OFFICIAL Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (Review)

[BumbleBee]

best game of 2015

it's a really good port. just make sure you have a controller. if The Witcher 3 didn't grab you try this game.

D-Horse > Roach and D-Dog!!!! I laugh everytime I see him in the chopper.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

You said last year, while defending the silly ass Titan Z, that you have 3 X GTX 780 Ti and you rarely ever play games. Why bother chiming in on games then?

And when he does, it's odd that he implies we should be OK with crap controls, saying stuff like this ...

If you can't handle how screwed up the game is control-wise, then the game is not for you, since that's just how Kojima games have ALWAYS been.

Apparently he doesn't know they are actually slowly improving on PC controls, and it's not due to people that accept crap, it's because those of us whom know sub par control schemes when we see them, and speak out about it.

Screw controllers Bee, KB/M is doable once you know what keys/buttons work for what. It's just pathetic that you have to go scrounging for a guide on it.

Haven't got the dog yet, looking forward to that part. Reminds me a bit of Shadow from Dead to Rights. Shadow could retrieve weapons from his victims and sniff for bombs too though. The weapon retrieval came in handy when you were pinned behind cover and low on ammo.

 

[cadaveca]

You said last year, while defending the silly ass Titan Z, that you have 3 X GTX 780 Ti and you rarely ever play games. Why bother chiming in on games then?

Because stone cold said so?


I benchmark games all the time. They are pretty. Few games can rouse my loins enough these days for sure, but I got two that have me playing quite often lately, and this is one of them. The other is Dirt Rally.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

MGS V on PC with M+K took me 45 minutes to acclimate to the controls. I now have ZERO issues with the controls. Maybe people should stop bitching and try this little thing called effort. You know effort to learn the controls. Effort to learn the quirks. 31 hours in and am 25% complete. I have managed mostly A+S ranks and have no issues with controller or Keyboard + Mouse. Well thats a lie my controller died so I switched to M+K and to be honest I am glad I made the switch. Switching items / weapons/ tagging enemies and aiming are all vastly improved. Sniping is somewhat like BF3/4 with scope shake and bullet drop over distance. Even things like distance impacting the sound enemies hear is represented. Snipe from 200+out with a tranq sniper you can use terrain to mask the noise. I myself am having a blast sure a few things could be improved. But ive yet to die or get caught or have an issue related to controls that makes me scratch my head. Then again with probably close to 2000 Hours combined in the Metal Gear games I am used to Kojima's quirky controls which are now second nature to me anyway. MGS1 / MGS2 / MGS3 / MGS4 all beaten on the hardest difficulty. MGS4 I was 2 hours short on a perfect Big Box Extreme no alert no death play through. aka beat game at around 5 hours I came in at 7 hour never having the enemy alerted to my presence never killed an enemy etc. By comparison MGS5 is far more forgiving while still being a challenge depending on how you approach a situation.

I have more issues with games that have broken net code and shitty gameplay elements like magic flashlight bullet shields ala Battlefield.

MGS5 is a fucking damn good game. Looks good runs good. 980Ti I am running it at 4k downscaled to 1200p for a nice crisp image.

COmpared to some of the crazy shit like running MGS2 Twin Snakes on Dolphin. Ill take what MGSV offers any day.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

LOL, reading this just makes me face palm. You're totally glossing over the fact that gamepads are better supported both via onscreen prompts and function listing in the control menu. So what then, only PC players need this fumbly jumbly design?

It's a simple case of poor PC support, and it's common with Japanese developers. Mikami did the same thing even with the mega popular RE4. They simply don't focus as much on PC, until they start getting flooded with complaints. Example, to execute a point and aim CQC in Ground Zeroes you had to hold RMB and Q down, then press an arrow key to issue the command you want. It was an almost impossible reach even for those with large hands. In The Phantom Pain they changed command selection from arrow keys to 1-4 keys, which are FAR easier to reach while holding down Q. They did that because after MANY complaints, they realized they f*cked up. They also changed the binoculars to being more steady when zooming. In Ground Zeroes you actually have to lower the DPI on your mouse because zoom is so squirrely. These are things that should be obvious in initial design.

No dev in their right mind purposely makes such controls pretty much unreachable for anyone with medium or smaller hands, or in the case of binoc zoom, too shaky without sensitivity adjustment. It simply wasn't play tested well on PC. You get enough challenge from the AI in a game like this without gimping controls. That is a very short sighted analogy. What you're implying actually goes against quality control and is oblivious to the inconsistency of control from one platform to another.

Anyway, for those playing on PC with KB/M, here's a guide I copied from a site that wrote a guide on PC controls for TPP, which attempts to pick up the slack left behind by Kojima and his crew of merry misfits. It does not however include some things, like the aforementioned point and aim method of CQC, and how it differs from that in Ground Zeroes.

Basic Controls:

Hold F - Allows you to go into first person, with no weapons drawn this will bring out your binoculars.
Hold Left Ctrl - Walk pace, allows you to move slowly.
C - Press C allows you to crouch, if crouched you stand. Hold C Allows you to prone, if prone you stand.
Mouse - Left Mouse Button (LMB) fires and Right Mouse Button (RMB) aims, nothing abnormal there.
Q - Allows you to call for help on the radio.
Left-click (unarmed) - Initiates CQC, and holding allows you to grab opponent.
E - Climb, get in vehicle.
WASD - Standard movement and vehicle control (W accelerate, S break reverse).
Space - With no weapon drawn you dive to the ground in the direction you are moving.
Tab - Press to bring up iDroid system, which is an all in one map, mission objectives and tapes playing device.
1 - Selects primary weapon, hold to modify.
2 - Selects secondary weapon, hold to modify.
3 - Selects grenade type, hold to pick type.
4 - Switches to night vision.
When the Controls are Fiddly
One thing which is worth noting is that the mouse does not work for the menus, not an issue as arrow keys or WASD keys work just fine.

The controls become fiddly when dealing with grappling or using the games inventory system.

Grappling:

To initiate a grapple you hold LMB, when near an enemy, with no weapon drawn. You now have a choice of what to do, interrogate, knockout or kill.

Interrogate - You press Q to initiate the interrogation, now you have to use the arrow keys to select the question to ask. But be sure not to let go of Q otherwise you will let go of the prisoner. When you have finished you questioning you let go of Q and quickly hold LMB again to get back to the initial options.
Knockout - Simply tap the LMB, it's slightly counter intuitive to let of the button, but not difficult to pull of.
Kill - Simply press E to kill and done.

Inventory:

You can do several things with the inventory, but every PC gamer knows how to switch weapons, so I am going to talk about modification of those weapons.

Holding down the key for a gun, which would be 1 or 2, allows you to do two basic modifications - remove/add light or remove/add suppressor. These use X and Y, I can imagine on a controller this inventory system working very well, but on keyboard it's a bit of a pain to start with.

iDroid:

Using the iDroid is easy when you get your head wrapped around it.

I found just experimenting with buttons, and looking at the screen allows you to work out what to do. It falls down with the system for changing pages, which use keys 1 and 3.

When you want to call for a helicopter, or go into Walkman menu you need to change the page. I found that using WASD, Space, and Escape (to go back) to be the most effective way to navigate through the iDroid.

This kind of thing wouldn't even be necessary if they'd paid more attention to PC support in the first place. The majority of consoles originated in Japan, and that's still where the mindset of Japanese developers are.

Holy wall of text batman!

 

[Frag_Maniac]

Holy wall of text batman!

Most of it is the guide for KB/M controls on PC, which wouldn't even have been necessary had they not messed that part of the PC version up so badly.

 

[BumbleBee]

bump to play this game!

wait until you unlock d-dog's battle dress hehe

 

[Frag_Maniac]

wait until you unlock d-dog's battle dress hehe

Yeah that made me laugh. I was assuming...

Spoiler

..."kill knife" was a metaphor for a typical canine lunge at the throat, but when I saw him pull a knife out of his vest and jump up on a soldier and slit his throat and sit there howling in delight,...

...I thought, only Kojima would come up with stuff like this.

I'm currently playing with Quiet and have done several side op missions with her just to get the bond level up so I can get her a silenced weapon. The way she relocates she's pretty lethal even loud though. The only buddy I've not really tried yet is D-Walker.

I really liked the level design of that oil filed mission, but I got stubborn and refused to smoke the cigar to fast forward to night time and paid for it. I think I'm going to try it again with a different infiltration route in darkness.

 

[BumbleBee]

 

[Frag_Maniac]

Just did the eliminate the heavy infantry side op that has a tank, 4 ground troops and an assault chopper circling. Extracted all but the chopper with stealth, and proceeded to take out the heli with my sniper rifle. Epic battle it was.

Does anyone know if you can extract grounded choppers btw?

 

[AsRock]

this is why i own a console. PC Master Race is a myth. The true master race are those who own both PC and console!!!!

Not true to all, i got a a PS3 back when it was the latest and greatest and only found 3 games in it's life time worth playing.

Mean while i played loads of PC games in that time.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

Not true to all, i got a a PS3 back when it was the latest and greatest and only found 3 games in it's life time worth playing.

Mean while i played loads of PC games in that time.

I would add that they finally got MGS right when they started supporting PC halfway well, albeit with near non existent control explanation.

Worst part for me now that I know how controls work on KB/M is the tendency for Snake to keep moving non stop in a given direction. In Ground Zeroes it happened too, but was usually easily fixed by flashing in and out of iDroid. The only way I can consistently stop it in TPP is to simultaneously mash A+D or W+S.

Think I'm the only one? Think again, there are many people on several forums complaining about it.

 

[AsRock]

I would add that they finally got MGS right when they started supporting PC halfway well, albeit with near non existent control explanation.

Worst part for me now that I know how controls work on KB/M is the tendency for Snake to keep moving non stop in a given direction. In Ground Zeroes it happened too, but was usually easily fixed by flashing in and out of iDroid. The only way I can consistently stop it in TPP is to simultaneously mash A+D or W+S.

Think I'm the only one? Think again, there are many people on several forums complaining about it.

I would not know as i will never play them the game unless it was free. but that mashing keys shit is some thing i don't want to do on a $180 keyboard. At least it's improving unlike FO3 \ FO4 \ Skyrim which has always had a issue with remapping the E key in game.

 

[KrachB00Mente]

I must say, i really like the game, but what i don't get why they fucked up the controls so much. Yes most of the time you can do what you want to... BUT...
Why does every game noadays have different controls? running? jumping? crouching? shooting? reload, counterattack...
For every game its a different set of controls. Usually i can live with this but in Metal Gear literally every button except aiming and shooting is different than in most AAA titles out there.

Why is this a problem? You play a nice round of single player MGS V and some of your friends come online so you switch to GTA V to play with them.
Or lets say you play a nice round of Batman and switch to Assassins Creed... the counterattack / block button which is timing sensitive is reversed.
Does not destroy the gameplay but is annoying. Remember old NES games when A & B where all of a sudden reversed? You get used to it sooner or later but its not intuitive the button layout switches in every game for basically the same function.

 

[BumbleBee]

Kojima is Japanese. Japanese read right to left (B before A) if you ever wondered why... it's still a thing today with Japanese PS3/PS4 games (X and O)

 

[Jaffakeik]

I play this game with gamepad on PC. NIce review btw.
Still need to finish game hopefully before Fallout4 will come out

 

[Frag_Maniac]

I must say, i really like the game, but what i don't get why they fucked up the controls so much. Yes most of the time you can do what you want to... BUT...
Why does every game noadays have different controls? running? jumping? crouching? shooting? reload, counterattack...
For every game its a different set of controls. Usually i can live with this but in Metal Gear literally every button except aiming and shooting is different than in most AAA titles out there.

Why is this a problem? You play a nice round of single player MGS V and some of your friends come online so you switch to GTA V to play with them.
Or lets say you play a nice round of Batman and switch to Assassins Creed... the counterattack / block button which is timing sensitive is reversed.
Does not destroy the gameplay but is annoying. Remember old NES games when A & B where all of a sudden reversed? You get used to it sooner or later but its not intuitive the button layout switches in every game for basically the same function.

Yeah I like it too, but at times it has me very frustrated. I forgot to say above that if you look for the virtual USB devices in HID in Device Manager and disable them, the non stop movement thing happens less often. For me it was Logitech Virtual Keyboard. It varies according to what you're using.

I agree totally on too many buttons required for controls, like having to hold RMB AND tap F just to go to iron sights. And F isn't even a true toggle, it won't stay that way. Another annoyance for me is the very twitchy selector wheel for items. I like to enable NV Goggles to get precise headshots with the tranq gun, and moving the mouse upward often has that twitchy wheel going to the next position vs the top one I have NV in. This leaves me holding 4 then tapping the Up arrow just to enable NV.

MGSV is s cluster f*ck of unnecessary control mappings.

 

[Easy Rhino]

Not true to all, i got a a PS3 back when it was the latest and greatest and only found 3 games in it's life time worth playing.

Mean while i played loads of PC games in that time.

Nah, you gotta own consoles and PC to be master race. PC only are dirty plebes who should be shot and thrown in the river.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

PC only are dirty plebes who should be shot and thrown in the river.

If you're trying to sound like adding consoles to the mix is an extra level of sophistication, you're failing miserably at it with that immature droning. You're just making them sound like little boy toys.

Anyways, back on topic before sneeky starts raging. I'm finding the wandering soldier missions both hilarious and frustrating at times. Just want to knock some sense into dem boys.

 

[64K]

If you're trying to sound like adding consoles to the mix is an extra level of sophistication, you're failing miserably at it with that immature droning. You're just making them sound like little boy toys.

Anyways, back on topic before sneeky starts raging. I'm finding the wandering soldier missions both hilarious and frustrating at times. Just want to knock some sense into dem boys.

@Easy Rhino is trolling us PC gamers but he does have a point. I want to be able to play the Halo series after Halo 2 and Red Dead Redemption. There's more talk about Halo 5 being ported to PC but who knows.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/10/developer-theres-plenty-of-chance-of-a-halo-5-pc-port/

 

[Frag_Maniac]

@Easy Rhino is trolling us PC gamers but he does have a point. I want to be able to play the Halo series after Halo 2 and Red Dead Redemption. There's more talk about Halo 5 being ported to PC but who knows.

There's never more than a few console games I can think of that I would want to play, and HAVE played some of them a bit on my friend's PS4. It's always the same situation for me, what could be a decent experience, ruined by antiquated controllers. Until they get up off their have-to-play-them-with-seriously-limited-thumb-toggles approach, they'll have less sophistication than PC, where you can play most games either way, including with a Steam Controller now

My point though was, it only makes the console platforms look even more childish and simplistic when you have someone, well, talking like a child about them as if we're out of the loop for not settling for their limitations. I frankly don't see that it's worth it just to play a few exclusives to shell out what it takes to buy a console, plus the games are high priced. The only way to really justify the expense is if you also play multi plat titles on them, but most that have a decent PC as well play those on PC.

Are we done going off topic now? I feel like I'm filling in for sneeky at this point. This is one of the best games made in some time and not many seem to want to actually talk about the game itself.

My latest frustration in MGSV. I encountered a rather nasty wandering soldier whom would easily spot me if I tried to tranq him and toss a sleep gas grenade at me then disappear. He usually managed to gas or melee me if I tried to sneak then sprint toward him.

So, I dumped over a million upgrading Quiet with the non silenced, then silenced tranq sniper rifle, only to find you cannot order her to fire on friendlies, even with just a tranq gun, despite their being hostile toward you.

I finally managed to sneak and sprint well enough to knock the guy down at the same time he dumped a gas grenade. Fortunately I was able to get up before him and extract him.

So I'm on my way to get picked up by the chopper, and I'm thinking, maybe it will be worthwhile if Quiet can mange to use her new gun effectively on the two guys at the nearby camp I had to sneak past to exfiltrate.

I laid hidden from the searchlight in a bush and ordered Quiet to fire at the guy in the watch tower. Nothing happens. I order her to fire at him again. Suddenly he panics and takes off running toward the other guys in the camp.

Needless to say the 750,000 silenced tranq rifle and the 450,000 non silenced one you have to buy to unlock it seem to be a waste of money. I'm starting to think my mid level tranq pistol is actually more effective.

 

[64K]

There's never more than a few console games I can think of that I would want to play, and HAVE played some of them a bit on my friend's PS4. It's always the same situation for me, what could be a decent experience, ruined by antiquated controllers. Until they get up off their have-to-play-them-with-seriously-limited-thumb-toggles approach, they'll have less sophistication than PC, where you can play most games either way.

My point though was, it only makes the console platforms look even more childish and simplistic when you have someone, well, talking like a child about them as if we're out of the loop for not settling for their limitations. I frankly don't see that it's worth it just to play a few exclusives to shell out what it takes to buy a console, plus the games are high priced. The only way to really justify the expense is if you also play multi plat titles on them, but most that have a decent PC as well play those on PC.

Are we done going off topic now? I feel like I'm filling in for sneeky at this point.

My latest frustration in MGSV. I encountered a rather nasty wandering soldier whom would easily spot me if I tried to tranq him and toss a sleep gas grenade at me then disappear. He usually managed to gas or melee me if I tried to sneak then sprint toward him.

So, I dumped over a million upgrading Quiet with the non silenced, then silenced tranq sniper rifle, only to find you cannot order her to fire on friendlies, even with just a tranq gun, despite their being hostile toward you.

I finally managed to sneak and sprint well enough to knock the guy down at the same time he dumped a gas grenade. Fortunately I was able to get up before him and extract him.

So I'm on my way to get picked up by the chopper, and I'm thinking, maybe it will be worthwhile if Quiet can mange to use her new gun effectively on the two guys at the nearby camp I had to sneak past to exfiltrate.

I laid hidden from the searchlight in a bush and ordered Quiet to fire at the guy in the watch tower. Nothing happens. I order her to fire at him again. Suddenly he panics and takes off running toward the other guys in the camp.

Needless to say the 750,000 silenced tranq rifle and the 450,000 non silenced one you have to buy to unlock it seem to be a waste of money. I'm starting to think my mid level tranq pistol is actually more effective.

True. But console oriented games always presented problems for us. Maybe I should just give up on hoping for a competent Halo 5 drop.

 

[Splinterdog]

For the first time ever in a game I can't even move since WASD or E simply don't respond in-game. Nothing, zilch. It's like it's expecting a controller command which I don't use.
I even reinstalled the game and I've never had a controller connected. What a disappointment!
And yes, I know this thread is old.

 

[basco]

there should be ingame settings to disable controller?
i use both-mouse keyboard for shooting+moving and controller for driving
using logitech f310 on xinput

 

[Ferrum Master]

For the first time ever in a game I can't even move since WASD or E simply don't respond in-game. Nothing, zilch. It's like it's expecting a controller command which I don't use.
I even reinstalled the game and I've never had a controller connected. What a disappointment!
And yes, I know this thread is old.

Fix your PC, played with both, never had issues.