that’s hell of a lot of cool
that’s hell of messed up
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I’ll have to try out Old Blood; Im assuming you’re recommending it because it’s a game focused less on exposition and more about blowing shit away in labyrinthine, needlessly large Wolfenstein 3-d style maps? If so, that’s probably the one I should have played because The New Order underwhelmed me.
Yep. It also has secret levels that are basically the first ten Wolf3D maps only you play as Nu-B.J. with Nu-B.J. weapons and moveset. Though I will say the Old Blood’s levels aren’t “needlessly large”. They’re probably larger than New Order’s but if you were underwhelmed by that one’s levels then you might also be by the Old Blood’s.
The Hell of a Good Time
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I do say ‘Hell of’ and it’s awesome.
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Obviously I chose Fergus to die because that’s the only moral option. I doubt I will go back and play again, because I don’t have time for that kind of shit in my life any more, plus I just started it on the hardest difficulty anyway since I figured I could handle it (which I could, it wasn’t super terribly hard) and so I feel I’ve already “conquered” the game. I guess I could get all the collectibles which apparently turns on some kind of alternate modes, but again, no time. I got what I wanted out of it.
I just don’t know what to say to the criticism that there’s too much exposition in the game. If anything the playable levels are too long. You can skip all the cutscenes and blow through the “back at base” segments super quick if you don’t feel like poking around. Not that I have any idea why you’d want to do that, but I’m pretty much at the parker stage of my videogame career where I like sitting and watching stories and I see no charm any more in contextless arcadelike action experiences.
I wasn’t being critical. I actually thought the New Order’s narrative choices were semi-interesting, it’s just that in a game where you do battle with robot dogs and giant nazi mechs, it’s a difficult task to then switch gears drastically to make me care about what is essentially a love story in the end. Still, I thought there was some genuinely interesting story beats, and applaud the effort.
I’m trying to wrap up MGSV after dropping it near the beginning of the Angola map.
I dislike the strategy superstructure. Whenever this game gets close to improving on Snake Eater’s play spaces and flow, retcon Master Miller nags me to engage with the optional management sim and terrible social game economics. It doesn’t seem like the hardware development is necessary, but maybe I’ll be gear limited down the line. There only seems to be one truly situational gear adaptation in the water pistol which seems like a missed opportunity to cop from Monster Hunter. Poison got you down? Make a cowboy hat out of Wroggi skin.
Mission 18 was a level design highlight so far. I discovered the river on a failed attempt prior to entering the mine and upon dying approached it from downstream, then back the same way to the evac point.
If this were an action game with the weird OSP rules from 2/3 I’d find it so much more rewarding. Putting enough man-points into my development stats in order to get the Mosin Nagant is less interesting than finding it in a storage shed in the jungle. MGSV could totally just hide all of the cool gear in its world but instead it’s a psychotic kidnapping/kleptomania grind that the characters treat with a straight face. It’s the weirdest shit that Outer Heaven doesn’t have a way to procure fuel except by attaching balloons to shipping containers. If you’re going to have base building, why don’t we build a power plant or an oil rig? A cursory Googling turns up about 7 million results for “Seychelles oil”. It’s exasperating to have the fun bullshit removed while the “realism” is tenuous and shallow, to say nothing of the fact that giving Quiet clothes is apparently locked behind an endgame mission.
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I couldn’t agree with all of this more. I’ve been grinding easy side ops to try and unlock the true ending… how far we have fallen.
One thing that really grates on me (which I haven’t seen raised elsewhere), is the dissonance imposed by the TV serial, episodic structure and the open world ambitions.
Too often I have been forcibly returned to Mother Base to watch a cinema, meaning I have to ride back to the actual play area in that excruciatingly slow helicopter again, (complete with rolling credits of course) to progress. I loathe that several critics have explained away this ‘feature’ as being Kojima’s dig at Konami. It’s just bad design in complete conflict with the sandbox style of play MGSV is trying so hard to facilitate.
Why is it that if one is lucky enough to stay in the play area after a mission ends, you have to go and collect intel from a random box thing, despite that fact that all the info is in your idroid? I dunno, videogames huh.
pretty glad I made MGS5 into the example of “game I will not play because I have standards”
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I reserve that classification for Ubisoft checklists. (The irony!)
It’s sad because the handling and contextual problem solving realize Snake Eater’s ambitions very well. Structurally I’d prefer if it had no “credits” or anything breaking up each area. It’s not like the story plays out in a linear order. I expected much more of Mission 11-type surprise encounters to make use of the spaces. Instead it’s just a slog and whatever atmosphere it has is killed by the constant interruption of the strategy layer and the dumb TV framing @Annetts mentioned.
Why doesn’t this game have cooperative multiplayer? Being a 50 hour solitary slog dates the game more than finding weapons in spinning item boxes. Coop made Peace Walker downright bearable with a friend with whom you can share your concerned look when the game eroticizes a 5,000 year old CIA mole’s physical abuse.
all standards are illusory
yeah, I think I misspoke. I meant to say “making an example of not playing a franchise I once loved because I have no faith in this newest installment”
Right on! The unlockable modes are neat but not really anything special. My favorite is the one that completely removes the HUD. There’s another where you only have one life which I never attempted because the final boss on one life would be kind of infuriating and you’d just end up save scumming your way through the game anyway. The other two were more forgettable. One of them gave you 999 health and infinite ammo and the other one set the difficulty to the second hardest option and removed all the health and armor pickups.
Would have been nice to have been able to play HUD-less from the start or toggle it on/off at will.
Jet Set Radio was free and so I played through it. I still think it’s a better whole than JSRF, but I certainly have gained new appreciation for how Future controls and handles. I would also complain about how it’s capped at 30 FPS, but it seems like they ported the game code wholesale and having an accurate experience trumps things being smooth and broken.
it’s weird that everyone’s criticisms of mgsv are so correct but that it still rules so fucking hard
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I’ve slowly made my way to mission 21 and I can’t get enough attaching balloons to things and launching them into space
The “bahhh? Baaaaaaahhhhh!” the sheep make when you Fulton them forgives many sins
I might be a shallow creature
Your base can generate fuel?
Just at an obnoxiously slow rate no matter how much you upgrade.
That’s a little better. I haven’t noticed a derrick or anything beyond the menus to indicate it.
I admit complaining about the diegetical absurdity is rhetorical gloss on I don’t find this thing fun. It’s like the side quests in Mass Effect 3 where you play Pac Man on the map screen to retrieve a ceremonial urn for a Citadel loiterer you overheard. It’s an activity to do for its own sake I don’t find intrinsically pleasurable. The designers rewarding me with galactic readiness points or R&D progression doesn’t make it fun, and the absurdity means there’s no narrative value in it. Peace Walker introduced fultons because dragging people back to your truck in Portable Ops sucked, but the missions in MGSV where you have to carry someone provide a challenge and narrative reinforcement.
(I played Peace Walker five years ago so maybe the hilarity was already worn out.)
Or at least these moments would carry more weight if they didn’t immediately follow a mission where you’re able to clear and fulton an entire enemy stronghold. The narrative excuses for disallowing the fulton are so thin, but the associated missions are so much stronger for it.