Tag Archives: MGSV

Revisiting MGSV

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.

Here’s what I learned from CheckPoint S3E27.

  • First of all, is MSFT trying to sell the fact that in some awful and unreasonable way the Xbox One is backwards compatible? Oh, I need to hear more about these claims.
  • “[…] I think we might have blown our seasonal load too early.” So, this is a thing.
  • I believe the reason that No Man’s Sky will be a success isn’t because of the first-person shooterism or the fact that it’s a four-man game developer entering the same genre arena that Bungie’s attempting to claim next year with Destiny, it’s because of the art direction. Those colors and the way that everything is rendered just screams Mirror’s Edge to me. Even though Faith’s runabout-is-fair-play adventure didn’t sell that well because EA marketed it, any competently created game that includes procedurally generated anything will.
  • Metal Gear Solid V preorders for the Playstation 4 will get a DLC mission where you play as Solid Snake, but Xbox One variants will get a DLC mission where you play as Raiden circa Revenegance? I liked MGR for the challenge it provided, but console-specific exclusives always irks me. I’ve thought twice about buying a Xbox One lately, and if this sort of polarity becomes a trend, it will only add more complexity to making a decision.
  • Good Ol’ Games is one step away from Steam with regards to being trustworthy game distribution methods. DRM-free classics that don’t require a front-end to acquire, and now they’re offering refunds? Perhaps they’re more trusting than Steam is at this point.
  • Oh, it’s just a scam. Morons who brick their Xbox Ones deserve to have voided their warranties and ruined their systems. Backwards compatibility? Odds are your Xbox 360 is setting right beside the Xbox One you just bought AND IT STILL WORKS.
  • 100k user registration spike? 10% of all content on Twitch came from PS4s since launch? Time to start shaming MSFT for not including Twitch streaming in the Xbox One launch software suite.
  • Another adventure game from Telltale that everyone will care about except for me! Yay!