Feel like a lot of the consumer hype came from the lobby of gamers who just want tight controls, 60 fps, and as many gameplay hours as possible. Certainly on Steam this is a sizable group of people

the fob stuff came out at a point where most were done with the game so thats the only thing to really talk about by a lot of people

ah yes. the bethesda pc crowd.

I think that doesnst give the game enough credit though. its really fun to play. which is what is usually most important for games

The open world gameplay is fun and solid. I've played about 120 hours and enjoyed most of it. The FOB stuff doesn't bother me, it's only really a concern for players who choose to engage with it. However, the game is super incomplete in the 2nd half. Chapter 2 is a bunch of scattered cutscenes that hint at a better game that was cancelled in mid-production. Anyone who finishes chapter 2 is left with the feeling that this game could have been a masterpiece with more development time, whether or not that is actually true.

MGSV still deserves to be in the running for GOTY, but this is the same year that Bloodbourne, Undertale, and Monster Hunter 4 released. It would not be my pick over those.

While playing, I declined all the "online/FOB" stuff. As it stands, it's definitely in my top 5 of the year. I think it plays absolutely fantastic, so I'm not down on it at all. Sure the story is a little shaky, but the gameplay is amazing.

I created a lot of my own fun, trying to be a sneaky/chaotic as possible, playing with all the tools given, and the AI is second to none. I had an absolute blast.

Despite it's problems MGSV is still the best game this year by a wide margin. Followed by Witcher 3 and Bloodborne.

Repetitive as hell and I rather have a linear game for MGSV then open world.I love open world games but MGSV doesn't feel right in one. Also the whole mother base stuff I didn't care for but that's just me also the Fulton thing was just to damn silly.

It's this. A majority of the people who are talking about it the first day/week it's out are the people who are incredibly excited about it.

People always feel the need to defend the thing they like with the mindless handwaving that is 'OH EVERYONE JUST WANTS TO BE CONTRARIAN BECAUSE IT'S POPULAR' but you can dismiss that train of thought if you think about it for more than three seconds.

MGS died for me when it changed from "Tactical Espionage Action" to "Tactical Espionage Operations" with Peace Walker. The mission and base management aspects don't interest me. I want a good action-stealth game, not a Monster Hunter type of game. I had enough by Mission 16, with the soldiers repeatedly blowing up the truck before I could drive it out of danger and my fulton system being nowhere near developed enough to pick up the truck. Why should I work for that when I will just have to keep building for other filler missions? It wasn't good enough that the previous games had you procure weapons and supplies on site. No, like so many other games, MGS V has to implement upgrades and turn everything into a grind. The world is also too open for my taste. I think open world games can be awesome, but to get to a place of interest in this game, you have to bear through menus, helicopter rides and a lot of horse riding. I would have preferred one big base with surrounding wildlife and little camps/bases. I don't like where they've taken the story over the years either. I'd have preferred a sequel to MGS4 or something new from Kojima.

Maybe because the ending is so weak? Either way, it's definitely in my top three games this year.

I just think that enough time has passed that people are looking at the game more objectively. When you're playing MGSV you're having the best time with it, the gameplay is where the 10/10 comes from. But when you're done and you look back at it, you realized that the half-baked story is not at all what it could have been, a lot of missions were inconsequential filler, and the microtransaction nonsense really sours the whole experience. All of that along with the fact that this will probably be the last real Metal Gear game, suddenly that 10/10 GOTY shoe-in is more like a Top 5 game because of its outstanding gameplay and little else.

same exact thing happened to the Witcher 3, everyone was on its junk when it came out and then two weeks later a lot of haters appeared. Hype is a real thing. Personally I enjoyed both games when they came out and still do now, one of them best years for games in recent memory.

I find it to be boring and have a poorly written story.

Part of it has to do with the updates to the systems konami has made. that makes people retroactively look back at the game. and how this is probably the last one of these we'ill get.

As it's the best playing video game of the year, but the story is terrible, and completely disappointing.

with such a thin story to carry the game, and Story is a HUGE draw in this series, the "gameplay loop" wore out for me after Mission 26,

i played through MGS4, 3 times, and was hooked all the way through because of the story, and i have to pull myself to finish this game. and that is heartbreaking as a diehard of the series

Mgsv has issues, some big some small. It is still, hands down, my goty. Its an amazing game and the current gold standard for gameplay. It could have been better, but you can say that about, literally, anything and everything. What's there is still praiseworthy.

@supermonkey122:

A FEW METAL GEAR SERIES SPOILERS AHEAD BECAUSE DUH

I dislike that "relatively poor story" now seems to be objective to so many people. Like, "well, there's less cutscenes, so it sucks". I know that "listen to the tapes" is a punchline at this point, but that's simply how a chunk of the story is given to the player. But people treat it like huge amounts of story in 1, 2 and 3 are not given to you in codec calls.

Then there's the argument that they should have made those Yellow tapes into cutscenes. Really? You think Ocelot and Boss discussing Quiet, presumably while sitting down at a table, would make a good cutscene? (I know, it's not like that cutscene of that stupid Battle Gear was any better, but still.)

It just seems crazy to me that a big hangup with people is "there's no cutscenes", rather than "the story within the tapes is bad", since most people - like me - seem rather pleased with those Chapter 2 tapes.

I know cutscenes are kind of video games' "thing", but again, I'd direct one to the MGS2 ending, where THE big plot dump of Raiden's involvement is done through codec; or the MGS1 arc where you find out evrything about Naomi's betrayal... through codec.

Audio-only story delivery has always been there, guys. That hasn't changed. What changed is the number of and length of cutscenes, and well, they DID make an open world game. Of course, then the argument is that someone doesn't want a dispersed story for better gameplay, which I'd say you're crazy to not want advancement. If one doesn't like the story, that's their opinion, but do they really want less playing, more watching? I'm not ready to go back to MGS4's style, where it felt like chapters 1-3 wrre ONE chapter worth of play and 4 and 5 were the meat of it, interspersed with "make dinner and eat" length cutscenes. And this is from someone who actually really liked MGS4. The joke has always been that Metal Gear is more a movie than a game, now that they've tried to find a balance, all the "fans" can talk about is how they can't have their open world cake and eat it's multiple-hours-long cutscenes, too (this is a dumb analogy). Point is: surprise, Konami didn't have infinite money and faith to pour into one game series. You got a great open world game with - I think - a terrific, if admittedly rather backloaded, story.

If one wants to complain about something, I'd suggest focus on what is already there, like Eli's half-story that isn't edited or altered at all to add some sort of closure. I get that this one might have happened so late in development that there was simply not time to do so. Rather than pining over what you COULD have had in some alternate world. "Why is there no lovingly rendered cutscene of Code Talker eating burgers!?"

Act 2 is not good.

@poobumbutt: I am big time MGS fan and I loved V and think it has a good story. Not the best in the series at all but it's good and I like that it is different in style than the other games and took some chances. I think there are similarities to MGS2 in the meta-ness of the story. Elements, like the virus and your men falling victim to it, were very well done and interesting. The direction of all the cutscenes was very well done to me.

In my opinion, MGS4 was icing on the cake for the series and making a sequel to that I am glad it wasn't more of the same. Also, I think this game didn't need to wrap up the story like many seem to expect it to have. I think that expectation is not realistic or in the style of the other MGS games (they all have loose ends).

And the tapes do what the Codec calls did but better so I was a big fan of that change to the game. Watching MGScanlon and seeing how much he doesn't care about the story without the tapes at all drove that home for me. They are very important. Tons of story has always happened in Codecs and in this game all of that is in the tapes in the same way.

My biggest issue with the game and story was just that it wasn't as silly/funny random in story ways. There was cool wacky stuff in the gameplay but hardly in the story like there have been in other MGS games. I loved the Hamburger tapes and those felt like some of the only stuff like that in the whole game.

Also I think the game was lacking with bosses or interesting adversaries compared to the other game. I mean it is different and like I said I'm cool with that, but I think the Skulls just weren't interesting from a story point of view.

@supermonkey122 said:

Well, speaking only for myself I just hit a point where I thought the game wasn't so good anymore. I was really, really enjoying it for the first 20 or so hours and then suddenly a switch flipped and I really, really wasn't. I attribute this to a few things:

1. I was really into the weirdness of that opening level. Men-on-Fire controlled by a floating gas-mask wearing child who summons a flaming whale to eat a helicopter is exactly the type of bat-shit crazy stuff I come to Metal Gear for and I was excited to see where the game went with that. However, the story never seemed to move past that point. The entirety of Afghanistan was pretty much a bunch of missions that never really connected together that well, and things really hadn't picked up that much after getting to Africa. At a certain point I just got sick of Miller growling about revenge and the misery of the human condition and wanted something to actually happen.
2. Without story beats to fall back on, the gameplay got super repetitive. I think the open world really did the game a disservice here, since too much of the game was traveling between checkpoints with nothing in between. There just wasn't anything going on. I think that bothers me more than some people because I'm not what I'd call a "systems" gamer. There are some people who love going through the same level over and over again just to see how they can fuck around with the AI. I'm not one of those people.
3. The whole Mother Base/Equipment Upgrade stuff was incredibly tedious. Nothing interesting ever really happened there and it ultimately amounted to a bunch of countdown timers with the "option" to spend real money to speed things up. Most of the equipment upgrades were pretty marginal anyway in that I never found there to be a huge difference between one assault rifle or any other assault rifle. Most of the unique stuff was only there as a way to screw with the AI, and as I mentioned I'm not a "systems" gamer. Some people derive joy from piling a dozen decoys into a truck and driving it around or shooting a guard in the face with a water pistol for laughs. I don't find that fun.
4. The online component was gross and interfered with the enjoyment of the single player. I ultimately just turned off the online component entirely because I didn't want to deal with it.

From the moment i knew that MGSV is going to be "open world" i knew that it might be a big problem (since traversing through a large map while trying to not get caught can be a pain and how the work on building a large world will affect the quality of level design) but then i played GZ and man the design of that base was pretty damn great and i thought that this is Kojima's way of "open world" which is a big ass base with many details and possibilities.

Then, TPP came and i realized that the "open world" isn't the only big problem. The game has many flaws like in gameplay mechanics, level design, mission design, story writing, game release decisions and other game making decisions like the FOB and mother base.

I think that the reason behind the delayed negative impressions about this game is that you can't know all of its flaws unless you play through the game and in my case, the faint hope that things will get better.

The backlash against Bioshock Infinite towards the end of that year was vitriolic. MGSV is no where near that. I'd even say that Fallout 4 is getting more backlash now than MGSV.

It's still my favourite game of the year and i enjoy the 128 hours i spent with the game. That said, the game is deeply flawed in some areas. The FOB stuff is a neat idea, but turned out to be more annoying than enjoyable for me. 80% of the time you're invading a base that has no defender. If a defender arrives, your chance of success is suddenly extremely low.

The main storyline of Metal Gear Slid 5 was pretty interesting to me, and oif you dig into the tapes there is certainly metal gear-ish pseudo-scientific depth. But the overall story misses a lot of the metal gear feel. Gone is the focus on crazy characters. Gone is the serious / humor balance that the series used to have. It's all very self-serious in Metal Gear Solid 5. Also the rhythm of sneaking > action > cutscenes > sneaking is sort of lost in the open world setting.

There are still some really good scenes and storybits in MGS5, but it's just not the same type of story that made Metal Gear great. Also, the gross stuff that Konami patched into the game, doesn't help the game at all.

it's because the ending sucks, dude

Because hype is a thick, syrupy poison

This type of thing happens so much. I remember it happening with GTA IV on this site back in the old days too. Same thing with GTA V and basically every big game like that. I just ignore it at this point and keep enjoying the game.

it def seems like a game that'd be fun to pick up now and again and just mess around with. its been explained like 7 times why my resources are in the red and i still dont understand that. either im a big ole dummy or its just confusing as hell.

@artisanbreads: If there was one big complaint I could make, it would be the lack of a "Rogues Gallery" of bosses, as Dan puts it. Just hearing Brad theorize about the inclusion of the Nemesis system in MGSV and what it could do for boss encounters made me daydream. Man, that would be the actual best. Also, Skullface felt a lot like Fortune to me: a very good start to a character, but cut short before reaching his potential. I wish they had capitalized more on his "opposite of FOX" thread, by stating specific situations in MGS3 when he had "helped" Snake; like "he was the one who got the intel on Groznyj Grad and Raikov" or "It was his idea to destroy Shagohod using the fuel tanks" or something. Skullface might be the number one character in all MGS that I wanted to like more, but just needed more development.

I can see the "business man" logic of diminishing the comedy bits, considering the subject matter of chid soldiers and the like. But one of MGS' strengths has always been riding that fine line of drama and goofy-ass laughs. MORE SPOILERS The perfect example being the scene in 4 where Eva dies in Snake's arms after giving a heartfelt speech about how sacrifice is necessary to destroy Zero... followed by a monkey waddling up in a fucking diaper. I miss these moments, too.

Oh, and so we're clear, I feel similarly about IV, despite my jabs. I think of it as the "legacy" game, which reminds everyone why MGS is the great thing that it is and is like a big going-away party for Snake. The metaphor I've always used to describe MGS4 is that it is the full-length video game version of that moment at the end of a play where all the players come out and take a big bow. MGS4 is the MGS series' curtain call. EVERYBODY shows up to wish Snake a fond - or not so fond - farewell. Not to mention the nostalgia trip it sends you on for this very reason. They even find a way for Solidus to do something. Solidus! Anyway, I just meant that in the context of V and the complaints around it, I imagine people complaining of V's story that they just wanted IV again, and I think you get ONE of those games in a series like this and blaming Kojima Productions for not finding the perfect balance of story delivery and gameplay in V is kind of harsh.

Sorry, when you say "this game" in reference to not needing to tie up all the loose ends, do you mean IV or V? You put it in the same paragraph as IV, so I wasn't sure. If you meant IV, I actually think one of its minor weaknesses was thinking it DID have to wrap everything up ("we can't leave that Johnny Sasaki thread dangling!"). But if you meant V, I wholeheartedly agree. The game could have cut when Snake puts the tape marked Operation Intrude into the player and I would have understood everything. Everything after that was just extra awesome stuff. I also really like the idea that KojiPro made this lovingly crafted, open-world game with a story I love and adore, that potentially expedited Kojima's exit from Konami, and when you ask what it's biggest contribution to the series overall is, you say "it explains why you fight Big Boss in Metal Gear 2 even though you kill him in 1". What an incredibly Kojima-esque thing to do. That last part's a half joke, by the way. I think this story actually does have interesting remarks on the series as a whole and character motivations, despite what Brad insists.

In the end, I too, do not think it is the best story in the series by far. I don't think it's the worst, either; but then, I'm the dude who wrote a thread about loving MGS2, so guess what? I love ALL these games, top to bottom.

This ended up a lot longer than intended when it began.

@poobumbutt: Hey it was a good post though!

I agree with you on the humor in that I love the goofy contrast. I love a bit of goofy humor in anything and I enjoy that kind of tonal shift so it was a bummer there was less of it. Like I say though, the Hamburger tapes were top notch. And there is crazy and silly stuff in the gameplay that you have to give credit for but there was some fantastic silly dialogue before and there's hardly any of that. If I was to guess on why it's not there as much I would actually think it was having time to do it. I think it was probably a big challenge to make a game of this scope and they didn't have the time they might've before. But that's just a total guess. The game is tonally different and maybe he didn't want that much overt humor in it.

And yeah I meant V there when discussing the loose ends and 4 by comparison did wrap up everything a little neatly as many fiction can tend to do. I just think of the kind of stingers the series has been known for and the level of cliff hanger they leave the world overall. Plus where characters end up, what's next for Snake, etc. I think if things didn't go sideways at Konami so thoroughly we would get another MGS 6 game based off this engine by Kojima or not.

And I agree with your thoughts on Skullface. He had interesting monologues but not much else. That weakness plus the Skulls made the whole opposition not as interesting as in past MGS games. I felt a similar way about that to 2 though, which you mention bringing up Fortune. I felt that game also was weak in that area so it's nothing new for the series.

Having cool bosses and enemies is one of the strengths of the series when it is at it's best I would say so kind of a bummer that was a weakness. You could imagine them adding that to a sequel that will almost certainly never happen now.

And how you talk about the story is how I feel. It's crazy he made a central part of this game to explain a minor thing in Metal Gear 1. That is pretty amazing to me and something I give it a lot of credit for. Plus the meta stuff about Venom Snake as the player which I think is pretty cool to have in a game. Always interested in more of that.

Because the people who love it have moved on? I opened it the other night and went "yep still plays great." There really isn't much about it to talk about except its flaws, as there was not some profound ending that could echo in discussions for months.

I hated it from the start. Good game, terrible MGS game. Couldn't even finish it.

Summed up very nicely, thank you~

Because after a great game comes out and everyone is done playing it the only people left talking about it are a bunch of whiners who have some weird axe to grind, it happened with Skyrim, Bioshock Infinite, Witcher 3, MGSV, Halo 5, it will happen with Fallout 4 and Tomb Raider and everything else that has any positive merit and it will continue forever because that is the new thing for the internet to do.

To keep it simple, MGSV is an amazing game that simultaneously lacks much of the charm, character, and bombast that made previous games in the franchise what they were. The online gameplay related changes Konami has made post release has done the game no favors either.

I love the game part. Everything else is really really annoying. Why do I have to wait 2 hours to upgrade my base? 20 minutes to make a new gun? The fob stuff is terrible. The story is pretty much nonexistent.

@evilsbane: That doesn't sound very plausible. The people who will keep talking about it are probably the biggest fans because they are also the ones who keep playing it long after release.

I think over time the great first impression of what the game is gets overtaken by the expectation of what the game could (or should) have been.

Thanks for the replies guys. I feel that many of you are sharing the opinion that it doesn't feel much like a "Metal Gear" game, and while I see where you guys are coming from, I don't necessarily agree. First off, it has the crazy opening, which in my opinion is one of the best moments in the series. Second, while the story isn't that great, the dialogue definitely has that Kojima touch to it that you can't get anywhere else. Anyway, it was interesting to read you guys's comments. Even as a huge MGS fan who is slightly disappointed with the sub-par story, I still consider this my GOTY by a wide margin.

Controversial opinion alert

Peace Walker is better than The Phantom Pain on most levels.

I was and still am pissed about the ending just don't finish the game. The ending is the worst !

Before that the game was great !

slowly over the past couple months, they have been patching things in that change how the game works, as well as more things to push people into using their microtransactions. they change small things that are barely noticeable unless you've played a ton, like stun time when enemies are cqced, and the amount of resources you get when fultoning containers for the second time+, and then larger more obvious things like changing how detection works on FOBs, and changing how reinforcements spawn in. and then finally, more gross things that try to force you to pay them to get MB coins, grade 7 and 8 weapons and new security devices that take ridiculously high levels, tons of resources, and weeks of time to even develop. i've played the game for 200 hours now and i'm nowhere even close to getting some of these things. if i were to pay them for a second FOB, i could have them as fast as i could extract soldiers and upgrade it to hold them.

it's still the solid game that it was when it was released, they just keep changing things and adding things over time that add up to enough to make people who stick with the game not enjoy it's loop anymore. they want you to invade and defend FOBs a ton, but change the rules of FOBs to make it less fun and even easier on the defender, then want you to pay money to stay competitive in it. the things like changing times of stuns are kind of bad, and reducing the amount of resources you get by 100x after you extract a container for the first time is really bad, but they're not the kind of thing you notice your first time through the game.

you can easily continue to ignore FOB stuff and it will have very little effect on you or your enjoyment, but the people still playing it... don't have much else to do, and when your experience starts to sour, you kinda look back on what you played and the negative things you overlooked before like the story & characters being really flat to nonexistent and/or unfinished, really start to become more prominent. i still had tons of fun with it, but i continue to want to, and it would be cool if they could stop making it worse and harder to do that with each new patch.

I don't really feel like people are down on this game honestly. Haven't heard that many negative things about it. Then again I am not really following it that closely since I've never played any Metal gear and therefore have no real interest in playing it.

Not sure, it's pretty much my dream MGS game aside from a handful of quirks/blemishes and not quite as much story as I would like, but still a pretty marvelous game to me. And really all those FOB things and patches really have almost no impact on the game. Only thing I'm not crazy about is having that crazy-ass new Tranq pistol they added being insane to unlock/buy...but I guess it's sort of the point. At lease they made MB coins earnable now.

@supermonkey122: I love the game, and I don't even mind the story so much considering how I've never been a MGS fan. But it's one of the few games I think has actually been made worse by patches since every patch has further pushed the online component to the point where you are all but actively punished for not engaging with the FOB stuff. Also it has some of the worst micro-transactions I have ever seen in a $60 game.

@onarum: You could fix that riot suit thing, all in the deployment missions. You can take away their enhancements.

I'm expecting people to look fondly on the game down the line, just like they do w/ MGS2. It's not exactly what I was expecting (Peace Walker had more of a standard Metal Gear story, I was expecting that on steroids basically), but I quite enjoyed the whole game. I am conflicted though because of what Konami is doing with it, the updates are...gross.

EDIT: The main thing I wish could've happened was for Konami to give Kojima more time and money so he could finish it how he wanted. Sadly, that could've never happened :(

I think it all boils down to it not feeling like a legitimate Metal Gear Solid game. It feels like an impostor (hehe). Sure the gameplay and graphics are great, but it's not Metal Gear in the traditional sense. Where's David Hayter? Why so little dialogue and cutscenes? Where are the ridiculous boss battles? Where's the epic finale that every other core Metal Gear has? These are staple things in MGS that make it so unique and sure some don't like those aspects of the classic MGS's, but guess what? That's what makes Metal Gear Metal Gear. You either love it or hate it, but once you completely change the formula don't call it Metal Gear Solid.

The mechanics are incredible, but everything else is really lacklustre. It looks and plays incredibly but everything else is so ho hum that it outstayed it's welcome.... By at least 30hours

Because we all hit the second chapter.

The first chapter is one of the best games I've ever played (though it gets rougher near 26-32); the second chapter lost me almost instantly. Also, after 83 hours it's hard to maintain that excitement.

Another problem I had is that once I had ridiculous gear, the game ceased being fun. Once I realized I had the tools and gear to just walk in loud and have no issues, I lost motivation for being sneaky, which was the best part of the gameplay for me. I really don't enjoy the power fantasy god simulator a lot of these really big games evolve into.

Still, *probably* game of the year? Just because a game loses steam after eighty hours doesn't mean that those eighty hours weren't the most fun I've had all year. It's the same way people are down about games they've put 1000 hours into "oh it's not fun anymore, 6/10". Yeah...you put *1000* hours into this "bad game". You just get burnt out.

I never did, I stopped 12 missions in and never looked back.

I'm still playing through the game (I just got through Episode 36, total play time about 48 hours) but I'm enjoying it overall.

As some who likes the MGS series, but wouldn't identify as a true/hardcore fan of the games, I think the story (so far at least) has met my expectations, although they weren't very high to begin with. After playing through Ground Zeroes it was clear that the story in this game would suffer since it would still be atoning for the sins of Peace Walker, which from a story perspective was absolute garbage and the low point of the series.

Additionally, to get ready for this game I also played through MGS 4 for the first time earlier this year and it was interesting to see how that game was handled in comparison to this game. For most people you probably spent more time watching 4 than actually playing it, which is completely different from this game where you can play hours before seeing the next cutscene that advances the story. But again, I think Ground Zeroes telegraphed pretty clearly the fact that this was not going to be another MGS 4. And from a story perspective, I could be pretty reductive and summarize the story in MGS4 as a constant stream of convoluted bullshit punctuated by really cool/exciting/surprising moments. I think the story in MGSV is similar in that regard, it's just spread out over long stretches of the best gameplay in the series. MGS4 has better moments and more of them, but I don't think the MGSV story is some tremendous step down from that game at least.

Ultimately I think people that are more interested in top notch gameplay versus a deep story can really get into this game. Nowadays I'm very much into the gameplay side of things versus deep lore (I'd take Dark Souls over The Witcher all day) and this is the first MGS game where I get satisfaction from the gameplay as opposed to just tolerating it to see where the story goes next. They flipped the script in a way that appeals to me, but I can understand people who are more attached to the series than I am being frustrated.

With all this said if the ending turns out to be Assassin's Creed 3-level bad, I might just come back and say "Ignore what I said before, the haters were right". But we'll see.