I just finished mission 31 and saw the ending credits for chapter one, so I feel like I'm qualified to render some amount of judgement on this game.

This is not what I wanted from a Metal Gear game; by that I mean there was virtually no story. I feel like very little of importance happened, and when it did I didn't know why I was doing it. It's real possible that I missed something, but I don't know who the Man on Fire is or why he matters. I don't know who that Psycho Mantis type kid is or why he matters. Hell, I don't even really know who Skull Face is. This doesn't need to be explained in the first chapter, but I feel like I've earned some story reveals at this point in the game and I haven't gotten them. I feel like Kojima, who generally gets in the habit of over-explaining, instead completely under-explained the story of this game, and it really hurt the experience for me. And having a Snake that almost never talks severely hurts the experience for me.

In terms of gameplay, yeah it's a really good open world stealth action game. But guess what, so is Farcry. I don't get why this game, to quote Brad, "redefines the notion of what open-world gameplay can be." It feels iterative and sorta generic, two words I NEVER thought I would use to describe a Kojima joint.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy this game. I put 70 hours into it thus far. I love developing new tools and seeing my numbers get bigger. But to me, it's no 10 out of 10. To me, it fails as a Metal Gear game (the Kojima weirdness is there, but, like your soldiers thanking you when you punch them, it's usually funny exactly once) and the mechanics are cool, but not groundbreaking.

I played all the numbered Metal Gear games in the last year (Metal Gear Scanlon inspired me) and I was waiting for this crucial part of the story to be explained in a way Metal Gear fans should have become accustomed to. But as of mission 31 that hasn't happened. Please tell me what I'm missing, cause based on how everyone talks about this game I'm sure missing something.

Man on Fire - explained in chapter 2 + tapes.

Gas Mask Kid - explained in chapter 2 + tapes.

Skull Face - more or less in chapter 2 + tapes but it's fairly lame.

In fact most of it is explained in bits and pieces that way. It feels pretty cheap and I understand where you're coming from. It's an amazing game but a lackluster entry for the MGS story.

This should be the TTP forums so that people know which Metal Gear you are referencing

I'm with you man, there is an obscene amount of padding in this game. You just wait until you see what options the game gives you after mission 31. I was enjoying the game up until where you're at but then it starts throwing nothing but unfiltered crap at you in terms of game structure and pacing. I cannot believe that the MMO tier mission design got totally ignored in so many reviews nor can I believe how the reviews also managed to totally ignore how recycled the missions and the areas that are used in the game are.

This game plays amazingly the way it controls is fantastic. But almost everything else suffers enormously due to the open-world. There's barely any variety you spend 100 hours playing this game that has less activities and mechanics than the 10-12 hours you spend in the older Metal Gear games.

And to answer your final question, you aren't missing anything. Once you complete chapter 2 you'll realize that this is almost nothing but a side story to the whole franchises canon, it's almost entirely irrelevant and it is not the story you want to hear.

@bceagles128 You're not wrong, but I don't really use the forums ever and I don't know how to do that.

@baronsamedi I was okay with looking past the boring and repetitive missions because even though I don't really find them fun, they contribute to Mother Base development and stuff so I don't feel like I'm wasting my time. But there are so many problems with the game that I'm amazed at least some reviewers didn't focus on. Many of the reviews I read were like "there's not a lot of story, but whatever!" like that isn't something crucially important to a Metal Gear game.

I have problems with how the story was presented, but not with the story itself. I actually think that most of the story in this game, and the explanations about Man on Fire, Third Child, Quiet, Code Talker, Skull Face, et al. are kind of better than some other character backstories in other Metal Gear games.

But (and it's a big but) the way they present the information... the way the storyline is told to you... it's a problem. Putting everything in cassettes is a smart idea in that it allows you to play the game while you listen so they're better than codecs in that respect, I get that. However, I think that there's something to be sad to having some structure in the order and times you receive information. I was extremely crazy about listening to every tape in Peace Walker before moving forward, and I'm the same way in Phantom Pain. I listened to every cassette the moment I got it, and I never did it while doing other things in the game. I devoted my full attention to them, which I think is the only way I gleaned a lot of the information I did from them. That's contradictory to the way you can listen wherever you want, but I felt like they were so dense I needed to pay full attention. Especially the Code Talker research tapes; those are such huge information dumps. It's insane.

The story in Phantom Pain is pretty good, but it really caters to a very specific subset of the audience. You need to be meticulous in the way you ferret out the information and connect every cassette in your mind. The other big thing is how much of the cutscene information is conveyed through the acting of the face models, which works decently well due to the pretty good facial capture in this game, but isn't as effective as real people because the fidelity isn't perfect. Overall, I would have preferred talky cutscenes and codecs, but the story is still there as long as you dedicate yourself to finding it.

First off, I respect your opinion. I think you are wrong, and I'll do my best to explain why, but at the end of the day it's all personal preference and it's ok if this game isn't for you.

A load of shit is going to go down in Chapter 2. Whether or not you feel that makes up for Chapter 1, and whether or not you feel anything is adequately explained is, again, up to you.

This is not what I wanted from a Metal Gear game; by that I mean there was virtually no story. I feel like very little of importance happened, and when it did I didn't know why I was doing it. It's real possible that I missed something, but I don't know who the Man on Fire is or why he matters. I don't know who that Psycho Mantis type kid is or why he matters. Hell, I don't even really know who Skull Face is. This doesn't need to be explained in the first chapter, but I feel like I've earned some story reveals at this point in the game and I haven't gotten them. I feel like Kojima, who generally gets in the habit of over-explaining, instead completely under-explained the story of this game, and it really hurt the experience for me. And having a Snake that almost never talks severely hurts the experience for me.

• Man on fire: Clearly explained in Chapter 2.
• Psycho Mantis Type Kid: Sorta explained in Chapter 2. It's heady, MGS2 style stuff, though.
• Skull Face: Sorta explained in Chapter 2. I wish they did more with him, though.
• Silent Snake: Totally explained and I'm one of the people who think that putting up with Quiet Snake is absolutely worth the pay-off.

In terms of gameplay, yeah it's a really good open world stealth action game. But guess what, so is Farcry. I don't get why this game, to quote Brad, "redefines the notion of what open-world gameplay can be." It feels iterative and sorta generic, two words I NEVER thought I would use to describe a Kojima joint.

Well, for one thing, it's how many different ways you can tackle the same outpost. In Far Cry, you either sneak around and kill guys or go in loud and kill guys, plain and simple. Here, you can do both of those, or you can not kill anyone, or you can use your buddy as a distraction, or you can fly straight in on your helicopter, or bring in a tank, or...

My point is that I've put in over a hundred hours into MGSV and am still finding new ways to tackle outposts, and above all, each one of those ways is fun. The day/night cycle has far more of an impact than in Far Cry, and the weather plays a major factor as well.

On top of that, the open world in MGSV does far more than facilitate checkboxes to fill up by collecting random crap. Hitting outposts over and over again remains relevant, thanks to Mother Base's demand for able bodied troops and resources.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy this game. I put 70 hours into it thus far. I love developing new tools and seeing my numbers get bigger. But to me, it's no 10 out of 10. To me, it fails as a Metal Gear game (the Kojima weirdness is there, but, like your soldiers thanking you when you punch them, it's usually funny exactly once) and the mechanics are cool, but not groundbreaking.

I played all the numbered Metal Gear games in the last year (Metal Gear Scanlon inspired me) and I was waiting for this crucial part of the story to be explained in a way Metal Gear fans should have become accustomed to. But as of mission 31 that hasn't happened. Please tell me what I'm missing, cause based on how everyone talks about this game I'm sure missing something.

No, it's totally possible that you aren't missing anything. I hate to say it, but you may have gotten yourself overhyped, or let yourself down by expecting the same kind of story delivery you got in the older MGS games. Kojima decided to take this one in a different direction, and you don't have to enjoy that. I did, quite a lot actually, but I can see why you wouldn't. It raises a lot of questions and doesn't tie up everything with a neat bow like MGS4 did, but honestly I felt that 4 tried too hard to explain all of it's loose ends and suffered for it, which may be why I'm more ok with V's story than you are.

The gameplay is so stellar though, especially in comparison to the older MGS games, that I can't see where you are coming from in that respect. To me, it blows Far Cry or Assassin's Creed out of the water with one CQC-enabled hand behind its back.

@mirado I found a way that I liked to play the game. It was silent, without killing anyone with DD or Quiet marking enemies, and I kinda don't know why someone would play the game any other way, considering the need for bodies at Mother Base. You can ride in with a tank, but why would you if it hurts your chance at growth? Also, killing dudes silently versus tranqing dudes aren't different enough tactics mechanically to warrant calling them different styles. I mean I guess you don't have to worry about them waking up, but if you're fultoning correctly it isn't usually a concern. The game does feel good, but I think if people are overhyping anything it's that. They control well compared to previous Metal Gear games and Assassins Creed, for example, but I don't think it feels that much better than Farcry, but with the perspective difference it's hard for me to compare the two.

And it isn't that I want everything tied up well, I just want something to happen. Because Snake is silent throughout most of the game and most of the story is handled through info dump via cassette, I feel completely disconnected from the "events" of the game. I want revenge because they blew up my base nine years ago. Aaaaaaand 70 hours later I shoot Skull Face a bunch with a shotgun. Those feel like the only Metal Gear-style bombastic story beats in this game so far. The rest feel entirely forgettable. And even if chapter two is more story heavy like most of you are saying, I shouldn't have to play through 70 hours to get to it. I'm not saying it's a bad game. I wouldn't spend 70 hours playing a bad game. But I am saying it's different from previous MGS games in some ways that are extremely disappointing to me as a fan of the series. I find it hard to believe this is the game Kojima wanted to make from the get go.

@barnodian: I quickly filled my entire Mother Base to the brim and became far more capable of going loud without feeling guilty about stunting my growth. I was all about extracting every person and figured I would remain that way, but in the end it wound up being unnecessary.

As for different styles, I really went reductive to save from typing paragraphs and paragraphs, but I honestly can't think of another game that gives you so many possible approaches to each mission. Even if you limit yourself to non-lethal play, I was still discovering creative ways to handle guards even 50 hours into the game. Did you know that most buildings have rooftop vents that you can lob sleep grenades into? Or how about the fact that you can play the tape of that guy shitting while hiding in a toilet on your speaker enabled iDroid to stop guards from checking your hiding spot?

Sure, at the end of the day, you can boil it all down to two paths: either you neutralize all the guards, or you don't, plain and simple. But it's the sheer breadth of viable tools that blows me away. Far Cry gives you basically nothing but guns and a rock. Like MGSV, you can use them to kill people quietly or loudly, and you can distract guards. But MGSV lets you slap C4 onto a guy's ass, wait until he meets his commander, and then blow the whole party up.

It also doesn't fail you when you kill the guy you are supposed to tail, and instead provides many opportunities to improvise success in your mission. One mission, I stumbled onto a tank battalion that I needed to blow up before I even found the intel file which would give me their route. I took them out and the mission was done, no worries about sequence breaking. In another, I needed to destroy the comms equipment, but I already did that while in a side op beforehand, so the game just automatically treated it as a victory, unique cutscene and all. Instead of making your first encounter with the Skulls a scripted failure if you get caught, they let me kill them by placing C-4 and luring them to jump on it. There are very, very few instant failures in this game, and often it's at its best when you screw up what you are supposed to be doing, and are forced to improvise. That's why they're raving about MGSV. It's the freedom of it all.

The story is hurt by a lack of memorable characters who create those moments you are talking about, on that we agree. There's no Cobra Unit, no Dead Cell, no FOXHOUND to square off against. This Metal Gear is much more about the build up, which rubbed some people the wrong way, as they didn't feel they got the payoff for all of that work. It's what makes Silent Snake such a divisive thing; either you're going to be ok with it by the end, or you'll feel like a lot of time was wasted for no real reason, or that the reason wasn't worth it. But I agree, outside of a few memorable moments (the scramble to save my MB staff will stick with me for a good amount of time), that first Chapter could have used fewer generic Russian officers as targets.

But I have to disagree; I'm pretty sure this is the game that Kojima has always wanted to make. He's talked endlessly about making characters with a more nuanced performance, one that says what they feel without saying anything, using facial capture to convey emotions. On the gameplay side, he laid the foundation with Peace Walker, and this is just its logical conclusion. It's possible that he would have made some changes with unlimited time and an unlimited budget, but overall, I think he's pretty happy with the game he created. And most people seem to agree.

@barnodian: It probably isn't the game he wanted to make. But the same can be said about MGS2 for example, have you read the design document for it? His ambitions were insane but he got caught up in budget limitations and the power of the PS2. MGSV feels to me like it should've been longer, have a denser story, more varied gameplay, etc. Sure. But the game is what it is, and I find really pointless and ridiculous people judging the game for what it could've been. It may be incidental, but to me, MGSV being a weird entry can be reconciled with the way the story concludes in chapter 2. The game left me with a weird feeling in my gut, quite dizzy and at a loss for words. I won't go into further details, but suffice to say that, whether it's voluntary or not, this last game for me is Kojima getting weird in a way that makes even die hard fans uncomfortable.

He's doing that with a type of subdued, implied storytelling that leaves you with your own thoughts for the most part of the game. All throughout my playthrough, I found myself rethinking about events, interpreting them through the lens of other characters, imagining what Quiet thought of Snake, what Snake thought of what he was doing. It's no genius move, but Kojima not spelling anything out in long cutscenes, leaving threads hanging and frustrating me ended up pushing me to make the story mine in a weird way. And I'm not talking about open-world emergent gameplay here, I'm talking about thinking of things with incomplete information, doubt and frustration, dare I say: as if I was there. In a lot of ways, it feels like it's not focusing on world-changing events and climactic moments as the rest of the entries did - Shadow Moses Incident, Big Shell Incident, Operation Snake Eater, etc. It's more about a world slowly getting entrenched in a routine and bad habits sparked by dramatic events that left you powerless. This game feels like the story somebody tells you about in an another MGS game, an off-screen flashback. It's not what I expected, I'm not sure it's what I wanted, I'm don't even know if I'm fanboy-rationalizing here. But for the moment, I think it's unique in the series, and I'm glad for it.

God, the fact that Snake finally shut the fuck up with his horrible dialogue is one of my favorite things about the game. He was a character who 90% of the time repeated the last word someone else said and threw a question mark on it. I've always found his general cluelessness and wordiness to be completely infuriating. Solid Snake in particular is a goddamned dunce that only succeeds because everyone around him is ten times as incompetent as he is.

@xbob42: Actually about repeating last words. It is common in Japanese language to speak that way. It is called Aizuchi I think. Problem is I do not think when you translate from Japanese to English it sounds really strange.

I agree. I loved playing the game, but the payoff is rather weak, and the characters' silence or vagueness didn't improve my experience. Maybe, like me, you'll feel better about it after the tapes in chapter 2. But I don't think they are a great way of having the story happen.

It's a weird criticism to have about an MGS game. Maybe Kojima took comments about the long cutscenes to heart, or maybe he felt they wouldn't mesh well with the open world?

@barnodian: All is explained when you finish chapter 2. There will be some repeat missions that you do not need too do, but you need to listen to the tapes and do the side missions that are yellow to get the whole picture. I cannot say that this will be enough for you, but I personally felt like it tied things together and explained it appropriately. After you are done the last mission, and you should know which one it is, go read the discussion thread in the forums about the real ending and what it entails and how it ties the whole lore together.

The only thing that I can say is that if you were waiting for something that is a big bang as the other games in terms of story, I must just say that is was impossible as it is just filling the of how the Big Boss that was in Peace Walker turned into the one in MG1 and 2.

I agree with the sentiment that this game took a lot of the worst things about open-world games.

• Returning to same areas over and over
• Collectibles for currency/upgrades scattered about
• Respawning enemy camps
• Repeating mission types for currency
• Many missions do not advance the plot

I mean, I don't have a problem with this stuff in some games, but in a Metal Gear game ... to see the ending of a chapter and have almost nothing of consequence happen is blasphemous. I actually got bored many times throughout my playtime with the game and stopped to do course work... voluntarily.

The stealth is also just ok. It's no chaos theory. Most of the time, if you are wearing appropriate camo and just crawl around prone, no one will see you.

Some things that bother me with this being a metal gear game:

• The camouflage system doesn't let you change camo on the fly.
• Can only carry 3 guns
• Time of day is pointless
• Silencers break too often

I suspect some of these story/story presentation complaints are Brad's major reservation about the game that he wants to talk about on the MGS5 spoilercast. Brad seemed to not get a lot out of the conclusion of the game, Dan loved it because he is physically incapable of disliking an MGS game unless it's on a portable system, and I suspect even if Jeff likes the twist itself he probably isn't going to actually like how the story is conveyed to you because Jeff keep his standards pretty high. Jason seems like he'll have a similar reaction to Brad or Jeff.

Everybody seems on board with the gameplay systems, for the most part. I do wonder if the lackluster story will keep MGS5 from being game of the year. I mean, Saints Row 3 took it because not only was the gameplay fun as shit and ridiculous, but also the actual story and story missions were pretty dumb and entertaining and kinda rad.

@bisonhero: Skyrim won tough did it not?

@edgaras1103 said:

True, and I honestly don't even know how to compare the missions/quests/story in MGS5 to Skyrim. Also, Fallout 4 comes out this year, and if it ends up being kinda the full package, it might overpower MGS5 as a serious contender for game of the year.

I guess none of this bothered me since I haven't played any of the previous Metal Gear games.

I figure if you can change camo on the fly whenever and into whatever you want, what's the point of even having camo? At that point, I'd rather they just take it out of the game. Having to make a choice or pay to change your camo in the field via a supply drop means at least I'm invested in the decision. And camo does matter, as does time of day...enemies will see you closer during the day, and you get more Heroism for completing missions during the daytime. 3 guns seems like a lot when those three can be a rocket launcher, a full size assault rifle, AND a pistol, not to mention a full compliment of equipment and a fist attachment. You also eventually research more durable suppressors, with some guns (or maybe all?) eventually getting infinitely durable suppressors. Plus, you can always refill them by finding a suppressor out in the wild or calling in a supply drop to replenish everything. I actually like the limited durability because it forces me to make some tough choices about how I'm going to approach some of the longer missions, especially the earlier ones when using the first available suppressors.

@mirado You made a lot of really great points. I didn't think too much about alternative ways to do missions because I generally stuck to the script. Maybe it's my fault for doing what the game told me to/trying to be a perfectionist, but it is important to mention that if the mission does go sideways, there are ways to get it back on track. And not having fail states or sequence breaking stuff is super cool and something I didn't really consider at first. Maybe I just played too conventionally to get the most out of it. Metal Gear has always had those weird tools, but I played those pretty conventionally too so maybe all that was really there for me was the story craziness.

Nuanced facial expression is also something I didn't give enough credit, but I think you give it too much. It's great that tech has gotten to the point where I can sorta feel what Big Boss is thinking w/out words, but there is no way that it can take the place of a script. Even when Kojima's boss characters were sorta weak (Cobra in MGS3) they were anything but generic. I would have really liked to see some wacky characters that Metal Gear fans have become accustomed to, because anything would have been better than generic soldiers. I guess what I'm saying is that, if you reskinned any other numbered Metal Gear game, they would still be recognizable as Metal Gear games. But if you replaced the characters of this game with generic dudes, you'd just have a really well controlling but repetitive open world game. If that makes sense.

I think the part of all of that that bothers me is the waiting. Sitting around waiting for a supply drop is the same as having the item already with you with added wait time. In MGS3 you could switch your camo on the fly, but now in MGSV I can do the same thing but it costs a miniscule amount of credits and I have to wait. As far as the time of day, heroism isn't clearly explained, but from what I've read it doesn't seem that vital to the experience. Therefore, the choice of being easily spotted or not seems pretty clear - I'll go at night, lol.

As far as having 3 guns, in every game in the series (including mgs3 which had big boss in it), excluding Peace Walker, you have been able to carry all weapons and items with you. Now, I have to call in a supply drop (more waiting around) to get the most effective weapon for the situation. There have been times where I had a rocket launcher and wanted to snipe. I simply blew everyone up because I didn't care to wait around for a sniper for a simple side op.

The suppressor thing is fine I guess. I understand the mechanic, but it gets annoying when I want to complete two missions back to back and have to call in supply drops to replenish my ammo or suppressors. It just seems like there is too much equipment management which leads to me wasting my time. I prefer the older, more cinematic style of metal gear because the combat was always in purpose of advancing the story. Now, it's all a bit more aimless.

This is what I love so much about this game. The types of missions here aren't unique; but combining the very open nature of attacking enemies, your huge-ass toy box, and the flexibility of MGSV's fail states are what keep me hook all the way through. I remember one mission had Miller direct you to follow an interrupter to find a specific prisoner. I thought "fuck that shit, I bet he's gonna tell me right away if I capture and Fulton him instead." I did exactly that, but he didn't know the exact location of the prisoner (who was on the move), and I had to scramble running all over the area to find him before he and the rest of the prisoners were executed (which I ended up saving them all). THAT right there is fucking awesome to have the designers prepare for players who wish to play against the the presented rules, including a small branch of story within that mission.

And I'm glad this is a different Metal Gear Solid game story wise. I like that Big Boss has taken a backseat in conversations, so that I am demonstrating how Big Boss is a badass, not the story telling me how he is a badass. And while there is much in terms of story content here compare to last installments, I like how Kojima is finally putting trust in his audience to be smart enough to put the story together themselves, rather than anime-ing the hell out of every twist and exposition.

@huntad Yeah I haven't mentioned the amount of waiting in this game, but it feels completely unnecessary. You have to wait between 16 minutes and 2 hours for new equipment to develop. You have to wait hours for new platforms to build. And there doesn't seem to be any reason for it. You already have to wait to get resources to build the stuff, why do you have to wait for it to build too? Doesn't really make sense to me.

Some crazy shit happens in Chapter 2, and story wise Chapter 31 is roughly 1/4 through the game. You've still got quite a bit more to go.

That being said, knowing the entire story from beating the game, I agree that this game is pretty weak on story. If the cut content was included it wouldn't be so bad, but what you do get kind of feels unfinished and lackluster. I enjoyed my time with the game, but in the back of my head I keep wondering about what the game could have been if they took some of the time spent making useless, repetitive side quests and FOB nonsense and put that into developing the story better and fleshing some things out more. I liked the side quests, but that shit got old pretty fast and was downright annoying when I was extracting the same prisoner for the 20th time, or destroying the same tanks or heavy infantry for the 5th time and so on... If they had put those resources into making actual story missions that moved the plot along and gave some context... It would've been an entirely different game.

All in all it just feels unfinished and kind of a mess all the way around. But given what went down during the production of it and the whole Kojima/Konami split, that's to be expected. It's painfully obvious that somebody in a suit came in halfway through and pulled the plug on the game.

Metal Gear Solid V is a fucked up, beautiful, disappointing, masterpiece of a game. I can't decide if I love it or hate it.

Only major problems I had were the voice acting and the strange way of handling chapter 2 stuff, where you had to replay old missions or replay them on hard. I didn't mind because I loved just playing the game in almost any way, but it still wasn't as good as something original.

This is a bad Metal Gear Game. To me, Metal Gears greatness always stemmed from the iconic moments at the core of its story. Dont get me wrong, I dont think the Metal Gear series is well written; it is very, very stupid. But it was able to straddle this weird line of being both stupid, yet totally captivating that I haven't seen anywhere else.

MGSV doesn't live up to this legacy. It's story is stupid, but in a really boring, lame way. It does have a few decent moments, particularly the intro, but the story never lives up to the high bar set there. As others have said elsewhere, the story feels like an afterthought, which is disappointing.

With that said.. Where this game lacks in story it makes up for it with extremely well designed, well playing, fun gameplay. This is one of the most rewarding gameplay experiences I've ever had, if not the best. They did a fantastic job of making you feel completely control of the everything you do, and making it all feel satisfying. Do I wish the story was better? Sure, but I can't really complain because what we got is amazing/captivating in different ways. It does make me want to replay the old games so I can get my Metal Gear story fix.

@rongalaxy:

Imagine: MGS 5 gameplay and and overall "feel," With MGS 1 cinematic story telling.

I really think Konami should start on a remake NOW!

@rongalaxy:I think that's a fair assessment. I do have problems with the gameplay systems and management systems, but I would agree that this Metal Gear game plays better than previous ones.

I'm enjoying the moment-to-moment stuff immensely. I do feel like someone who's sneaking to and from enemy lines. It has its peaks and valleys and the writing isn't as ... erm... often as previously but the madness that's in there strikes a little harder because of it.

As for perfect marks, I don't tend to dish them out. For me, that only comes retrospectively and, unless a review period really grabs you, you'll not get much time to really sit and ponder before its time to pen it.

Huh, now that you mention it I notice it happening a bunch in the Yakuza games too.

This game should be next to 'Hyperbole' in the dictionary.

This is not an "Open-world masterpiece" or an "Open-world opus" nor does it "redefine(s) the notion of what open-world gameplay can be." if I may also quote Brad.

I don't know why people are fawning over this game so much, yeah the gameplay is solid, 60fps goes a long way and the Kojima presentation is still one of a kind, but other than that the game is kinda basic. Nothing about the game blows me away.

I play a lot of stealth games and this has been one of the smoothest, but that alone is not enough for me. I wish the game had deeper and more dynamic systems with more environments... But is that then a Metal Gear game? Is this a good fit anyway? Some think so, some don't. I'm undecided.

I played Peacewalker so the Motherbase and Fulton systems are not new to me. Maybe that's the problem. It's not that I haven't enjoyed the game or anything, I just don't get the hype.