@mirado: Also too laaaate. :V

@billymaysrip: It's difficult for me to imagine a scenario wherein Polygon would praise Kojima's attempts at social commentary regardless of what it was.

@hassun: Peter Brown is a man I trust. I'm glad he said that, I feel like he has perspective. Have to see for myself of course, but that's pretty reassuring.

Sorry everyone, I was out when the embargo lifted and missed the chaos!. Updating now.

The hype was real..

Quality tweet.

@hassun: Bah! Too distracted with hype. Here's Yong's impressions, then! (Warning, spoilers for the intro!)

Yeah, it makes me wonder about the reviewers that have qualms about the story. Is a lot hidden in those tapes, and did some reviewers not bother listening to some? In the case of Peace Walker and Ground Zeroes, almost the entirety of Paz's character is contained within those Diary tapes.

Knowing what I do about the game's plot, I think I'll enjoy it. And Ground Zeroes has already sold me on the gameplay.

I need this game now!

@theblue: I'm sure plenty of people would consider audio tapes a bad way to deliver a story. I usually think that's a shitty way to tell a story as well. Especially in a big-budget game.

Gamespot seems to be giving 10s away like candy at this point. I imagine part of it is the change to their review system (moving to a straight 10 point scale) and part of it is that they don't exactly have very many in-house reviewers anymore. Still weird to see that, though I guess I'm an old fogey at this point for remembering a Gamespot that was infamously tough with its review scores. That site hasn't existed in at least 8 years.

@hassun: In a game that requires covering ground to gather resources and head to missions, it makes much more sense to have your story delivered in a format where you can listen to it on the move or while doing other things, versus the old MGS style of taking a break from the action to hear some exposition. Some games do audio logs well, and others do it quite poorly.

Not saying that invalidates anyone's opinion, but that we should wait to play it before we decide if this implementation works for this particular game.

I mean.. even if that's the case and there's a ton of plot to be found there that's kind of a bummer. It's a very boring way to present a story.

@hassun: I agree, I went into Peace Walker knowing Paz's true nature and was disappointed that that entire character arc was relegated to audio tapes that couldn't even be collected until you beat the true ending. Hopefully it's handled at least a little better here.

Looking at more reviews, it seems reviewers are pretty split on the story being superb and it being lacking.

So I'm guessing you didn't like the codec in the other games

While GS has definitely changed over the years, the four games to get 10s this years are some legitimately amazing games that arguably deserve the scores they received. If we want to get picky about outsourcing reviews, the only reason why Crono Cross got a 10 was because it was outsourced... back when Jeff was in charge of things.

Any hint as to who is reviewing here? Dan may seem just a bit biased. Brad got deepest into GZ.

Drew has the best context at the moment but he's not review man.

From Polygon:

If you don't pay close attention to Mother Base and its staff, resources and technology, you'll suffer for it.

Man do I not feel sorry for all those people who said "the mother base stuff looks stupid, I'm just going to ignore it".

@csl316: Guessing Brad or Dan. Probably Brad.

If there is one, Jeff mentioned on his tumblr that since they didn't take part in the event they won't even get copies until release.

I'm guessing Dan will kill to review this game. Although strangely I think I trust Brad to actually review it more.

We've known for months the narrative side of PP would be, at the very least, less substantial than in the past, and it wouldn't surprise me if it was a bit lacking on the quality side, as well. It's a nice dream to have a Kojima game that is both succinct and engaging, but he's been writing half hour-long cutscenes for over a decade now, so I'd expect something to be lost in the transition.

Still, if the game systems are solid I'll probably consider it a blessing that the game isn't yammering all the time. Let's hope the few words it does have are artfully placed

Man the GOTY podcasts will be amazing this year

And then nobody was surprised that it was GAME OF THE DECADE

So excited for next Monday night. Best part is having Ground Zeroes to play until then.

Who didn't see this coming? GOTY is going to be really hard between this and The Witcher 3.

What an excellent year for gaming.

I'm really excited, guys. This game seems like it's going to be pretty good.

The complaints of a sparse story really bum me out.

I'm not gonna say Diary tapes are the worst they have been used to fantastic effect in games such as Bioshock but they should never be the at the expense of regular good old story telling. It seems odd that the reviews are saying this and a bit of a disappointment but I keeping faith that it will still be fine.

Man, burying core story beats in the tapes is bumming me out. The gameplay looks great, and I've long since ceased to have much good to say about the wider MGS meta-narrative anyway, but I will definitely miss having a solid narrative thread running through.

Still, keen to play it. Looked great in the GT review and GameSpot's review was super promising. The sandbox sounds great. Just hope the base building doesn't get too tedious. I just want to sneak in places and do stuff. Played the Jamais Vu mission in GZ earlier and man...That is Metal Gear Solid right there, all the stuff like that that seems to be in TPP? That's why I play these games.

My problem with it isn't how you experience it, it's how it's delivered. Collectible tapes are fine for universe building, but they're a bad way to tell a narrative because...There isn't one. You're very likely to get them in some scrambled order and miss bits. It ceases to be story. If they were doled out sequentially, but you could listen at your leisure, I would be fine with it, but making you collect them just makes it a tedious nuisance.

I find myself agreeing with the right below 100% reviews even though I haven't played it yet, with the story bits they bring up, cutscenes, codecs etc. People went batshit at Sony for patching the PS3 firmware too often, they listened, people quickly went batshit at Sony for not patching the PS4 firmware every month after that. Thanks focusgroups. Also a lot of story was hidden in Peace Walker tapes, you'd have to 100% (IIRC) to get the tape that set up the story for GZ and TPP in a massive way.

I don't mind it finally moving towards audiologs like games have since System Shock 2 or earlier but I already miss codec calls. Everything else sounds 100% great and looks 100% great and let's remember that this is also on 360 and PS3 and not looking or moving too shabby on those machines. What a piece of kickass awesome title that I can't wait to get my hands on, do FOB business in until MGO, etc.

@jensonb: The Konami guy in the Kinda Funny Games LP w/ Greg Miller mentioned that he (on one save) was tackling the game by not doing any MB business, instead going 100% OSP in missions. No clue how well it works for him but that's something to try once we've done a lap or two in more ordinary manners.

If there's FOB matchmaking based on MB size, tech-level and research done I'll give that a shot myself.

Sounds like it's gonna be good but...

"Though you will cross a few elements in the world that illicit a chuckle, there's very little humor in The Phantom Pain's story; " :-(

Its doable or at least it should be because it was in Peacewalker its just going to make your time with the game that much more difficult and also you won't get to see a lot of cool shit because from what I've gathered not only do you get new equipment but the equipment you already have can upgrade to get additional functions to them.

@oursin_360: Well, I can't say that Kojima didn't warn us. He has said multiple times that the story is grim, and so he concentrated most of the humor into the gameplay.

I'm really excited about this game, being a big fan myself, but the complaints about the history, seems rock solid... I'm worried...

unworry me guys...

please...

My lack of story worries are being confirmed. Lame. :-/

Judge the story for yourself. The game looks fun regardless.

Yep! And it aint over yet. We still got Fallout 4 and Just Cause 3 to look forward to.

I hope the game is good but having read most of the reviews I'm not sure if it's all that wise to put much stock in any reviews done via that review event. We still don't know what the micro transactions will be like in the final retail version. More so a lot of these reviews are done by Metal Gear die hards like Greg Miller and Peter Brown. Listening to how Peter Brown spoke about the game during preview coverage when he was a guest on Kinda Funny was bordering on Sessler levels of silly.

Honestly like all reviews for anything ever early positive reviews are meaningless. The Amazing Spider-man 2 got really good early reviews. I'm not trying to say that Phantom Pain will be bad so much as I'm bracing myself for the possibility that this will just be another in a long line of games as of late that initially seem garenteed to be good but ultimately falls short.

To say something positive though: On the tapes being a major form of story conveyance... That could work fine. The production quality for the audio of the tapes in Ground Zeroes, baring that one, were really good and above and beyond most audio logs as far as sound effects that gave a good sense of "found footage" style. More so a lot of game audio logs are usually characters talking to themselves rather then a conversation where in MGSV the tapes are basically the codec so it's mostly conversations.

@tearhead said:

After the slump GOTY discussions have had since 2011 (otherwise known as the SAINTS ROW SCREW JOB), it's going to be a pretty crazy year. Or it should be. So many fantastic games have been released in 2015.

Ground Zeroes' load times are great so good to see that continues, will be a relief from Bloodborne and the Witcher 3.

Never understood this line of thinking. I'm a Metal Gear die hard. I'm not going to like a bad Metal Gear game just because I like Metal Gear. I feel like reviews from fans speak to me because I'm a fan. We criticize the things we love. Just because you enjoy a series doesn't mean you're beholden to only praising games in the series.

"Every mission both starts and ends with a credit sequence that puts Hideo Kojima’s name front and center, which feels sort of like a final “fuck you” to Konami after that whole box art thing."

I approve.

Listening to Yong's impressions and referring to the hospital intro as "batshit insane" sold me.

So excited this and Persona 5 are both coming to last-gen consoles!

I was satisfied with how Metal Gear Solid concluded in MGS4, and I honestly don't feel like I need another entry in the series when it comes to story stuff. I'm excited for this game because the gameplay is rock fucking solid. It actually depresses me that Kojima Productions (with Kojima) will no longer be able to work with the Fox Engine, as its so god damn impressive. I feel like Konami is throwing away all the hard work that was put into it, and the potential that it has to create amazing things. At least PES will still use it (sarcasm, because those games don't seem to utilize it well at all).

I just hope wherever Kojima/his team end up after this, they are given the freedom/budget to create something just as impressive. Any company would be fortunate to have these devs making games for them. And as much as I love small, independent games, I don't want kojima making stuff like that. He needs to be making ridiculous, over the top, expensive as fuck games. Someone needs to give him a blank check so his insanity can flourish.

This is very true. The biggest heartbreak in gaming is a shitty sequel to a game you loved.

Those review scores are pretty impressive but does it have Gwent?

FOB requires Microtransactions

What, just, what? This can't be real right?

EDIT: it seems you may be able to earn the coins in Single Player missions. I hope this is just a miscommunication.

The sooner konami dies the better.