Been playing this so much. Probably the best game I'll play all year. Every time I play I learn something new and get better at the game. Got my first A rank on the main mission tonight at 37 mins, 1 alert, no retries, 2 kills, all prisoners rescued. I still have some issues with how tough it is and how easily you can get spotted, but the game gives you A LOT of abilities to not get spotted and survive.
Things that helped:
1) RUNNING AWAY IF ALERT GOES OFF and then hide for a minute and the alert is called off like MGS1-4. You still get an alert but that's better than a retry and keeps the flow of the game versus staying around the area and fighting infinite spawning dudes until they kill you and you lose progress. Alternatively you can hit start -> restart checkpoint and spawn from the latest major thing you did with alarm off.
2) Covered vehicles are awesome! As long as you don't run into anything/anyone and don't fire any weapons you can move through the level undetected! This helps a lot I've found for taking a truck after mission objectives are done to near the landing zone and then dispatching the 1 or 2 guys around the zone and getting on the helicopter all quick.
3) If you don't mind bad ranks and lots of negative points, the starting rifle with suppressor is AWESOME. Using the first person aim you can take out so many guys and security cameras and everything as an undetected ninja from far. Very easy to get through the levels completely undetected if you murder like crazy with suppressor. Now once suppressor breaks, you're fucked, but all fun and games until then!
4) FIRST PERSON SHOOTING, holy crap! This is basically essential in MGSV. I was struggling a lot because the stupid Tranq gun has the worst reticule ever in over the shoulder and unless you're like right in the guy's face, half the time you don't get a headshot instant ZZZ. But with first person it's a lot easier to get headshots from a distance and some of the weapons like rifles have fantastic headshot range in first person. Now I play it like MGS1-3 and do all my shooting in first person.
Himuro is going to shit his pants when he plays the full PP. The gameplay in MGSV is fantastic and incredibly repayable; it's MGS3 on crack. One of the main reasons MGS4 sucked outside the stupid story conclusion was that it was the first MGS that wasn't replayable from a gameplay perspective because Acts 3/4 are boring and on-rails basically and Act 5 is one area. It's nice being back to a highly fun and replayable MGS where every time you play it, it plays out differently because of all the items/weapons you have and the different ways you can approach the situation. If I'm getting 10-20 hours out of replaying this one camp, I can't imagine how much fun I'll have with a full RDR style open-world map with lots of these bases and other things throughout.
Very hyped for PP, also 60fps and good IQ is nice. At times it may look less fancy than stuff like Infamous/Ryse/Killzone, but it looks great and if PP keeps the same IQ and locked 60fps it's going to be amazing to play.
This is making me want to replay MGS4 since MGS4 is the only MGS I haven't played a handful of times and I hardly remember it at this point because it was bad and because of that. Would be interesting to do a replay for the gameplay-side even if Acts 3/4 are gonna suck.
