Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

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Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
Protagonist(s): Big Boss Genre(s): Action-adventure Stealth Platform(s): Microsoft Windows PlayStation 3 Xbox 360 PlayStation 4 Xbox One Release: WW: September 1, 2015 JP: September 2, 2015 Engine: Fox Engine Developer(s): Kojima Productions Publisher(s): Konami Country: Japan Series: Metal Gear Predecessor: Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes Successor: Metal Gear Survive

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is an action-adventure stealth video game developed by Kojima Productions and published by Konami for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. It was released worldwide on September 1, 2015. It is the ninth installment in the series that was directed, written, and designed by Hideo Kojima following Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, a stand-alone prologue released the previous year, as well as his final work at Konami.

Why It Keeps You Waiting

1. Great online multiplayer.
2. Excellent graphics, courtesy of the state-of-the-art Fox Engine, which aims to accurately simulate lighting, making environments and humans look lifelike. On top of that, the console versions run at 60fps!
3. Lots of improved mechanics that carry over from Ground Zeroes like being able to dive, receive intel, mark enemies with binoculars, quickly select weapons and other items, drive vehicles, and so much more.
4. EPIC boss battles.
5. Lots of content, with about 50 hours worth of gameplay.
6. This has the darkest and most mature Metal Gear story in the entire series. From the Red Band trailer alone we get torture, child soldiers mining blood diamonds and Snake being portrayed killing them.
7. There is a Buddy system, which is a system of AI allies for Players. Players can recruit four possible buddies throughout the story and can have one Buddy accompany them when deploying on a mission. These buddies each have their own equipment, and each has skills that can be developed as the player grows their bond level with them. A buddy cannot be killed but when their health is low they will automatically be filtered out to the Mother Base. These buddies include
   • D-Horse: Who is mainly used for traveling long distances but can also distract enemy vehicles, poop on the road causing vehicles to slip, and you can hang on to the side of him so it just looks like a horse walking.
   • D-Dog: He can scout the battlefield and check for points of interest and can mark enemies, prisoners, animals, weapons, and vehicles. Additionally, he can use various weapons to stun or kill soldiers in a variety of ways, depending on the equipment picked.
   • Quiet: Look to #14.
   • D-Walker: It can be used for combat, for stealth, and for search purposes by the player customizing D-Walker's equipment with 3 different load-outs, and is valuable in many situations, though it is slower than D-Horse as a form of transport. Unlike D-Horse or D-Dog, if an enemy spots a D-Walker, they will shoot it on sight.
8. You can create your own army, just like in Peace Walker, but with lots of enhancements.
   • In this game, you get to walk around and see how much your base is expanding.
   • Has an Animal Conservation Platform, which is a holding place for various animals captured in the field.
9. You can recruit enemies with Fulton recovery just like in Peace Walker and the binoculars make it a lot easier to find enemies with certain attributes since it shows you what their stats are.
10. Challenging gunfights.
11. An interesting story about Snake and Kaz getting revenge on the people who destroyed Outer Heaven and trying to rebuild their army.
12. Unlike every other Metal Gear game, this game is a full-on sandbox, open-world, stealth game that allows players to figure out how to complete certain objectives in any way they want.
13. Excellent 80s soundtrack as you can find various songs during the era of the Cold War such as "Take on Me" and Kids in America.
14. Introduces the character "Quiet". She may look like fanservice on the outside, but she's a master sniper, capable of killing/tranquilizing targets with ease, and can turn invisible and run away to a different spot if enemies spot her. You even get to play as her in the FOB missions.
15. The enemy AI is so volatile that every time you replay a mission, it's a different experience.
16. Impressive long takes during the cutscenes.
17. The "Shining Lights, Even In Death" mission goes right where The Last of Us: Part II went wrong. It puts the player into a position where Snake has no choice but to kill some Mother Base soldiers to prevent the mutated vocal cord parasite from reaching the rest of the world. Thus, it is a much better, genuine, un-manipulative, and sincere emotional guilt trip and is more emotionally powerful.

Bad Qualities

1. The ending feels rushed and barely answers the series' questions. This may be due to BQ #2.
2. Plenty of content has been cut from the final game as a result of the game's rather troubled development such as the infamous Konami/Kojima dispute deadlines and the limitations of Xbox 360 and PS3.
3. You have to replay some missions in order to progress through the game. In fact, almost all of Chapter 2's levels are rehashes of Chapter 1's levels, either in "extreme" (enemies are more brutal), "total stealth" (similar to European Extreme from past games, if you are spotted, you fail the mission) and "subsistence" (you start with no weapons and equipment, similar to the classic Metal Gear games) flavors.
   • The only three original missions in Chapter 2 are Shining Lights, Even in Death, and A Quiet Exit (the latter only works if you don't have a 100% bond with Quiet or you don't have a butterfly on your army insignia)
4. While both the Afghanistan and Angola-Zaire Border Region maps are large, they feel empty.
5. Some people consider the story a bit weak compared to previous Metal Gear games.
6. Skull Face is a villain who's evil just for the sake of it and has no real thematic connection to Snake. "I've been the other side of your coin" seems rather phoned in.
7. The boss fight with the Man on Fire is just a little bit of a letdown after how the prologue set him up.

Reception

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain received "universal acclaim" from critics, according to review aggregator Metacritic. It was praised for its varied gameplay mechanics, level of player freedom, open-world design, visual fidelity, mature themes, emotional weight, and cast performances, though critics were divided on its narrative, ending twist, and certain changes to the series formula.

Angry Joe gave the game a 9 out of 10.

Sales

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain shipped 3 million physical copies within its first five days of release, across all platforms. On its release date, the game grossed US$179 million, higher than the combined opening day box office of the films Avengers: Age of Ultron and Jurassic World. The Phantom Pain debuted at number one on the United Kingdom charts. It became the third biggest video game launch of 2015 in the UK, behind Batman: Arkham Knight and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The Phantom Pain was the most successful launch for the series in the UK, beating the previous record holder, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, by 37 percent. The game sold 411,199 physical retail copies on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 within the first week of release in Japan, topping the Japanese software sales charts that week.

In the United Kingdom, the game sold noticeably more on the PlayStation family of consoles than on the Xbox. Excluding computer sales, The Phantom Pain moved approximately 72 percent of copies on PlayStation 4, roughly three times the amount sold on the Xbox One, which accounted for 22 percent of sales. three percent of sales were on PlayStation 3, and two percent on Xbox 360. By the end of September 2015, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain had shipped over five million copies worldwide, which had raised to over six million by December 2015.

Trivia

• Kaz's speech when you rescue him became a meme.

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