Topic: Metal Gear Solid V OT

@RogerRoger that is really good, though, sometimes you just want to see what a series has to offer and a lot of the Spiderman games are really good especially the PS1 games and shattered dimensions on PS3. I had spider man 3 on the Wii and I seem to remember literally miming the web slinging lol. I'm sure a wrist flick would have sufficed but I got into it a lot.

I forgot I also finished jedi fallen order and resident evil revelations too so I'm actually on 17 games this lockdown.

I finally worked out how to customize stuff in MGSV, I've made my logo an ode to my love of master miller. I know it all ends in tears but I really "ship" (forgive my lack of better terminology) Big Boss and Kaz, especially after their date in peace walker and the naked fight they had in the shower.

I'll try and put some screenshots of my new logo all over my base in the screen shots thread if I can work out how to upload them without them going on twitter first, or maybe I'll just stick them on the pushsquare community which I joined the other day.

@ralphdibny Yeah, funny you should mention those specific games, but they've been my personal highlights, and were the ones I was most interested in. It's been a cracking retrospective!

Despite being somebody who always picks up on subtext, I've never found myself shipping anybody in the Metal Gear universe; having said that, I can totally see the argument for Big Boss and Kaz, moreso than most (as you say, there's plenty of suggestive evidence).

I'll look out for your base logo in either of those two locations. Here's what I always seemed to settle on, when I wasn't rocking the standard yellow FOX patch...

It was purely to troll Skull Face, as I'd built an army out of his own soldiers I'd captured.

@RogerRoger haha nice trolling, it's funny how you can feel a personal attachment. If somebody hurts d-dog, d- horse or quiet, I always make sure I gun them down in revenge lol (unless they are s rank of course haha)

I think miller just gives him that look after he rescues him back at base. Straight into the eyes. I think big boss just has that air about him that everybody just wants him or wants to be him, with some characters straddling the fine line. EVA (confirmed on screen), possibly the Boss, Ocelot, Paz (bit more complicated), Kaz and for Venom Snake, Kaz and Quiet. I don't get any vibes from Sigint, Campbell or Zero though.

Meanwhile solid snake only had Meryl and she ended up marrying the guy with IBS! Otacon has a thing for bad chicks like Sniper Wolf and Naomi. I thought Huey was the same as his son but it sort of turns out he is the bad guy.

I really dislike Huey as a character though his characterisation is great and obviously effective. I can't remember if it gets properly confirmed that he betrayed MSF as I'm only half way through MGSV at the moment but the way he acts, especially when accused. he just blames everybody else and that makes me think he is guilty.

@ralphdibny I threw a live grenade into a small control room during a mission, and D-Dog chased it as though I'd just told him to fetch. It hurt him, and I saw the "Your Bond with D-Dog Has Decreased" message pop up on the HUD. Felt absolutely awful for a good while afterwards, and petted him so much!

I'm no expert on Japanese culture, but the small scraps I do see of it tend to portray heroes very much like you're describing Big Boss there. We in the West are often a little more hesitant about showing affection or respect, whereas in Japan men will stare at each other whilst shaking hands, and act with reverence towards those they admire. Anyway, that was my sensible answer, until you used the word "straddling" and now I'm just giggling at all the subtext it entails, so... er, yeah!

Huey started well but yeah, it's interesting what MGSV does to him. Not sure if I'd have had the guts to write him that way, because it's very realistic in some respects and you're right, it's tough to like him. The confirmation of his suspected betrayal might've been something that got cut, alas, but I think it'd be a real foreboding sign of things to come if he was totally innocent. That's my head-canon.

@RogerRoger haha aww I always pet D-Dog if I've mistakenly treated him poorly. (Edit: I just remembered that I thought I'd love to pet d-horse too and it made me think of the yak/bison things in Uncharted 2 that you can pet, but when you press triangle near their bum, Nate goes in and smells it and voices his disgust)

I didn't know that about Japan, mind you, some of my friends are quite touchy feely, more so when we were in our late teens/early twenties though. That did make me think though, I've been in plenty of scenarios, socially and at work, where one person seems to have a bunch of people lining up to praise them or do things for them. I find it really weird, not in such a way that they need to "earn my respect" but more like they are just somebody I wouldn't want to be associated with if they would let people act like that toward them. In some cases I've had it where they expect it of me. They get a swift two fingers if they do though. (I mean the swearing kind, while we are on the topic of subtext 😂)

Huey is just a bit of a simpering snivelling guy, but it makes him super dangerous to be like that because his moral compass is sat inside an electromagnet pointing it in every direction. And he has a huge bargaining chip which is his brain, allowing him enough leverage to actually act out his fickle revenge(s). I loved the scene where he is pitching battle gear to Venom, Kaz and Ocelot and Venom just turns around to Miller like, "Kaz, I think I am having de ja vu here" and his exasperated "Fine" when he agrees as he's leaving. It just made me laugh so much.

Anyway, I posted those screen shots in the screenshot thread along with a few others!

@ralphdibny Your screenshots are epic. You made the base pink!

Despite having played Uncharted 2 more times than I care to count, and despite having petted all the yaks in that village, I had no idea Nate would do that if you approached one from behind. You've provided my new thing I learned for today, thanks!

Same; I've worked alongside plenty of those kinds of people, I know exactly who you're talking about. It's interesting how cultural context can totally transform a scenario or action, or even a person.

You're right about Huey. That being said, I can still sympathise to a degree; caught up in the events he's caught up in, working alongside the people he's working alongside, his lack of military camaraderie is his ultimate downfall. Soldiers are trained to be brothers and sisters to one another, to form a tight support network in order to handle the extreme stress of their chosen profession. Huey is just a scientist. It's no wonder he becomes a morally-grey, somewhat-unhinged loose cannon. When he's freaking out against Diamond Dogs, trying to highlight the insanity of the situation, I was nodding along (as I come from a military family, but have never served myself, so I can see both sides).

Your logo is awesome, by the way. I don't think I could ever wear that into battle and keep a straight face, but kudos to you all the same! The poses with Quiet and those three soldiers are the icing on the cake. It looks as though you've been enjoying a very bizarre playthrough!

@RogerRoger haha I thanks, I definitely don't have a straight face on when I play it but I don't need one! I feel like the game got a lot more enjoyable once I realised I could customise stuff. It's not something I normally enjoy because I don't typically have too many ideas for customising in games but it makes going back to mother base less of a bore.

Pinks just the brightest colour in the game! Everything else looks really dull in comparison.

Yeah Huey just can't ground himself, which is key to operating fairly in real life. I feel like I know of a lot of different people in real life that are quite unassuming but actually turn out to be quite nasty people. They're harder to guage because of how they present themselves. It's a lot easier when somebody is obviously just nasty off the bat. Having said that, I know a lot of people who act nasty/rude/lazy but are actually none of those things. Humans can be complicated haha. It's not so much a problem in social situations but I find it a nightmare at work because you have no choice but to work with or for these people. That being said, I'm sure I'm not the easiest person to work with sometimes, I can be a bit too honest with people even if I honestly have little to no opinion.

Anyway, I finished chapter one last night, I think I enjoyed it a lot more this time. I actually thought a lot of stuff from chapter 2 happened in chapter 1 but it seems the rest of quiets storyline, the killing of infected staff, strangeloves fate etc is all in chapter 2, I remembered it differently. I thought chapter 2 was basically just Eli taking off with sahelanthropous and harder versions of old missions, a bit like the final chapter in peace walker.

I remember it being less of a crescendo than the end of chapter 1 but maybe because it is just a lot of different plot lines that resolve individually instead of a single arc.

Oh yeah and since doing chapter one, there's all these Big Boss is watching you posters up which ruin the design of my base lol.

It's a brilliant game though, I feel like these later games are a lot better when you play them closer together so the story is fresher in your head and stuff makes more sense. I've definitely enjoyed it way more than the first time I played it. I really wish they'd get together again and make a 6th game, either just a continuation of big boss or old snake or maybe even a flash back tale where you play as The Boss around the time she had to kill The Sorrow.

I've taken some more screen shots of me mooching around on the animal conservation platform too so I'll upload them too when I get a chance!

@ralphdibny I'm always at war with my sense of humour whenever it comes to customisation, as I like my games to be immersive, so usually go for something default or, at least, fitting. I have much respect for those who play Mass Effect with deliberately hideous Shepards (and likewise, for you and your pink Mother Base) but I reckon I'll forever be a little bit boring in that regard...

...no matter how awesome you've made your base and logo look!

Honesty is always the best policy. I used to say that I was honest "to a fault" but I realised I didn't agree with that old saying, as I don't think honesty can ever be at fault. From that perspective, you're right, I much prefer people who own their character and are upfront about their attitude, whatever it may be. Then everybody knows where they stand. The biggest problems I ever had were with colleagues who, at first, wanted to be best friends with me; it was because they wanted to set me up somewhere down the line. Horrible life lesson, alas, but such are the times in which we live.

No, I'm always surprised how things play out across the chapters. There's a lot of misconception thrown around by exaggerated comments about Chapter Two, but it's got a heck of a lot of fresh content in, and wraps up a fair few plot threads. Did you play much more over the weekend?

It's a shame you can't make the posters pink!

Part of me secretly hopes for a new Metal Gear, but then another part of me says "Ahem... Metal Gear Survive, buddy." Not sure I'd trust anything, or anybody, to do the interwoven story and characters justice (if I'm honest, not even Mr. Kojima as I think he's moved on now, and never really wanted to keep making Metal Gear games anyway). MGSV is firmly in my personal top ten of this current console generation, and I feel like it's a satisfying bridge between the two main timeframes, and therefore a good enough conclusion to call it a day. But that's just me.

@RogerRoger yeah I don't think I could play with a deliberately ugly character (unless it fit the narrative) but there is a alot of humour in the MGS series in general (which is what makes it so good along with the action, conspiracy, heroism, complicated characters, music, gameplay etc) and MGSV is really a "make it your own" type game with the basically silent protagonist and obviously the end-game reveal about your character. So it's not taking me out of the game to have a pink motherbase (or any non standard colour) or "i heart kaz logo", I think it actually helps me be more attached to it because it's my own 😊 (I think that's a proud face emoji lol)

I remember the first time I played it, I made my custom character look like Picard and totally forgot I even did that because it's never mentioned until the end of the game. When the reveal came about, I was like who TF is that lol. This time I've made sure it looks like me because I guess that was sort of the point of customising the character in the first place.

Oh yeah the old nice until your useful routine, I've been thrown under the bus a few times! It sucks but it's made me realise what people value and it's usually money over doing the right thing. I definitely show more tact these days and sometimes in every day conversation, even I don't want to be reminded of constantly negative things (because it can really get me down). I recognise human contradiction and lean into it for the benefit of my own mental health. Sometimes you just wana hear "yeah that sucks" instead of a full blown analysis of what went wrong and what could have gone better. I've driven myself crazy with overthinking in the past and nowadays I find it much easier to function with a non-self medicated numbness to certain uncontrollable aspects of life. Gives both mind and body a rest I think! Sometimes just gotta face the music though. (Just realized, this paragraph was incredibly non-specific but it is just a general observation of how I deal with life these days, not that it always works by any stretch! It can be hard to switch off)

Yeah ive played a fair bit since my last post, I have about 8-9 main missions to finish and about 30 side ops. I think the misconception comes because a lot of main story beats are either in optional motherbase cutscenes or from "important side ops" which is just pretty weird when most of these chapter 2 "main" missions are just higher difficulty repeats of chapter 1 missions.

I've been looking up the missable cutscenes as well so I can try and trigger them before I stop playing, theres only one missed scene I think that I can't replicate because Eli has left the base now. Theres a couple I missed from earlier missions too but I guess I can replay them to see them.

Some cut scenes have played out differently on this playthrough too, I think one where ocelot throws a bucket of water over me for coming home stinky with flies around me actually ended up differently this time. Quiet stopped him throwing the water and took me to her cell for an intimate shower (albeit while the "lads" leered and jeered from outside the cell - suffice to say that I beat them all up after for ruining my Quiet moment lol). Had another where me and quiet had a water fight in the rain too, that was nice. There's a bit of a triangle between venom, miller and quiet and I think I am leaning toward the quiet relationship now because she, apart from trying to kill me the first couple times that we've met, has been nothing but good to me and miller hates her so much that his relatable bitter revenge has just become unjustified whining. That said, I don't think quiet has quite the series legacy behind her to be worthy of a motherbase logo, but I might mess around some since I've unlocked a lot of emblem parts since making my ode to master miller!

Have you played survive then? I know it got a lot of negative press and I never bothered with it because I thought it was multiplayer only. Ive since found out there is actually a single player story so it's going to be next on my play through. I don't have massively high hopes but based on the generally high quality of other non Kojima games in this series I'm not ready to dismiss it now (even if I did when it was released haha).

As a whole I didn't think mgsV needed to exist at all, I'd probably say that peace walker was a good enough bridge but seeing as V came out and was pretty good, I'd be happy with more. I think I'd just prefer them to be a bit shorter and more focused though! I did 90-something hours on this play through of peace walker and I'm at around 75 hours on V. Considering I put in 60 hours on my first playthrough on PW, and I'm not sure about my first play through of V because I didn't check before I deleted the save. Id also prefer them to have a new game plus option (like the original games' stealth camo, bandana, patriot etc) too because even with the replayability of the main game, the story is my favourite part so I'd like a way to replay that quicker because I have better items. That being said, all the resources stored online from my first save actually carried over to this save so I did have a bit of an easier time with base building etc on this game!

@ralphdibny I've just written a freakin wall of text, don't feel obliged to reply right away! We seem to be having an in depth conversation about this so don't feel bad about replying to others elsewhere on the site and leaving this thread for when you have time to sit down by the fire and read my essays haha

@ralphdibny It's okay, I type fast.

I agree, of all the Metal Gear games to put your own stamp and it not feel at odds with canon, MGSV is the place to be. I remember I once put "Raiden" down as my real name in Sons of Liberty, thinking it'd help me keep immersion if I used the protagonist's name (kinda like how, in some Zelda games, you can input your name and suddenly Link isn't Link). Made the final cutscene, where Snake hands over the dogtags, unintentionally hilarious. "Who am I, really?" [looks at dogtags] "Oh, I'm just Raiden anyway? Fair enough!"

Yeah, I'm always torn between making who I wanna look like, and just making myself. I went for the former during my first playthrough, but the latter during my second. Maybe on my third, I'll make a random Starfleet captain and see if it helps increase the comedy!

I hear you. We're all changeable; it's the people who fight their own flexibility who end up hurting themselves and annoying everybody else. Some days, I just wanna get things done, and respect people being blunt about things. Other days, I'm a full-blown diplomat. Depends on the context of any given situation, but also depends on the personalities involved, including my own. I reckon these are still valid conversational points, given we're talking about the evolution of Big Boss throughout the Metal Gear saga, from hero to villain and through every shade of grey on the Dulux colour chart. Kojima comments on the human condition very well, even in incredibly subtle ways.

Sounds like you're nearly done! Best of luck wrapping it up, and getting all the optional scenes. I swear I missed a good deal of them, as I still occasionally find footage on YouTube which is foreign to me. I was lucky enough to be playing it on my birthday one year, though!

Never got the shower with Quiet, and have never seen it; that's a totally new one on me, although I have seen the puddle-kicking rainbow playfight with Quiet in both my playthroughs. Have you never seen that one before? I thought that was pretty much unavoidable, given her relationship arc with Venom. I agree that Miller's bitterness and rage, whilst understandable, goes way too far in some places. He's perhaps a better illustration (or just a more potent one) of the descent into villainy than anybody else. He'll get even worse if you take his logo down! It's the only good thing in his life! Don't do it!

No, I'll admit, my comment against Metal Gear Survive was based on second-hand perceptions. This site did give it an 8/10 review and I've heard others find some fun in it, so I'll be real curious to read what you make of it, as and when you give it a try. Especially considering it's so cheap right now.

The length of Peace Walker is what's kept me from replaying it, I think. Given its handheld on-the-go structure, I found it difficult to play for long sessions, and so it took me forever to complete. I'm with you, I much prefer the shorter entries in the series; I can complete Sons of Liberty in a week of evenings and it never grows stale. Replaying the missions in a completed MGSV file is pretty weak, absolutely, and leaves far too many gaps. It's a shame we have to delete our saves to replay it properly; maybe a proper NG+ mode is just another of those features Kojima was forced to cut in the rush to release.

Likewise, reply as and when! That's why we're on a forum, and not an instant messaging platform!

@RogerRoger haha I feel like I've forgotten so much about mgs 2, ive only played it twice (most recently was last year) and it is still confusing to me, like what's real, when does Campbell become an AI etc, I'll probably end up back at it again because the story is so cyclical that technically a play through can never end, the sequel to mgsV being Mg1 and MG2 then MGS1, 2 and so forth until you are back at 5 again 🤦‍♂️. I'm probably going to cap this play through off with the English dubs of the digital graphic novels of mgs 1 and 2, maybe they will shed some light on it!

I think having a poor facsimile of Picard just confused me more than made me laugh lol, maybe Ben sisko will be a better and easier to make choice?

Yeah I find the characterisations quite realistic even if they are a bit caricature-ish. I loved big boss' early enthusiasm for different guns in mgs 3 that was quite funny. I keep flip flopping on Huey, whenever you go see him he always has this innocent smile as he shouts "Snake!" to you. Then I play the harder metalic archaea mission and it ends with his torture which he finally reveals information about sahelanthropous from but why was he keeping it a secret anyway if he's truly on our side? Also when he freaks at big boss at the funeral of the soldiers from the second out break, blaming snake for their deaths. Turns out he caused the mutation and it's his typical blame everybody else for his mistakes type jobby.

Yeah I'd seen the puddle kicking one, I do think you could miss it though if you don't go back to motherbase regularly. I had the birthday one on my last playthrough and this time I set my avatars birthday to be in the last couple weeks so I saw that one again! I weren't sure if miller became a villain, I've heard that his last chronological appearance before being murdered off screen is in Metal gear 2 for the MSX but since I haven't played it, I don't know what he is like.

Not sure if I said that I thought I definitely weren't going to put another 60 hours in to peace walker when I replayed it, only to end up putting in 90 because the game is so addictive 😂. I've actually ended up with only five trophies left to get on mgsV, not sure if I want to go the extra mile for the platinum. All I've got left is the S ranks, animal extractions, mission tasks and document collection

@ralphdibny That's always the danger; the beginning is the end of the beginning again, so it's crucial to pick your start and end points, for sure! Please let me know how the Digital Graphic Novels play out, and whether they add in any particular revelations, if you're passing through around then.

Sisko could work. Kirk and Archer would be too generic, and there's no chance of a Janeway, alas!

I'm always impressed by the reverse character arcs, the ones written backwards, and the little touches to certain characters Kojima managed to work in. You mention Big Boss being a nut for guns in his youth, but then you see him in the graveyard at the end of MGS4 and he's just casually tossing aside a generic SMG. Perhaps I'm looking for detail where none exists but, with Kojima's masterful world-building and character handling, you're kinda encouraged to!

Yeah, I think you'd also miss it if you don't use Quiet as field support; a lot of things depend on how frequently you take each support unit out, and how good a bond you form with them. I never use Quiet until I can craft her tranq. rounds and so a lot of her stuff came late in my playthrough. And you're right, perhaps Miller never becomes a "villain" villain, but his evolving attitude helps justify a potential descent more effectively. I've never played Metal Gear 2 either, but I do have the novelisation of Metal Gear Solid laying about somewhere, and that apparently gives more backstory to Miller (whether or not it's official canon backstory or not is another question but, hey, it's a source).

Wow, best of luck with those last trophies, if you do go for them! I think I got the animal and document ones, but it's been a while since I looked at my list. There were a lot I skipped.

@RogerRoger I think I'm about half way through Survive now, that Janeway dream may become a reality as you can be female in that game (I am playing as a female). The game is massively different from MGSV in terms of gameplay but it uses so many assets from that game, it's really weird. Like entire chunks of Afghanistan have been copied and pasted into survive but they are different, there are chunks of motherbase smashed into different outposts and stuff. It's quite cool, its like half lazy because it reuses so much but quite cool how it changes the look of things. I probably wouldn't recognise so much if I hadn't finished playing mgsV the same day. There's an AI character too that uses the same model as the Boss AI pod from V.

The dialogue is really dumb but it is quite funny. One of the characters is a total d-bag but secretly does nice things. It's like character tropes X 1 million plus bad dialogue and it makes it laughable but I am enjoying it though.

The controls are different too, it's basically the same actions but they are assigned to different buttons. I thought it would be a good idea to play it straight after V so I was used to the controls but it's taken some getting used to the changes.

Another thing that's different from MGSV is that you can climb up mountains a lot more than you could do in V. There's also proper base building and defense at a base camp rather than mother base. You also do base building on the fly out in the field by assigning defences to item slots and chucking them out on the ground when the "wanderers" come. There's a lot of looting and crafting too and there are survival aspects from MGS3 like hunting, cooking food (not in MGS3), eating, drinking, treating injuries etc.

I thought it was The Boss' patriot gun that big boss chucks away at the end of mgs4? I might be misremembering or maybe there were two guns. I've read the digital graphic novel is a bit different for the second game, I think snake is made more the main character in it over Raiden. The second one is like 3 hours long 😧. I imagine it's going to be quite difficult to sit through!

Oh yeah and somehow I managed to glitch my game in one of the last couple of missions of MGSV, I ended up 600 meters under Afghanistan! It was super weird but I took a lot of screenshots which I'll try and get round to putting in the screenshot thread in the next couple of days!

@ralphdibny Wow, okay. I wasn't expecting you to start Survive so soon, and I certainly wasn't expecting you to be so positive about it (on balance, at least)! Sorry to hear that the reason you picked it straight up, the controls, was one of the elements they changed. Thanks for writing up your thoughts thusfar; it sounds like everything I'd heard about before, but yet somehow it still kinda works. The idea of being able to fully explore the Afghanistan map is quite appealing, even if said map is packed with zombie-esque creatures (not my favourite). You'll have to let me know how it ends, and whether you reckon it's satisfying enough to give a look-see somewhere down the line!

You're right, it was the Patriot. No idea what I was thinking, that's really iconic! What a perfect illustration of how long it's been for me; I really need to replay the series soon!

Ah, I love a good floor-clipping glitch! Hope it didn't spoil your game too much, though?

@RogerRoger no worries, somehow I don't think it would have been as good when it came out, even now my prejudices toward it due to the situation around it make it hard to enjoy properly.

I have to start it, I have to finish it, need to move on lol. The last two 100 hour MGS games have really slowed up my progress and lockdown will probably end soon (if it hasnt already, I try not to watch the news) so I need to play more games while I have the guilt-free time to do so haha

I think the map is a lot smaller than Afghanistan, and you can't see very far because there is this "mysterious" dust around. Also you are limited by how much oxygen you have in the tank while you are exploring. They also use this kind of really specific "fog of war" type map exploration, so you have to visit places to see them on the map but the routes are so direct that you often just get long lines of map drawn, it's kind of weird.

Yeah zombies were lame at the time this come out, way overused in every single piece of media. I like the classics but it always garners an eyeroll when they get added to stuff. Even the skull infested humans in MGSV which Survive's "wanderers" are clearly based on were a bit like meh. I did like the skulls though, especially the female Borg snipers!

Floor clipping didn't ruin everything, I spent like half hour underground just seeing what I could do there which was not alot really. I sort of hoped i would get stuck under there so I could stop my playthrough as I'd already done the final story mission and the last two were just the harder versions of older missions. I just returned to the helicopter in the end and everything was back to normal.

@ralphdibny We're not fully out of lockdown yet, so you've got time; that being said, if Survive does drag on for another 100 hours or more then, yeah, you'll probably be glad to see the back of it! What are some of the other games you've got lined up to play?

Hmm. It does sound very survival-focused which is cool in a way, but very cliché in another. Particularly if a lot of the map is recycled, as you suspect. Yeah, at least the Skulls felt fresh and were classic Kojima adversaries in design and implementation; spinning off a whole hoard of them and making them mindless brain-eaters is equally, alas, classic Konami. Have there been more linear, story-driven missions throughout the campaign, or is it just a lot of roaming with loose cutscenes every now and again?

Ah, gotcha. At least you could wrap things up, even if you kinda didn't want to!

@RogerRoger I don't think survive will be that long, the campaign is about 22 hours according to HLTB, doubt I'll put any time into the online portion. There are some cutscenes (portions of which are recycled from ground zeroes) but alot of the story is told through that kind of talking head way of doing things, the text comes up next to the head but at least it's fully voiced. Yeah it's split up into main missions and side missions, you do have to gather resources through side missions and free roam to be prepared for alot of the main missions though.

Not sure what I'll play next, I'm tempted by some of the ps plus games that I guess have relatively short campaigns like cod ww2 and sniper elite 4. I still need to knock resident evil on the head some time this week too. I've got 3 more gears of war games to play on game pass as well and also I'm quite interested in playing that Hellblade game. I bought star wars battlefront 2 ages ago but haven't got around to that yet, I assume the campaign is fairly short on that. Also a gazillion games on Switch, need to finish the original Doom because they kept adding more levels (and it's hard) so I can continue playing that series! I have to get around to red dead 2 as well at some point, I started it when it came out but got distracted by other games lol

What are you playing at the moment/planning to play?

I was reading some quotes of Big Boss' nerdgasms about different guns and it really reminded me of the main character in American Psycho (Pat Bateman). I don't know if you read the book or seen the film but that character goes on similar tangents about his interests, which amusingly are different Pop music artists. A lot of it made it into the film as voice over and dialogue but the book, which is told from a first person narrative, has entire chapters that are literally just about Whitney Houston and Genesis. Made me laugh thinking back to that because it is a really funny book/film.

@ralphdibny Talking heads? Hmm. All well and good for the codec calls in earlier games, but I'd kinda expect more from the most recent game in the series. Here's hoping you can see it through without too much resource grinding (which sounds like it might be a thing if going for 100% as it usually is in these kinds of games) and that you're somewhere around that HLTB time!

Short shooter campaigns are the perfect antidote to sweeping epics, yes. I've got a couple of those from PS Plus as well, including Modern Warfare Remastered and Sniper Elite 4. Confirming that, yes, the campaign in Star Wars: Battlefront II is short, around eight hours if you stop and look at everything, six if you rush things. It sounds like you've got a good variety of things to pick from, which can be a blessing and a curse; sometimes I stop and look at my seventy-strong backlog and think "Yeah, it's too much, I can't decide!" so I hope you can settle on something quickly!

I've got a half-finished save on DOOM 3 which I need to get back to, but I wanna start The Last Guardian as I've been meaning to for ages, and it finally feels like the right time.

Never made that connection to American Psycho before, although I'll admit to having avoided the film for a long time, as I can't stand Christian Bale (but I've seen bits and pieces of it over the years, usually out of context). I'm more likely to read the book; will keep it in mind, cheers!

@RogerRoger it's his best film to be fair, though I'm probably biased because it's one of my favourite films/books. Christian Bale is a weird one, he's normally quite solid in whatever he does but he is better in non-generic roles. I sort of went off him post terminator salvation but there's been a few films with him in since then that look quite good but I haven't seen. He's a great actor but I probably wouldn't pick a fight with him haha

There's quite a few cutscenes to be fair, and tbh MGSV is lacking in cut scenes compared to the earlier games too, alot of the story in that game is garnered from the tapes you listen to.

It's kinda why the lockdown has been quite good for me, instead of having to worry about work and how much time I have and being constantly knackered, I can just pick a game or activity and go with it. I really am not looking forward to going back to work and I probably won't seeing as I'm on a zero hour contract anyway and I don't think it will be safe. My furlough ends this week but I've saved up enough to see me through a few more months at least.

Ah yeah, the last guardian is unplayed on my shelf too! I loved ico and only made it about halfway through SotC, not sure if it's worth going through them again before playing last guardian though. Doom 3 is wicked but similarly ive only made it about half way through on the BFG edition for PS3! I had the pc version back when it came out originally but not the (good enough) PC to play it on.

I think my backlog (as long as I've been thinking about it, probably goes as far back as the Wii 😂 but I probably have a few GameCube games that I haven't finished still!