Metal Gear Solid. The Phantom pain.

[strumpusplunket]

Have to update after my intial gripes - this game is great! Took me a little while to get into it, but thoroughly enjoying it now. The story's a bit all over the place, the characters are ridiculous, but the gameplay is so damn fun!

I've become expert at going through missions in perfect stealth... right up until the very end when everything invariably goes south very rapidly and everything devolves into a mass shootout. Every damn time. Always my own impatience or carelessness to blame right at the end of a run where I've exercised impecable patience all the way up to that point.

I love how many ways there are to approach the situations you're faced with. I came up with an approach to one of the rescue and eliminate missions that I feel especially proud of as a quick and effective solution and that I haven't seen anyone suggest as a possibility anywhere else. There's a lot of flexibility and the range of tools at your disposal really open things up and give rise to approaches that feel unique.

Only four and a bit years after I got it for Christmas, too. No wonder no one else here is still talking about it...