Is there any reason I shouldn't buy a US key? Like legally? I really want to play Metal gear and I see that the US side of greenmangaming has it.

I can't imagine there would be any problems

Just buy it on steam.

It's $46 (or less) on GreenManGaming with a discount code. It's $59.99 on Steam. Quite a difference.

Greenmangaming usually puts on a region lock when it's not allowed for us in Australia to buy US copies, so I reckon you're safe. Edit: if you can buy it through normal means, that is.

Yep, they just had the sale today. I was at a point where I was already waiting on a sale before buying it and I am now contemplating on whether I roll the dice and wait for even a much bigger discount around the holidays or buy it now.

@gaspower: You might save another $2 or $3 if you wait a few months!

Yeah, you're right. A game rated that high don't get higher discounts until after a year or so....fuuuuuuuck. I'll try to see when this sale would last and hopefully its not too late.

I also received the GMG email with the discount and am mulling the offer. Any news on how well the PC version of the game is holding up for people? Well optimized?

@dalerax: It's so good. Granted, I have a very high end system, but it's rock solid stable and looks incredible. I haven't heard any complaints from anyone on my friends list about it either. Definitely performs better than Ground Zeroes, and there are more graphics options too. They also fixed that annoying bug where a mouse cursor would appear on the screen sometimes when using a controller that was prevalent in Ground Zeroes.

Two problems so far - there are no audio controls beyond being able to turn down the volume of custom soundtracks, and there are some keyboard options missing such as being able to change scopes to toggle instead of hold. Other than that, the PC version runs well and looks fantastic.

I'm running two GTX 980s and using the second card for a ton of antialiasing. With everything maxed out at 1440p, it stays locked at 60 the entire time no matter what is going on.

@Mike: Thanks for the quick reply! I'll be buying and downloading it shortly.

@dalerax: Good call! You should join Bombardiers sans Frontiers so you can populate your friends list with a bunch of people for FOB stuff!

Bonus screenshot...although I think the differences between the PC version and the consoles are much more apparent at night.

Load times are fast, zero pop-in, volumetric fog (smoke/sandstorms), and on and on. One of the best PC versions I've seen in quite some time. And an imgur link because GB wrecks screenshots sometimes: http://i.imgur.com/46JP1ak.jpg . This is with the following settings forced in Nvidia Control Panel: 16x AF, SLI 64x CSAA, and SLI 16x Supersampling. I just love me some antialiasing.

Did you try it out OP?

@Mike: I'll definitely look into that. My Steam friends list currently consists of one RL friend, so there's plenty of room.

I hope I have similar results to what you have, though at slightly lower settings. I'm running on a 2GB 770, but it's still handling games well. Hell, even Arkham Knight ran well for me at medium settings (somehow).

@Mike: I've definitely seen pop in on the PC version. Not that much less then the console version in fact. Which is to say that it's not bad overall, but it exists.

I wrote this originally but somehow it didn't post because of an error or something, but GMG has been making moves away from customer happiness and more towards hard profits.

For anyone in the US, where I'm from, there is nothing to worry about. For those living in Europe, where I;m unfortunately at right now, GMG has imposed prices in British pounds instead of the Euro for a lot of countries which nearly doubles their normal retail price. What has been a nice cheap alternative to Steam once in a while, is now completely useless.

Also I'm not sure how strict Steam is about region locking between the US and Canada but they crack down on that stuff kinda hard when it comes to Europe. Certain Id games are just never available where I'm at right now.

Must have to do with system specs then, because it is a night and day difference on my system compared to video of the PS4 version I've seen on YouTube. What kind of PC are you running?

Then again, my GPU and SSD each costs more than a PS4 by themselves, so comparing those two platforms directly in this case is sort of silly. But after playing the game for hours at home and then watching some PS4 video of the same sections with similar gameplay, I couldn't believe the amount of pop-in I was seeing on the console version. It was that noticeable.

The PS4 version still looks good though, especially when you take into consideration that it's a $400 machine.

@Mike: Running on this. I'm doing my main playthrough on PS4 though because MGS has always been a Playstation game for me. The biggest difference I've noticed is in resolution, both rendering resolution and stuff like shadow resolution. Although I guess that's mostly irrelevant to this conversation. Just pointing out the minor differences I've noticed, which were not that big.

@liquidprince I have two 980s myself, what SLI configuration & settings did you end up using for Phantom Pain?

That seems strange. I believe you that they do that, but it seems utterly nonsensical business decision.

I mean what's the upside for them doing that? The only reason I've seen anyone ever use them for is price. If they remove that aspect of their business, why would anybody ever use them? Is this something they have to do due to EU trade laws/taxes?