Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain [official site] is our Game of the Month for September, but why has this traditionally non-PC series infiltrated our chests and Fulton’d our hearts? Alice, Adam, Alec and a Graham gathered to discuss stealth, balloons, dogs in eye-patches, making enemy grunts feel alive and accidental kill-sprees.

No plot spoilers here, but if you still hope to go into the game entirely blind, be warned that we do discuss some of the game’s systems and mechanics in some detail.

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If you’ve been playing Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain [official site] for a bit, you may have joined up with superfast sunbathing sniper Quiet. Folks warn you that she’s trouble and heck, it seems she is. Publishers Konami have warned that she may corrupt save games on certain missions, and are warning folks until they can fix it. Read on for details because I feel I’ve already spoiled too much in this post and know I thought “Oh huh!” when I saw a tiny insignificant detail in the announcement.

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Game Of The Month returns, haunting the first Monday of the month with the answer to life’s eternal question: “I do not have time to play all of these games so which one should I pick?” There are so many worthy games that it’s hard to pick just one but in this month of September 2015, one game has dominated our waking hours with its extraordinary take on open world stealth. It’s Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain [official site].

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Like Snake with the open expanse of Soviet-occupied Afghanistan stretching out before him, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain [official site] is a massive game, both in terms of the systems that drive it and the number of plot threads it feels obligated to weave together. This breadth is the game’s triumph, as well as its downfall. The Phantom Pain is the best stealth-action game ever made, and one of the worst Metal Gear stories ever told.>

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This weekend I decided to spend a rare spare afternoon waiting for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain to start. Here’s what I did.

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The weekend crept up on us silently, catching us snoozing or distracted flicking through magazines. But now it’s here! Loudly! In our faces! And has brought a dog! Read on to be wholly surprised by which game many of us are playing this weekend, then why not tell us what you’re clacking away at?

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Global illumination.Volumetric clouds.Sub-surface scattering.

These are words that make me hot.

But I know this feeling is forbidden. I should care about games>, not the empty pursuit of photorealism. But oh my, it s so exciting, and not empty. In fact, I think that right now photorealism is becoming crucial to games, and that we should celebrate it.

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Continuing a diary/review-in-progress of MGSV [official site], from the perspective of someone who hasn’t really played Metal Gear Solid before. There are no plot spoilers in this one.>

Metal Gear Solid V is a videogame in which I travel around on a bright pink helicopter which blares Kim Wilde’s Kids In America from a loudspeaker. Then I go home to my bright pink oil rig in the Seychelles and roll around on the floor with a one-eyed puppy for a while, before delivering a savage and unprovoked beating to the men who work for me. They thank me for my cruelty, and demand I hit them harder.

11/10 … [visit site to read more]

When we talk of ‘spoilers’, we usually mean plot twists – e.g. you’re actually your own uncle’s uncle’s nephew sent back in time to cut your child’s finger off. More rarely, and more delightfully, we face odd surprises in what a game does or becomes. What’s so great about Frog Fractions? Mate, go play Frog Fractions yourself.

Metal Gear Solid games hold many surprises big and small (I still chuckle at Snake Eater’s glowing mushroom chat), and I wouldn’t want to ruin any in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain [official site] for you, but this post is about a small and charming thing you’ll only see on one day of the year so… maybe have a peek below?

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Continuing a diary/review-in-progress of MGSV [official site], from the perspective of someone who hasn’t really played Metal Gear Solid before. This entry contains possible spoilers for some early in-game mechanics, but no plot stuff.>

I suspect the craziness of Metal Gear Solid V’s prologue is as much the ‘true’ MGSV as are the rather more sober missions, so I don’t want to making wild proclamations about how I’m now onto the real deal. However, the missions, with their wide-open stealth sandboxes, already feel like a reason to stay in the game, rather than just hoot uproariously at it from afar. The stealth is good. Good>. And the game comes up with some smart, and funny, reasons why you would always want to play it as a stealth game rather than a straight shooter. And I don’t just mean the balloon-based animal abductions pictured above. … [visit site to read more]