Today’s Metal Gear Solid 5 footage comes direct from the Tokyo Game Show. As such, only the Japanese-speakers among us will benefit from the developer commentary.
It’s hard to imagine any amount of commentary could explain the sight of a horse, strapped to a parachute, pinging high into the air. Or a spy climbing into a cardboard box to change his clothes. Or smokes that last for two days. But no language barrier will prevent us from enjoying every last bonkers bit of it.
We join Snake in the jungle, stripped to the waist. But if we find him in an unusual state of undress, just wait til we bump into Quiet – the mute sniper first introduced in the Metal Gear Solid 5 E3 2013 trailer.
It’s not just Quiet’s fashion instincts that are in question, but her allegiance. Despite that, she makes a solid, low-maintenance ally – participating in Rainbow Six-style coordinated shootings, and appearing out of the earth to highlight enemies Snake misses (and blow their helmets clean off if required).
For the most part, we see the undergrowth stealth Kojima and co. defined in Snake Eater, now reprised on an open world scale.
Snake marks guards and climbs cliff faces. At one point, he lobs a mine accurately enough to blast one guard neatly off a precipice above a waterfall. And after the bang, an inflatable decoy pops up to lure another bad guy into the player’s path.
It’s not all environmental manipulation. The demo eventually devolves into cover-shooting, petrol bombing and fire propagation. But I’m inclined to put that down to expo crowd-pleasing rather than a tweak to the series’ DNA.
Metal Gear Solid 5 is coming to the PC. But will it stop by yours?