You Can't Go Phantom Pain Again (Replaying Series)

Hey everyone, this is something I've been thinking about lately. I'm not really in any mood to type out a whole blog for some reason, so I just wanted to shout out some quick thoughts. I have had some time on my hands lately and replayed through MGS 1-4. It's something I do every other year or so...When you know the tricks they are relatively quick playthroughs, easy to get through, even when doing no kill / no alert runs. However, I've just never been able to get past the hump of replaying TPP. I thought this recent playthrough of games might give me the proper inspiration to tackle a second playthrough of Phantom Pain, but it actually just cemented what makes the game so difficult to replay.

To get a true Phantom Pain replay experience, you'll have to delete your entire save and start over. Can you replay each mission from your helicopter at mother base after you beat the game? Yes. Can you use items you researched in late game earlier missions? Yeah, you can do that too. However, its a very drop in and drop out experience that feels incredibly isolated from an actual cohesive experience. More so, certain intro and stitching in-between cut scenes will never be played again (in a story already bleak with cut scene content, that ain't great). And perhaps most damming is cleared mission objectives remained cleared even on replay. For instance, in one of the first main missions where you need to rescue Kaz: I already had the intel of Kaz's exact location even though Ocelot told me to head to a camp to figure it out. I could have went to the camp to "receive the intel" anyways but when I already have a pretty clear waypoint of where Kaz is...not exactly sure how to these feelings into words but basically: The Espionage element of this series essentially gets taken away. It feels more of a generic open world, go to this waypoint, do this the thing, rinse and repeat kind of thing. Ya know?

Of course I could just delete my save or figure out a new profile to use. But that is an opposite philosophy not seen in previous MGS games. I earned all the cool camos and special items during my various playthroughs of MGS3, being able to enjoy a brisk playthrough of MGS3 using the EZ Tranq Gun and Snake cammo suite is like watching a nice 007 movie marathon for the day. I put in the time to have never be seen and get 0 alerts or kills in MGS4. You expect me to not use this stealth camo? Heck no! In my last playthrough, MGS 2 and 3 took about 9 hours each to beat. That's with all the cut scenes and listening to a lot of codec convos too. MGS4 only took a few more hours than that. It's the interesting inverse about phantom pain. 1-4 seem to be gameplay in service of cut scenes while Phantom Pain is almost 100% about the gameplay, sprinkled with story content enticing you to move forward.

It's a weird feeling to want to replay a game that doesn't exist. If the game had some kind of new game plus, it might be capable of delivering that 'directors cut' experience I'm trying to get out of it. But that's just not what Phantom Pain is about. The game is about the 40-60 hours you spend tactically infiltrating bases and camps all while building up your own as a super power. I loved it, but obviously doesn't lend its self to replayability...and Ive already gone waaay longer than I wanted, so I'll stop here. So ya...that's it. Curious to know if any others have similar experiences. What games do you love but find difficult to replay?

Probably not alone on this one: I love Super Metroid, but for the life of me I cannot keep any of it in my memory. I think I'm missing that part of my brain, and got double of the part that wants cheeseburgers instead

I think I ended up restarting it back when I review it. I was exhausted by the end of it. What stops me is the convenience the developed gear gets you. I can't play MGSV as a survivalist. I need my gadgets and buddies.

I went back to Shadow of the Colossus and I just couldn't get on with it. I got to the second Colossi and just completely checked out. Aiming the bow felt too slow for comfort, the climbing, whilst tactile, felt cumbersome. It just did not click and I hate how that happened. I've played that game several times to completion but I just can't do that in 2020.

@shindig: Yep. I also have that same issue with SotC

I dunno... Going back in with model swapping has some amusing results.

I wanted to return to it many times as well. I have played some of the multiplayer and it's pretty good , but it's a bit less "free" than the single player open world stuff. Hmm...it just feels like such a commitment to start over and the whole progress bit is kind of gone when you've finnished it once earlier.

I'm just chiming in here to say that I finally got around to playing this great game after letting it sit in my backlog for 5 years. Yeah if there was enough time in between your first playthrough then I totally understand wanting to start from scratch. It just isn't the same to replay old missions from the helicopter base. Instead of deleting your save though maybe just create a new profile and play the game anew with that.

Fun to see that others are replaying this as well. I played on PC when it came out and I loaned the PS4 version from the library. Damn I love it, it's the only stealth game that really works for me. Is there anything else like it?

@zaccheus: Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker is kind of the prototype for a lot of V’s ideas. It’s a smaller and more limited game (no open world), but it’s got a lot of charm. I highly recommend checking out Peace Walker HD if you want to keep sneaking around and fultoning dudes.