I booted up my Xbox One for the first time in six months about a week ago to play Metal Gear Solid V and I was kind of shocked. There are some parts of the game that’s aged as well as an 80-point wine.

For all of the hype surrounding the game’s costly and lengthy development and considering how stale the game got shortly after launch, it’s funny how I ended up coming to this conclusion. After I finished the story and finished grinding the single-player world (when the online functionality was not exactly smooth sailing), I justified my moving on from playing the game by concluding the game was the wrong type of grind—the very same way in which Destiny turned into the wrong type of grind that turned me off from buying in after the House of Wolves expansion.

A year later, it’s clear that the real endgame for MGSV required more commitment and patience than the typical gamer might be able to command.

After picking the game back up over the weekend, I’m nearly back to where I was at skill-wise before I stopped playing when the game was still fresh. We’re not talking about Metal Gear Online, though, because addressing that mess is its own can of worms.

I’m having fun coming back to the game, though I wish there was an easy way to replay the whole story without it being tied to my online progress.

I really intend to fully complete the game while I still ahve some sort of interest in playing it. Right now, I’m concentrating on finishing the entire list of Side Ops. After that, I’ll replay all of the story missions to make sure I complete every additional mission task and find every hidden key item. Lastly, I’ll deal with the major replay missions I haven’t completed yet.

After dealing with all of those single player things, I’d like to seriously try the multiple FOB grind. Maybe contibute to unlocking that third and final chapter of the game. If the game can keep my attention for that long. I suppose it doesn’t really help that I am playing it on my Xbox One, but I suppose it could be worse. I could be playing it on my Xbox 360.

Until then, I suppose I need to figure out how to train DD to stop blocking my line of sight.