Video Gamers Podcast - [Deep Dive] Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: October 2, 2023

Video Games hosts Josh, Ryan and Paul are back with our Force a Friend follow up episode of Metal Gear Solid 5. Josh was forced to play MGS5 (one of Ryan’s favorite video game series) and now it’s time to find out what he thought of Ryan’s beloved video game? We break down the game in only the way we can, before getting Josh’s takes and thoughts on Metal Gear Solid 5.  Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Redletter and Gaius214 Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com//videogamerspod Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/videogamerspod Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com. Hello, fellow gamers, and welcome to the Video Gamers Podcast, where we break down all things gaming. Today is a special deep dive episode of the 2015 hit Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain. I am your host Paul and joining me, this is surprisingly his first Metal Gear Solid entry and he's been crawling and crawling through the hospital. Some say you can still find him crawling to this day.

It's Josh. I'm crawling from a guy that is on fire. I'm crawling from a floating weird Nazi girl. Sure, yeah. As one does. Wait, look, guys, it's a flaming Pegasus now. This game is one of the most bonkers openings oh my goodness so weird i can't wait to get into what i thought about this game in the first like 30 minutes oh i know i'm just glad i warned you about the crawling because i told you i said josh

you're gonna hate you are going to hate this so much you just gotta get past the intro all right and then joining josh and me he is the metal gear solid aficionado of our group he is a true diamond dog through and through wait no ryan ryan metal gear Metal Gear. I love it. Man, what a great game. We're just making sound effects? Yeah. If you're a fan, if you know, you know.

He doesn't understand. He doesn't know. He doesn't get it. I need that audio of Quiet on the radio. I did not know what that was for like the first 40 minutes and i was like what is this sound and then i realized it was like quiet playing music through the radio she's not singing to me is she i don't know man it really took me a while to figure out what the heck was like that noise was

and then I was like oh it's I'm sure I have her I'm sure it took you a while to figure out what a lot was yeah yeah that's very true uh yeah all right you can find us on socials everywhere at video gamers pod and we would love to ask all of our listeners to toss us a follow and give us some love on social media we love connecting with our listeners through Discord and on socials. You can also help out our show by rating us five stars on Spotify and Apple and leaving a written review through Apple Podcasts. And you can also pledge some support through Patreon. It starts at five bucks a month, and that's the only way to unlock our Squadcast bonus

episodes, which are a ton of fun. Don't miss out out go join the squad at multiplayer squad.com and then josh last bit of housekeeping i think you've got a couple of reviews to read we do have a couple of reviews these are short and sweet but i'll tell you what man every review helps so if you have been listening to the show and you haven't left us a review pause it pull up your podcast app, leave us a review. There's a good chance we're going to read them on the show, but it is really one of the best things that you can do to help out the show if you enjoy listening and you want to do your part.

All right. So this first one comes in from Wham Bam Shangalang, and it's titled Amazing Podcast. And it says, fell in love with it immediately. Love at first sight. Just love it first. Listen, man. That makes me really happy, though. Yeah, honestly, that's short and sweet. I love it, though.

And then this other one comes in from Duncan Domet, and it's titled Great Podcast. And it says titled great podcast. And it says great podcast, really funny group of guys who just want to enjoy gaming. You're darn right, man. Darn right. We're not trying to be critics. We're not trying to be news analysts or any of that stuff.

We're just gamers at heart that love gaming. Exactly. Just regular dudes that love to game and talk about gaming. Yeah. Yeah. All right. We're done with housekeeping guys Guys, it's Metal Gear Solid 5 time. I love that we're able to cover this now that Ryan's on the show. Josh can testify. I believe when we very first started the podcast, even within the first month, I was saying at some point we got to do Metal Gear Solid 5. It's one of my favorite games. I knew Josh had never played it. We finally get to get around to it at this point. And for our listeners who may not know,

we have a really fun way of choosing our deep dive games. Basically, long story short, we've got what we call the Force of Friend format. It is where one of us gets to pick any game, we're going to cover it on a deep dive, and you get to choose not just the game, but also the other host that has to play it. So in this case, Ryan, your turn was up. You picked Metal Gear Solid 5. You picked Josh to play it. If our listeners want to hear the

full episode where we break that down, just scroll back a few episodes. It was two Mondays ago. You can go find all of our thoughts there but just to make maybe make the long story short ryan why this game why is it special to you and why did you pick josh well how much time you got uh 55 minutes how long is our show so um i've been i've been hooked on this series since i you know i know if you've been listening to the podcast for a while and you've listened to me, you know I love this series. You know I started it as a little kid from a demo disc. 11 years old convincing my grandma to buy it for me. Started with Metal Gear Solid 1. So I've played through all of

these. I fell in love with them. I love the whole series. They're wild. They're outlandish they're crazy kojima is a madman he loves the ladies every everything guns explosions all of it it's all everything i love incomprehensible plot yeah things that don't make sense so we're gonna try to explain that as well later uh we'll do our best kind of hard to do but um yeah i just i i i really was interested to see one how josh would take the beginning with the crawling and then and then how he would play the game because you can do different ways you can go stealth you can go kind of full bore you know use uh uh little kind of sidekicks and whatnot to

help you. You can go, you know, all out and just machine guns and stuff. So I was interested to see how he would play it and then just his thoughts on the game. So, so yeah, I'm super stoked to get into this and break it down and see, you know, how far he got and what he did and what he thinks of it. So Ryan and I were already fans of the series going back a very long time. Ryan is the one who really got me into Metal Gear Solid. I remember playing a demo at Fry's Electronics and seeing it, but Ryan's the one who was always putting

the old games on and we played through the first three many, many times. I remember buying the Phantom Pain as a new release in 2017. I actually searched my emails, Ryan, to see if we talked about it at all. And we did. I actually said in an email in September of 2015, this is the first full price game that I have bought this year.

So I had bought Dragon Age Inquisition used and GTA 5 used for my PS4. And that kind of tells you how much hype that you and I had, that this was the one full price title that I was going to spend money on. I will say, even though you didn't choose me to force me to play it, Ryan, I still reinstalled it. I played through on PC this time. I probably only put in about eight hours. It was really just a refresher because I hadn't gone through it in a while,

but I probably put a good 75 hours back when it first released. Josh, I'm kind of curious to know, what was your mindset going into this game, knowing that we loved it, but you hadn't played any Metal Gear since the NES days? Were you excited, anxious, infuriated? How were you feeling? I do want to start off by saying that Paul and Ryan and myself have not discussed Metal Gear Solid and my playing at all. None. Zero. Literally, it is a foundation for

these episodes in The Force Affrined that we don't talk about it at all. We might say, Josh, are you playing? And I'm like, yes, I am. But we don't give anything away. So what you are hearing now, Paul and Ryan are finding out at the same time, which I absolutely love. But I just want to put it out there that it's like, this is pure discovery for Paul and Ryan to hear what I think about this. So when Ryan picked this game, it's funny because I knew he was going to pick it. Paul, you and I had kind of jokingly said, it's like one of two games and it's probably going to

be Metal Gear Solid 5. And then Ryan was like, hey, I'm picking Metal Gear Solid 5. I will say that I was actually really excited for that because I have heard nothing but you two just tout this game forever. And then just be like, Josh, oh, you'll love it. You'll love it, Josh. Metal Gear Solid 5 is a top game, man. It's right up your alley. You know, I think you'll really enjoy it. You don't have to know anything about the rest of the series or any of that. So I remember being like really excited.

I also remember you guys being like, be patient the intro is really bonkers it's really weird don't worry there is a game there but just just grind through the intro dude the staggering through the the corridor in the hospital is a legit like how long are you crawling i in my in my head it felt like 10 to 12 minutes. And I think it really is legitimately that long. One million zillion jillion dillion cotillion times later. It's legitimately about 15 minutes of actual crawling. And by crawling, I don't mean like you're on your hands and knees crawling like a baby.

This is like slapping your stump arm in front of you and then slowly dragging yourself forward and then slapping it again and slowly dragging yourself forward. Yeah. This is like a dying man's crawl. This is not like speed crawling across the floor. I love, I love Kojima's was like,

let's make this realistic waking up from a nine year coma. But, uh, you know, I love Kojima's like, let's make this realistic, waking up from a nine-year coma. But we'll have just flying, flaming Pegasus and a man on fire and a floating weird kid, creepy kid cruising around, setting everything ablaze. Yeah, keeping things real realistic, right? Yeah. I will say, so for my first hour in this game, there's not much gameplay. It's a lot of cinematics.

You guys warned me about that. There's a lot of crawling. You warned me about that. But I will say it instantly grabbed my attention because there was so much going on that I had no idea about. I wake up, I'm in a hospital. There's crazy people. They're trying to kill me. I've got some buddy whose entire face is wrapped up in gauze. I have no idea who this guy is. Is that who that is? I don't know. I still don't know who that guy is, man. I just know he was cool.

He was helping me out. And so you crawl out of this hospital and I'm like, okay, you're pretending to be dead at one point. You have to lay in this pile of corpses. While they're stabbing. And these soldiers are stabbing people. And it's just, just dude it builds the tension

up so well and i was just invested right away i'm like what is going on and then you almost make it out of the hotel and then the crazy flying nazi girl shows up and then some giant flaming dude shows up and he's eating missiles and it's like like, what the heck is, what is this? I'm like, okay, okay. I'm down for supernatural. I like that. Is this like a superhero game? Like, what is this?

And then you finally make it out of the hospital. And this is the one thing that I said to you guys about the game, because I just went, what the heck is this game? There are flying Pegasus. At one point, a flaming flying Pegasus in slow motion flies across the sky with somebody on it. Then there's some dude that reminds me of... Who's the president?

Truman? The guy that was the cowboy that was like... I don't know. There's some dude on a white horse that comes riding in who is like just rosamund roosevelt there you go just a gleaming white perfect horse and it does this like slow motion rare up and it's like and then the flaming pegasus goes by and i'm just literally my jaw is open i'm staring at the screen and I just go to Slack. And that's when I type, what is this game? And you guys just start LOLing out there. Dude, my initially, I was like, this is the love child of a Jerry Bruckheimer, Michael Bay and John Woo film all thrown together

in like this weird mashup of a video game intro. It's unlike anything I've ever seen in my life. So would you say Ryan and I did a good job of preparing you for this game? Like did we set expectations? Well, flaming, flaming Pegasus. I told you there's supernatural flying Nazi girls.

Like what? No, you didn't prepare me for this. I was going to give you spoilers. I said that there are supernatural elements. I let you discover that on your own. supernatural flying nazi girls like what no you didn't prepare me for this i wasn't gonna give you spoilers i said that there are supernatural elements i let you discover that on your own but but as far as like gameplay wise you know obviously i think most of our listeners are pretty well accustomed to metal gear solid 5 in case anyone out there has never played these games. Basically, long story short, is that this entry takes place in the mid-80s. It takes place in Afghanistan, and the Soviets have occupied the area. You go out on different missions. You got to either

assassinate certain bad people, or you got to rescue certain allies and then extract them out, things like that. The game does let you play in a lot of different ways. You can't, like Ryan mentioned, you can go full stealth. You can go full action. You can snipe and do a lot of stuff from distance. You can do a mix and mash of all of this all together. The way I like to play Metal Gear Solid 5 is I think the way a lot of people play it. I stay stealth as long as I can.

I would like to think that it's going to last a long time. It normally lasts about four and a half minutes. Someone sees me and now I'm just running around guns a-blazing while everyone's running around trying to find Snake. And then I just kind of go full action from that point on. I was kind of curious, Josh, like how did you approach most of the missions in this game? Was it similar to me or did you just go full action

or full stealth? What'd you do? So what's interesting about this is after the bonkers opening, you get into the actual gameplay. This helicopter drops me off in Afghanistan and it's like, okay, it's go time. This helicopter drops me off in Afghanistan and it's like, okay, it's go time. I have no idea what I'm doing. I see this outpost. It's like, hey,

there's this little camp. You got to try to find somebody or something and whatever. And I was like, okay, well, I can do that. But I have no idea of the aggro range of these guys, I'm snake crawling for like 400 meters because I have no idea what it takes to like... So I'm playing this super cautious, right? I'm thinking this is like Splinter Cell, don't get caught. And then I'm just like, man, I don't know if I like this game, guys. All I'm doing is crawling around everywhere. And then, you know, I assassinate some dude, there's pop-ups everywhere, right? Like this is, I'll be honest, like it's a little daunting at first because it's like to stealth crawl, press the directional arrow with right stick in and L button to do this. And I'm like, wait, what did all that say? And then I'm crawling and I get

it next to a guy and it's like, you can press left stick plus right trigger to do a silent takedown. I'm like, okay, yeah, that I got. And then it's like, but if an enemy sees you, you'll be alerted by a white sound in a, in a, in a proximity meter. And then you can press right stick with L bumper and then down on the D pad to do something else. And then I'm just like, I'm not going to gonna remember any of this and then i just started shooting boys started blasting all right and then but i will say so it took me it honestly it took me about three like full missions before i got into the like i'm starting to figure this out okay they don't aggro from super far away i have to to kind of be fairly obvious. Oh, if I get

spotted, I get the sound, whatever that is. And then it goes into slow motion. So that was one of my favorite things, right? Oh, you saw me. Oh no, you didn't slow motion whip around with the silence pistol and right in the head. And then the dude falls down and then I'm looking around like, yeah, nobody else saw me. And so I really started to settle in at that point. It did take me a second to get used to the combat because I had no idea about like the aiming or like how combat worked in this game. I think we're going to cover that in a little bit, but yeah. So there was this definite like training wheels kind of timeframe for the first few hours where I really just didn't know what this game was, man. Like, like is like, how important is stealth? Like, am I supposed to be shooting everybody?

How close can I get before I have to worry about stealth? Why am I going to these outposts? Like there definitely was that warmup period for me. And so I will be honest, the first like three hours of this game, I was kind of like guys i don't i don't know if i like this oh that's totally valid like even when i reinstalled the game yeah i remember joking with you guys that i was like oh man i love this in 2015 but getting re-acclimated to the game and learning the buttons and all the crawling there was a brief moment where i thought does this game suck like is this just that i loved it back in the day and now I don't like it? It is very daunting to learn this game.

It's a high, steep learning curve, absolutely for sure. Ryan, I know you feel similarly. Even you trying to get reacclimated, even though you've already played a thousand plus hours, I know that you were diving everywhere because you kept pushing the wrong buttons. Yeah. and plus hours i know that you were diving everywhere because he kept pushing the wrong buttons yeah no and that's where um like if josh was to play like ground zeros that kind of intro like the prequel to to the phantom pain like it's about like i think two hours ish you know depending on how you play but that kind of would have got him ready for it but um truth be told like i i did uh i haven't played in a couple years a few years probably honestly um and i bought on the pc i couldn't get my controller to work i played on pc for a while i didn't like it um last week and i loaded up today on the ps4 i booted up my old

ps4 threw in the disc yes they're still hard discs you know out there i put it in and loaded everything up updates and whatnot and and i played maybe seven or eight hours today so uh don't tell my wife i didn't clean as like i should or do the other things but um yeah so i i had a job fall through didn't go to work today, so I just played Metal Gear all day long. And it still took that little bit to just get back into that flow. But once I did, I was rolling, baby. After like 30, 40 minutes, I was, oh. I can't tell you how much I loved it. Oh, it's so great.

If I could just throw balloons on people in the public, I would do it. I would just walk up and just, boom, hit them with a then they oh it's so great uh believe it or not it's actually time for our first break and then we're going to come back we're going to talk a little bit about story and then we'll start getting down into the nitty-gritty all right boys we are back i think we have to address story before getting more into the combat that way people at least somewhat understand what we're talking about here can either of you explain the story of this game because i sure can't i i absolutely have no idea what's going on in this game there's not many that can i was really hoping one of you guys could help me because I don't know.

All I know is I'm a mercenary with the Diamond Dogs. I've got one boss that's named Ocelot that's kind of cool. I've got another boss named Miller who's a complete jerk. I can't stand that dude. There's a bad organization with a bunch of supernatural people, but none of us are supernatural. At least I don't think I am, even though I'm pretty good at sneaking and killing people. But then I get a dog, which was really cool. But then I totally ditched that dog when I met quiet. Uh, it was really cool. Um,

like, so I, all I got from the plot in this game is we are a private military organization that is mad at somebody that was trying to do something bad. And we're trying to grow and make a bunch of money so that we can maybe fight that guy again in the future. Sure. Why not? That sound about right. That pretty close it's it's a love story between a soldier and the sniper that he met while

yeah it's a romance game i mean i am not even joking when I say I read the full plot section of the Wikipedia article, which is very lengthy. I am just going to pick out two sentences, okay? And I don't even know what any of this means. This just tells you how convoluted and confusing this plot is. During a test, the third child betrays Skull Face, having, say face having say philanthropists wound him and crush the man on fire snake fights saw philanthropists and recovers one of the three parasite vials one is missing and the other is taken by the third child like i don't know what any of this means

this is so hard to follow ryan is josh accurate do you want to try to explain the plot does it matter he's he's close well the third child's okay hold on so i just put like like one or two words and i just listed them to try to just do like middle your solid sure like five seconds so i have like so basically wake up in hospital fire guy creepy kid ocelot helps you escape form an army skull face tries to take over the world with a parasite kill them all right there you go okay that's pretty much that sounds about right that's pretty much it um so uh spoiler warning this game is from 2015 but so the third child that's the recessive genes of the clones of big boss and that's liquid snake from metal game solid one having played all five main

entries that i don't even know what that means yeah i don't know what that means either oh my goodness there was a couple kids that i saved and one of them was a blonde headed dude is that the third child so that that blonde kid that's the white mamba that's yeah that's eli so that is a clone okay because then even there's it's kind of hard because there's a lot of steam coming out of ryan's ears right now you can see him trying to wrap his head around how to explain this. And there's just smoke starting to just pour out. There's so much.

But basically, long and short, yeah. He's a clone of Big Boss. And he turns into Liquid Snake, who you fight in metal gear solid one which is funny because like uh you said like revolver like ocelot um was really cool dude when i was a kid and i played metal gear solid one i hated ocelot he's a villain much because he's your enemy in the first one yeah he's the villain in the first one and so but then this one he's cool and he's like helping you out and he's like slick and a cool like cowboy but yeah so but yeah so that's all right that's the game in a nutshell i think But then this one, he's cool, and he's helping you out, and he's slick and a cool cowboy. But yeah, so that's the game in a nutshell.

I think our listeners know exactly what's going on in this game. Yeah, there you go. Easy peasy on the story, guys. You're welcome, everybody. So let's get into a little bit more of the nitty gritty with the combat. So one of the things that I really like in this game, but I don't know if this is necessarily for everybody, is that you can actually do a fair amount of recon before you actually start the mission.

So you accept either a main story mission or a side op. They show you in the open world map where it takes place. And then basically you choose your landing zone. You get dropped off by helicopter a couple hundred meters away. And then you can pull out your binoculars and zoom in and start looking at the area. You can mark enemies and then you see little markers of where they are on the map at all times. And you can also like take a look at patrol routes and, you know, get acquainted with the place that you have to infiltrate before you go in. And then you already mentioned, Josh, you don't have to crawl all the way from 500 meters out. You can pretty much run your way pretty close up to the area. And then you do get that nice big grace window. If someone spots you, you have enough time to pull out your tranquilizer dart, shoot someone straight in the face.

They'll fall over sleeping. I really like that the game is pretty lenient with the stealth. This is not a game where if you get caught once, it's mission over and you got to restart. This is not like that at all. It's actually probably the most forgiving stealth game that I can think of, which is why I really appreciate that. A lot of times I actually can stealth my way into the objective, but then oftentimes I'm fighting my way back out. And I actually find that mix to work really well. Kind of curious to hear your guys' thoughts. How satisfying was the combat? Did you want to break down any types of guns? I mean, I almost always just roll with the tranquilizer dart. And then

once I get caught, it's either a sniper rifle or my assault rifle. That's kind of how I play. What are your guys kind of like leftover thoughts on combat? So again, this took me a little while to kind of wrap my head around because the first time I got in a gunfight, the aiming was all over the place and it was like, what? Like this, this, this gun play sucks, man. But then I realized that it, it follows the, the kind of gameplay method of like, when you pull the trigger to aim, it will auto kind of lock on to the closest guy. Um, I'll, uh, saints row, right? If you remember, I was not a huge fan of the combat and saints row, because I don't like that. I will, I want to do the aiming. I don't want the game to just lock on. And then all I got to do is squeeze the trigger.

So it took me a little bit at first to be like, Oh, okay. It's this kind of game. Um, you know, there's people shooting me from all over the place. I've alerted the camp.

Um, what do I do now? Do I have to Merck everybody, you know, like, can I just run? Like I, so these are like all the things that it took me a

little bit to kind of figure out you can just run you don't have to fight you just need to do your objective so like that's the thing where it's like i finally just figured out if you get caught if you try to stealth in and you alert everybody sure you can get in a gunfight you can take out the entire camp you know or you can just do your objective assassinate the guy that you were there for and then just hightail it out of there for that horse and just ride your way out yeah so so there was this like the game doesn't tell you this though and i'm going into this completely blind i've never played any of these games before so for me there definitely was this like curve of like, am I

supposed to shoot everybody? Am I supposed to just focus on the objective? How hard should I try to stealth and that sort of stuff? Ultimately for me, I really did fall into just like you, Paul, where I really wanted to try to get to the objective without getting busted, do what I needed to do and then get out. If I got seen while I was close, you know, maybe I'd make a mad dash for it. See if I couldn't rescue the person or assassinate the person or whatever I was trying to do and then hightail it out of there. Um, but yeah, for me, that mix of trying to go in stealth, trying to pick out, like pick off the guy in the sniper tower with a, with the tranquilizer gun and then landing that headshot and seeing him slump over.

I was like, yeah. And then I was like, oh, I got you, boy. And then I could sneak in further and stuff like that. Or a dude that I didn't see spotted me and I couldn't kill him in time during the alert period. So now everybody's after me. And now it's chaos. I'm playing chicken running around buildings and diving through windows. And I will say the other thing is this game is smart. It

actually caught me off guard how smart this game was in the sense that it's like the enemy will look for you where you were. They don't know where you went. And I loved that about it. It's like, this is how it would be. Don't get me wrong. They're searching around. They're definitely checking corners and stuff like that. But I actually was caught off guard a few times by the AI in the game, especially for being from 2015, just how good some of this stuff was at times. There's other times I'm like, man, these guys are kind of dumb. But it really was kind of neat that it would react to what I did and how I was playing.

Yeah, it's good. Once you learn kind of the sequence of where they search when there's an alert and then how the alerts happen, depending on how bad it is, if they just find a guy asleep or if they just, you know, whatever it is, you kind of know how to evade that area or how to get around. And so once you get, the more you play, the better you get at those things. You can just, you know, just disappear, you know, from those guys. And then they just go back all clear, you know, and they go back to their normal patterns. And you can come back around, you know, and do everything you want to do. But I'd say you guys, you know, talking about trank dartsarts and stuff you're a lot more nice than i am are you i'm murking every one of those

suckers um i'm either if if they got heavy gear on uh i'm assuming they're probably an s plus soldier so i'll try to you know send them up in a balloon but other other than that the last things i think i would mention about combat that uh we haven't mentioned yet occasionally the game will throw sandstorms at you with the dynamic weather and that allows you to kind of run around oh yeah will and no one can see you so every once in a while if you get that sandstorm you can actually run like straight past 25 guys into a base start you know to get your way into the objective i think that is very cool and the other thing that i thought was really cool that i totally forgot about until getting back into it if you sneak up on someone with your gun out pointed

at them and they turn and see you sometimes they'll give themselves up i don't know if you ever saw that but they'll, they'll drop their gun, they'll put up their hands and then go down to their knees and then you can knock them out or whatever you're going to do. And I thought that was also really clever with the AI where sometimes they'll respond that way.

The other thing that I really enjoyed was that there's a lot of range combat, but then there's a lot of up close and personal. I would tranq people from afar or snipe them from afar. But then it's like, you know, I'd be right up against the wall of a building while they're coming to look because like they, they would notice if their buddy's sleeping on the ground. Like they, they wouldn't go into full alert mode, but they would know that something is wrong. Right. Yeah. And I really liked that. I could just wait around the corner for this guy to like walk by. And then I just grabbed when I choke them out, you know, and then it's like, or you can do this

tactical takedown where it's like you do this body slam that is instantly stunned. And like, so there was just this really, once I got into it, there was this really nice mix of like stealth versus gunplay ranged versus close quarters, sneaking around and avoiding lights and not busting through doors because that would be really loud and you'd alert people, you know, and like actually having to like be aware of what you were doing. Like that to me was a really well done part of this game. Cause it's honestly, let's be honest. It's the major part of the game. I mean, you're how many outposts do you sneak into when assaults or try to recover somebody from well i love just just like it's almost the weight of the combat like you're

even when you're running it's like oh dude you're you know you you it's not just like a steady camera angle it's you feel it and then those takedowns i wanted to mention that i had wrote it down in my notes like that thato throw, you just wham. So satisfying. You can feel it. You feel that throw. And you feel that. Or when you take them, turn them and just slam them into the ground or slam them into the wall.

You feel it. So there's weight to it. There's gravity to it. And that's what I loved so much about the combat is um they're just it you could you know it was it was like part of you you it was like you were doing it everything's very visceral in this game i remember the first time i started running and the whole screen starts shaking back and forth now i play on a 48 inch monitor so like i it was weird because there was almost like i i don't get motion sick from video games,

but there was a little bit where my eyes were kind of, I was like, God, they don't need to shake the screen that much, you know? But you do, you feel like you're a 220 pound, like solid muscle of a man, like trucking through the, like the desert, you know, it's like, and I'm like, okay, like, this is cool. Like you said, you get the guy and you, you, you grab him and you body slam them. The ground shakes, like you feel it, man. Like even like with the headshots, you pop a guy and you see him, he rears back, his head explodes or whatever. Blood sprays, slow motion. It really does. Yeah. It's very tactile. The game, like even though you don't actually feel it, you think you do. Um, there is so much to cover with this game because it's just such a big game. I think we have to mention a little bit about building up your base. So you are the leader

of this group called the Diamond Dogs. And throughout the game, you are constantly recruiting more and more people to join your cause. And we've already mentioned a couple of times setting up these balloons and extracting soldiers. This to me is one of the funniest things in the game. Basically, one of your primary ways of growing your base is just running around, tranquilizing the enemy, popping a balloon on their back so they shoot up into the air, they get picked up, and then you get a little message like a minute later, so-and-so has arrived at the base. And then when you return back to base, there's this whole aspect of like firing staff, choosing what department they have to work in. Is this person good for research and development or are they better for like defending the base? And if you choose choose to you can just set all that

to auto and just tell the game auto assign all my people i don't want to even bother if you want to get into the minutiae of like maintaining this business of the diamond dogs you can do that too but i will say it's incredibly funny for your recruitment method to be knocking a guy out and just being like well now you're you're a diamond dog. And they're like, all right, I guess I'm a diamond dog. I'm going to help these guys. Like, I don't know whose idea this was, but it's actually very fun and it's very satisfying. I will use every single one of my balloons on every mission. I'm extracting 12 guys. I don't care if they are rated ease across the board and they'll even kind of like troll you on the comms. They're like, really, you're going to extract that guy. And I'm like, yeah,

of course I am. I got 12 balloons. They're coming with me. I'm Miller. Yeah. I, this was another part of the game for me that just made me chuckle, but I didn't really, again, understand what I was doing at first. Uh, dude, extracting somebody is one of the greatest things ever. You literally strap this backpack balloon thing onto them, like while they're unconscious. And then it shoots up. They hover about eight feet in the air for a second,

unconscious. And then it just goes, and you just hear him go. And it was just like, well, this is great. I'm with'm with you pause do it to everybody but there's a tack there's a tactical you can't dude i did it to a goat one time and that made me crack up man um but yeah you can just it's funny what you try to extract but it but but the neat

part about it is is like if enemies are on patrol and they see an unconscious guy that'll raise alerts but if you extract them then you don't have to worry that they're going to come across them but i found this out the hard way if you try to extract somebody too close to another guy they're going to be like i like i heard it over the radio right like this guy's like uh I just saw this guy get yanked up into the sky by a balloon. And then they're like, everybody go on alert. And then I'm like, well, okay. I mean, I guess that's kind of smart too. Potential enemy. Yeah. And so it was just one of those things. But what I love to do with the extraction part, because again, you can

kind of play this game a little bit like you want to, is there's a couple missions where it's like, hey, you have to go assassinate these people. And I would tranquilize them and then extract them. And I love that the game would be like, you were supposed to kill those guys. Why are you extracting them? And then they get extracted. And then like 10 seconds later, they'd be like, okay, actually, you know what? Some of the intel from these two might be good. That's actually a really good idea. And I really liked that the game would respond to what I did, whether it was right or wrong. I thought I was doing something wrong because it's like, I'm supposed to assassinate this guy, but now I want to extract this guy, man. And then the game would literally be like, what are you doing? And then it'd be like,

actually, boss, that's a good idea. We're going to interrogate them and get information. And then the end result from that mission would then summarize and be like, hey, we talked to the guys that you extracted to our base. We got some intel from them. And then it would carry on. And I just thought that was a really neat touch. Well, and another great example of that is in the beginning, you hear all the radio chatter, and it's just Russian. You don't even know what they're saying. But after you finally extract an interpreter who can speak Russian and English, then they're translating the enemies over the comms to you. And that's like another really clever way of where you're not just randomly extracting things.

It's actually got this neat feedback system where it's now changing the open world, changing what your character knows, unlocking new side ops or different parts of the storyline. It really is very clever in how they do all that. All right, well, it's time for our last break and then we'll come back

and talk about our favorite companions all right so guys we got to talk a little bit about companions we've mentioned it very briefly i do not remember all the options available however um in the near the beginning you do run across a wolf pup that you get to pop one of those balloons on. The dog continually grows. He will go out on missions with you. He'll run around and mark enemies, which I thought was really cool. That's very handy. Dude, I loved-

Baby, baby. Okay, so you start with a horse, which is just traversal. That's great. You get really, you know, I was like, oh man, then you get the dog, but then I don't have my horse. So now I'm hoofing it everywhere.

But of course, I've got to roll with my boy. because you do why does the dog have an eye patch he's only got one eye when you rescue him what happened to his poor eye yeah is it just yeah oh really i okay i didn't notice that apparently so but then i so i've got this dog on this very first mission and i love the fact that it's like I crouch and he kind of crouches. And then he does this little thing where he goes, it's like, he does this tiny little half bark, like under his breath to like point out enemies.

And so he's marking enemies in the village. And I just hear, and I'm like, you're the best boy ever. Who's a good boy. Who's a good boy. Point out the enemies. Good boy. Good boy. And then'm like, you're the best boy ever. Who's a good boy? Who's a good boy? Not the enemies.

Good boy, DB. Good boy. And then later on, there's this cool fight with this sniper that you come across. And it's like, I'm just going to take that sniper out. It turns into this boss fight. It winds up being this person called Quiet that I know nothing about. But let me tell you, I ditched that dog real fast, guys. I'll see you, boy is that josh you're you're staying at base um well i well it's really handy to have a sniper in this game oh of course yeah really handy so that's the only reason why so did you uh a little quick question

did you actually battle her? You fought her and tried to shoot her and stuff? Yeah, I did the whole shot her. She was zipping around. I shot her again. I think I knocked her down at one point, but it was really far away. So then she got back up. She actually killed me once, and then I had to do the battle again.

And then they did give me the option, because one of the guys, I think it's Miller, is like, you've got to kill her that's one of the snipers like absolutely like end her end her now she's super dangerous and then I'm like no so then I think I don't know if you extract

her I think you take her to the helicopter you yeah you put her over your shoulder I actually just did that mission on on one of them I redid it but just pro tip uh you can actually mark her with your binoculars and then you just get an airstrike with the sleeping gas and if it i didn't have sleeping gas at that point ryan so some of us are max level i'm just i'm just saying yeah you can definitely choose some of the fights it makes game. It makes it really easy. Unsurprisingly, some people did have issues with the character of Quiet.

She literally does not talk, but is very scantily clad, which is maybe an interesting mix. Maybe at least let her talk if she's going to be dressed that way. But in any case, I also want to talk about items. Items in this game are hysterical. And at first glance, you might completely ignore them because you're looking and in the beginning, you've got like an empty ammo clip. And it's like, well, what good is this? Or you've got a cardboard box or you've got a cigar. And it's like, I don't even know what these things are going to do. So with you being new to Metal Gear Solid, Josh, did you know you can like hide in a cardboard box

and kind of waddle your way around? I knew about the box from the original Metal Gear games before they were Metal Gear Solid. So I knew about the box. I had no idea what this cigar did. I didn't use the cigar for, I think, the first probably 15 to 20 does that I played the game? Um,

you know, I, I will say, yeah, I passed this time because at one point I'd like this guy wouldn't move like at all. And then I just, I,

I was just fumbling around with everything in my inventory and I did the cigar and it marks like the rats and stuff. Yeah. And I was like, Oh my goodness. Like I probably didn't have to wait. Yeah. Nice. I will say I probably didn't have to wait yeah nice i will say i really didn't use the items very much i mean there are a lot of them there's

grenades there's decoys there's like uh the ballistic shields that you can hold in front of you uh the only items i ever really used was c4 because i was on one mission like this is where i got a little it got like i got stuck because it said missiles suggested because i was on one mission like this is where i got a little it got like i got stuck because it said missiles suggested but i was not far enough on my base to have missiles unlocked so i went to c4 route and just laid traps in the road which worked out really really well um and again that was one of those moments where it was like i think i'm supposed to be shooting these with a rocket launcher but i'm booby trapping the road and going the c4 route yeah and it worked and then i was like i like that it's letting me figure out how to do this on my own but yeah i just didn't

use the items very much man there is nothing funnier than sneaking around in a cardboard box and seeing the enemies like looking and checking the area and then they kind of fixate on the box and then like you know you're gonna get caught and then they'll come and they'll open it and then you gotta you know pop them with the tranquilizer dart but it never fails to make me laugh just seeing snake like pull out this massive box and be you know duck waddling around underneath it huh all right All right. So Josh, I know you had very limited time. Were you able to test any of the online multiplayer stuff or did you not even bother? I, there, there is a practice mission that they make you do that is indicative of the

multiplayer where you're trying, like you, like these guys invade your base and then you have to go and clear them out. And that's basically the introduction to multiplayer. So I did do that mission, but I did not try to do any actual multiplayer after that. This game's been out since 2015. There were leaderboards that started popping up on my screen and all this stuff. And I just went, I was like,

I am brand new to this in 2023. I'm not gonna even am brand new to this in 2023. I'm not going to even attempt to try to infiltrate some dude's base that has been hardcore sweating this game for the last eight years. I don't blame you at all. Yeah, so I did not. I did a few actually today.

It took me a while to even remember how to find them, the FOBs on there. And I found them. I did a few infiltrations actually today um it took me a while to even remember how to find them you know the fobs on there and and i found them i did a few infiltrations and wow it was uh it was bad it did not end well any of the times for me i i was like oh man i remembered like i gotta search through these areas and then but now everybody's got like full mega armor i can't you know uh uh tranq snipe anyone i can't you know do any of that stuff as i as i navigate through so i got to try to circle around them and then i try to take out one guy but then the

other guys notice and there's security cameras and there's drones it's it's wild but i mean once you get in you can you can go in you can extract guys you can get S plus guys you can get and it'll tell you what each base has and you can get resources they'll have shipping containers you can just air vac out the resources so it's

really cool to get the stuff that you need and get more people for your base but yeah it's tricky it's a lot's tricky. Um, I, it's a lot, it's a lot harder than I remember. That's for sure.

Well, I almost didn't bring up the multiplayer at all, except there was one thing I had to bring up cause it's such a funny story. So if you go in and infiltrate someone's base and steal any of their staff, they lose those characters, or at least that's how it was at launch. I don't know if they've changed it since. But what's funny is that Metal Gear Solid 5 sold FOB insurance with real money, which meant that if your soldiers got extracted out,

they would instead get a copy and you would be able to keep yours. But Josh, you're going to love this because you and I both worked in the insurance world for years with progressive and also me with USAA. There were exclusions and it was like they would only cover certain kinds of soldiers, but they wouldn't cover other ones if they were in your brig and like things like that. But this all cost real life money and it was not for forever it was only for a set period of time so you would have to keep paying for fob insurance which made for one of

the most hated micro transactions of all time man i can't imagine but i will say you know if you i started to find some of those good people the a plus people or the s people and it was like you'd get such a jump up in your ability to research stuff that i was like oh man this is not with real life money that's preposterous i get it but at the same time i would never do it yeah yeah all right so do you guys have any funny stories or anything else that uh you know you wanted to mention here on the show before we kind of like do make love marry murder and all that stuff the only other thing i'll say that really surprised me with this and and again the longer i played the more i discovered that the game would allow you to do this but i was on a mission where

i had to go assassinate like six guys they were all bad and they were all in different camps one of them was at this mine so i'm infiltrating this mine and I see this little locked gate and I'm like, oh, that's, there's like a tunnel behind that. I wonder, like, so I mosey on over and sure enough, I could pick the lock on the gate. And then it leads me deep into this mine. So I'm exploring this mine and I come across a prison cell that's got like five kids in it. And I'm like, what is going on here? And then the kids are like all scared of me and stuff. And then Miller comes on the headset and he's like,

we can't have kids at the base. You're going to have to just end them. And then my guy starts firing his gun. And I'm like, what kind of game is this, man? Like we're killing kids now? Like, what? And then it was like he was actually shooting the lock off the door. And then the whole mission changes.

I have to slowly, agonizingly extract these five kids because you can't put the balloons on them, right? Because it's like they're too small. It'll hurt them or whatever. So you have to walk them out to the helicopter through all of these bad guys. They kept falling behind. I had to keep wrangling them and everything. You get to the helicopter, the enemy starts swarming you at that point. So it's like, now I'm on this point defense thing where it's like the helicopter's trying to land. And it was crazy, man. I wound up extracting all these kids. They gave me diamonds,

which is why it was okay to extract them or something like that. But the whole game or that mission changed completely because I explored and I went off the beaten path a little bit. I think, I mean, I could have just done the mission by assassinating the six guys that they wanted me to assassinate and that would have been it. And I never would have known any different,

but that mission was like, I think there's a lot more of this in this game that if you just be line it from like, you know, you get dropped off, you do your objective, you leave, I think you're missing a lot of stuff that's in between. And so that really kind of made me realize like this game's a lot more in depth than I think people might give it. It's a little deeper than you might notice at first glance. Yeah. Right. All right.

So just to give a little bit of a breakdown of what else came out in 2015, I looked up the game awards and there were a lot of bangers this year. Guys, this was a killer year for games the game of the year nominees were the witcher 3 bloodborne fallout 4 metal gear solid 5 and super mario maker like that is a really cool set list of games because you've got like hardcore souls like combat with bloodborne you've got more family friendly style with mario maker you've got playstation exclusive you've got a nintendo exclusive you've got some massive open world rpgs

um the the winner of game of the year was unsurprisingly the witcher 3 i was kind of curious like what do you guys think do you feel like metal gear solid 5 is up there with those other titles did they get it right for me i would say witcher three deserved the win but for me metal gear solid five is like right behind it i i think it should be up there with witcher three and bloodborne and yet i feel like people don't necessarily mention metal gear solid in the same breath as those titles but i think it deserves to be there. I agree. It's, it's like one in one a it's, it's kind of like, um,

as we discussed, you know, it's a little outlandish. It's a little wild and crazy. Some of the things are, um, extravagant and, and out of this world.

So some people may not take to it as well as some of the standard games of just a normal fantasy you know witcher 3 so like i i think that may have turned some people off but yeah this is you know right up there i i love the witcher series and i love witcher 3 but this one you know i think is right on par you know especially for me because i you know i love the series so josh this is i think where you kind of get to give us like your kind of like overall verdict how did you feel about mellow gear solid five i it was really weird because in the beginning i legitimately did not like this game for the first few hours crawling aside i just did not really understand

what i was supposed to be doing. I didn't understand all the systems I'm infiltrating bases. Now I'm at some giant oil rig. There's all these people talking to me. They want me to send out mercenaries. Like it's one of those things where the game, like they tacked so much extra stuff on to all these areas. They're all shouting at you at the same time.

Um, yeah. You know what I mean? And so I was like, I don't want to build a base. I don't want to infiltrate other people's bases, like that kind of stuff. Not that I had to either for the most part, but then I really started to settle into the gameplay part of it. And then I do remember, it's funny because there was a moment where I was scouting a base. Oh no, I know what it was. I was doing a side mission and the side mission was to find a guy that had a blueprint that was going to allow me to unlock a new weapon, which I thought like, well, this is really cool. Cause I actually did do a few of the side missions in this. Um, and then I remember standing on this mountain, I'm scouting out the base. And there was a moment where I went, this reminds me of the witcher three in a lot of ways.

Like legitimately, you know what I mean? And then that's when it started to sink in that I was like, this is a really good video game. There's a lot going on here, but this is a really good game, man. You guys know I love chaos. You know I love bananas things happening so flaming pegasus like i was just like what is happening but i loved every minute of it at the

same time oh yeah so there there was like there was this moment of realization where i was like this game's legit man and then i kind of started grinding a little bit to try to make it through and then there was a part where i was like, starting to feel a little repetitive, man. Like how many, how many outposts can I infiltrate and extract somebody before it's, before it's starting to feel a little routine at this point. Um, but then something crazy would happen in a huge boss fight would occur, or I'd come across quiet out in the wild. Like this isn't like a mission that you were on. I just happened to go down this road and there's a sniper, right? Or the thing with the kids in prison. And then that's when I was like, there's more to this game than

just infiltrating these outposts. I think, you know, the more you put in, the more you get out of it. I will say I got frustrated a few times because this is an older style game where if you are, I'm 90% of the way through a mission and I've had to scout, sneak, stab, choke people out. And then I got caught and I got killed and you have to restart the mission. Right. And then it's like, Oh, like this is kind of, this is kind like that old school nintendo thing that got a little aggravating at times but dude metal gear solid 5 absolute banger of a game like it is so good guys it took a little while but and it's funny right right? Because my wife was asking me at one point, I was like, hey, I got to go play that game.

And she's like, are you liking that? And I was like, I am. I was like, don't say anything, but I'm actually really liking it. This does not feel like work to me at all. So you almost have to like calibrate yourself to the game first, because it's very different and unique.

It is not like any other open world RPG. For The Witcher 3, it's one of the greatest games of all time. But if you're a fan of fantasy RPGs, it directly translates to that game. Yes, you have to learn what a Witcher is, and you learn about the Wild Hunt and all this stuff. But Metal Gear Solid V is just very different. You're riding on a horse, but it's in the 80s, and you're in the desert, and you're extracting soldiers. Oh, and the music? It's so weird.

Guys, the soundtrack in this game rivals Guardians of the Galaxy, man. I don't ever care about tapes and stuff like that, like collectibles. Dude, it's amazing. Every time I saw radio and it was playing some banger song from the 80s, I was just like, oh, yeah, I love this song. I was like, I'll take that. Just mash that thing. Yeah, it really did take a little bit

for me to wrap my head around this because I'll be honest, it's not like any other game that I've really played. Like I said, I had that moment where I was like, it's kind of like The Witcher 3 in this weird way. And then I got this kind of like inner tingle, where I was like i'm i see some of the similarities here man it's not to say it's not without flaws you know but not many games

are either um but dude it could use a lot of quality of life honestly yeah i mean it could the whole like i have to there was one part i literally had to google because i couldn't start a mission because it was like you have to be an air command call the call the helicopter and you didn't know that I'm on the freaking mother base man like you're telling me like where else am I supposed to be and then it's like they don't teach you cannot start this mission except for air so I'm running I ran all the way up to the top of the stupid tower in the home base thinking like I have to be up high or something because it's talking about air command and then finally I freaking had to google and it was like somebody else was like i can't start this mission and guy was like you have to be in the helicopter call the helicopter and i'm like why is that a

thing you know it shouldn't be that should not be a thing so there's there there are some things where i'm like this doesn't make any sense to me that's a little distracting but dude overall oh my goodness what a freaking fun game that i've never played before to come across oh i was gonna say how many times did you call in the helicopter and you're just standing there waiting for two minutes oh dude and you're not even standing on it and they're like you have to clear the landing zone and you step back three feet, and then 10 seconds later, they finally come down. And it was like, oh, there's something in the way. And I'm like, that's way over there. What are you talking about?

And then I had to get in the Jeep and drive it four meters away, and then the guy's like, okay, we're cool now. So, Ryan, do you feel like Josh did this game justice? How do you feel now? I'm very happy. I am so happy i i do know like with all this stuff that he's seen and how this game is played out like if he was to have played the other ones it would mean a lot more to him and and it would have it would have been an even

better game so you know the fact that he hasn't touched any of the other games, any series, or any game in the series, and he loves this one, that's awesome. So I'm super stoked. Because all of this happens before Metal Gear Solid 1. So it all plays into that. So it all connects. It's all kind of a crazy whirlwind of convoluted story that nobody understands. But yeah, I'm beyond excited. I would never have played this game

if you hadn't picked it for me. And now that I've played it, it's like, it's so, I see why this series is like so like well mentioned and beloved by people and i can't help but think i i honestly i probably won't just because we have other games to play but i i get the whole like if i knew more about the characters like and the backstory and stuff like that like i'll be honest they kept calling me boss but like miller acted like he was the boss.

So then I'm like, are you the boss? Am I the boss? You guys are calling me boss. But like, I'm kind of deferring to you. Like, even with all my 30 hours of playtime or whatever it was, like there's still things I just had no idea about. But I figured that stuff that ties into the more

of like the Metal Gear Solid universe versus like just this one game. But for a dude that's picking this game up in 2023, that has never played any of these games in this series whatsoever. This game is awesome, dude. It's a banger. And imagine playing it.

It really is. Imagine playing it eight years ago before you had games like red dead and God of war. Revolutionary. It had to have been revolutionary when it came out man so good it was yeah yeah all right well guys it's time for make love marry or murder this is where you get to rate the game is it marriage material do you recommend it long term is it maybe just a make love game play it for a little while and then drop it or is it murder

josh it sounds like you're gonna marry marry this game. I am absolutely marrying this game. Absolutely. It is just, it is so fun. I loved the gameplay loop. I loved the crazy cinematics. I loved the kind of even the choir moments when you go back to base and you're just kind of talking to people for a minute or two. You know yeah there was just so much that i genuinely appreciated about this i loved the voice comms like having ocelot in your ear giving you like a mission briefing or i'm going off path right i'm going off mission and he's like dude what are you doing you know and then it's like i just like the music in the game i i gotta be honest, man. The graphics, I was a little worried at like before I ever played this.

The graphics in this game for being 2015 are pretty top notch, dude. They're always good. They're freaking good. They're always good. Yeah, like I don't know what I thought I was gonna expect there, but I was pleasantly surprised in that regard.

Yeah, easy murder. Again, I could- Easy Mary. Easy Mary, sorry sorry i was gonna say easy i got you right you thought i was gonna know no um i mean i could nitpick some of the small stuff but i'll be honest none of it was distracting enough to really take away from the game um so yeah i this is Josh approved 100%. Nice. Three thumbs up between all three of us.

Yeah. So looking at our leaderboards, just so our listeners know, if you go over to video gamers pod.com, you can see several of our different leaderboards. We've got our top 10 games of all time. We've got our deep dive leaderboard list. Anytime we do a deep dive, all three of us, if we've all played the game, decide where we want to place it on our leaderboard list anytime we do a deep dive all three of us if we've all played the game decide where we want to place it on our leaderboard so josh i'll give you first honors since you're the noob to metal gear solid where are you thinking of putting it on your leaderboard which by the way

is now 101 games this makes number 102 well to give you an idea of how much i actually liked this game i'm putting it at number 20 boys okay yeah um that is taking the place of deep rock galactic just behind hollow night just in front of risk of rain um i i mean there's not much that i didn't enjoy about this game to be honest with you. I mean, I would have liked a few more boss fights. I think like there was one really cool one where you're fighting the giant flaming dude. And the only way to like survive is to douse him with water.

And it's one of those things where there were these giant water towers that look like they were just part of the set. And at one point I was like, I wonder, and I shot a rocket at one and it exploded in this absolute deluge of water and like snuff that dude out. And it was just one of those things where I went like, yeah, you guys thought about that too, man. Like, yes. Like it wasn't just me thinking it, you know? Um, and so, yeah, there's just so much to like about it. Don't care about the

base building stuff. I mean, I get that people could sink a thousand hours into this game, to be honest, with all the little side stuff, but you don't need to do all that. Just play the game part of it, and it's just freaking enjoyable, man. All right, so number 20 for Josh. Ryan, your leaderboard's a little bit shorter

since you haven't been around with us since the very beginning, but where are you putting this? I'm guessing it's near the top. Yeah, I'm going to definitely have to put it way up there. So on what we have... Your top five right now is Red Dead Redemption 2, God of War, Diablo 4, Call of Duty Warzone,

and God of War Ragnarok. I don't know if I need to read any further down, but I'm guessing you got it top five yes absolutely so it's it's actually i'm think i'm i'm going uh i'm going three i'm gonna push out diablo and uh whoa metal gear because i like i said i played seven or eight hours just today and i'm going to do that every day through this weekend. So I am so completely back hooked on this game. So hopefully Josh doesn't pick me for the next Forza Friend,

so I can just keep playing Metal Gear. But yeah, that's where I'm putting it. It's an all-timer for me. I love this series. series oh very nice i am going to put it on my leaderboard at number 10 i am going to have it below stardew valley apex legends and rust i will put it above resident evil 4 satisfactory and valheim um obviously these are very high marks from all three of us. Our listeners should absolutely check it out. You can buy this game for like $3 just buying a Steam code. It's wildly cheap. I do have to point out, and I love this fact, but this is where nostalgia comes in a

little bit because I can give this game nothing but praise, you know, like honestly, but it's really neat to me to see you guys both played it back in 2015 and you're a little bit more familiar with the series. And I can imagine when this game came out, if I had played it back in 2015, my opinion of it would probably be even higher still, you know what I mean? In that regard, because just, oh man, it was so great back then, know and so it's just it's one of those interesting things you guys both have it in your top 10 i have it in top 20 which i think is really high for me i'm happy with that but it's just neat to see that like i think there's some nostalgia coming in there with you guys as well as far as like you just remember that time of life like like playing this game. Absolutely, man. I was looking through just this morning when I was pulling out the old disc of the Phantom Pain. I looked, I saw my Ground Zero.

I saw my Metal Gear Solid 4. I found my old Metal Gear Solid 1 two disc case that I've had since I was 11 years old. And it's just the whole series, man. It's just like, it's been with me for most of my life. And it means so much, you know, which is weird to say about a video game, but it's just something that I've remembered since I was a little kid

and I just fell in love with video games. So it's so cool to see how it grew and what it turned into and to see somebody who's never touched it jump in this late in the process and just and just fall in love as well it's also it is part nostalgia and it's also part i had all the same frustrations that you did josh the thing is that was eight years ago for me so to to hop back in, all I'm going to do is enjoy the positive aspects. I didn't have to relearn the game because of all those things. So there's also that distance where it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, calling in the helicopter. I also did the same thing you did, Josh. I ran around 10 minutes on my base, ended up Googling it back in 2015. can't i start a mission you know so so not having those frustrations and approaching the game now in my second playthrough was just even more enjoyable

because you don't have to deal with any of that kind of bs all right well i think that wraps everything up for this deep dive we do want to let our listeners know that if you want to pick a game for us while we have this force a friend format, we do have one of our Patreon tiers called hijack a host. That is where you are able to come in. You get to pick a game. You pick the host that has to play it and you can step in and choose what we have to cover. If you want to sign up for that tier or even just a lower tier to help support our show, go check it out at MultiplayerSquad.com. Make sure to come check out our next Force a Friend episode. That's going to release a week from today. And we came up with a really cool idea. Ryan, I got to give you all the

credit. Today, you started messaging me and Josh and saying, hey, would it be cool if we gave out a Steam key or a console key for the next Force of Friend game that we're going to do? And I think that is an awesome idea. So the next Force of Friend episode will be next Monday. Since Josh got selected to play Metal Gear, he gets to pick the next game. I have a feeling I might be the target since I don't think we're just going to keep bouncing between Ryan and Josh.

But whatever that game ends up being, we will also give out a code for that. So we'll release some more information. I think we're going to want people to either leave a review on Apple Podcasts or maybe share a tweet or post something on socials. We'll give you guys some more info about that. Of course, we have other episodes that release all the time. We've got episodes on Mondays, Thursdays, Saturdays, Tuesdays for Patreon supporters, all kinds of stuff like that.

So make sure to follow the podcast. Make sure to follow us on socials at Video Gamers Pod. You'll stay up to date on everything there. I think that's everything. We want to say thank you so much to all our listeners. Thank you, Ryan, for picking a fun game. I was really excited to jump back in as well. That wraps everything up.

So until next time, happy gaming. See ya. All right. See you, everybody.