METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN

One of the best stealth action games ever made. The game gives you tons of options for both combat and stealth, and the enemy AI is incredible. For fans of: Far Cry and Splinter Cell.

I've played MGS5, Kojima's flawed opus, on PS4 once through, back at release. My impressions then remain the same now: this is a phenomenal open-ended stealth sandbox, more mechanically flexible and robust than its contemporaries like Far Cry or Ghost Recon, with a fascinating story, poorly told. MGS5 feels phenomenal to play on gamepad or on keyboard and mouse, allowing you so many degrees of freedom both in tackling its various mission objectives, but also in basic player character movement. Snake can crouch, go prone, roll, dive, leap, aim in any direction from any stance, call in support, hang off the side of his horse to stealthily pass enemies, etc. It makes for a supremely deep stealth sandbox. But, the story is lacking. Quite literally, the game lacks a final chapter. It's a poetic coincidence, given the game is so much about mourning loss and the ghost of what was once there. But, this game, more than any in the saga, requires digging through reams of text, audiologs, and careful study of the (far less frequent and more brief) cutscenes to really put all the pieces together. I found this incredibly frustrating at launch, but I think that many of the ideas rattling around in Kojima's head - the maleability of language, the flexibility of identity, and the ever-present rot of the American imperialist project - work stupendously. It just feels like you have to root around in the guts of the game to really extract all that Kojima is saying. He was already leaning toward the more passive storytelling of the in-game podcast formula in MGS4, but, here, it is taken to its extreme. Most of the game's story is told through audiologs that can be played almost anytime anywhere. But, this can lead to awkward moments where the dulling of gameworld sound leads to an otherwise avoidable alert or the possibility of missing a key piece of mission info revealed by a guard. On PC, this game looks and runs phenomenally. But you will have to do some tweaking to get it working at above its 60 fps cap out of the box, annoyingly. Further, if you have an ultrawide display, getting this running in 21:9 or more is basically a non-starter. If you know of a workaround, lmk, b/c I couldn't find one. Overall, great game, poor - but acceptable - PC port.

I picked this game up because I completed it on PS4 forever ago and wanted to start out fresh due to the server info. I spend hours in this game and always find a new challenge to the game. If you’re a fan of open world this is the game for you. While it’s a weird tie-in to the story of Big Boss and the canon of the MGS series it’s still a great game!

Don't buy it. It's pretentious junk. What is MGS V at its core? A bad story, bloated and unnecessary mechanics/features, a linear map with redundant locations, and endless grinding. The Mother Base is a complete waste of time. You will get sick of the missions after about ten hours (that's about five hours of gameplay since the game is full of rambling, idiotic cut scenes). The stealth isn't even good because it's been so dumbed down.

This game is one of the most deep mechanics wise. It has aged surprisingly well too

took a while to beat this with my brother, but it was a blast

I personally enjoy this game maybe too much , KOjima makes good games

Even though this game has alraedy had for 6 years, I still play until now.