What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

Eh, I heard it compared to Ubisoft style games...which I don't like. But I do want to check it out. Probably Gamefly on that one. Or it'll be under $20 on all platforms by Black Friday.

I started messing with Grow Home, free for PS+ this month. It's neat so far.

Also played with Grow Home some. I like it but man, the movement of the character really bugs me. It's like trying to control a drunk skeleton marionette with your elbows.

He is a bit slippery, yes.

Michael Barnes wrote: Oh Christ...did the guy used the phrase "dumbed down" anywhere in there? Because when someone uses that phrase in a game review, you can almost always ascertain that the person is resentful of modernization, updating or refinement. And that the writer is, in fact, "dumbed down".

(snip)

- Was in the middle of another side op mission, crouched down with no firm plan of approach and a couple of guards just parked 10m away when a sandstorm suddenly hit out of nowhere. I took the advantage and just ran. They neither heard nor saw me go past them.

Mike, that buddy of mine I was talking aboot who is a huge MGS fan and just bought a Xbox One was troubled by that initial review I shared with him. I told him that I know this guy who reviews games who basically posted a rebuttal of that review that includes some pretty cool testimonial about playing the game and what that experience is like. So I sent him that entire post above and he replies...

Holy shit.

Je vais l’acheter !!!

Ça l’air teeeeellement cool pour vrai.

Bon vendeur ce Mike !

My god…..j’ai dévoré son texte….. 1000x mieux que celui de Do pour moi.

basically translates to he's going to buy the game and he thinks the game sounds waaaaay cool, and that you're a good salesman cuz he just ate up your text. My other buddy, Dom, just wrote a huge text trying to sell Destiny to him/us and this guy thought your text was 1,000x better.

Anyway, just some good feedback, is all.

I'm picking up Destiny tonight myself I think and he's going to get MGS V. Should be fun!

OK, so the mission was another prisoner extraction- most of these are "side ops", which are optional and not part of the storyline, but you need to do them to get resources, get paid, and to get people. Pretty cut and dried, except the prisoner was in a tricky spot on the second floor of a guard tower- usually you have to interrogate somebody to find out where they are, and I did this during the approach. A couple of attempts went south including one where I tried to tranquilize a dude wearing a helmet, which I had not seen happen yet. PLINK...ALERT! But I figured out how to climb around the tower to get in right on the second floor. There was a guard posted by the door, so I made some racket with the prosthetic arm (it's a thing) and he came in to see what it was. I smashed him into the door frame. Made too much noise, so another guy came down. CQC'ed him, but somebody else saw me. Suddenly, there were like four guys converging on the room. If you reconnoiter the area and mark guys with your binoculars, you can track where they are so I could see them coming up the stairs. I grabbed the prisoner but fumbled around a bit, knocking around some pots and chairs. So they knew I was there and they just lit the room up. Threw a grenade. So I ran out the door and couldn't see an immediate exit point and the whole base was on alert. I had put some C4 on an AA radar and a comms relay so I figured to hell with it and blew those before just jumping off the wall while fireman carrying the prisoner. Bullets everywhere.

And then a sandstorm blew in like the breath of God.

So we started just running in any direction away from the base. On the radio, they called for mortar strikes. GREAT. So I can barely see a foot in front of me and they're shelling the area. Flares going up to try to find us. I call D-Horse and quickly put the prisoner on her and hop on. We take off and I call the chopper, still barely able to see anything and disoriented. We ride and ride and I hear "The Man Who Sold the World" in the distance because I installed speakers on the helicopter and you can customize which music it plays based on the cassettes you find. We pile in and get the hell out of there.

Absolutely none of that was scripted or shown in a QTE or cinematic. Pure gameplay evolving seamlessly as it happens.

Last night I finished that Honey Bee mission. It was a disaster overall, but we pulled it off. Now, it did have a scripted part because it's a story mission. And that scripted part was one of the spookiest, scariest things in a MGS game to date. No spoilers, but what happens is totally unexpected, eerie and surreal.

As for the lost sheep mission, I finally found him. The first time I did, I fiddled around and accidentally equipped a grenade launcher instead of the tranquilizer gun so I blew him to bits by accident. The second time I got him out of there.

Michael Barnes wrote:

As for the lost sheep mission, I finally found him. The first time I did, I fiddled around and accidentally equipped a grenade launcher instead of the tranquilizer gun so I blew him to bits by accident..

Thank you for the gameplay session report. PETA will be in touch with you shortly.

the same thing happened to me once in Red Dead Redemption where, on horseback, I was tracking this rabbit with a shotgun and it quickly darted to the side, under my horse's head, as I was pursuing it. I pulled the trigger too quickly and I blew the head off my favourite steed that I had kept from the very beginning of the game. It was devastating. I was almost teary as I slowly skinned his hide to not waste the experience completely. I never found that rabbit again, it was God's will.

Michael Barnes wrote: I'd say more "absurdist" than "gonzo", really...there's a willful split between this meticulous attention to detail (look at some of the gun models in these games...they are RIDICULOUSLY detailed) and real-world elements and then these completely off-the-wall, bizarre elements like the chicken hat, ballooning animals away and a grown-ass man hiding in a cardboard box. You get a full-on discussion of Afghan tribalism along with flaming whales. You get these old fashioned video game tropes (like the "!") over an alerted soldier's head and that iconic sound effect paired up with complicated camouflage mechanics and sophisticated AI programming.

All of these oppositions are part of what makes Metal Gear what it it, what makes it so "gonzo" or "absurdist" (take your pick).

I remember playing the first game and there was all of this talk of SALT II, serious discussion about nuclear proliferation, ethical debates about war and technology and so forth...and as late as when that game came out (1998), games were still not really speaking at that kind of an adult level yet. And they still aren't, really. But then there was Psycho Mantis and being able to eat a ration to heal yourself.

One thing that is really neat about all of the games is that they kind of play up that whole "science indistinguishable from magic" thing...nanotechnology drives a lot of the futurism and there are lots of elements that are almost supernatural...but they tie back into some kind of biological or technological superscience in some way. So Vamp really is a vampire. Sure, why not...in a world with the kinds of technology depicted in these games.

I would definitely say hold out to play it on PS4 or Xbone...it is a beautiful game that runs smoothly on those systems, not sure how it would perform on older ones.

I think this one, more than the others, is more accessible if you don't know all of the story elements.

I never buy AAA games, until they go on sale, but after Barnes' write up I decided to throw caution to the wind and buy it for my PC. Love it. Really weird story (never played any of the earlier games) super fun and before you know it, 4 hours have gone by. Very cinematic, very immersive and also bat shit crazy. Works great on the PC with full controller support.

I loved that crazy shit breaking out of hospital.Totally over the top explosions, bad guys every where, crazy shit going on all over the place. Brilliant.

MGS is so not AAA, apart from the astronomical budget and big-name talent involved...it's just not at all anything like the assembly line video games that come out. I mean, the last one (not counting Peace Walker) came out seven years ago...so it's an EVENT game, more than a AAA one, really.

Anyway, glad you picked it up- I only "internet" know you, but I'm not surprised that you like it. I'm getting up to 20 hours in and it just gets BETTER.

Don't want to spoil the hospital scene too much, but that whole opening just blew me away. It breaks so many rules of modern video game design. I've seen people say that it "starts slow", but that' such an absurd statement. What do you expect when your character hasn't walked for nine years? Of course you are going to crawl the whole way out. Ishmael is a big question mark...if you don't know the past games, I have a feeling the "reveal" of who he is might be lost. I have no idea who he is, but I think it'll be a big shock.

One thing I haven't touched on is the mission structure. They kind of have that awesome Thief thing, where you have a set objective and there are "harder" ways to get to it...as well as side objectives which may not even be known at the outset. So each mission has like five objectives and you can replay any of them at any time. Which is really nice, because it relaxes some of the more rigid elements of past MGS games...like going for the "no kills" thing, which is fucking HARD as balls to do for a full game. And there are rewards for going back to past missions- more resources, more GMP (money) and so forth.

I just upgraded the Fulton recovery system so I can pick up equipment now. So in addition to kidnapping dudes, I'm stealing all of their stuff too. Apparently later on you can float vehicles out of there and sell them.

The base management thing is a good example of how this game, really, is as deep as you want to go. Boss (Snake), Ocelot and Miller are effectively re-booting their organization Militaire sans Frontiere from Peace Walker (which was dismantled in a very long and convoluted story line). They picked up this abandoned oil rig in the Seychelles, and a big part of the game is manning the base and developing it along with technologies. So there is almost an XCOM-like element to it on top of everything else. Yeah, there's a strategy game going on in this too, completely integrated.

Every enemy soldier has skills rated A-E. So a dude at a comms relay station might be a great intel asset. But he may also be a troublemaker or have bad hygiene, impacting the department's morale. Find a gunsmith and you might get bonuses to developing certain kinds of firearms. Your people can get in trouble and be sent to the brig. You need people that speak Pashtun, Kyzgryg (spelling), Russian and so forth to translate, so you have to find them and convince them to join Diamond Dogs. Nobody turns it down, of course.

All the equipment you research and manufacture requires resources like fuel, biological material, metals and so forth. You can find raw and processed materials. For example, if you want to upgrade your tranquilizer gun, you have to have resources AND a quantity of specific medicinal plants to develop it. And money. And dudes to run the R&D platform.

When you deploy for a mission, it costs GMP. Everything you take with you has a deployment cost (something I just figured out) so if you're taking out an expensive weapon every time that you never use, you're throwing money away. I don't know what happens if you run out of money, you might have to grind to get more by completing missions and selling gear and/or excess resources.

I also just realized that you can completely customize your helicopter's appearance. I have no idea if it actually impacts elements like visibility, so I didn't cave in and do the solid gold paint job. You can also customize the color of Mother Base. This shit is crazy.

Now, as for PETA...remember, the Diamond Dogs are contracted by an NGO conservation group to save animals so we are on the same side. I just researched capture cages so we can humanely extradite stray animals without even having to tranquilize them.

Multiplayer is going to be interesting...not sure when it launches, but I think it's going to have some kind of base invasion thing where you attack other players' Mother Bases.

This whole controller support on the PC side is amazing in general. I was wondering if I would have to dig out some old janky USB controller to play BORDERLANDS the other day and nope--just plug the PS4 controller in and it's fine.* I'm about five hours in, duking it out with Chtluloid critters and really wanting guns with bigger magazines. I am reloading constantly. At least with Tediores I can throw it for the reload. The levels with little jump pads are awesome. I am in these shootouts and everyone is floating around or jetpacking and it's all nuts. I am a gunslinger, so I can go into this sepia-toned old west mode as my power where my aim is automatic and I get way more crits. I can run at a bunch of guys, jump pad into the sky, flip to that mode and rain fire down. I wish I could watch me do this in third person. It must be cinematic as hell.

Goofing around with THE UNFINISHED SWAN on Vita. Really pretty game about art and shadow and color.

If you have PS+, get SUPER TIME FORCE ULTRA this month. You won't regret it. (unless you are hotseatgames, who is terrible.)




*The game has Xbox button reminders, which is weird, but I adjusted quickly.

Oh, mission report. Eliminate or capture three Soviet Platoon leaders meeting in a village. I decide to go in at night, hoping that security might be lighter. It isn't. I have intelligence showing the routes they are expected to take to get to the village but no info on when or if they're coming in a full motorcade with armor or riding in on a bike. So I saunter out on horseback and the Intel department radios in- our operatives have a fix on the officers. I have the option to just kill these guys- I could call in a chopper strike on the area or try to get in there before and trap the building they are going to meet in with C4. I could take out the guards outside the village and take up position in one of the HMGs or mortars and blow them away Or I could post up in the hills and snipe them on the way in. But I want to take these guys alive.

So I high-tail it on the horse to one of the main roads and there it is- an open-top jeep with one of the officers speeding along. I intercept the jeep and it triggers "reflex" mode, where time slows down and you have a few seconds to do something to prevent an alert. I perfectly headshot the driver with the tranquilizer pistol but the horse can't slow down in time for me to overshoot the road. I jump off and hit the dirt. Take out the other guy, but the stupid gun is empty so I just run up and grab the officer and KO him. Balloon everybody out of there and then I drive the jeep into the village.

There are guards everywhere, but I see where the other two officers are meeting. My plan is to go in, hit one with a dart and KO the other. it doesn't work. I miss with the dart and then try to KO both, but I only get one. Full alert. So I grab the one guy and run, stopping to hit the power supply to hopefully shut down the flood lights around the area. I get behind some buildings and balloon the officer away. The third one has run back to his command post in some barracks up the road. The guards lose my trail.

So that's a 900m trek. I get there and it's early morning, there's hardly any guards out. I had been on another mission there, and the usual patrols and guard posts weren't there. I get cocky and just kind of strut in. Of course, there's guys in different spots so they bust me. I do my usual "just fucking run" thing and try to run up on the officer. He's taken up a sniper position, but I come around behind him. A melee ensues, and I put him down. Accidentally killing him.

Tonight- restart from checkpoint. ARGH!

That's a AAA game through and through. I know that's inconvenient to your crusade against AAA games but you don't get to change the definition to Support a pointless narrative

Great AAA games exist. Not all AAA games are great

jeb wrote: If you have PS+, get SUPER TIME FORCE ULTRA this month. You won't regret it.

I was doing the tutorial and got to the part where you are supposed to spawn a bunch of yourself.... I clearly don't have the controls figured out because this pissed me off to no end. Well actually there was an end, when I quit the game.

My finger got a cramp scrolling past all these MGSV walls of text. New thread maybe?

SUPER TIME FORCE ULTRA is great fun. It takes a little bit of trial and error to wrap your head around the mechanics, but once you do, it becomes second nature. I unlocked every character except the neon line time lord guy. You get him by doing speed runs of each level and I got a bunch of them, but I just ran out of steam at some point since I had done everything else in the game, I decided I was done. Still really fun though.

Black Barney wrote: That's a AAA game through and through. I know that's inconvenient to your crusade against AAA games but you don't get to change the definition to Support a pointless narrative

Great AAA games exist. Not all AAA games are great

I think Barnes sees Metal Gear Solid V as an auteur game. Which is unfair to other creators, but deep down I must agree.

Still, I can't help but feel less predisposed to play the game after hearing it get so much praise!