Life Is Strange [official site] Episode One came out all the way back in January of this year but with the release of the final episode a couple of weeks ago, this is a fine time to celebrate the series as a whole. Dontnod’s episodic adventue is a mystery-drama set in a small Oregon town. Combining time travel, photography, tragedy, terror and scrapbooks, it’s all but untouched by the typical canon of gaming inspirations and feels entirely comfortable within its episodic format. If you only have time for one game this month, catch up with this unexpected treat.

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I expected MGSV: The Phantom Pain [official site] to be punishing – the kind of stealth game that stuck you with insurmountable challenges the second you stepped out of the shadows or were spotted. These expectations were born of what I assumed previous Metal Gear Solid games were, based on struggling through the first on PSone as a teenager, and based on the slavish praise they received from what I assumed were more skillful players than me.

I was initially relieved, then, when The Phantom Pain turned out to be accommodating. But after twenty hours of play, I’m much more surprised to find myself feeling so far towards the other direction. The Phantom Pain is too easy.

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I play every stealth game the same way.

I remain at a distance. I find the higher ground. I use a weapon with a scope; a bow and arrow if one is available, a normal sniper rifle if not. I crouch-walk around my target or targets slowly, attempting to pick off each enemy and objective in turn, such that no one ever notices anything is amiss until the instant when they’re killed. If they do notice and sound the alarm, I do not care; as long as they do not know where I am, and so can never fire at me, I continue until the job is done. It’s always this way. In the Far Cries, Crises, Splintered Cells and Rainbows Six; wherever possible, this is how I play.

I am playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain differently and I don’t know why.

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Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain [official site] may be the best stealth-action game ever made, but it’s not flawless. The game’s massive scope, and the surprising amount of detail in each interaction within that massive playpen, is impressive – however, that scope is precisely why certain aspects feel like they have something missing. Consider the following, then, as an exploration of The Phantom Pain’s own phantom pains – without plot spoilers.

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It’s been days since I wanted to talk about anything other than Metal Gear Solid [official site]. My sister is probably sick of this. We’re very close but live far apart so we tend to speak almost every day, not so much about our lives as about the things that distract us from our lives. She had no interest in Metal Gear Solid, but eventually my incessant chatter caused her to look into The Phantom Pain. I should have predicted the response.

“I watched a trailer for it last night. What’s the deal with the boob lady?”

I’d been talking about the game for days but hadn’t mentioned Quiet, your sniper buddy. I had been raving about the things I liked about the game, and when the conversation turned to flaws, it turns out it’s the small things that disturb the experience more for me than those bigger talking points.

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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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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
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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.
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