La Li Lu Le Ho Ho Ho: MGS 5 Ground Zeroes In December
Better lighting and shadows on PC
While we've been getting all excited about Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, as publishers Konami fling videos all over the place like so many guard-distracting nudie magazines, let's not forget that its short standalone prologue Ground Zeroes hasn't come out on PC yet. We still have a while to wait, but we do now have a Steam release date: December 18th. Konami also confirmed today that the PC version will look a little fancier than its its console counterparts.
Ground Zeroes' PC port will support 4K resolutions, Konami say, and "will feature an increase in the number of simultaneous light sources, the number of models that can be displayed on-screen and increased shadow resolution." More stuff, better lighting. Gotcha. Given the amount of time one spends lurking around shadows in sneak 'em ups, that's a nice thing to touch on.
Though Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2 were ported to PC, Ground Zeroes wanders down the prequel part of the timeline that has only ever been on consoles. I've heard and seen such lovely things about Snake Eater and Peace Walker but never got to play them. I do hope Konami re-release the whole series on PC at some point, perhaps together in a nice bundle wrapped in shiny red paper tied with a big ribbon and bearing a name tag shaped like a snowman saying "To Alice, Merry Crimbo, Hideo x".
The Phantom Pain is due in 2015, on consoles at least. Here's an old look at Zeroes on Xbox One: