Tom Francis is a former writer for PC Gamer and current game developer. He's been playing Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain and writing up his thoughts on his personal website. We've been enjoying his musings and he agreed to let us share them with you here. You can follow the development of Tom's next game, Heat Signature, at its official site.

A lot of the time, MGS V is just a very good stealth game. You have lots of tools to distract, evade or take down your enemies, and they re all very satisfying to use—just like Deus Ex 3. Its levels are encampments dotted seamlessly around a huge open world—just like Far Cries 2-4. Its layered systems turn failures into new challenges rather than end points—just like Invisible Inc. But none of those things are new, and MGS V sometimes feels like something that is.

Those times, for me, are not during some particularly great mission, or when some unexpected chain of events creates a cool story. They re after: when the guards lie sleeping or dead, the cargo containers are ballooning skyward, I m scampering out with the target (too weak to be similarly ballooned) slung over my shoulders.

Because what happens next is both incredibly mundane and incredibly unusual. I heave them into the back seat of a 4 4, get in the driver s seat, and drive off. I bring up the map and tell my chopper pilot where to pick us up. Then I drive them there. Then I park, haul them out, carry them to the chopper, and put them in. Then the chopper flies off. Then I go back to my car, look at my map, and figure out where I m going next.

None of these things are thrilling or even challenging, they re just the things you would need to do if this was your mission and these were your tools. And that makes you feel more like an actual field operative than any other game I can think of. Instead of cutting to the next exciting mission or cinematic, it leaves you to deal with the basic mechanical business of getting things done and moving on. It s more than feeling like the star of an action movie—it s feeling like this is your job.

As I ve started to figure out that this is what s special about the game, I ve also figured out how to maximise the feeling. Because it doesn t always do this: main missions often do cut away, or force you to return to base. So now I drop myself at sunset, in whichever country has the most side-ops scattered across its map, climb in my car, and work through the night.

That means getting from each mission area to the next, sometimes through 3 kilometers of twisting, guard-infested roads. I mostly drive, cutting my headlights and offroading dangerously to skirt watchtowers, and enjoying the empty, dark stretches between. Other times I ride, hanging off the saddle to hide behind my horse as we trot past patrols in the shadows. And for the longest journeys, I sneak into an outpost s delivery point, climb inside a stamped addressed cardboard box, and post myself to the next town.

That part is probably not a lot like a real commando s job.

But it s these between moments, staying in the world between objectives, that makes it work. It has all the appeal of methodically taking down the outposts in Far Cry 3 and 4, but the added sense of purpose from the side-ops makes a huge difference to the fantasy you re living: you re an agent with a job to do rather than a madman with a murderous hobby.

In fact you ve got lots of jobs to do, and the more of them you do in one continuous marathon of espionage, the deeper you can sink into this other life. Last night I tranqed a whole airport to find a crucial blueprint, interrogated a lookout to locate a prisoner, incapacitated four heavy infantry with my bare hands, and stole a tank from under the noses of its sniper guardians. By the time I drove out to a remote shack to capture an interpreter, the sun was coming up. I tranqed him and one of his bodyguards at range, then snuck up on the last one and slammed him into the shack. For no practical reason, I loaded the target and the better of the two bodyguards into my jeep and drove to the nearest pickup point… then this happened:

Turns out the game sometimes auto-extracts people when you leave the mission area. Which is one of many signs that this sense of doing all the between bits yourself wasn t a particularly high priority for the developers. But when you play that way, and when they let you, it s really something special.

This article was originally posted on pentadact.com.

Forward Operating Bases are a core element of the multiplayer action in Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. They are, as George Carlin put it, a place for your stuff; every player has one, and—this is where it gets interesting—you can bust into other players' FOBs and take their stuff for your own. Of course, other players can do the same to you, and being burgled by a super soldier isn't as much fun when you're on the receiving end, is it?

Players who are tired of dealing with losing their stuff may now take advantage of "FOB Insurance," a new service added to the game as part of the latest update. Other players can still take your stuff, but if you have insurance, then the stuff they take will actually remain on your base. Everything is effectively doubled: They get your stuff, but you get to keep your stuff. It's like magic!

The downside is that, just like real-life insurance, it's not a once-and-done deal. Instead, you'll have to maintain a subscription to the service with "MB Coins," which are purchased with—you guessed it—real money. It's possible to earn the coins in-game, but the process is very slow—daily bonuses vary but are generally quite tiny—and according to a NeoGAF user, insurance isn't cheap: A single day of insurance costs 50 coins, three days is 100 coins, a week is 200 coins, and two weeks is 300 coins. Furthermore, not everything is covered: Stuff that isn't fully yours, wounded staff, staffed deployed in defense of your FOB, and nuclear weapons will not be covered by the policy.

But the real bite, I think it's safe to say, is that this exists at all. Konami specifically designed the MGS5 multiplayer experience around this element of competition between bases—you take my stuff, I take yours—and now, for a price, are offering a way to avoid most of the negative consequences of being on the losing end of a fight. People are free to spend their money in whatever way they see fit, but this strikes me as very much on the sketchy side of the microtransaction spectrum: Optional, sure, but hardcore players may feel like it's a necessity to have.

The update also brings a number of other changes to the game, including developer-generated "Event FOB" missions, a greater range of missions in Combat Deployment (Online) with better and more varied rewards, new weapons and a new top-tier performance grade, night vision equipment for your security staff, a proper "ghost mode" for FOB infiltration that enables stealthy players to do an entire FOB mission without alerting the enemy player, an option to reduce the amount of time required for FOB expansions (also paid for with MB Coins), and various smaller tweaks and fixes.

We recently took a closer look at the pre-update state of the FOB multiplayer mode, and came away from the experience not entirely satisfied. It's a cool idea, but "doesn t feel aligned with what s great about the game... As a standalone mode it could work, given more nuance in terms of how players personalize their bases and interact. Right now, FOBbin is too inconsistent to recommend." Perhaps the update will help address some of those shortcoming.

The new Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain update is slated to go live today. Full details are up at Konami.jp.

Metal Gear Solid 5 is already a sprawling stealth masterpiece, but less discussed is its FOB multiplayer mode. Players have an opportunity to build Forward Operating Bases, which function as risky but rewarding extensions of their Mother Base. You can invade other player s FOBs and steal their stuff, so long as you can sneak by their guards and defensive gadgetry. Get discovered and that player can enter the fight and try to take you out. Fail completely, and they can invade your FOB at a chance for revenge. If you get in and out undetected, they can t retaliate.

After finishing the campaign, I set out to see if FOB invasions were more than just a novel idea, but in my heart, I knew I was heading out there to make sure my rivals would remember the name Barb: Cosmic Mom.

Operation Pipe Dream

I m targeting a mid-level Medical Pavilion, my first choice for a reason: it s not guarded by drones, cameras, or IR sensors—at least that I can see. So far, I ve only seen an outfit of ill-equipped guards and myself. Reaching the base core should be a cinch. I take a few steps before an on-screen notification informs me that my rival, The Joy is approaching. I panic.

My first good idea is to climb one of those large pipes and remain there motionless until I win. My second is realizing that this is not a good idea, so I dislodge myself from the pipe and am spotted immediately. My last good idea is to use my immense upper-body strength to hang precariously from the side of the base over the open ocean.

My rival's feet clank on the walkways above. They re sprinting aimlessly, shooting at the sky. My decision to hang from the first floor railing on the edge of their FOB wasn t without reason. I can t be spotted easily from here, and luring guards down to this platform only to pop up and blow them into the ocean with C4 has technically kept me alive and hidden. I m not sure that sending those boys to their watery death qualifies as espionage exactly, but what is stealth, truly? For them, it was a life of indentured servitude or the long sleep. My human and robot hands are clean. This is stealth. I am a stealth master.

I hang off the edge for 20 minutes, listening to The Joy take pot shots at the sky. Magazine after magazine, emptied into nothing. A timer ticks down on-screen. If it gets to zero, I lose. A stealth master can t lose.

I let go and join The Joy s boys.

Operation Wormholed

The next four invasions followed a similar pattern. Perhaps I was selling myself short. Sure, I failed a series of simple level 14 invasions, but maybe I stunted my natural skill and instinct by setting my sights so low. Why not start from the top? I invaded a level 40 platform.

I revisit the climb-a-pipe-and-win plan, but it fails again. A tranquilizer dart hits me from somewhere offscreen and I fall down, which ignites a small quicktime event. The Y-button nearly melts under my thumb and I shake the control stick as my eyelids close in blurry first-person perspective. There s a metaphor here about my enthusiasm.

Sprinting aimlessly only draws more attention. I see pipes, I resist. Somehow I manage to fulton two containers and a guard before my rival, The Leviathan, pops into the game to defend their base. Again, from somewhere offscreen a smoke thing hits me. I continue my get up and run strategy, albeit with a bit more urgency knowing The Leviathan is out there. The smoke follows, a drone shoots from above, everything on screen becomes oversaturated and blurred, and a final tranq knocks me to the ground. My rival appears and fultons me into a wormhole.

After a few more failures on higher-level bases, I give up for the day. But it wasn t my fault, the game is just unfair. If drones outfitted with cameras circle the base, guards can spot you from across the map and fill you with tranqs or lather you with smoke, then I m not to blame, right?

Operation Gunk Junker

My inability to win is eating away at my confidence. If I can t succeed in a single FOB encounter, what does that say about me? In order to succeed (and to prevent a meltdown) I have to redefine success itself. So naturally, I prey on some brand new players.

Before I tackle my next FOB to prove to the rest of PC Gamer that I'm a Real Gamer, I rearrange my staff to their optimal positions. The process is automated, so it usually means your security unit is emptied out and leveled down in favor of boosting the vital single-player units. NowWhen I search for FOBs with a low-level security unit, there are nothing but low-level, empty bases to invade—MGS5 s own rudimentary form of matchmaking. Convenient.

The next eight invasions all play out the same way: I climb a pipe, dislodge from the pipe, and sneak to the base core, a victory condition. A bunch of screens show me data and tell me I did a good job. Various numbers associated with persistent game stuff and leaderboard information I can t parse beeps and grows. I feel good.

Most of the bases I invade during The Weak Streak still have a default DD emblem. Chances are, they barely started playing the game. I began to project. Maybe these are good folks, working late to support their family of four to fourteen Mother Base recruits. Metal Gear was the one game they bought this year. Imagine: they re pining all day for a few minutes with Big Boss, and the first thing they see upon loading in is a notification that Barb: Cosmic Mom rolled in like a sneaky mean guy, gunked up their junk, and they can t do a damn thing about it.

What monster is this?

Mission Debriefing

I am not a stealth master. Turns out, I was barking up the wrong tree—or, climbing up the wrong pipe. FOB mode is strictly for the bossest bosses, and I m still a clumsy stealth boy. But that I only found real fun by stepping outside of the mode s intended methods of play isn't only because I was bad a tiptoeing (but maybe a little), it s a reflection of the mode s well-intended, but half-baked ideas.

FOB invasions are a novel, but super niche affair. Finding an FOB that poses a fair challenge feels like a crapshoot. There might be low-level bases with a few soldiers that, if alerted, pose a huge threat. On the other hand, there may be a high-level base stocked with no soldiers, but all sorts of gadgetry that's relatively easy to disable or skirt around. And what each base is stocked with resource-wise doesn t seem related to their defenses.

Finding an FOB that poses a fair challenge feels like a crapshoot.

The onus is on the defending player to stock their FOBs with adequate soldiers and defenses, but since they re buried so deep in the single-player game s progression, most bases will be insufficiently defended. Conversely, players who are deep into the FOB mode will have bases that are seemingly impossible to infiltrate. I found it hard to find a base somewhere between the extremes. For the few hardcore FOBbers, I m sure they re happy. For the happy-go-lucky, lackadaisical stealth children of the world, you re best off playing around in the open world or waiting for a more refined take on the mode.

I love the idea of invading a stranger's base and wrecking something they built. There's a teenage vandal sensibility at play, with a real risk of retaliation. But the mode comes in too late during the single-player campaign to support an involved, diverse player base, and customizing your defenses is too restrained for any of it to feel personal or worthwhile. As it stands, FOB invasions are a cool addition that don t harm the rest of MGS5, the implementation just doesn t feel aligned with what s great about the game. None of it feels playful and any small error is severely punished, which may be fair, but expect everyone but the most skilled to jump ship. As a standalone mode it could work, given more nuance in terms of how players personalize their bases and interact. Right now, FOBbin is too inconsistent to recommend.

Hope remains: Incremental updates are coming and MGS5 has yet to launch its fully-featured multiplayer mode. Metal Gear Online, on PC in January 2016, looks to be more traditional in the way it pits teams of players against one another, and from the footage we ve seen so far, it appears to embrace the inventiveness and variety from the single-player campaign. Let's just hope the only way for me to win isn't by picking on inexperienced players.

Tom Francis is a former writer for PC Gamer and current game developer. He's been playing Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain and writing up his thoughts on his personal website. We've been enjoying his musings and he agreed to let us share them with you here. You can follow the development of Tom's next game, Heat Signature, at its official site.

Almost every game that lets you take people out lethally or non-lethally presents it as a choice between pragmatism and ethics: killing is easier, but tranqing is nicer. That s true in MGS V too, but it adds something else to that choice that solves a problem I ve had with these games for ages.

The ability to play a game nonlethally lets you adopt that policy as your character s moral code, and that makes your game persona a little more sympathetic. By the same token, it also demonises the act of killing: it s no longer possible to claim it s necessary, because you often have the developer s word that it isn t. To kill is now either the act of a sadistic monster, or an unsatisfying compromise made because you either couldn t or couldn t be bothered to pull off the non-lethal option.

So the ways of playing these games—including my own—boil down to:

1. Do everything nonlethally forever, no matter how difficult or boring it becomes.

2. Kill everyone, playing the role of a psychotic monster who usually clashes with both the story and your own ability to embody your character.

3. Stop caring about the distinction and do a messy mix of both, as your mood or the situation dictates.

It s probably clear from the way I ve phrased these that I don t find any of them entirely satisfactory. Very few games make the purely nonlethal option inherently fun the faint satisfaction of knowing you ve done the right thing is balanced against how boring and time consuming the methods were, how many cool tools you weren t allowed to use, and how utterly fake the whole charade is—you re usually only doing it this way because you have divine knowledge that the world has been architected to make it possible.

Mechanically, I like the third option. I like having a lot of tools. Option 1 makes lethal tools forbidden, and option 2 makes nonlethal tools pointless. But by itself, option 3 doesn t give you any particular reason to use both sets, so it can feel kind of empty.

That s the thing MGS V fixes. With an early upgrade to your binoculars, you can scan every soldier to see how good they are at a variety of different tasks. If they re any good, it s worth taking them out non-lethally, because you can then tie a balloon to them, send them up into the sky, have your colleagues collect them with a passing plane, fly them to the Seychelles, drop them off at an offshore base, persuade them to change sides to your private mercenary corp, then put them in full-time, devotedly loyal employment in the division of your base that their talents best suit.

I ll be honest, this was not my next guess for how games would ultimately fix this problem.

But it does work.

You have to disengage with the moral aspect completely, of course—you re now operating in a pretty grotesque fantasy land where no-one has a will that can t be bent to serve your own. You can shoot a person 7 times in the knees and then make them work in your box-delivery department forever, and they will salute you on sight and thank you if you punch them. You could read it as parody or an ugly dominance fantasy, but I suspect it s just where a series of cool systems ideas led them, and they didn t much mind that it was narratively mad. Luckily, neither do I.

It works because there s now a strong practical reason to use nonlethal tactics for some guards, and lethal for others. This guard has an A in Engineering and this one has a B in Intel, so I ll tranq those two and kill the rest. You don t have to kill the rest, but as in most games it s easier: you have more powerful, more varied, and more satisfying tools to do it, and it eliminates them from the complicated patrol equation: people don t get up from death.

Pure lethal and pure nonlethal are still options, but by fleshing out option 3 with interesting systems, it makes it clear how much less interesting they really are. Fine for an experimental or role-playing playthrough, but monotonous compared to the juice you can get out of that choice if you let it vary situationally.

In other games, the kill or tranq? question asks you to pick one of two possible playthroughs at the start, and it takes a dozen hours to finish enunciating your answer. MGS V lets it become an ongoing debate.

This article was originally posted on pentadact.com.

The Metal Gear Solid series has always been as much about mining the history of movies as actual world events. There are so many allusions and references embedded in the long-running stealth action series, that the possibilities in terms of recommending further reading and watching are almost endless. The recent release of MGS 5: The Phantom Pain represents the end of Metal Gear under its creator Hideo Kojima s stewardship, and the game bows out with an appropriately rich fusion of twisted history and 80s-influenced action movie madness.

Kojima has often gone on record listing the cinematic influences that have been important to him in as he guided MGS through its various incarnations, including classics like The Deer Hunter, Full Metal Jacket, and Heat. It s clear that the series mastermind has been motivated by big films that take on sweeping and transformative moments in history, accompanied by a deep uneasiness with the direction the modern world is heading in.

With all that in mind, in this edition of If you like... I ve selected films and books that echo Metal Gear Solid s fundamental foundations: visual splendor amidst startling violence, the intersection of technology and the body, and the deadly legacy of the Cold War...

Escape from New York, directed by John Carpenter

John Carpenter s 1981 vision of the Big Apple as a dystopic, maximum security prison shares all the ingredients of a Metal Gear Solid sneaking mission. On the eve of a crucial summit on nuclear weapons, the President of the United States is missing and only one man can save him in time—Snake Plissken. Played with suitable gruffness by Kurt Russell, it s up to the ex-soldier turned heistman to sneak into New York and nab the President plus a crucial audiotape he s carrying.

Beyond providing the obvious inspiration for Snake himself, Carpenter s film also shares a lot in common with another classic fictional world that had a deep influence on Kojima: James Bond. Escape from New York isn t just about a one-eyed, scowling tough guy, it s also about gadgets, ticking time-bomb scenarios, and strange sidekicks picked up along the way. And like Bond, we see that no matter how perilous the problem, it s really all about Snake in the end.

Marvel Comics Presents: Weapon X, written and illustrated by Barry Windsor-Smith

Conceived by Barry Windsor-Smith as a psychologically rich and disturbing origin story for Marvel icon Wolverine, this 1991 arc from Marvel Comics Presents fits neatly into the Metal Gear Solid worldview. It s set in a secret laboratory where scientists are working to create the perfect killing machine out of Logan aka Wolverine. During this process we get insight into the development of not only his fearsome adamantium claws, but also his dark and troubled personality.

In a way that reminds me of The Phantom Pain s vivid and violent introduction, Windsor-Smith s Weapon X presents Wolverine as damaged goods. As with Big Boss, Logan s biggest challenge isn t surviving the medical experimentation so much as rediscovering his humanity and identity. No matter the technology that helped transform him, the biggest question seems to be—is he a man or an animal?

Black Hawk Down, directed by Ridley Scott

A director long known for his arresting and powerful visual style, Ridley Scott s 2001 action/drama film dealing with the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu has long been pointed to as an obvious touchstone for events in the Metal Gear Solid universe (especially those from The Phantom Pain s predecessor, MGS 4: Guns of the Patriots). Based on an original book of the same name by Mark Bowden, Scott s film traces themes that also surface prominently in The Phantom Pain—loyalty, camaraderie among soldiers, and the blurred lines of life lived in a war zone.

Beyond the thematic similarities, Black Hawk Down is simply a brilliant war film packed with great performances by talented actors. Eric Bana s turn as a cynical but clear-eyed Delta Force operative is particularly moving and acts as a kind of mirror to Josh Hartnett s more idealistic Army Ranger. While the film is a fairly one-sided fantasy about the costs of war, it meshes the personal with the political in a way that very few recent war films have been able to do so effectively.

The Gun, by C.J. Chivers

Metal Gear Solid has always ramped up the drama of weapons technology by returning again and again to giant death machines that threaten world peace. In C.J. Chivers s 2009 book, The Gun, we get a social history of the Cold War s actual deadliest weapon—the AK-47. A longtime NY Times war correspondent and former Marine, Chivers walks his readers through the origins of automatic weapons, their proliferation throughout the world, and their impact on warfare to the present day. And he does all this through the lens of perhaps the most famous gun ever developed, the Kalashnikov.

Exhaustively researched and highly readable, Chivers s book resists tidy conclusions. It works to explain the significance of a weapons technology that has impacted nearly every dimension of contemporary world conflict, from gang warfare to the battlefields of Afghanistan.

Patrick currently works as web editor for Hinterland Studios, which is making The Long Dark. For more installments of If you like... , check out his recommendations for Dead Space, The Witcher, Dishonored, Mass Effect,Skyrim, Fallout 3, Deus Ex, Company of Heroes, STALKER and Her Story fans.