So with as much as I loved MGS I wasn't planning on buying it day one just with Gears of War and Dishonored Definite Edition out the week before and a bunch of other stuff around the corner. However this past intense week of Metal Gear Scalon has sent my hype levels in to overdrive. Anyone else been similarly affected or even had the opposite occur where it's made you think fuck MGS and it's mental story.

The heavy MGScanlon of the last week basically has got me to commit to starting MGS4 (and aiming to beat it) before next week is over (I'm halfway through Act 2 right now, and might try to burn through Act 3 tonight after work... it is possible I might even just aim to beat the damn thing this weekend, but we'll see)--I was playing along with Drew through MGS 1 and MGS 2, but fell behind in 3 when they started posting two episodes a week. Last week I polished off 3 in a couple days (I'd stopped playing after the End fight, so I went from the Ladder Fight to the end over the weekend).

The past year saw me go from having an appreciation for the MGS series but not really feeling like the games were that great to buying the Legacy Collection and falling absolutely in love with the whole series and it is all @drewbert and @danryckert's fault. So yeah, TPP is a day one for me now--hell if we're being honest I'm going to wind up pre-ordering it.

EDIT: Important update: I got distracted in the middle of writing this post to go look at what it would cost to get a Solid Snake figure for my desk at work. I have a sickness.

I preordered the collector's edition months ago because it's Metal Gear. But I wasn't too excited because I was so bad at Ground Zeroes.

Seeing Drew demolish that game showed me what's possible, though, and all of a sudden I'm feeling it. I feel alive again.

Yeah, me too. Thanks Drew and Dan for exposing me to this... this absolutely ridiculous world where nothing makes sense, and yet somehow, everything make sense.

Yep.

A year ago I didn't know anything about or give two shits about Metal Gear. I watched him play all of them. A third of the way into 4 I decided to pull the trigger and play some myself. I've now played 3 twice, 4, Peace Walker, and Ground Zeroes and I plan on spending the next week and a half getting 100% in GZ. I could not be more hyped for Phantom Pain.

I'm also now terrified of going anywhere on the internet.

Konami should thank Drew and Dan for their excellent free marketing.

Yeah I was originally going to wait for a sale to get TPP but the enthusiasm and excitement has rubbed off and now I'm pretty hyped for it and will have to get it day 1. I got GZ on a sale but never played it, how is it on PC? Any issues/complaints that might translate over to TPP that I should be aware of? I should just play GZ shouldn't I.

Now I'm just imagining them ending MGScanlon 5 with their own post-credits stinger phone call.

*Dan's voice*: Yes... Yes sir... Of course, they ate it all up. You were right, that 5-episode week worked perfectly... Uh huh... Absolutely, I'll keep you informed... Kojima-san.

I was always gonna buy it but it's great to have so many new initiates in the clan. Dan and Drew should be given a salute and medals for the work they've done. And special shout out to Dan, who makes me feel way less lame about being head over heels into MG.

Haven't watched a single episode of their MGS LP series, though I've always intended to play PP ASAP.

I haven't had any real issues with the PC port, and I haven't heard much about problems from other people. As for whether or not you should play it, I'd say yes. Even if you already know the story that it sets up for TPP from watching Drew play, actually playing GZ yourself will get you accustomed to the new-ish control scheme before TPP comes out.

Fuck. FUCK.

"Yes sir, Scanlon still has no idea. He thinks we're doing it for them. We even managed to talk about it on the bombcast.... Yes, yes.... Mmhmm.... Oh, and one more thing. I think it's time. I think it's time we unveil Metal Gear Kiefer."

GZ has a pretty rock solid reputation on PC. I played it on both PC and PS4 and to quote someone talking about the latter's TPP performance : "steady as a surgeon".

I don't know about day one but you're right that Metal Gear Scanlon has now made me want to by TPP. I'm still going to wait to see the quick look and initial impressions. With so many games coming out over the next few months I don't want to buy it before I hear what people have to say about it first. But before this series, even if it was well liked, I wasn't planning on getting it.

So .... thanks Drew and Dan, i guess?

I'm really glad Metal Gear Scanlon has attracted more newcomers to the series and maybe even try the games out. I'm in the middle of my second playthrough of Peace Walker in preparation for Phantom Pain. Still pretty bummed out they're skipping Peace Walker though, I would love to watch them play co-op together.

OH, my, GOOOOOOOOOODDDD!!!!!

They played us like a damn fiddle!

How long did you play GZ initially? The reason I ask is that I was in the same boat. There wasn't really a question for me of IF I'd play TPP, but when. I love MGS, but after a few hours with GZ, I was pretty disappointed. Mostly the decision to go open world did not sit right with me, and the gameplay became a struggle. I went back to it a few months later and even then didn't like it, but I admit I went into it with a closed mind.

After watching the MGS4 playthrough (the one MGS game I had never played because I never owned a PS3), I was re-energized and got hyped for MGSV. I decided to go back to GZ, this time with an open mind, to prepare myself for TPP. I forced myself to clear all of the side and extra missions. What I discovered is that the more I played it, the more familiar I became with the controls and the new stealth mechanics/expectations, and ended up liking the game a ton. It just took that long to un-learn the previous MGS games. Give it a go again - if you've been playing MGS, I bet you are actually pretty good at GZ. TPP has now turned into a Day 1 purchase.

@thiago123: At first, the gameplay just didn't resonate. Felt clunky, I missed the R2 weapon select stuff, limited narrative, I sucked, etc. Beat it twice, then tried the extra missions and kept sucking. Tried again months later, nothing changed. Gonna try again this weekend because I watched all those gameplay videos as well as Drew's.

I'm still worried that the game's gonna be too damn long, and a majority of the missions will just be gathering resources and dudes with limited narrative. Clearly, the gameplay is good since it got all this praise. But I think at the time of release, I was busy comparing it to other games (and not just MGS).

Anyway, I hope I love the game because the dark tone of the trailers is really intriguing me.

@geraltitude: @bbalpert: Yeah I didn't remember hearing any problems with the port, but with recent PC porting issues I figure I double check. And good idea, I should re-familiarize myself with the new controls, and also it'll be good to see how well my PC can handle it in preparation for TPP. Thanks!

@flameboy84: the videos this week have actually made me have trouble sleeping due to the excitement.

I love this series. ;_;

I've never played a single metal gear game (except metal gear for the nes when I was a kid) and I'm all set to play MGSV after loving the video series.

Ayup. I used to cringe at the mixture of serious drama and goofy humour in the past, but after watching through the whole series...well, I still think it's really horrible at it's worst, but it's not off-putting anymore and certainly managed to get me hooked and get Phantom Pain on day one.

Also that custom music's pretty great. Sole reason for why I bought the pc-version of GZ, after already having played it on PS4. Fortunately enough it runs smooth even with settings maxed out, so I'll definietly play PP on PC as well.

As long as it didn't make you pre-order I'm sure the Bombardiers don't mind.

It took this to like Metal Gear?

Do people on this website even play games anymore

Ground Zeroes on PC looks significantly better on PC even without everything maxed out. The only issue I ran into with the port is that my mouse cursor would constantly reappear over the screen, but if you just download a program to auto-hide your mouse you should be good.

One thing people took issue with was that several graphical options were tied together as a "Screen Filtering" option, but they've already confirmed all of those will be separated into their own options in the Phantom Pain port. Phantom Pain is also going to have custom soundtrack support on PC, something that was only available in the PS3 and 360 versions of Ground Zeroes and is still missing in the PS4/Xbone versions of PP. This'll allow you to put your own music on Snake's Walkman as well as set your helicopter to play any song you want whenever it comes to pick you up.

It's done a whole lot for me too. I've never played an MGS game before. But now, here I am, 100%ing Ground Zeroes on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. The hype is real.

Yeah sorta, watching them go through the last few games again made me realize how much i loved them back in the day. I played through 4 in like a week everyday before work lol. I had forgotten most of the major plot stuff honestly and completely forgot how 3 tied into 4 as 3 was my least favorite to play. I watched peace walker(and currently re-watching them watching it lol) then i'll move onto the new stuff just in time to load up the game on PC hopefully.

I must say however, it also shined some light on how creepy metal gear can be that i honestly never noticed before(at least not on the level i see it now)

I've been looking forward to this game since I knew it existed.

The only Metal Gear games I played were the AC!D titles (yeah I know it's weird), but I NEED to know how the story of V plays out.

Ok, gave it another go and had a great, great time. Normal feels really good because you feel powerful but still vulnerable. The controls are better than I remember, and the handful of missions had some good variety.

So yeah... I'm glad I took that week off!

How else would I get that sick pre-order theme and get to pre-load it? ;)

@geraltitude: @bbalpert: So I played it, and I'm glad I did. I found stealth to be more difficult with how things are handled now. When you lean up against a wall and walk to the side, you just keep walking past your cover, there's no snapping to the end of the cover it seems. And I don't know if you can do this anymore but I tried to do the lean up against a wall and knock on it technique to lure guards but couldn't find a button to do that. And now there's no radar, vision cones or the audio ring from mgs4 to detect nearby threats so that combined with not being able to snap to the end of a cover made it pretty tough for me to look out for nearby guards in an enclosed area like the tent areas. The binoculars/marking system makes it pretty easy for enemies out in the open though but I've having a rough time stealthing in those enclosed areas. Oh and also sound seems to play a much bigger role where you can knock over environmental items, open a door too loudly, or even crouch walking to an enemy from behind at full crouch walk speed will draw attention.

I felt the exact same way, especially about the peeking around corners. It took a LOT of getting used to not magnetically sticking to walls and corners like you did in the other games. Ultimately it's all in service of a more open/free movement system, but it could be frustrating initially.

I wasn't planning on doing so, but I may actually go back and try some of the other side missions just so I can make sure I've got those controls down by the time TPP comes out.

@bbalpert said:

A LOT of this has been reported as fixed for TPP. The knock is back, you snap to cover in a better, more natural way, and there are many different, additional ways to help you spot enemies.

GZ was a very stripped down teaser which I personally feel was Konami's decision to release and not Kojima's. They probably wanted to recoup a bit of the budget on TPP so they carved out a section with reduced mechanics and charged $40 for it. All reports point to TPP refining nearly every aspect of the controls and Snake's movement.

Yeah that's true, I was just thinking that between the lack of fulton system and the partner system that the mechanics in GZ probably isn't final so that makes sense.

It's really too bad that so many people assumed that GZ was the finished combat of TPP. It's pretty clear from the gameplay demos over the past few years that GZ wasn't even close to the full product. I'm so excited to play the expanded version of this new control scheme.

I also don't really know what to say to people lamenting that there's going to be a lot of missions of grabbing random people/gathering stuff. This game is basically an expanded and improved Peace Walker, so I'm assuming there'll be a similar structure of main missions and side missions. There will definitely be some grinding for the best equipment, but I'm hoping there's going to be an option for players who want to stay within the main missions to not have to engage in that too much. I love Peace Walker, so I'm really looking forward to this style, but I feel that Kojima is making TPP this way because he felt that Peace Walker didn't get its fair shake since Konami wouldn't even let him call it MGS5.

I just ordered a new graphics card which I've been thinking about for almost a year now, and the thing that tipped me over was the fact if I buy now rather than wait a few months, I'll get to play The Phantom Pain when it comes out (all because of this series).

I also got Ground Zeroes on sale and greatly enjoyed it as my first proper playing of this series.

Glad you went back to it! My hype levels for TPP have reached critical levels - and now the reviews are rolling in and it's basically unanimous acclaim. I'm firmly against pre-ordering, but this was a game I had to pre-load. One more week....

Metal Gear Scanlon made me appreciate the beautiful insanity that is the Metal Gear series. I got GZ yesterday and pre-ordered TPP today. I can't wait to finally delve into the bat-shittery one last time and then discuss that with other people.

5 days away...

MGS was my introduction to all things Metal Gear. TPP will be the first (full) MGS game I play for myself. I am beyond excited.

After debating with myself for a while I ended up deciding to pre-order it through Steam. Watching Greg Miller play (I have no qualms about such early 'spoilers', personally, especially since he didn't put up the intro) 5, and watching Drew, Dan and Jason go through all previous 4, GZ, trailers, and the Peace Walker movie got me stupidly excited for it.

Just finished Ground Zeroes myself, being the first Metal Gear Solid game I've played, and damn is it good. Spent about 2 hours in it, tried the Drew method of extraction (and got immediately spotted but managed to make it out), and I never had an actual firefight (I'm a master at running away and hiding, apparently) until I got on the chopper to leave when I could just start dumpin. Though the chopper did almost die because I accidentally called it over the base instead of at the cliff.

The next few days are mostly going to be Side Ops, I think. God, I have just the biggest urge to fulton everything ever right now. Can't wait for next week.

I really implore anyone who enjoyed Metal Gear Scanlon and Ground Zeroes to find all the patches in GZ and unlock the "Deja Vu" mission. It was glorious. Incredibly self aware, and some really inside gags in the scenery, voice overs, and objectives.

For Example:

The only metal gear game I ever played was 2 and I don't remember ever even making it off the tanker. But after watching all of Metal Gear Scanlon and seeing Gamespot's review I already have it pre-ordered. I also played Ground Zeroes an I loved what little there was in it.

Tried Metal Gear as a teen. Didn't get it. Bought MGS4 in my 20s and didn't get it. Bought ground zeroes on Xbox360 a while back randomly, was super impressed how good it looked, still didn't get it. Bought GZ on PS4, tech blew my mind, still didn't really get it.

Watched all of MG Scalon.

Now I get it. TPP preordered.

I've never owned a Playstation so I basically missed the boat entirely except when I watched friends play 2 & 3.

I'm so glad they put the finale on PC. The level of quality of Ground Zeroes immediately sold me on getting this alongside Drew and Dan's adventures.

Played MGS and MGS2 when they came out. Rented MGS3 and just didn't get it. The pace was different and as a young college student I had other things on my mind. After watching Drew play a bit it sort of clicked and I got a copy of the original release. I have now completed a playthrough from MGS to GZ while watching metal gear scanlon. From lapsed fan to obsessed weirdo. Thanks.