed up some tutorials triggering by going off track and doing things out of order, but I'm finding it a bit odd. I know I missed the one about stealth on horseback and can't figure that one out. I'm feeling like a right noob, but Googling these issues brings me loads of results with controller inputs which are no help to me...

Gee · 27 Jan 2020 at 21:55

I 100% this when it came out and I don't recall there being any controller input hints when playing with M&KB. Try aiming down sight with weapons etc, should help with headshots.

strumpusplunket · 28 Jan 2020 at 09:49

Gee said:
I 100% this when it came out and I don't recall there being any controller input hints when playing with M&KB. Try aiming down sight with weapons etc, should help with headshots.

Thanks for the tip about aiming down the sights. I didn't know there was a different way of doing this other than the "ready weapon" right mouse control. After trying all my assigned buttons whilst readying a weapon, though, I found the "binoculars" binding let me aim down the sights! I must have missed the tutorial for this too and wouldn't have guessed that was the way to do it. But, great - headshots are go!

I checked before work this morning, and I definitely do see the odd controller input (at least I think that's what it is). When running from the first village, for instance, a prompt came up with an icon depicting what I can only assume means pressing down on the right controller stick to whistle for the horse?

I'm still not sure I've got everything down with sneaking behind guards, either. I can throw them sometimes, but I'm not sure what triggers that as it seems to work with my left click, but sometimes left click doesn't do anything. Googling this it looks like it might be triggered by left-click plus a direction movement? As I say, I missed the tutorial for this so I'm not sure what I'm doing. It's annoying that 95% of Google hits for this game only refer to controller inputs, but I guess that's to be expected since even most PC players probably use a controller.

Also finding the camera makes it a bit tricky to spot enemies I've not marked as I move around obstacles, but I guess I'll just have to be more careful about reconnaissance.

Thanks to your hint about aiming, though, I was able to clear the first little area very easily, so thanks for that! Actually enjoyed the few minutes I played before work. Onwards!